The Government of Palestine already exists. Its name is now Israel. Making a SECOND Palestine is a recipe for disaster. It will bring rivalry, conflict and a war of legitimacy. Encouraging this folly is encouraging a bloody catastrophe!
If European or other leaders recognize a SECOND Palestine, based on Saudi-style Sharia law and excluding Jews, Christians, Baha'is and other religions, it will initiate an endless conflict. It could well end in embroiling the EU and North America in a new Middle Eastern war. Ignorance is no excuse. Two Palestines cannot claim the same land. One is legitimate and the other is an outright fraud. One is tolerant, the other praises its martyrs or suicide bombers.
Which Palestine is the real one? Like the two women who came to King Solomon for judgement, only one can be the real mother of the baby that they disputed, 1Kings 3:16. Is it the one whose charter would eliminate all Jews and Christians?
Look at this document.
Note the letterhead: GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE ! Note the city : JERUSALEM.
Before the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, a Government of Palestine existed with its capital at Jerusalem. This is a British Mandate official document. Note the British seal. The Mandate of Palestine was set up by international law to return the government of the Land of Israel to the people of Israel, who had been scattered, persecuted, tortured and terrorized for around 70 generations.
The text reads:
Dear Mr Erlanger,
This is to introduce Mr Josef Pollak a young Palestinian Singer who is to visit Paris.
It is signed by an official called Salomon.
Mr Josef Pollak is Jewish and a Palestinian. At this time everyone
in Paris and in Europe understood the term Palestinian
to mean Jewish citizen under the Mandate
living in the former Land of Israel.
What does PALESTINE mean? It is a Roman term. It is the Roman way of
pronouncing Philistine. It was applied after the Roman Empire had
wiped out the last effort at Jewish independence in the second
century. It is anti-Semitic abuse. It was used to show that the land
was cleared of Jews. Israel or Judah became Judenrein, (to use
Hitler's term). That is Jews were for a time cleared out and banned
from entering the own home territory. However over the succeeding
centuries, the Jews re-entered and always maintained a presence
there, not only in Judea and Samaria but also Gaza, the home of some
Jewish sages.
Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople,
nowadays called Istanbul. The Roman Empire finally fell when its
capital at Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In
Europe people still used the term Palestine. It is found on old maps
and those in many Bibles. It is not a Biblical name. The Christian
'New Testament' uses the term Land of Israel, even
when the Romans were in control with the Herodian dynasty. (See
Matthew chapter 2 v21).
Who were the
Philistines, the Palestinians?
They were a small group of a few tens of thousands of people who
occupied four or five towns in what is now the Gaza strip. They
gained their power because of alliances with Egypt and some other
Mediterranean powers because they sat on the gateway of the trading
route between Mesopotamia, via Israel to Egypt. They also maintained
a monopoly of the iron
industry which was then the latest war technology. They
succeeded in creating a cartel
system in i
ron production with the Hittite empire in what is now
Turkey, but this empire also disappeared from later history.
After wars with the Israelites and others, they were wiped out or
absorbed three thousand years ago. The remaining Philistines living
in the towns of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza and Ekron were killed
in the time of Joash king of Israel in the eighth century (see Amos
1:8). This was accomplished efficiently by the brutal Assyrians when
they invaded from the N.E.
'I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza ... and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holds the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish.'
Today there are no Philistines in Ashdod or Ashkelon, nor Gaza or Gath. The Philistines no longer exist. Nor had they existed for centuries before Rome itself was founded. The Romans had to dig far back into history to find a insult big enough to abuse the Jews.
Why? Because the Jewish revolt in the first and second centuries involved the mobilisation of many of the Roman legions and a huge amount of imperial resources. That a small people could defy the Roman Empire was a huge insult to the imperial Caesars. It was not enough to slaughter them and render the remainder slaves of no worth. They chose to name the land after a small trading people of a few thousands that was a cause of irritation by their culture and war over the centuries.
The term Philistine still exists as an insult. It means uncultured person. Perhaps it derived its force from the fact that the Philistines ate dogs and pigs as archaelogy shows. The masses of drinking vessels show they were enthusiastic beer-drinkers, which was probably also a source of trouble.
In the same way the abusive term Palestine, that is, Philistia still existed as an insult until the last century. It is no surprise that Jews did not want to keep this vile name. There was never a State called Palestine nor a Government -- until the British revived the term and used it to create the Government of Palestine for the Jewish Homeland.
The British passports before the end of the Mandate are stamped
Palestinian Citizen.
That is exactly how the family of Moshe Dayan are classified. Information is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Both parents of Moshe Dayan, Dvora and Shmuel, and General Dayan himself were classified by the British under international law as Palestinians.
When foreign armies tried to invade the land, Dayan and other leaders resisted. (The black eye-patched Dayan lost an eye in Syria during WW2 fighting under British command.)
In 1948, the new government changed the name of their beleaguered country officially to what it had been two thousand years ago: ISRAEL.
Like the previous Government of Palestine, it comprised Jews and Arabs, Baha'is, Druzes, Muslims, Christians, atheists and agnostics and other religions in a multi-cultural Jewish State. It became the State and Government of Israel by the proclamation of a name change on 14 May 1948. The idea of tolerance comes directly from the Torah and the rest of the Bible.
You shall love your neighbour as yourself, Leviticus 19 v18.
Democracy, said Schuman, derives from exactly the same Biblical principles.
Some, perhaps most of the 'Arab' Palestinians as Ben Gurion observed were actually Jews who had for generations been in the land and had been forcefully converted to Islam. Recent DNA tests and analysis of their customs indicate it may be the majority of the residents.
Thus the Government of Palestine is now called the Government of Israel. This was the original intention of the Mandate system. After WW1, it was set in law by the Allies and agreed by nearly all the States of the world, who became members of the the League of Nations and then members of the United Nations. It is written in the UN Charter. Other States such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq which were part of the Ottoman Empire owe their legitimacy to these legal agreements as much as Israel.
The only thing that was not clear was the final designation of the name of the State. The choice of the name Israel was hardly a shock as it had been published by the British and other States for decades.
Thousand or millions of paper and metal documents attest to it. The identity of the Palestine with Israel was long recognized since the 1920s by the British and world authorities. How can Europeans, Americans and others know today? How can the leaders of the democracies be absolutely and legally sure that Palestine = Israel?
All they have to do is to look at any stamp or any coin of the Mandate period. There you will find Palestine in English, Hebrew and Arabic. You will also find two Hebrew letters Aleph Yod. This stands for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
Every coin and every stamp of the period is living proof that Palestine Mandate territory and the Land of Israel are identical.