Note from Robert Spencer:
From AP, with thanks to DC Watson

Others among the "Palestinian People" included Muslims transplanted into the area by the Ottomans -- Muslims from the Balkans, and Bulgaria, who otherwise would have had to endure Christian rule after the Ottoman power receded from Europe (after the Bulgarian wars of 1876-1877). Others were the descendants of Egyptian troops who came with Mehmet Ali and never left. Others were from North Africa (and included some Berber speakers, who eventually switched to Arabic), and were survivors of Abdel Kader's ranks. Successive waves kept coming from Egypt, especially; Arafat himself was born in Cairo, and speaks Arabic with a still-recognizable Egyptian inflection. Much of the money he has stolen for his own ends has gone, interestingly, into Egyptian real estate -- chiefly in Heliopolis.

The phrase, and the notion, of a "Palestinian people" does not appear even once in the thousands of pages of records of debates on the subject, from 1947 on, at the U.N. -- until well after the Six-Day War. Not a single Arab spokesman, not a single ambassador, not Azzam Pasha (who in 1948 was the head of the Arab League -- and incidentally, though perhaps not coincidentally, was the great-uncle of Ayman al-Zawahiri, now playing one of the Companions to Bin Laden's Muhammad somewhere close to Waziristan), ever used the phrase "Palestinian people." Ahmed Shukairy, Arafat's too-forthright predecessor, never used it. Nor did Arafat himself, until after 1967. No, as he never tired of saying in the early days, "Palestine does not interest us. It is a mere drop in the Arab sea, from the Atlantic to the Gulf." And one should recall the famous mask-dropping admission by Zuheir Mohsen, head of the Syrian-backed As Saiqa terrorist group, in an interview given to the journalist James Dorsey that appeared in the Dutch publicatioin Der Trouw: "There is no such thing as Palestinians. There is no difference between us and the Syrians, the Lebanese [the Muslim Lebanese, obviously], the Egyptians, the Jordanians. The idea of the "Palestinain people" is just a new weapon in the struggle against the Zionist enemy." After all, what distinctive features do the "Palestinian people" possess? A distinct language? Religion? Fairy tales? Food? Clothing? It is simply a convenient fiction, and of course among those falling for it have been many Israelis, who enjoy wallowing in their own (non-existent) feelings of guilt. Why should they have them? They live on 1/1000 of the lands seized by the Arabs, who deny to every non-Muslim or non-Arab minorities -- Berbers, Kurds, Maronites, Copts, Sudanese blacks -- not only the right to self-determination, but even the most elementary cultural rights (only this year did the Arabs of Algeria cease to punish Berbers for speaking Tamazight).

The war against Israel has nothing to do with the imaginary rights of a recently-invented "Palestinian people." It is a classic Jihad, directed at an infidel state. Israel's size does not matter. No Infidel sovereignty can be tolerated within the dar al-Islam. It simply cannot be. Once that is understood, the futility of negotiations and treaties will also be understood. The Arabs, of course, find treaties to be useful, for pushing back the enemy, weakening the Infidel's resolve, and eventually going in for the kill. This is not fantasy; it is a simple statement of Muslim ideology. Of course, the countries of dar al-Harb will ultimately meet the same fate, but for the moment the chosen instrument of conquest is migration, and then da'wa, or conversion, and subversion, from within.

If this is clearly understood by both the United States and Israel (and by remaining friends of both in Europe) then it will be clear that the only way to maintain the peace is for the Infidel side, that of Israel, to remain so strong, and so obviously strong, that the Muslim side will not dare to attack. That necessitates Israel's retention of all the territory it now holds -- a very tiny amount of territory, in any case, and all of it, one needs to be reminded, was part of the 22% of Mandatory Palestine -- Western Palestine -- that was left for the Jews to establish their state once the 78% on the eastern side of the Jordan had been lopped off, and handed over to Emir Abdullah, for the Emirate of Transjordan (in 1946, renamed the Kingdom of Jordan).

Deterrence worked for the United States; it finally outlasted Soviet Russia, and it was Communism that fell. Deterrence is the only realistic strategy for Israel, but the strange unwillingness of Israelis to recognize that what they face is a classic Jihad (which may be explained by their unwillingness to recognize an unpleasant truth, and also a fear of offending those few Muslim states that the Israeli government has tried to cultivate, such as Turkey) has had consequences, and not only for Israel. For its lack of clarity has helped confuse the United States. Had Israel, beginning in June 1967, articulated on every occasion the real nature of the Jihad against it, it is at least possible that the peoples of Western Europe would have not only not abandoned Israel, as they have as an act of deliberate policy, but not allowed the unfettered immigration of Muslims to their countries -- for Israel could have encouraged public study of what Jihad is, what the real tenets of Islam are, what happens to non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Perhaps it is too much to have asked of the Israelis; they are always lurching from one crisis to the next. But the Israeli government, at this date, should be listening closely to its own scholars of Islam -- Moshe Sharon, Raphael Israeli, and the others who have written so acutely about Islam. The situation is not hopeless, but it is one that can be only worsened, not ameliorated, through any further farcical agreements. It is important that, in Washington, the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya be well understood. To date, it is hardly known. That situation is bound to change. People begin to study, begin to see patterns, from the Moro Islands to the southern Sudan, to northern Nigeria, not forgetting Thailand, or Madrid, or the separation of Muslim from non-Muslim in Khobar yesterday.

Education about Islam will, and just in time, help non-Muslims to adopt the strict policies that self-defense demand. One hopes that for Israel it is not too late. It would be intolerable if Israel were to be thrown to the Muslim wolves, and then, once it was devoured, that spectacle would have roused the same Western Europe that did the throwing of tiny Israel to those snarling wolves, to shake off its sloth and save itself, through whatever it takes -- including expulsions akin to those the Czechs felt were justified, in 1946, in regard to the Sudeten Germans.

The history of Palestine extends further than the kingdom of David and Soloman which the Zionist Jews base their territorial claim... Since when has an "Israeli" people ever exisisted on ALL of Palestine? never because the Jews infact had a kingdom covering only a fraction of the ancient Palestine thus the Jews were one of MANY peoples who settled and lived in the land (like most other countries in the world are not excusively made up of one people with one history). In fact Jerusalem was already a fortified city in 1800BCE!!!This predated the Israelite civilisation by eight centuries. This system was built by the Cannanite civilisation. The fact still remains there is far more Roman, Christians and and Muslim character to anceint Palestine than there is Jewish character (covering the entire land!). The Zionist Jews base their claim over Palestine on the Kingdoms of David and Soloman. The kingdom of David lasted 73 years and then fell apart!!! hardly enough time to even begin to build a nation or a GREAT civilisation as have the Arab Muslim and Christians. Even if we include the Kingdom of soloman into the equation we reach just over 400 years of Israelite rule over only a fraction of what the Jews today call "Israel". Thus the Arab Muslims and the Christians stake more claim to ancient Palestine than the Jews although all three Abrahamic faith share the history and culture of the land (Muslims and Christians do not worship a different God they all believe in the Abraham etc...).

In conclusion the the Muslim conquest in Palestine (7th century) made Muslim converts of the natives of ancient Palestine including many Jews and Christians and in fact settled down as residents, intermarried with them, the end result is was the complete Arabization of ancient Palestine (Exactly the same way all other Arab countries today became ARAB!!!)

The Muslim have thus far ruled Palestine for over 1500 years since its conquest by the Caliph Omar. This by far exceed that of the Jews (This argument alone is enough to refute any claim that the Jews and Jews alone exclusivly own the land).

As Edward Said (Rest in Peace) put it:

"Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics - including its name in Arabic, Filastin - became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."

I won't bother with his histories from outer space; it is amusing, and altogether proper, that he should put a Muslim blessing after Edward Said's name, for Said, a nominal Christian (raised and educated in Cairo, where he attended Victoria College -- though he was born, because his parents trusted Jewish-run hospitals, in Jerusalem. (By the way, didn't Said also die in a Jewish-run hospital, where he had been kept alive, and his leukemia kept at bay, for years?)

But about Said's potted history, it is instructive to note, in his ludicrous "Palestine," that he ignores all of the evidence of the Western travellers to that region who testified as to its desolation, from the late 18th century on. He carefully ignores Volney, for example, though in his other books he shows he is aware of Volney (and uses him). He does not quote, but instead blithely alludes to, Lamartine and Chateaubriand, Mark Twain and Melville -- all of whom saw, and reported on, the ruin, desolation, and near-total emptiness of the region. It is fascinating to see how, in his first chapter, Said fails to quote from these people, and then to compare how he uses them, and how Samuel Katz, in his great one-volume study, "Battleground: Fact and Fiction in Palestine" uses those sources, actually quoting from them most aptly.

Said, who has been well dismembered by Ibn Warraq (see www.secularislam.org, and search for the article on him), and by Keith Windschuttle, and a devastating review by J. B. Kelly in National Review some decades ago, and now by many others, including some from the so-called "Third World," has no reputation left except among Said-groupies (growing up is hard to do). Now that Said's apparent personal charm, liquid brown eyes and all that sincerity and phony anguish, has turned to dust, those who might have succumbed to all that jazz can see him as the hystericdal charlatan, who knew nothing about Islam but presumed to defend it, knew noting of Islamic history (what, after all, is one to make of someone who thinks that Byzantium was islamized before Spain and North Africa -- when it occured some 700-800 years later?), knew Arabic imperfectly (whatever his sins, one is grateful to Bernard Lewis for his smooth demolishment of Said, and that footnote on "thawra" which demonstrated how inept Said was in thickets of Arab philology), and, when it came to literature, he had views on its uses and worth that were not distinguishable from that of Lunacharsky, or Goebbels).

Khoury himself is unimportant, for as the Russians would say, he is "neduel'nij" (not duellable, as it would be infra dig). But for those readers who might need further information, a few truths about the heretofore successful campaign to present the inextinguishable, and unappeasable, Jihad against Israel as a fight for the "legitimate rights" of the (newly-minted) "Palestinian people," -- two tiny peoples, blah blah blah -- justifies, I hope, this posting.