Talk:Views of Palestinian statehood

Palestine is a word coined by the British recently...

Here's something I've been wondering about for a long time:

How much of the advocacy for the establishment of "a Palestinian state" is predicated on the following ideas?

• that Palestine no longer includes Jordan
• that Palestine needs to have at least one state which is either (a) Arab, (b) Islamic, or at least (c) non-Jewish

I may be terribly naive -- and I'm SURE that I'm woefully ignorant -- but why can't all the Palestinian Arabs just go and live in Jordan? And let Israel have everything west of the Jordan River?

Jordan would then be the "Palestinian state" everyone's always talking about, and the Arab refugees from the west side of Palestine would be citizens in a country whose national culture is congenial to them.

I'm not proposing this as a solution. It's more of a "food for thought" question. I'm fishing for objections here, not for support! I think if I understood the issue better from this angle I could write better Wikipedia articles; that's all. --Uncle Ed 21:18, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Hmm. Not a lot of discussion here. Well, here's another idea:

I hear a lot about the need to establish "a Palestinian state". The way this is worded implies that there is not already anything which can be called a Palestinian state. If there were, the rules of English grammar would seem to require us to speake of establishing "another Palestinian state" or a "Palestinian state that was better in some way".

These three simple words -- "a Palestinian state" manage to convey a lot:

• that "Palestinians" don't have a state; or,
• that there is no state for "Palestinians" in Palestine

I daresay this is all to eliminate all mention of Jordan from discussion. The fact that Jordan was formed from Palestinian territory is conveniently omitted. In fact, we nowadays say that Jordan is not in Palestine. We even use Jordan's western frontier as one of the borders of the modern "Palestine". (I hope I'm not making too much of this.)

But if we were to say the following, the argument would not carry as much weight:

• We need to provide a homeland for Palestinian Arabs; or,
• We need to provide a homeland for the stateless Arabs of the region known from ancient times as "Palestine".

Note that the meaning of "stateless Arabs of Palestine" depends on the meaning of "Palestine":

1. stateless Arabs from all parts of the British Mandate of Palestine; and,
2. stateless Arabs from the portion of the British Mandate of Palestine which is west of the Jordan River

For "Palestinian" refugess to have a homeland in "Palestine", there are (depending on one's point of view) two options:

Jordan is not in Palestine

Refugees from the are west of the Jordan River were displaced by the creation of Israel. They need someplace to go, preferably in "Palestine". Moving to Jordan is not an option because:

• Jordan refuses to grant them permanent residence, let alone citizenship
• Jordan is not part of Palestine, so it by no means could provide a "Palestinian homeland" to the refugees

Jordan is still in Palestine

The displaced refugees could find a homeland in Palestine, if Jordan would welcome them, i.e, grant them citizenship or at least permanent residence.

• A portion of Jordan could be designate specifically for refugees; or,
• Refugees could settle anywhere in Jordan.

Some advocates assert that Islamic countries generally reject the settling of the refugees in Jordan. Many of these advocates say that the Islamic world is using the refugee issue against Israel, i.e., there is an Islamic argument (tacit or otherwise) that:

1. Israel must accommodate the refugees;
2. If not, Israel should be destroyed

To these advocates, this argument is just an excuse to destroy Israel. --Uncle Ed 15:15, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)