A new series where I bring to you news from the newspaper archives to debunk common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict.
I have long reminded people claiming the palestinians just want the return of lands we won in the Six Day War and all our problems will go away that the PLO was formed in 1964, 3 years earlier. Why is that, if the problem is only the so-called 1967 “occupation”?
Of course, the answer to this is explicitly mentioned in the New York Times article relating to the PLO’s formation (accessible here). But the article reveals a whole lot more.
In particular, note the following:
- From the get-go, they rejected any resolution to the refugee issue that did not involve them being settled in Israel, even though resettling them in Arab countries was mentioned. This is because they wanted to take over all of Israel, and not actually make life easier for the refugees. In other words, the refugees have been used as tools.
- All of Israel means what was referred to as Palestine under the British mandate. Yet Israel haters constantly refer to a state of Palestine that has existed for hundreds and even thousands of years. If this is the case, how come they point to the British designation, which is really what Britain wrested from the Turkish-Ottoman Empire in World War I?
- Following the previous point, the PLO members refer to it as the “Palestine entity.” Nowhere do they make mention of things like the “historical state of Palestine”, or their rights as “indigenous peoples of Palestine.”
