Palestine – UNESCO Membership May be Unconstitutional

November 14, 2011 by David Singer
Read on for article

Palestine’s membership of UNESCO could be under serious legal threat – as the vote approving such admission comes under increasing scrutiny…writes David Singer.

The decision to admit Palestine has come at great financial cost to UNESCO and has threatened the abandonment or postponement of many of its worthy and worthwhile programs.

UNESCO notes in a Press Release on 10 November:

The U.S has withheld its contributions following the admission of Palestine to UNESCO on 31 October. They were required to do so by U.S. laws dating from the 1990s. This leaves UNESCO with an immediate shortfall of US$65m to the end of 2011, and a further gap of 22 percent in its US$653m budget for 2012-2013. Israel has now followed suit and withheld its contribution of US$1.5m (0.3 percent of UNESCO’s budget) for 2012-2013.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova has now launched an Emergency Multi-Donor Fund to help find the very large shortfall resulting from dues withheld by the United States. It has left an enormous black hole to fill – given the financial crisis enveloping the European Union and its members.

One way of rescuing UNESCO from its current predicament would be to approach the International Court of Justice seeking an Advisory Opinion on the legality of Palestine’s admission to UNESCO.

Two questions need to be answered – even more urgently now – following the UN Admissions Committee failing to agree on whether Palestine qualified for membership of the UN as a “peace-loving State” as specifically required by Article 4 (1) of the UN Charter.

  1. Is Palestine a State enabling it to be admitted to UNESCO under Article II 2 of the UNESCO Constitution?
  1. Article II 2 provides:

Subject to the conditions of the Agreement between this Organization and the United Nations Organization, approved pursuant to Article X of this Constitution, states not members of the United Nations Organization may be admitted to membership of the Organization, upon recommendation of the Executive Board, by a two-thirds majority vote of the General Conference.

Palestine’s applications to both UNESCO and the UN required that in each case it be a State to qualify for membership.

The UN Admissions Committee appears to have been divided on whether it so qualified.

One could reasonably infer that this was also one of the issues that was uppermost in the minds of the UNESCO General Conference where only 51 out of the 137 non-Islamic states voted in favor of Palestine’s admission to UNESCO.

In customary international law as codified in the Montevideo Convention 1933 – it would appear that Palestine did not possess the four necessary legal requirements to call itself a State.

UNESCO is required to ensure its Constitution is faithfully observed at all times.

Since the UN interpretation appears to contradict the UNESCO interpretation – legal clarification by approaching the International Court of Justice for an Advisory Opinion is justified and indeed necessary.

2. Was Palestine’s admission to UNESCO unconstitutional because the majority vote required for its admission under Article II 2 of the UNESCO Constitution was not reached?

The vote for Palestine’s admission to UNESCO was 107 for, 16 against and 52 abstentions (which do not count as votes).

There are 194 members of the UN – so a two thirds majority vote required would be 129. As only 107 votes were in favour – Palestine’s admission to UNESCO did not satisfy the provisions of the Constitution and should be declared invalid.

This viewpoint is further strengthened by the provisions of Article II 3 :

Territories or groups of territories which are not responsible for the conduct of their international relations may be admitted as Associate Members by the General Conference by a two-thirds majority of Members present and voting [ed: my emphasis], upon application made on behalf of such territory or group of territories by the Member or other authority having responsibility for their international relations. The nature and extent of the rights and obligations of Associate Members shall be determined by the General Conference.

Clearly the Constitution makes a significant distinction in the specific section of the Constitution dealing with Membership between the vote needed to admit Members and the vote needed to admit Associate Members

This clear difference is however clouded by the provisions of Clause IV B 8(a): 

Each Member State shall have one vote in the General Conference. Decisions shall be made by a simple majority except in cases in which a two-thirds majority is required by the provisions of this Constitution, or the Rules of Procedure of the General Conference. A majority shall be a majority of the Members present and voting.

The International Court of Justice needs to be urgently approached to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies and uncertainties posed by these contradictory provisions in UNESCO’s constitution.

I put some questions on these issues to UNESCO’s Director of Liaison Office in New York ten days ago – but have been met by a wall of silence despite sending him a reminder.

Approaching the International Court of Justice could prove to be the financial lifeline UNESCO so desperately needs – since a ruling that Palestine’s admission was unconstitutional would assuredly restore America’s financial commitment to UNESCO.

Will political or financial pressure win the day? Will the political fallout involving the possible removal of Palestine from UNESCO dissuade UNESCO from approaching the International Court of Justice for its advisory opinion – thereby allowing its financial woes to continue and its projects to founder ?

Either way UNESCO cannot be seen to create the impression that any of its actions are not in strict accord with its Constitution and that it is prepared to act in possible contravention of its own Constitution.

To do so – whilst the above two questions remain definitively unanswered by the International Court of Justice – could well persuade those 86 non-Islamic member states who did not vote for Palestine’s admission to UNESCO to also cut or withhold their financial contributions to UNESCO until the Court’s ruling is obtained.

That would surely be the beginning of the end for UNESCO- which cannot be seen as a law unto itself and certainly cannot financially afford to do so.

 

Comments

21 Responses to “Palestine – UNESCO Membership May be Unconstitutional”
  1. Otto Waldmann says:

    Not such a strange phenomenon. Poor thinking, poor ethics, poor documentation and poor English are the common denominators of the single name anti Jewish brigade spilling their bile with the gusto enjoyed by traditional anti Semites.

    Bob takes the cake by counselling his Jewish “brethern” on how to destoy their country ( hasvSholem !!). And does it in “style”, a kind of language easily found in the sewers of palestinian activism. Trolls or just simple imbeciles, they provide the strong argument that being a dedicated Zionist is much easier in terms of dialectics. That is if you really, really must engage constantly with idiotic arguments put forward by the said single names, hiding behind ostentatious stupidity, for there is NO chance at all of redressing their deficiencies. Ben, Steven, Neil, Bob shall vomit forever their hatred of Jews regardless of what we say .

  2. david singer says:

    To ben

    You seem to be the clone of Steven

    You just can’t accept that Israel has been admitted to the UN – as has been the US and Iran,Libya and all the rest of the 193 members on the basis they are peace loving.

    What you don’t want to try and comprehend are the reasons why Palestine was NOT admitted.

    Bury your head in the sand if you will – rejecting everything that has happened in the international arena since the end of World War I has caused the Palestinian Arabs nothing but a lot suffering. Whilst they – and people like you – continue to think the same way their suffering is set to continue.

    It could have ended a long time ago – at least as early as 1937 – if not earlier – and at many points of time thereafter – if they had adopted a reasoned and rational approach. Their leaders have let them down.

  3. david singer says:

    To Steven

    Your comment has nothing to do with my article.

    UNESCO membership does not require a canadidate to be peace loving. UN membership does.

    Both require the applicant to be a State.

    My article deals with the UNESCO vote being possibly unconstitutional. Do you have any constructive comment on that or do you accept the correctness of my claims?

    For once try to hide your Jew-hating slip and address the issue at hand – UNESCO’s deviation from the terms of its own Constitution.

    • ben says:

      Hello David Singer. Thanks for the slander and the absense of facts. Israel has no declared borders. It is expanding settlements in the West Bank and Jordan Valley. It is using the resources in the region for its own citizens but denying citizenship to the indigenous people in the region. It is building its barrier inside the West Bank. It is demolishing bedoin settlements inside Israel while arming Jewish settlers in the West Bank. There is a civil rights struggle at this very moment against aparthied in the West Bank.

      Israel has not acknowledged the expulsion of Palestininas through massacres and terror such as deir Yesin, lyddah and Tanture. It has not permitted Palestinian refugees to return to their villages but permists any one identified as Jewish to acquire citizenship. here are the facts, conclusins follow from facts, not hasbara.

      • Paul Winter says:

        Hello Ben, hello… are you reading any of the replies to your baseless pally lies against Israel? No borders? What about the ones with Egypt, Jordan and the Gaza enclave? Settlement expansion? No new ones since 1993. Or do you mean that if a Jew dares to build anything on his land, that he is expanding something? Sure, mohammedans demand that dhimmis not build synagogues and churches, but is an additional room for a house or a school or even a new building a threat to peace? If a village cannot accommodate the young, it will eventually. But that really is the name of the game, isn’t it? Resources? What about the water developments Israel approved and the PA didn’t bother to build? Or the water theft by Arabs from the National Water Carrier? Or the PA’s deliberate failure to build sewers in order to pollute the ground water? Yes, the Arabs are so resourceful and truths for them are so fluid. The barrier is in a strategic position for security reasons. It can more easily be removed than can mohammedan hatred of Jews. Bedouin settlements, like as in land rights for gay whales? The Bedu are nomads and the lands they claim are not theirs but the state’s. Indigenous people? Like those who migrated to the British mandate mad properous by Jews. All those indigenes called el Masri, al Libi and al Bhagdadi are of ancient stock; not. And denied voting rights just because they are not Israeli citizens – how shocking! Apartheid in Israel has been rejected by Goldstone, but you would want to deny that. Expulsions??? Now in view of Norman Trubik 16.11.11 post, detailing the falsity of that Arab lie, you truly expose yourself as a propagandist following Geobbel’s line that if you tell a big lie often enough people will believe it. But the second part of Goebbel’s strategy you failed to note; such lies can succeed only where the power of the state perpetuate them. Alas, on this site, the Arab/mohammedan lies you peddle are exposed at every turn. Keep it up though, it feels good to expose each and every one.

        • ben says:

          Hello Paul Winter. very happy to expose your lies. Here is one. Israel announced the building of 1100 new buildings in Gilo in September. Even the EU and Britain condemned this.

          • Paul Winter says:

            Gee, Ben, thanks for the opportunity to show what a foolish and bigoted bullhorn of the eternally lying pallies you are. Gilo is a Jewish part of southwest Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people. It is groteque, bizarre and antisemitic that the Jewish people should not build in Jerusalem because a politically concocted “people” makes a completely baseless claim to a city that is part of Jewish history and of no meaning to the mohammedans, other than in a fabrication by fueding 7th century Arabs about the place Mohammed dreamt he had flown to. The Arabs are hypocritical as well, as they build without permits, thus creating facts on the ground. The EU and the Brits who fund anti-Israeli, anti-democracy are the last ones anyone other than a fool would quote as a source of moral authority.

  4. Otto Waldmann says:

    Bob,you are reaqlly, really a very interesting man. I read your posting and said to myself: ” This Bob is fantastic !!”.You will notice that I did not say “Bob is interesting ” to start with. But why did I first say : ” This Bob is fantastic !” ? This is why:

    – Bob has the courage and determination ( no big diference between the two,to be honest ) to come to a Jewish blog and tell Jews ( Israelis included ) that they, the Jews, make big mistakes in running their own country. It is like kind of me seeing that you neglected to close the door to your place, come in slowly and quietly and seeing you in the privacy of your room standing in front of a cca.1938 modest wardrobe with a mirror door, scream on top of my voice, prectically cracking the mirror. : “Bob , stop masturbating !!!”. I reckon that will give you at least a heart attack, not to mention some other serious internal injuries, not least loss of balance, temporary blindness, panic and uncontrolled urge to write moronic texts using your computer.

    Why did I say “Bob is an interesting man.” ??

    – Although Bob handles the language of Inglish the same way stray dogs play the violin ,Bob composes words and imparts ideas with the wisdom and passion identical to expert alcoholics vomiting on post marks affixed on letters to President Mahmud Abbas . And all these make Bob a very interesting man. That is if we are really, really ( once again ) dealing here with a real, real man or just two letters, one used only once, letter “o” and the other one twice.
    I DO wonder what else is OUR Bob capable of telling us.

    To be continued ?????

    And isn’t tireless Ben tireless, even more so than his best mate, Bob of the above ?!

  5. Paul Winter says:

    Bob, your concern for Israel is so, so touching. Your argument that to save itself, Israel must support the creation of a Palestian entity is based on false premises. It is a triple lie that Israel is occupying more and more Palestinian land. Firstly, there never was a Palestinian state and the Jews accepted their share of 22% of the original British mandate; most of the land allocated had been purchased and developed by Jews. Secondly, Judea, Samaria and Gaza came into Jewish hands through a defensive war and if normal rules of war applied, Israel would be entitled to keep what it chose and to rid itself of a hostile population as the Czechoslovakians did in Sudetenland, the former USSR in the Kurile Islands and the Turks in northern Cyprus. Thirdly, Israel has not built any new settlement since 1993 and is entitled to build anywhere in Area C, Jerusalem and on the Golan. In particular, Israel is entitled to build in Gush Etzion, since under the terms of UNSC242, the acquisistion of land by force is unacceptable and that Jewish area was siezed by Trans-Jordan in 1948 and its defenders were massacred. So its the old mohammedan game of: whatever I claim is mine and what you have is mine as well. Another error you make is in claiming that the demographic balance favours the Arabs. It doesn’t. Check the data. Typical of pally lovers, you invert the facts: the us versus them attitude you rightly condemn is that held by mohammedans, not by Jews. If you bothered to think a bit before you wrote, Bob, you would note that about 20% of Israelis are Arabs and the PA has repeatedly stated that it would not tolerate a single Jew in its state. And of course, dear “Bob” the separation barrier in not a wall and far from intentionally killing people, the IDF often places its own soldiers in danger to prevent casualties among the enemy’s civilians. Clearly you have as much of a problem with your English as you have with your facts, so please don’t waste your time trying to make Jews accept your sick spin.

    • ben says:

      Hello Paul
      If all of that is true, why are the International Court of Justice and even Israeli major funder USA oposing expansion of settlements ?

      • Paul Winter says:

        Thanks for giving me the opportunity Ben, to return to my teacher’s role to clarify matters. My reply to you will be in two parts.

        (1) The International Court of Justice is an arm of the United Nations and it is therefore a political rather than a legal body. It very clearly is politicised as one can discern from its “judgements” on Israel. The ICJ bases its ruling regarding settlements on a section of the Geneva Conventions which prohibits the transfer of populations into occupied territories. That rule was made to outlaw deportations such as the Nazis practised predominantly against Jews. The ICJ erred on two points: a) Jews who moved beyond the 1948 armistice lines did so voluntarily, so clearly they were not deportees and b) the ICJ hypostetised that in 1967 Israel aggressively invaded another nation-state. Somewhere along the line, the Geneva Conventions were perverted to make voluntry movement to anea under occupation illegal, but it still rested on the false presumption of the existence of a “Palestine”. There is no occupation, merely regions whose legal status has not yet been defined and agreed upon. It is wothwhile recalling that in 1954 Ahmed Shukhairy stated that “Palestine” was just Southern Syria, but in 1964 designated a group of Arabs in that region as “Palestinians”, purely for political reasons. The artificiality of that grouping was confirmed by Zahir Muhsien in 1977 and by Azmi Bishara in 1996; the Arabs of that region miraculously become “indigenous” through just two years residence in pre-1948 “Palestine” according to UNWRA rules. It is alsi significant that the areas of settlement for which the ICJ criticises Israel were never claimed by the”Palestinians” while under Jordanian and Egyptian occupation, those dear Arab brothers who realised that the issue of self-determination did not apply to people no different to themselves. As regards the ICJ and the UN, one must question by what right, rule of law or of morality it pressures Israel to submit to resolutions, binding or non-binding that the Arabs rejected; what court with any pretense at lawfulness or justice would give a party that rejected its rulings the benefits in retrospect and as far as I am concerned, that applies to UNSC 242. Finally, to the US. Is is a friend of Israel. Yes, it supports Israel, but the State Dept is hostile and it has failed of many occasions to act morally or legally. It never put Arafat in his place when he rejected Jewish ties to Israel. It failed to keep its word to keep the Straits of Tiran open and that led to the 1967 war.

        (2) It is logically invalid to say that Israel is in the wrong because umpteen entities say that. Jews have been falsey and maliciously accused of all sorts of things over the centuries; that so many of its enemies accused Jews of all sorts of things did not establish the truth of the accusations. But lets get away from Jews; Galileo was made to recant his observation that the earth revolved around the sun by the Catholic Church, but that didn’t make the heliocentric postulate true. There are things like truth, justice and morality, none of which are decided on narrow national, ethnocentric, political or religious bases. A nation as much as a person can act correctly irrespective of what cynics or enemies demand. While acting in conformity with one’s beliefs can lead to a delusional state, terrorism or to evil actions, harsh reality testing and conforming with the Jewish version of the Golden Rule – Do not do unto others that which is hateful to you – can prevent one from falling into error. That notion of justice, fundamental to Judaism plus the talmudic rule “that to be kind to the cruel is to be cruel to the kind”, allows a nation to deal in real-politik.

  6. Bob says:

    My dear friends. If Israel really wants to save themselves, restore international credibility and gain their allies back in the region they need to change tack to promote a Palestine state. Failure to do so will isolate them as rightly or wrongly they appear to be the aggressor as since the inception of the israeli state 1948 they appear to be claiming more and more land (see all the border shifts and understand why the palestinians will accept no more landswaps) and more importantly they will loose Israel as the population increase on the plaestinian side is greater then on the Israeli side. The world wide Jewish population is on the decline. There are 15-17 million Jews in the world there are 1.1-1.2 billion muslims, which are on the increase. The “them” vs “us” attitude is not healthy, and very costly: The building of Wall to keep them in or them out is costing Israel over 1 billion. The cost in military spending to combat bombs and missile attacks, is massive considering more people die in car crashes each year in Israel. The difference is of course it is intential murder, which is very wrong, but more solders die in the wars then in peace time. To save reperation, lives, cost and ensure the survival of Israel they needs to vote with an unconditional “yes” for Palestine.

  7. Otto Waldmann says:

    Consistent with their intellectually deficient hallucinations, the Bens and Stevens, to whom a Neil is occasionally added, all of whom would be the same derrailed obsessive anti Semite of NO actual identified identity, legality, simple compliance with clear rules, basic electoral conduct etc., have no value at all when it comes to promoting their/his/her sickening affair with all matters palestinian. As this kind of dialectics define the worthy new cultural ambassadors at UNESCO, one wonders why bother giving this moronic collection of fake identities the time of day at all. All you get, time and again, are idiotic lines oblivious to clear data and principles of civilised behaviour. And here is the crux, what do principles and civilised behaviour have to do with the Palestinian “argument” !! In one word: GURNISCHT !!!

  8. Paul Winter says:

    Singer’s article is well thought out and put as simply as a legalities can be made. Anyone who actually both read and comprehended the article would note that there are legal tests for UNESCO membership, which the PA fails. Name calling and ridiculing the article invalides the ranters, not the thrust of the arguments. Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, is indeed peace loving, as are the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. Those who describe Israel as war-like deliberately ignore that in all of its wars, Israel was the defender. And please don’t even think of claiming Israel’s 1967 thrashing of the Arabs was an offensive campaign; remember the Straits of Tiran? But back to the PA bid for membership. The PA regime rules over only 60% of Arabs labelled “Palestinian”, while its rival, Hamas controls the other 40% in Gaza. The antisemitic PA is kept in power by Israel and it lives off international charity. Israel supplies Gaza with food, medicines and electricty, even though the openly antisemitic terrorist gang there attacks Israeli civilian, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Apart from the fact that no nation, other than that of the Jews, who are concerned for life, would act so generously, graciously and humanely, the two competing irridentist, bloodthirsty, jihadi factions of the Fakestinians do not comprise a state and are thus ineligible for membership of any international body. That was one argument Singer made. The other one was that they fell short of the votes. But then again, legalities and democracy do not cut much ice with totalitarian Jew haters.

  9. Norman Trubik says:

    Steven, David singer is quite correct. Simply read the clauses he mentioned. This is neither a racist or Zionist article. It is a very factual article. Its a shame that your logic is clouded by your obvious bias. Please explain why the article is racist or Zionist for that matter. Israel is a very peace loving state. Unfortunately war has been forced on her many times by Arab states and the Palestinians.

    • ben says:

      Sory Norman. I will leave david singers lawyer article to be analysed by legal experts. But Israel is not a peace loving state. Its beginnings are in collaboration with imperial powers including the anti-semite Von Phelve, built on the Balfour Declaration made without the consent of the Palestinians, followed by military collaboration with a colonial power in Palestine and realised by massacres such as Deir yesin and Lyddah and displacement of the indigenous population.

      • Norman Trubik says:

        Sorry Ben, You claimed that David singers post is racist and Zionist. I ask that you please justify your allegation. What exactly is racist or Zionist in his post. You can’t now hide in a statement that his article be analysed y legal experts. You made the allegation! Back it up!!

        Your assertion that the Balfour declaration was made without the consent of the Palestinians.-WRONG!!! The head of the Pan Arab movement of the time, Emir Faisal Ibn Hussein, the hero of ‘The Great Arab revolt’against the Ottoman Empire had no hostility to the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917. On the contrary, In January 1919 he signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann, the rising head of the Zionist movement (eventually the first President of Israel) which expressed support for
        ‘the fullest guarantees for carrying into effect the British Government’s Declaration of 2nd November 1917’ and for the adoption of ‘all necessary measures…to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale.’
        In a letter to an american couple, Faisal wrote: ‘We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…and with regard to [the Zionist demands]as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.’

        You can find this and a lot more in the very well referenced book: Karsh, Ephraim, Palestine Betrayed, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2001, Chapter one.

        • Norman Trubik says:

          Again to Ben, the Arabs themselves, their leaders were to blame for the Arab exodus in 1948. Also Deir Yassin was not the massacre that you claim.See below.

          Sources confirming that Arab leaders told Arabs to flee and
          reports related to the departure of the Arab refugees:
          1. “The first group of our fifth column consist of those who abandon
          their homes…At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels
          to escape sharing the burden of struggle” — Ash-Sha’ab, Jaffa, January
          30, 1948
          2. “(The fleeing villagers)…are bringing down disgrace on us
          all… by abandoning their villages” — As-Sarih, Jaffa, March 30,
          1948
          3. “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab
          populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their
          shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests
          will be safe.” — Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26,
          1948.
          4. “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order
          of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…. By withdrawing
          Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.” — Time
          Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25
          5. “The Arab streets (of Palestine) are curiously deserted
          (because)…following the poor example of the moneyed class, there
          has been an exodus from Jerusalem, but not to the same extent as from
          Jaffa and Haifa”. — London Times, May 5, 1948
          6. “The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages
          were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress
          of war.” — General John Glubb “Pasha,”[the British commander of the Arab Legion] The London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948
          7. “The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence
          of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish
          state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they
          must share in the solution of the problem.” – Emile Ghoury, secretary
          of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the
          Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948. (same appeared in The London
          Telegraph, August 1948)
          8. “The most potent factor [in the flight of the Arabs] was the
          announcements made over the air by the Arab-Palestinian Higher
          Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit… It was clearly intimated
          that Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection
          would be regarded as renegades.” — London Economist October 2,
          1948
          9. “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee
          encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and
          Jerusalem”. — Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April
          3, 1949.
          10. “The Arabs of Haifa fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish
          authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”-
          – Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, New
          York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
          11. “The military and civil (Israeli) authorities expressed their
          profound regret at this grave decision (taken by the Arab military
          delegates of Haifa and the Acting Chair of the Palestine Arab Higher
          Committee to evacuate Haifa despite the Israeli offer of a truce). The
          Jewish mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation (of
          Arab military leaders) to reconsider its decision.” — Memorandum of
          the Arab National Committee of Haifa, 1950, to the governments of
          the Arab League, quoted in J. B. Schechtman, The Refugees in the
          World, NY 1963, pp. 192f.
          12. Sir John Troutbeck, British Middle East Office in Cairo,
          noted in cables to superiors (1948-49) that the refugees (in Gaza)
          have no bitterness against Jews, but harbor intense hatred toward
          Egyptians: “They say ‘we know who our enemies are (referring to
          the Egyptians)’, declaring that their Arab brethren persuaded them
          unnecessarily to leave their homes…I even heard it said that many of
          the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come
          in and take the district over.”
          13. “The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to
          leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab
          invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees.”
          – The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.
          14. “The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha,
          assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel
          Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade…Brotherly advice
          was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and
          property to stay temporarily In neighboring fraternal states, lest the
          guns of invading Arab armies mow them down.” –Al Hoda, a New
          York-based Lebanese daily, June 8, 1951.
          15. “Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering
          now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal
          leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them
          over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The
          Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it.” — The Beirut Muslim
          weekly Kul-Shay, August 19, 1951.
          16. “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every
          place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives
          and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.” — Iraqi
          Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir An-Nakbah (“The Secret
          Behind the Disaster”) by Nimr el-Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
          17. “The Arab Exodus …was not caused by the actual battle, but
          by the exaggerated description spread by the Arab leaders to incite
          them to fight the Jews. …For the flight and fall of the other villages
          it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of
          rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities
          in order to inflame the Arabs … By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities,
          killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror
          in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their
          homes and properties to the enemy.” – The Jordanian daily newspaper
          Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.
          18. “The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in.
          So we got out, but they did not get in.” A refugee quoted in Al Difaa
          (Jordan) September 6, 1954.
          19. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi “there was no rape,” but Khalidi replied, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, [in 1998] “This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react.
          Israel and the Arabs: The 50 Year Conflict,” BBC..
          Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha made clear in an interview with the BBC on the eve of the war (May 15, 1948): “The Arabs intend to conduct a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
          For more on why the Palestinian “exodus,” in his ‘Arabs’, Edward Atiyah, secretary of the Arab League office in London, wrote:
          “The wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the
          Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic press and the irresponsible
          utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only
          a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies
          of the Arab states, and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and
          re-take possession of their country”. — Edward Atiyah (Secretary of
          the Arab League, London, The Arabs, 1955, p. 183)
          20. “As early as the first months of 1948, the Arab League issued
          orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring
          countries, later to return to their abodes … and obtain their share
          of abandoned Jewish property.” — Bulletin of The Research Group for
          European Migration Problems, 1957.
          21. “Israelis argue that the Arab states encouraged the Palestinians
          to flee. And, in fact, Arabs still living in Israel recall being urged to
          evacuate Haifa by Arab military commanders who wanted to bomb
          the city.” — Newsweek, January 20, 1963.
          22. “The 15th May, 1948, arrived … On that day the mufti of
          Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country,
          because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.”
          – The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, October 12, 1963.
          23. In listing the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948, Khaled al-
          Azm (Syrian Prime Minister) notes that “…the fifth factor was the call
          by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate
          it (Palestine) and leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948,
          it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is
          we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab
          refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave. We
          have accustomed them to begging…we have participated in lowering
          their morale and social level…Then we exploited them in executing
          crimes of murder, arson and throwing stones upon men, women and
          children…all this in the service of political purposes…” — Khaled el-
          Azm, Syrian prime minister after the 1948 War, in his 1972 memoirs,
          published in 1973.
          24. “The Arab states succeeded in scattering the Palestinian
          people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as
          a unified people until the states of the world did so, and this is regrettable.”
          – Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas, the current President of the Palestinian Authority), from the official journal of the PLO, Falastin el-Thawra (“What We Have Learned and What We
          Should Do”), Beirut, March 1976.
          25. “Since 1948, the Arab leaders have approached the Palestinian
          problem in an irresponsible manner. They have used to Palestinian
          people for political purposes; this is ridiculous, I might even say
          criminal…” — King Hussein, Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, 1996.
          26. “Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States Are the Cause of the
          Palestinian Refugee Problem” (Wall Street Journal; June 5, 2003):
          27. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article in March 1976 in
          Falastin al-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: “The
          Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the
          Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to
          emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political
          and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the
          ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.”
          As Abu Mazen alluded, it was in large part due to threats and fearmongering
          from Arab leaders that some 700,000 Arabs fled Israel in
          1948 when the new state was invaded by Arab armies. Ever since, the
          growing refugee population, now around 4 million by UN estimates,
          has been corralled into squalid camps scattered across the Middle East
          – in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.
          In 1950, the UN set up the United Nations Relief and Works
          Agency as a temporary relief effort for Palestinian refugees. Former
          UNRWA director Ralph Galloway stated eight years later that, “the
          Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to
          keep it as an open sore, as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do
          not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die. The only thing that
          has changed since [1949] is the number of Palestinians cooped up in
          these prison camps.”

  10. Lynne Newington says:

    Geoffery Robinson QC and distinquisted international human rights lawyer and judge, has covered this in a precedent already set by the Holy See, in his recent book In the Case of the Pope, chapter six. It makes interesting reading and thought provoking.
    It also makes sense as to why the Holy See would gain for Palestine to become a member of UNESCO, seeking to have holy sites placed on world heritage register entering into a bilateral agreement.
    Goodbye Mount Zion someone said sometime ago.

  11. Steven says:

    You think Israel is a peace loving state? By this reasoning both Israel and the United States should never have become members of the United Nations. What a ridiculous racist Zionist article.

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