In the first few years after World
War One - after the British issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, viewing
"with favor "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people, and after they had wrested the country from the Ottomans - the borders
of "Palestine" embraced also the eastern bank of the Jordan River, or
Trans-Jordan, the territory that is today the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan.
Shortly after the war the Hedjazi prince, Abdullah, great grandfather
of Jordan's current king Abdullah II, invaded the east bank and, with the
connivance of the British Colonial Office, headed by Winston Churchill, crowned
him as Emir of Trans-Jordan. In June 1922, one month before the League of
Nations assigned the Palestine Mandate to Britain, Churchill issued his White
Paper excluding Trans-Jordan, some 78% of "Palestine," from the provisions
of the Mandate pertaining to the "Jewish National Home."
Henceforth, the name "Palestine" applied only to Eretz Yishrael west
of the Jordan River.
In 1948 the Arabs in Eretz Yishrael, with the help of the armies of
5 neighboring Arab countries, tried to throttle the reborn Jewish State at
birth. In the course of the war, Jordan occupied eastern Jerusalem, including
the Old City and dozens of Jewish holy and historical sites, large parts
of Judea and Samaria, annexed them and dobbed them "the West Bank."
Only Britain, Jordan's patron and Moslem Pakistan
recognised the annexation of eastern Jerusalem.
At the end of that war, the territory of
Israel constituted some 75% of former "Western Palestine," that is 75% of
22% - or 16.5%-of "Palestine" before Churchill's 1922 White Paper.
In June 1967 our neigbours again
set out to wipe us off the map. The battle cry of Jordan's king Hussein,
broadcast to his troop over Amman radio on the 3rd day of the
war, was the koranic one of "kill the infidels where ever you find them!"
(the Jerusalem Post, June 8 1967).
(Later, of course Hussein became the
2nd Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel.) |
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We won a stunning victory in the
6 Day War, in the course of which the Arab
aggressors lost several territories to us. These included the
above - mentioned Jordan-occupied areas of former "Western Palestine".
Soon afterwards a larger group of citizens-religious and secular;
men and women; urbanites and farmers; capitalists and socialists; politicians,
artists, writers, journalists, intellectuals-joined forces to establish what
they called in Hebrew "Tnuat Eretz Yisrael Hashlema," and in English " Land
of Israel Movement," ommiting the "Haslema/Whole" part. Their reasoning was
that we had regained those areas in rebelling aggression and were therefore
entitled to keep them, especially in view of the fact noted by distinguished
international jurists that Jordan had in the first
place occupied them illegally.
Those areas refered to as "the cradle of
the Jewish Nation," contained, many Jewish sites, the Temple Mount and the
Western Wall; Hebron where Patriarch Abraham made the first territorial purchase;
Shechem (Nablus) where Patriarch Jacob make the second purchase; Shiloh and
Beit El, where the Tabernacle had stood; Samaria, capital of the Northern
Kingdom of Israel.
The movement's founders understood "Eretz
Yisrael Hashlema" to apply strictly to former "Western Palestine." never
did any responsible person call that movement "Greater [Land of] Israel"
or utter irredentist thoughts, implied in this designation, of invading the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in order to regain the rest of what Lord Balfour
and the rest had originally considered "Palestine."
Indeed, the only "Greater" idea lurking
in our region is the Greater Syria idea in which Lebanon is "Western Syria"
and Israel and Jordan (and more) are "Southern Syria".
Moshe and Barbara
Kohn
Jerusalem in the Sources.
E-Mail:
moshbarb@netvision.net.il.
Address: POB 9275 Jerusalem 91092 Israel. |