A response to Dayan's 'The savaging of Lebanon'

by M. I. M. Siddeeq

Mr. Dayan Jayatilleke's article in the Sunday Observer of July 30, contains some misconceptions that need to be corrected.

1. He has observed that "Israel was established in 1948 by a decision of the United Nations." There was NO United Nations resolution in 1948 regarding Israel. The only resolution regarding the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine was General Assembly resolution No. 181 of Nov. 1947, known as the Partition Plan. The Partition Plan has no legal validity as Resolutions of the General Assembly have only the force of recommendations to member states of the United Nations but do NOT have any mandatory force. Based on the Partition Plan, many mistakenly believe that Israel was created by the United Nations. Fact is, Israel was created on May 14, 1948 by means of a Unilateral Declaration by Chaim Weizman/Ben Gurion.

2. He accuses the Arabs of rejecting the Partition Plan 'with an impudence that was to be characteristic.' If any one is to be accused of 'impudence', it has to be the United Nations because the UN had no right or authority under international law to partition or otherwise dispose of the territory of Palestine against the wishes of the clear majority of its inhabitants. Without any sovereignty or any other right over Palestine, the UN had no power to partition Palestine or to assign any part of its territory to a religious minority, that too made up mostly by recent European immigrants, in order that they might establish a State of their own.

It will be relevant to ask, after more than two decades of war, in the hypothetical event of the UN passing a similar resolution partitioning Sri Lanka into two States with the North and East becoming a Tamil State and the rest of the country a Sinhala State, whether even the war-weary Sinhalese will not reject such a resolution, will Mr. Jayatilleke then call the Sinhalese 'impudent'?

3. He also makes the point that the 'Arab armies invaded Israel'. This is to ignore the fact that, when the Arab armies entered Palestine shortly after the UDI, 'Israel' was an illegal entity. Further, those areas which the Arab States purportedly 'invaded' were, in fact, exclusively areas earmarked for the Palestinian Arab State proposed by the UN Partition Plan. Clearly, "Arab armies 'invading Israel'" is one of the several myths created by the devious zionists. The so-called Arab invasion was a defensive attempt to hold on to the areas envisaged by the Partition Plan for the Palestinian State.

It is also relevant to point out, under a calculated and well co-ordinated plan, by May 1948, Zionist forces had already invaded and occupied large parts of the land which had been earmarked to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan. They achieved this by carrying out no less than 31 military operations between Dec. 1947 and 14th May 1948.

The entry of the Arab armies was aimed at preventing the Zionists from forcibly occupying areas earmarked for the Palestinian State, though they miserably failed in their objective.

4. He has also stated that "Hizbollah is in grave error, morally, strategically and tactically, to target Israel's cities with its rockets". I wonder whether, in saying this, Mr. Jayatilleke has considered the fact that Hizbollah's rockets were fired after a massive 24 hour air strikes and artillery bombardments by Israel, beginning July 12, through the length and breadth of Lebanon, striking Beirut airport, Lebanese air force bases, the Beirut-Damascus highway, a power station, and all sorts of other non-Hezbollah targets and killing many civilians. And it was only on July 13 that Hezbollah rockets began to hit cities all across northern Israel.

5. Mr. Jayatilleke asks, "had Yasser Arafat accepted the offer made by Bill Clinton and acceded to by Israel's Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000". He must be referring to an offer which was widely touted in the Western media as a 'generous offer' being 96% of West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, as well as control of Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. What was the real position?

First and foremost, the Israelis never presented any maps for the areas they intended to return.Secondly, West Bank, according to the Israelis, is NOT the area captured from Jordan in 1967 but that area minus areas that were illegally annexed in 1967 as well as land confiscated since then to become part of 'great' Jerusalem. Further, Israelis wanted sovereignty over one-third of occupied East Jerusalem, wanted control of the third holiest site in Islam, al-Haram al-Sharif where Israel, incredibly, also demanded Palestinian agreement to the construction of a synagogue.

The status of settlements located within the territory of the Palestinian State - estimated at around 60 with a population of 40,000 and a key factor in assessing the degree of Palestinian sovereignty - was not addressed. Israeli statements subsequent to the summit suggested that no settlement will be evacuated, ever, as part of a pact with the Palestinians.

Robert Fisk, well known British journalist, an expert on Middle East, writing in the Independent of July 23, 2001, states: "the total Palestinian land from which Israel was prepared to withdraw came to only around 46 per cent? a far cry from the 96 per cent touted after Camp David." No wonder, Yasser Arafat's parting words to Clinton at Camp David were, something like "If I agree to this offer and return to Palestine, you will have to come to my funeral".

Was Arafat wrong in refusing to sign the totally humiliating Camp David offer?