Monday, January 14, 2013

Why The Quotation Marks for "Palestinian Arabs"

When the Mandate terminated at midnight of May 14/15, 1948 and the State of Israel came into being, and when Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria and Egypt that of Gaza, there was no longer any valid reason for the Arabs of former Mandated Palestine to be called “Palestinian Arabs” since the country of Palestine no longer existed in international law and Palestinian citizenship or nationality became defunct from that time onwards. These Arabs were now either residents or citizens of Israel or Jordan and thus possessed the citizenship or nationality of the state they lived in. In the case of the Arabs of Gaza, they were stateless after 1948 since they were denied Egyptian citizenship or nationality...Israeli Jews who lived in Mandated Palestine are no longer called
“Palestinian Jews”. Nor are their offspring. So there is no valid reason to call the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, “Palestinian Arabs”, unless this is a direct reference to the period of the Mandate for Palestine when this designation can be legitimately used

Howard Grief.

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5 comments:

omer said...

So how would you propose calling them??

YMedad said...

There are Israeli Arabs.
There are Jordanian Arabs.
There are Arabs of the former Mandate of Palestine.
And there are just plain Arabs.

omer said...

OK theoretically you are correct and i will go with you...

But by the assumption every man has and should have a nationality, how would you call the Arabs in the west bank??

I am generally against the concept that say the Palestinians are "made up" nationality... because eventually all of the national states are made up - USA, Germany, Spain etc.

YMedad said...

at the present, they are stateless. they are Arabs and that's that. until a new reality comes about. but i can't see the national difference between an Arab living between the sea and the former Green Line, between the Green Line and thye Jordan River and between the Jordan River and thye Iraqi desert.

omer said...

The problem isn't the stateless for itself, rather then being without citizenship,
If you suggest to give all the Arabs on the West Bank - Israeli citizenship its OK (i think its wrong, and will cause a serious damage to the Jewish state)
But if not, your in a big problem because, the world won't allow that situation to continue for much more time.

Following this, in the international law there is the concept of self definition for minorities and groups. where those groups can express it internally, a full citizenship and rights, or externally, meaning a state.
In most states the countries grants those groups the opportunity to express it internally.

As i c it, your solution (on one foot) for this subject is to wait until Jordan will collapse from inside and give them the territories back?