Submitted by Elliott A Green, Nov 20, 2007 12:59

Resurgent Judeophobia in the West places Israel at a disadvantage in any international conference meant to "settle" or "solve" [finally?] Israel's relations with the Arabs. Another disadvantage is Arab oil power and oil wealth.
Some of the pretexts for this resurgent Judeophobia are, unfortunately, echoed by Hillel Halkin, whose article otherwise has some good food for thought.
1) Halkin seems to think that the 1949-1967 armistice lines between Israel and Transjordan [later Jordan] and Gaza were "borders". This is simply not correct. They were armistice lines only, as the Jordanian UN delegate took pains to remind the Security Council a few days before the start of the Six Day War. Nor were the partition plan's proposed boundaries "borders" since the plan --approved by the General Assembly on 11-29-1947-- was merely a recommendation as are all General Assembly resolutions on political issues. Hence, the borders of the Jewish National Home [the mandated territory] remained in effect, also because the Arabs rejected the partition plan.
2) There never was a "palestinian people" in all history. Even the PLO, which supposedly embodies "palestinian nationalism," declares in the first article of its charter: Palestine is a part of the Great Arab Fatherland [watan] and the Palestinian Arab people is a part of the Arab nation. So speaking of "palestinians" is misleading, although "everybody" does it. The very notion of a "palestinian people" was invented, in my view, after Israeli independence precisely in order to weaken Israel's position in world public opinion, and even to obscure the memory of the Jews as a historical nation living in the Land of Israel [which the Romans called Judea] long before the Arab Conquest of the 7th century.

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