20 Facts
1. The name "Israel" first appears on an Egyptian obelisk c. 1209 BCE. The twelve Israelite tribes, having escaped slavery in Egypt, settle in the land of Canaan between 1200 and 1000 BCE.
2. The word "Jew" comes from the word "Judean." Judea was the name of the southern kingdom of Israel. In 70 CE, the Romans almost completely destroyed Jerusalem. The Romans, in an effort to de-Judaize the land, rename Judea as "Palestine."
3. Palestine was the name given to a geographical area. The word "Palestinian" does not denote ethnicity. Before the State of Israel, everybody in the land was referred to as Palestinian – both Jew and Arab. There has never been State of Palestine on what is now Israel or the West Bank.
4. Before 1967, most Palestinian Arabs considered themselves to be part of a "Greater Syria." Palestinian Arabs are ethnically and culturally identical to Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, Egypt etc.
5. Jews have had a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. Jerusalem has always been considered the focus of Judaism and Jewish identity. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned at least 700 times in the Jewish scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. During its occupation by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, no foreign Arab leader came to pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
7. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backsides toward Jerusalem.
8. The Palestinian Arabs were given their own state in 1923. It was called Transjordan, now simply Jordan. 70 per cent of Jordanians are Palestinian.
9. The Palestinian Arabs sided with Hitler in the Second World War. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem actively collaborated with the Nazis in an effort to bring the ‘Final Solution’ to the Middle East.
10. After the UN voted in favour of partitioning the land of Israel, 800,000 Jews were forced to flee from Arab lands due to persecution and pogroms.
11. In the 1948 war, Arabs in Israel were encouraged to leave by their Arab leaders who promised to purge the land of Jews. Two-thirds of the Arab population evacuated. The remaining third were afforded Israeli citizenship rights. Today, 20 per cent of Israelis are Arabs.
12. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000.
13. It is well documented that many of the Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1947 and 1948 were recent economic migrants to the Holy Land. Even the UN, which is no friend of Israel, has acknowledged that many had only lived in Israel/Palestine for two years prior to Jewish independence.
14. The surrounding Arab nations have consistently refused to integrate the Palestinians, preferring to keep them in camps. The UN has perpetuated this problem by creating a unique agency for the Palestinians. Since 1971 and for nearly ten years, the UN General Assembly condemned Israel every year for trying to rehabilitate the refugees. This condemnation always had one requirement: “Send the refuges to the camps.”
15. UN Resolution 194 recommends that refugees wishing to return home and live in peace with their neighbours should be allowed to do so. This resolution was never applied. Not because of Israeli opposition but due to the unanimous rejection of the Arab governments. If the Arabs had accepted the resolution it would have meant the implicit recognition of Israel and the laying down of arms and compensation for Jewish refugees.
16. The term "West Bank" was coined by the Jordanians after they occupied the territory in 1948. Historically, it was known as Judea and Samaria and was part of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites in the West Bank were desecrated and the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the territory.
17. The West Bank is disputed territory, not occupied territory. Because the Palestinian Arabs rejected the 1947 partition plan, the West Bank is unclaimed UN Mandate land.
18. UN Security Council Resolution 242 does not call on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank but instead calls for a negotiated solution which would leave Israel with secure borders.
19. Following the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were given full control over 55% of the West Bank population and administrative control over a further 41% of the population.
20. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and has repeatedly offered to settle for a two-state solution. In the past 12 years, the Palestinian leadership has refused on two occasions the opportunity establish a state on the West Bank.
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