Palestine: Official name: Dawlat Filastin. Capital: Jerusalem. Official language: Arabic. President: Mahmoud Abbas. Major political party: Hamas. Indepence: Nov. 15, 1988. Area: 22,145 km. Population: 7,047,000. Same size and population as Israel, including the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Gaza Strip.
Currently, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) envision the establishment of a State of Palestine to include all or part of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the East Jerusalem, living in peace with Jews under a democratically elected and transparent government.
Most Palestinian groups and parties have described their intent for a Palestine that includes all of Jerusalem as their capital. In fact, the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, all include the entire region pictured as “Israel,” on their official emblems, and have refused the idea of a state of a state for Jewish people in the occupied lands.
“Palestine,” they say, “is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria and Jordan to the east, and Egypt in the southwest. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean in the west and the Gulf of Eilat in the south (or Aqaba in Arabic) — a port to the Red Sea.”
These facts are taken from the Alberta Arab Directory 2010 edition.
A recent article stated President Obama asked Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel to negotiate a Palestinian state based on the borders that existed before the 1967 war.
In other words, just give up lands that were won, and became the spoils of war which were the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
These lands were part of the territory given for the jews in the Balfour Declaration of 1921.
At the time, Lawrence of Arabia was negotiating the Arab states that exist today. Before that, these lands were bought and paid for from the Ottoman Empire by the Rothschilds Trust in the 18th Century.
How many more times do the Jewish people have to pay for their land so they can have a homeland? Is there any other people on the face of this earth that have paid so much in money, toil, and blood, only to be denied again?
In 1988, a declaration was approved at a meeting in Algiers, by a vote of 253-46.
The declaration invoked the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 and a UN General Assembly Resolution 181 in support of its claim to a “State of Palestine on our Palestinian Territory with its capital Jerusalem.”
The “State of Palestine” was recognized immediately by the Arab League, and about half of the world’s governments recognize it today.
The European Union, as well as most member states of the UN, maintain diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority.
Yet this so-called “State of Palestine” is not and has never actually been an independent state, as it has never had sovereignty over any territory in history.
Carmen Wallace
Red Deer