Assalam Alaikum,

Check this link out by Al-Jazeera, it is a good overview on the Palestinian issue:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...603635511.htm#

Thanks.

Salaam,

I reserve this space for future contribution on the above mentioned subject. Let's organize all the stuff in a single thread rather than scattering it!

Regards,
Adil Memon

__________________
"The race is not over because I haven't won yet."

Adil Memon
Police Service of Pakistan (P.S.P)
37th Common Training Program

This is the complete history. It's quite elaborate and it briefs about the dirty roles of British, Jews and Americans. In the next article, the ugly feats of UN are discussed.

Israel: consequences of ‘uniqueness’

By M. Shahid Alam

“If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me.”

—Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, 3

WHY did the creation of Israel engender such deep but opposing emotions in the Islamic world and the West, leading to Arab wars against Israel and Israeli wars against its Arab neighbours, producing tensions that have poisoned relations between Islam and the West, and, now, arguably, pushing the United States into a direct occupation of two Muslim countries?

The Zionists claim that Israel is a ‘normal’ state, like India, Iraq or Indonesia. They equate their ‘struggle’ to establish a Jewish state in Palestine with the movements for national liberation in Asia, Africa and elsewhere during the 20th century. The hostility of Arab and Muslim peoples to Israel, they claim, is motivated by their anti-Semitism, a hatred of Jews implanted by Islam itself. In recent years, this hostility has also been explained as the result of an Arab or Islamic envy of Israeli democracy.

We face a difficult choice here between Israeli and Arab normalcy. If Israeli statehood is normal, then it follows that there is perversity in the Islamic opposition to it. On the other hand, if Israel is not a normal state — like India, Iraq or Indonesia — then we are justified in investigating this lack of normality, or ‘uniqueness,’ and probing into its consequences. It may turn out that Islamic hostility to Israel did not proceed from perversity but, instead, is a legitimate response to the ‘unique’ conditions surrounding Israel’s creation.

This Zionist claim to normalcy — that Israel belongs to the same species of states as India, Iraq or Indonesia — is based on two superficial similarities. First, Israel was created as an independent state out of Palestine, a British colony since 1917. Second, after 1945, some of the Jews in Palestine took up arms against the British to force them out of Palestine. On the basis of these partial truths, the Israelis claim that Zionism was a nationalist movement aimed at liberating Palestine from the British occupiers. Incidentally, the Palestinians are completely missing from this narrative about Jewish statehood in Palestine.

This claim is not tenable: one intransigent fact militates against it. The Jews who created the state of Israel in Palestine were not indigenous to Palestine. Indeed, more than 90 per cent of them were settlers from Europe, having entered Palestine after its conquest by the British in 1917. In the 1940s, the European Jews had a legitimate claim to our sympathy, but, as Europeans, they had no legitimate nationalist claim to statehood in Palestine. In other words, Israel is a ‘unique’ case of nation building.

Sadly, the Jews of Europe could not have staked a nationalist claim to any part of Europe either. They did not constitute a majority in any of the territories which they shared with other Europeans. This was the unstated problem the ‘nationalist’ Jews confronted in Europe during the 1890s. The oppressed nations in Europe could stake a valid claim to sovereign statehood. Not so the Jews: they may have been a distinct people, and some of them were still oppressed, but they were not a nation.

In order to become ‘normal’ — that is, in order to transform themselves into a European nation — the Jews of Europe would first have to create a Jewish majority in some part of Europe. This path of ‘normalization,’ however, was not open to Europe’s Jews. It would have been opposed. Indeed, it would have amounted to courting disaster.

Nevertheless, there would be poetic justice in the creation of a Jewish state in Europe. After all, the Jews were a European people; the history of their continuous presence in Europe goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks. Since the European Jews — as minorities — have historically faced persecution, and, under the Nazis, many Europeans participated in a fiendish attempt to exterminate them, one can argue that it was Europe’s moral responsibility to accommodate the Jews as a nation inside Europe. The historical wrongs done to a segment of the European population should have been corrected by Europeans inside the geographical boundaries of Europe. At least, this might have been the right thing to do. But when has Europe shown magnanimity of this order?

Unable to stake a nationalist claim in Europe, those European Jews who sought ‘normalization’ as a nation had another idea. After all, this was the 19th century, the age of colonization and of settler-colonialism. If the British and the French could establish settler-colonies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Algeria, among other places, why not the Jews of Europe?

In its early stages, during the 1890s and 1900s, when the project to create a Jewish state was being broached in some Jewish circles of Europe, several locations for this state were considered. Although Palestine was his first choice, at various times Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was willing to settle for Uganda or Madagascar. Earlier, others had scouted Surinam, Argentina, Missouri and New York! However, Palestine won easily. It would appeal to Jewish emotions associated with religious Zionism, and the Messianic Christians would support the idea of a Jewish return for their own eschatological reasons.

If political Zionism does not qualify as a movement for national liberation, was it a scheme for establishing a colonial-settler state similar to those being established or consolidated in the same era? I will argue that it was, but with two differences that make Israel rather unique among states of this species. Unlike the other colonial-settler states, Israel was not the creation of another state ethnically allied to it. Israel had no mother country. A Jewish state did not yet exist.

Indeed, the Zionist movement sought to create such a state; this would be its end point, not its point of departure. Secondly, there was an important difference in the goals of the colonial-settlers in Africa or Australia and the political Zionists. The former intended to expropriate the natives so that they could use them as cheap labour on the lands they would expropriate. In other words, they did not intend to expel the natives from their colonies.

On the other hand, the Zionists intended to expropriate the Palestinians and remove them from Palestine. They wanted a Palestine without the Palestinians; this was their goal, not the serendipitous consequence of their settlement activity. In its conception, then, Zionism was a colonial-settler project with a difference.

This ‘unique’ project had several vital implications. First, in the absence of a Jewish mother country, the Zionists had to find a surrogate, a western power that would use its military to implement their colonial-settler project. This would not be too hard to find. For more than two hundred years several western powers — in league with Christian messianic groups — had worked on various schemes to persuade the Jews of Europe to establish a Jewish state in the Levant, a state that would serve as the staging post for their colonial ambitions in that region and farther East.

Wisely, the Jews rejected these overtures, suspecting that that they were traps to get them out of Europe and into greater trouble. However, the emergence of political Zionism in the late 19th century turned the tables. Starting in 1897, after the First Zionist Congress, the Zionists began courting the ‘powers’ to take on their cause.

Their efforts were directed primarily at Britain, the greatest colonial power of that era. Success in this venture came almost exactly twenty years after the First Zionist Congress in the shape of the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. This document stated that His Majesty’s Government “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object...”

In fulfilment of this commitment, the British created the mandate (euphemism for colony) of Palestine. Under the terms of this mandate, duly approved by the Council of League of Nations in July 1922, the British administration in Palestine would work with the Zionist organization to “secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.” Thanks to British support, the Zionist project was in motion.

The Zionists converted the absence of a Jewish mother country into an advantage. Political Zionism appealed to the West for at least three reasons: messianic Christians saw the Jewish return as a prelude to the Second Coming; western powers were eager to acquire control over the Middle East because of its strategic value; and the West was still animated by an antipathy to Islam. In September 1922, the US Congress passed a resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration.

When British support for the creation of a Jewish state wavered in the 1940s — coincidentally, just when British power was being superseded — the United States stepped into the breach, thanks to Jewish votes, money and influence in that country. The western sponsorship of Zionism would evoke historical memories in the Muslim world. In time, many Muslims would come to see the creation of Israel as the return of the Crusaders, an escalation of western Christendom’s campaign to undermine their faith and civilization. This was a dynamic that contained the seeds of a clash of civilizations.

The goal of a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish population had an unavoidable corollary. As the Jews entered Palestine, the Palestinians would have to be ‘transferred’ out of Palestine. As early as 1895, Theodore Herzl had figured this out in an entry in his diary: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.”

Others took a more direct approach: “As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank. We’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.” At some point, when a dominant Jewish presence had been established in Palestine, and the Palestinians had departed or been marginalized, the British could end their mandate to make room for the emergence of a Jewish state in Palestine.

This plan ran into two problems. The Palestinians would not cooperate: they refused to leave and very few were willing to sell their lands. As a result, in 1948, the year that Israel was created, nearly all of Palestine’s “penniless population” was still in place. In addition, more than 50 years after the launching of political Zionism, the Jewish settlers owned only seven per cent of the lands in Palestine, not the best lands either.

During the Second World War, the Zionists ran into a problem with the British too. In order to rally Arab support during the war, in 1939 the British decided to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine to 75,000 over the next five years. However, these problems would not derail the Zionist project. The Zionists would achieve under the fog of war what they had failed to achieve through money and discriminatory policies.

In cooperation with the British colonial authorities, the Zionists had been establishing since 1918 a parallel government in Palestine, consisting of a network of Jewish organizations that brought in Jewish settlers, acquired Palestinian lands, organized Jewish settlements, supported Jewish businesses, and established Jewish educational institutions.

In addition, as early as 1920, the Zionists had set up the Haganah, a grass-roots military organization. Fifteen years later, the Haganah consisted of 10,000 mobilized men and 40,000 reservists, equipped with imported and locally manufactured weapons. When the British refused to lift the restrictions on Jewish immigration after the war, the Jewish military organizations started a campaign of terror against them. Partly in response to this terror, the British announced their premature departure from Palestine before the conflict they had spawned could be resolved.

The Zionists found their opportunity in the British loss of nerve. On May 14, 1948, on the termination of the British mandate in Palestine, they declared the emergence of the Jewish state of Israel under a UN partition plan. Although the Jews in Palestine owned only seven percent of the land, the UN plan assigned 55 per cent of Palestine to Israel. The Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states decided to resist the UN partition plan.

But the ranks of the Palestinian resistance had been decimated before by the British, and the Arab armies were poorly equipped, poorly led, and their leaders lacked nerve and commitment. They were decisively defeated. In the process, the Zionists occupied 78 per cent of Palestine, and 800,000 Palestinians were expelled or left their homes under duress. Israel, Mark I, had arrived in the Middle East, a Jewish state in Palestine with only ten per cent of its Palestinian population.

The writer teaches economics at a university in Boston, US.

alqalam02760@yahoo.com

__________________
"The race is not over because I haven't won yet."

Adil Memon
Police Service of Pakistan (P.S.P)
37th Common Training Program

The invalid UN Resolution

By Bilal Ahmed Malik

Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs have ever accepted the resolution for the partition of Palestine. They considered it to be invalid and of no effect. Their attitude is based upon political, historical and juridical considerations.

Not only Palestinians and Arabs consider the UN resolution for the partition as invalid, everyone fails to see on what legal basis a UN resolution, which is of no effect, could subsequently and retroactively acquire legal effectiveness.

The first ground of invalidity of the resolution lies in the incompetence of the General Assembly of the UN to recommend the partition of Palestine or to create the Jewish State in that country. The legal position is clear in this regard. The UN is an organization of States, which was formed to perform certain purpose defined in the Charter. At no time did this organization possess any sovereignty or any other right over Palestine. Accordingly, UN possessed no power to decide the partition of Palestine, or to assign any part of its territory to the religious minority of alien immigrants in order that they might establish a State of their own. The UN could not give what it did not possess. Neither individually, nor collectively could the members of the UN alienate, reduce or impair the sovereignty of the people of Palestine, or dispose of their territory, or destroy by partition the territorial integrity of their country.

The UN also did not possess any power to administer the country. And the Charter of the UN did not give the organization any right of supervision over exiting mandates. The General Assembly, however, paid no heed to this fact. It might possibly be argued that the General Assembly could deal with the Palestine question since it was placed on its agenda as a result of a request made by the Mandatory Power for the recommendations to be made under Article 10 of the Charter concerning the future government of Palestine.

However, the power given by Article 10 to the General Assembly to discuss any question or matter within the scope of the Charter cannot be enlarged so as to imply the power to break up the territorial integrity of a State or to create a new State. The General Assembly possesses no power to prescribe the future form of the government of Palestine, a matter that was the sole concern and within the exclusive competence of the people of Palestine. Such recommendations, unless accepted by the original inhabitants of the country, possess no juridical value or obligatory force. Since the majority of the inhabitants of Palestine have unequivocally expressed their opposition to partition, the resolution of the partition of Palestine was therefore ultra vires and invalid.

Further more, the resolution of the partition of Palestine constituted an encroachment upon the sovereignty of the people of Palestine. This encroachment not only was contrary to principles of law but also constituted a violation of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, which declares that nothing contained therein shall authorized the UN to intervene in the matters that essentially fall within the scope of domestic jurisdiction of any State.

Another ground of invalidity of the partition resolution is that it violated the principles embodied in Article 22 of the Covenant of League of Nations and in the Charter of the UN. This violation was emphasized in the report of Sub Committee 2 to the Ad Hoc Committee of the Palestine Question. The UN has no power to give effect to the partition resolution because UN is bound by the Article 1 of the Charter to act “in conformity of the principle of justice and international law and to respect the principle of equal rights and self determination of the peoples.”

Under Article 73 concerning non self-governing territories and mandated areas the UN undertakes ‘to promote to the utmost the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories and to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples.’ The imposition of the partition of Palestine against the express wishes of the people of Palestine can in no way be considered as respect for or compliance with any of the above-mentioned principles of the Charter. In accordance with the principles of self-determination of peoples recognized by the Charter, the people of Palestine were entitled to affirm their national identity and to preserve the integrity of their territory. The carving out of the substantial area of Palestine for the creation of the Jewish State and the subjection of parts of the original inhabitants of its dominion was a patent violation of this principle.

One might perhaps argue that the existence of a Jewish minority in Palestine changed the situation. The answer is obvious. What country does not possess in its midst a religion or racial minority? Nowhere is the world can a dismemberment of a country be recognized as a legitimate method for guaranteeing the rights of a minority.

In 1946 the total population of Palestine amounted to 1,972,000 inhabitants, comprising 1,203,000 Muslims 145,000 Christians and 608,000 Jews. Only one-tenth of these Jews were part of the original inhabitants and belonged to Palestine. In fact, the original Jewish Palestinian community did not favour partition or the establishment of the Jewish State. The rest of the Jewish population was composed of the foreign immigrants, originating mostly from Poland, former USSR and Central Europe. Only one-third of these Jewish immigrants had acquired the Palestinian citizenship.

In terms of the land ownership, the Jews owned only 5.6 percent of the total Palestinian land, and, in contrast, the Arabs owned 47.8 percent of the total land and the rest comprise the public domain.

What did the partition plan do? It attributes to the Jews — who were less that one third of the population, largely foreigners and owned less the 6 per cent of the land — an area exceeding 14,500 sq km and representing 57 percent of the area of the Palestine. This meant that the Jews were given the territory, which was ten times the area owned by them in the whole of Palestine. Moreover, the territory allocated to the Jewish State included the coastal plain extending from Acre to Isdud and other fertile lands, while the Palestinians were left with mountainous and sterile regions. In other words, it was not a partition, but spoliation. Its enquiry is obvious.

It is evident that the grounds of nullity of the partition resolution, which we have reviewed, vitiate such a resolution and make it null and void. The partition resolution was essentially a political decision, which was conceived, engineered and adopted through the efforts and pressures of the Zionists and their friends in violation of the principles of law, justice and democracy.

The nullity of the partition resolution should not be dismissed as a matter of the past. Although ethically wrong, and legally void, these grave acts are still producing their effects. The present abnormal and explosive situation, which exists in Palestine and in the Middle East, is directly related to the Balfour Declaration, to its implementation under the mandate, and to its realization in the partition resolution.

__________________
"The race is not over because I haven't won yet."

Adil Memon
Police Service of Pakistan (P.S.P)
37th Common Training Program

Assalam Alaikum,

Adil here is something that you may find useful.

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Biography Of Sultan Abdul Hameed The Second

And The Fall Of The Islamic Khilafa

The Logo Of The Ottoman State

Sultan Abdul Hameed The Second was born on Wednesday, the 21st of September 1842. His full name is Abdul Hameed Khan The Second Bin Abdul Majeed Khan. He was the son of Sultan Abdul Majeed (from his second wife.) His mother died when he was seven. Abdul Hameed spoke Turkish, Arabic and Persian and he studied several books in literature and poetry. When his father Abdul Majeed died, his uncle, Abdul Aziz became the Khalifa. Abdul Aziz did last long in power. He was forced out of power and then assasinated by the political enemies of the Ottomans. His successor was Sultan Murad, the son of Sultan Abdul Aziz, but he was also removed from power after a short period because he was not fit for office.

On the 31st of August, 1876 (1293 H) Sultan Abdul Hameed was given the Khilafaship, the people pledged allegiance and loyalty to him. He was at that time aged 34. Abdul Hameed realised, as he explaines in his diary, that at the time of the assasination of his uncle, and the constant change in leadership was some sort of a conspiracy against the Islamic state.

Abdul Hameed had a character historians looked deeply into. He was given the leadership of a huge state that was in a tense and critical situation. He spent more than thirty years full of interior and exterior conspiracies, wars, revolutions, events and constant changes. Abdul Hameed himself expressed these feelings in his writings and poetry. Here is a sample of his handwritten poetry, which was taken from the book "My Father Abdul Hameed," written by his daughter Aisha.

The first trouble Abdul Hameed ran into was Midhat Pasha. Midhat Pasha was secretely involved in the removal of Abdul Hameed's uncle. When Abdul Hameed came into power he assigned Midhat Pasha as The Head of The Ministers council because Midhat was very popular at that time and Abdul Hameed needed any kind of insurance to stay in power. Midhat Pasha was a good governor but he was opinionated. Midhat Pasha was supported by a strong stream in the Shora council (parliament). With the help of these people he was successful in passing the resolutions to go into war against Russia. Abdul Hameed could not stop that stream. Had he tried to he would have porbably been removed from office. Still the stream wanted to blame him for all the losses that resulted from these missclaculated wars. Abdul Hameed did not want any wars at that time. The Islamic state was too exhausted to engage in warfare. Abdul Hameed was able to use the differences between him and Midhat Pasha to decrease Midhat's popularity. He finally was able to break lose from his chains and he exiled him to Europe. The people and polticians welcomed that move greatly.

Afterwards, Abdul Hameed turned to the foreign enemies of the Islamic Ottoman State. He was able to somehow predict the Communist Revolution in Russia, and that it will make Russia stronger and therefore more and more dangerous. At that time, the Bulkan parts of the state faced two dangers, Russia and Austria. Abdul Hameed tried to awaken the Bulkans and make them realise the coming danger. He came close to an agreement with the Bulkans, but when the agreement was in the final stages, four Bulkan states made a separate agreement and excluded the Otoman state. Western and Russian influence was the reason for that change.

Abdul Hameed realised that the consperacy to destroy the Ottoman state was bigger than anyone thought. It was both interior and exterior. He thought he got rid of Midhat Pasha and his likes for good, but he was faced with Awni Pasha, head Of the Ministers Council (Alsadr Alazam) and one of the leaders of the army. Later Abdul Hameed discovered that Awni Pasha took money and presents from the English, and his role in the removal of Abdul Aziz (Abdul Hameed's uncle) was exposed to Abdul Hameed. Awni Pasha pushed the Ottoman state into the wars of Bosnia against the will of Abdul Hameed. Abdul Hameed knew that if the war took place Russia, England, Austria- Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Italy and France will all attack the Ottoman state and make sure Bosnia is snatched. Awni misinformed Abdul Hameed about the size of the Ottoman army in Bosnia. He claimed to have 200,000 soldiers ready. However, Abdul Hameed checked with other generals of the army and discovered he had only 30,000 soldiers, faced by more than 300,000 soldiers. The people at that time loved Awni and Abdul Hameed couldn't remove him from office because that would endanger the interior stability of the state. The western powers, realising that they had outnumbered the Ottomans attacked under the cover of four Bulkan states (Romania, Montenegro, Serbia, Austria-Hungary). As a result, Bosnia and Greece were lost and seperated from the Otoman state. Abdul Hameed exposed Awni and his mistakes afterwards and got rid of him. The public accepted this move. The court found him guilty of the charges of conspiracy against the Ottoman state and aiding foreign powers, such as England.



Yeildz Palace, the government headquarters of the Ottoman Islamic Khilafa.

The fall of the sick man of Europe appeared to be eminent. everyone wanted a part of it and that doesn't exclude the Jews. In 1901 the Jewish banker Mizray Qrasow and two other Jewish influential leaders came to visit Abdul Hameed, they offered to give him :

1) Paying ALL the debts of the Ottoman state. 2) Building the Navy of the Ottoman state. 3) 35 Million Golden Leeras without interest to support the prosperity of the Ottoman state.

In Exchange for

1) Allowing Jews to visit Palestine anytime they please, and to stay as long as they want "to visit the holy sites." 2) Allowing the Jews to build settlements where they live, and they wanted them to be located near Jerusalem.

Abdul Hameed refused to even meet them, he sent his answer to them through Tahsin Pasha, and the answer was "Tell those impolite Jews that the debts of the Ottoman state are not a shame, France has debts and that doesn't effect it. Jerusalem became a part of the Islamic land when Omar Bin Alkhattab took the city and I am not going to carry the historical shame of selling the holy lands to the Jews and betraying the responsibility and trust of my people. May the Jews keep their money, the Ottoman's will not hide in castles built with the money of the enemies of Islam." He also told them to leave and never come back to meet him again. With the Jews and Zionists in the game the set was complete, and the play of the end of the Ottoman state was about to start. The Jewish money was an important asset to finance the destruction of the Ottoman state to build the Zionist state in Palestine, the state that Jews wanted so badly they were willing to risk anything for.

Alaqsa musque burning after the Zionist Hands got hold of it.

The Jews did not give up on Abdul Hameed, later in the same year, 1901, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Hertzil, visited Istanbul and tried to meet Abdul Hameed. Abdul Hameed refused to meet him and he told his Head Of The Ministers Council "Advise Dr. Herzil not to take any further steps in his project. I can not give away a handful of the soil of this land for it is not my own, it is for all the Islamic Nation. The Islamic Nation that fought Jihad for the sake of this land and they have watered it with their blood. The Jews may keep their money and millions. If the Islamic Kalifah State is one day destroyed then they will be able to take Palestine without a price! But while I am alive, I would rather push a sword into my body than see the land of Palestine cut and given away from the Islamic State. This is something that will not be, I will not start cutting owr bodies while we are alive." After this, the Jews turned to the British to turn their dreams into reality.

The British and French were ready to finish the Ottoman State, still the word "Jihad" was powerful enough to make all Europe tremble. Europe still feared the Sick Man Of Europe. The British decided to use its most important foreign policy, devide and conquer. It supported new groups like Young Turkey and Young Arabia. When Young Turkey became strong in the Ottoman state, Britain did not need to do anything anymore, Young Turks did the rest, they started a national and prejidice stream withen the Turkish citiziens of the Islamic State. In resonse, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds and other races developed their own national brand. People started feeling a part of their race not a part of the state, and that was the beggining of the end of the Islamic state. Later in WWI, Arabs collaborated with the Bristish and French and revolted against the Ottoman State. They were betrayed by the British and French and later invaded.

Abdul Hamid did not forget the development of his state, he built many institutions and services to the public like Hamedi market, Alazm palace in Damascus. He also built many mosques, public bathes, markets and hospitals in Cairo, Demscus, Sana, Baghdad and the rest of the Islamic cities. He also worked on the development of the educational system. The Ottomans tried to imitate the European educational system but they failed, except in two areas, Medicine and Military. The Ottoman army was not as weak as people today think it was. The Ottoman artillary was the strongest in the world. The Ottoman Navy was very well organized and was ranked the world's third most powerful fleet after the English and French. Many industries such as weapons manufacturing, weaving and Sugar appeared. The road system was updated,and seaports were expanded. Many new newsprints were established and before the first world war Egypt, Iraq and Great Syria had more than 1300 newspapers and magazines.

For a little time it appeared like the Sick Man of Europe will finally stand up, but the western allies were determined to destroy the Islamic Unity at any cost. The non-muslim minorities in the Ottoman state were used by the West to create trouble and instability, especially the Christian citiziens of the state. The western states always interfered in the Ottoman domestic policy under the excuse of "protecting the Christian minorities." The west also launched a campaign of Christian preaching in the Islamic world by building Christian schools and churches. The target was snatching muslims away from Islam and spreading un-islamic social habits and ideas. Many newsprints were also established for the same reason, to poison the minds of the muslims and spread destructive ideas and misconceptions between them. The west also wanted to make the Ottoman state busy and for that it used the minorities again. The west encouraged the Armenians and financed their revolution against the Ottoman state. England helped the Druz and France helped the Maronites in Lebanon and they both engaged in a big battle that was solved by the interference of the Ottoman army. More troubles between Muslims and Christians took place, and at some time the Muslim population of Damascus was about to wipe the Christian population of the city. The Ottoman army interfered in the last moments and prevented a massacre from taking place. That era was a constant battle between the conspiracies of the west and the defence of Abdul Hameed and the rest of the faithful Muslims.

It is important to mention that the debts of the Ottoman state, when Abdul Hameed came to power, were 2,528 Million Ottoman golden Leeras. When he was removed from power they were only 106 Million Leera. Which means he cut the debt to about 1/20 of its original value. The Young Turks, who came after Abdul Hameed, raised it back by 1300%. Such an achivement of Abdul Hameed would give the impression that he could not spend on development, but that is untrue. Abdul Hameed established fax lines between Yemen, Hijaz, Great Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Then he connected it to the fax lines of Iran and India. He managaed to earn back the cost of the project withen only two years because of the extensive use of these lines by the Hujjaj (the people who go to Mecca to do the pilgramage).

The Signiture of Abdul Hameed

Abdul Hameed realised that the only hope for Muslims is a form of a strong Islamic Unity. Abdul Hameed was able to see that the West will try to seperate the Islamic state and then deal with each part seperately. The only way to prevent that is through Islamic Unity. Abdul Hameed decided to present the Ottoman Khilafaship as a leadership to the Islamic World. Abdul Hameed was able to touch and effect the Muslims of India and Pakistan and he caused many troubles to the British in these areas. Similar results were established with the Muslims of Russia and the southern USSR republics. Abdul Hameed also used these Muslims to pressure Russia. At this time, Abdul Hameed mentions in his diary that he feels the walls falling on him, and that he feels he is alone and he can not fight the enemies of the Islamic Nation alone. He later started an alliance with Germany, but that too seemed to be insufficient, because the Germans wanted a part of the Ottoman state as well. Sultan Abdul Hameed felt at that time that the big war is very close. And it was obvious that the remains of the Ottoman state is what the fighting factions will fight for.

Abdul Hameed needed something big, something strong, something to awaken the feelings of the Islamic unity in the hearts of the muslims all arround the Islamic world. Abdul Hameed searched and searched and finnaly decided to establish the Hijaz rial road(1900). The rail road ran from Demscus to Madina, and from Aqaba to Maan, the line symbolized the Islamic Unity, all the muslims who used to do the pilgrimage felt that the Ottoman Khalifa was trying to bring them closer, with a new rail road system and one of the most sophisticaed fax systems. Muslim started getting the feeling of gratitude and appreciation to the Ottoman State. The rail road payed for its expences in a couple of years and it functioned as an important tool to connect the parts of the Islamic state, it also was to be used as a fast line to transport and deploy military units. Abdul Hameed also launched a campagin to spread the idea of islamic untiy and islamic support in southern Russi, India, Pakistan and Africa. He started inviting many muslim scholars from Indonesia, Africa and India to the Otoman state, and he established a program to build mosques and Islamic Institutions all arround the Islamic world.

Assalam Alaikum,

Reading the above article, u must realize that all the modern Kingdoms and governments have one thing common in thier roots, that these authority was given to them as a gift from the Western Bloc of GORA SAAB, for succesfully going against the Khilafa.

No wonder why at the end of the day, they end up fulfilling the demads of GORA SAAB, even if they don't agree with it, because they are still paying back their debt, if it was not for GORA SAAB, they would not be in power.

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It is a known fact that Israel at the time of its creation was not happy state because of the demarcation of its boundaries, and with each ARAB-ISRAEL war they ended up taking more land.

In fact one of my expatraite friend from Syria, whose father and some other relatives were Syrian soldiers during 1967 conflict, told me this:

Bashar ul Asad's father Hafiz ul Asad and others were a monster in the skin of human. Keeping the arab emotions in mind he along with others engaged in the conflicts of Arab-Israel wars, especailly this one of 1967, where the soldiers fought well. In fact, according to his father accounts, some better parts Syrain Army in fact marched its way into Israeli territory, only to find out that the supplies from the Syrian establishments to keep the conflict alive, were nowhere to be found. According to him, Hafiz and others were persuaded by GORA SAAB to leave his army in isolation, to avoid the serious consequences from the WEST.

Infact, he went on to said that in early Arab-Israel encounters, Arabs together always had a upper hand, but the Arab government infact were forced to back down, only to demonstarte that they were defeated by Israel.

Note: these were the personal accounts of an individual, and should not be taken as a valid piece of History.

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Hafiz al-Asad's Rise to power:

In 1966 the Ba'th launched a coup d'etat within the regime and cleared out the other parties from the government. Assad became Minister of Defense, and wielded considerable influence over government policy. However, there was much tension between the dominant radical wing of the Ba'th, which promoted an aggressive foreign policy and rapid social reform, and al-Assad's more pragmatic, military-based faction. After being discredited by the failure of the Syrian military in the Six-Day War in 1967, and enraged by the aborted Syrian intervention in the Jordanian-Palestinian Black September war, conflict erupted within the government. When presidentSalah Jadid realized the threat and ordered al-Assad and Tlass to be stripped of all party and government positions, it was too late: al-Assad swiftly launched an bloodless intra-party coup, the so-called "corrective revolution" of 1970. The party was purged, Jadid sent to prison, and al-Assad loyalists installed on key posts throughout the bureaucracy.

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As for Hizbollah and such goes, these are the organizations that are not part of any governmet, therefore have there own rules and code if conduct, proving it difficult to become prey to any government.

Thanks.

Assalam Alaikum,

Here is a very good website:

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/maps/

Thanks.

This is the concluding part of the series of articles by Mr. M. Shahid Alam on "Israel". The series is very imformative. Every passerby is requested to peruse it.


(The first part of this essay appeared in the November 19 issue of Encounter. Following is the concluding part)

THE creation of Israel had thrown a spanner in the wheel of Islamic history. In the aftermath of the First World War, the western powers had dismantled the most powerful Islamic state — indeed the Core Islamic state — by instigating and supporting the still marginal forces of Arab nationalism. At the same time, even as they were using Arab nationalist feelings, they had made plans to fracture Arab unity by creating a multiplicity of Arab fiefdoms, each of them subject to western powers.

Adding insult to injury, the western powers also worked with the Jews to establish a Jewish state in a segment of the Islamic heartland. This restructuring of the Islamic world, imposed by western powers, would not be easily swept under the rug of time. Indeed, the creation of Israel alone was pregnant with consequences, much of it yet to unfold.

Quite apart from Israeli ambitions in the region, the logic of the Israeli state would almost inevitably propel it to rapid demographic growth, military dominance and expansionism. At the time of its founding in 1949, Israel contained only 5.6 per cent of the world’s Jewish population. In order to justify its creation as the world’s only Jewish state, Israel would have to attract more Jews, perhaps even a majority of the world’s Jews. Israel’s small population — relative to that of its Arab neighbours - also called for a rapid influx of Jewish settlers.

Then there were the temptations of success: imagine what we can do if we brought a third or a half of the world’s Jewish population into the region. The first large influx of Jews, doubling Israel’s population over the next five years, came from the Arab countries. In large part, this was inevitable. The Arab Jews were migrating to greener pastures; Arab defeat in 1948 and the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands provoked hostility towards Jews in Arab countries; and Israel encouraged and facilitated their departure.

In addition, given the very high educational levels of Jewish settlers (especially those drawn from Europe and the United States), the reparations from Germany, the financial contributions of world Jewry, and grants and loans from western countries, Israel would soon acquire the characteristics of a developed country whose capabilities in science and technology would rival the best in the world.

In itself, this enormous disparity between an advanced Israel and mostly backward Arab countries would tempt Israel to seek military solutions to its conflict with its Arab neighbours. Indeed, Israel had within a decade built a military capability that could defeat any combination of Arab states. Finally, Israel had acquired a nuclear arsenal by the late 1960s — with French technology — thus securing the Samson option against any potential Arab threat to its security.

At the same time, Israel would face hostility from Arab states that had gained independence under the aegis of Arab nationalism. This was inevitable. The creation of Israel was an affront to Islamic peoples, in particular to Arabs. In Israel’s victory, the Muslims had lost lands that had been Islamic since the first century of Islam. Further, the Arabs feared that if allowed to consolidate itself, Israel, with western support, would seek to dominate the region with new rounds of expansionary wars.

In the climate of the Cold War, the Arab nationalist states had reasons to believe that they had a chance to roll back the insertion of Israel into Arab lands. In other words, the creation of Israel also charted, inevitably, a history of hostility between this state and its neighbours.

Whether in response to this Arab hostility or using it as an excuse — as some would argue — for deepening its assault on the Arabs, Israel would seek a new ‘mother country’ to replace Britain. This time, it would turn to the United States. It was a natural choice, given the preeminence of the United States, and its large and influential Jewish population.

It would appear that American commitment to Israel was not strong at first, if measured by the volume of its military and economic assistance to Israel. Israel sought to change this by demonstrating its strategic value to the United States. This happened in 1967, when in a pre-emptive war it simultaneously defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The defeat of Egypt and Syria, the two leading Arab nationalist states, both allied to the Soviet Union, persuaded the US to enter into a deeper partnership with Israel, one that would only grow with time, as Israel acquired greater influence over decision-making in the United States, and as US backing for Israel would create Islamic hostility against the US.

Just as importantly, this second military defeat of the Arabs produced a new Israel. This was Israel, Mark II, now in occupation of 100 per cent of the former British mandate of Palestine; this included the new territories of Gaza and the West Bank with 1.1 million Palestinians. Inevitably, Israeli ambitions rose to match the new opportunities created by the war of 1967. Immediately, plans were set in motion to make the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza permanent. Israel began to appropriate Palestinian lands in the occupied territories. It established fortified settlements all over the territories, in control of the main water reservoirs, and sitting on hilltops overlooking Palestinian villages.

After facing yet another defeat in 1973, Egypt broke ranks with the Arab states and recognized Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai and an annual American subsidy. This capitulation of the core Arab country sounded the death knell of Arab nationalism; it was also the signal for Israel to expand its military operations. In June 1981 Israeli jets destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor under construction in Osirak. A year later, it invaded Lebanon, occupied western Beirut, laid siege to Palestinian refugee camps, and forced the exit of the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon. During the Israeli siege, the Phalangists, a Lebanese Christian militia allied to Israel, massacred 3000 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

At around the same time, in 1982, the World Zionist Organization, published a report in its official organ, Kivunin, urging Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza, reoccupy Sinai, convert Jordan into a Palestinian state, expel all Palestinians west of the River Jordan, and split up the Arab states into ethnic and religious micro-states. In order to dominate and control these micro-states, Israel would build garrisons on their borders, military outposts for projecting their power over these states.

In addition, these states would be policed by local militias drawn from ethnic minorities in their population — like the Christian militia created by Israel in Southern Lebanon. Once executed, this plan would establish Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East, independent of the United States. What this plan reveals is the reach of the dialectic inaugurated by the creation of Israel in 1948. In the 1980s, the World Zionist Organization was urging Israel to take steps to dominate the region on its own.

The attacks of 9-11, the American invasion of Iraq, Israeli/American plans for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, and American plans for restructuring the region, suggest that the dialectic that began with the rise of political Zionism may have entered a new, perhaps final phase.

There are several forces operating behind these developments, whose provenance — in various degrees — can be traced back to the pressures and inducements engendered by political Zionism. At many different levels, 9-11 is a riposte to political Zionism and its chief accomplice over the past 60 years, the United States.

Islamic anger over the insertion of a Jewish state in Islamic lands, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, Arab humiliation over repeated defeats at the hands of Israel, the dismantling of Arab nationalism following these defeats, western support for repressive Arab states, the sanctions against Iraq, the stationing of American troops in the Arabian peninsula after the Gulf war, and the invasion of Iraq: each of these have contributed to the radicalization of a small segment of the Islamic world, who, frustrated by the inertia of Islamic populations, have adopted terrorist tactics; they see this as the only effective way in which they can leverage their small numbers into a visible force.

Apart from America’s strategic interest in the Middle East’s oil — always a backdrop to US policies in the region — the recent evolution of this policy towards a massive programme for restructuring the Middle East owes much to two forces long in the making but which gained centre stage with the election of George W. Bush. On the one hand, these are the forces of Christian evangelists in the United States, who have derived strength from the creation of Israel and its victories over the Arabs, which they see as a necessary prelude to the Second Coming. As the largest voting bloc in the Republic Party, they are now the most powerful American supporters of Israeli Likudniks, seeking the expulsion of Palestinians from all of Israel. The Zionists have not only welcomed this support but worked to deepen their alliance with the Evangelists.

The second group of actors — small but influential — are the neoconservatives in the Bush administration who have for long, but especially since the early 1990s, urged the United States to use its military dominance to prevent the emergence of a rival power. Many of the most influential neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration, are Jews (but so are many of the most articulate members of the left in America) who have been involved with right-wing Zionist think tanks in the United States and Israel.

Some of these neoconservatives were advising the Netanyahu government in 1996 to make “a clean break” from the Oslo Agreement. After 9-11, the neoconservatives became the principal intellectual backers of America’s invasion of Iraq and the larger plan to restructure the Middle East. Could it be that this represents the belated unfolding of the Kivunin plan, with the dismemberment of Iraq an imminent possibility now? There is one difference, however. At least for now, Israel is taking a back seat.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, like the decision of the Young Turks in October 1914 to enter the First World War against the Allied Powers, mark a new historical turning point for the relations between the West and the Islamic world. The Turkish entry in the war offered Britain the opportunity to settle the age-old Middle Eastern question. It invaded the Middle East to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, and laid the foundations of a Jewish state and a system of colonies and client states in the region. Now, after 9-11, the United States enters the region, in strategic partnership with Israel, to restructure the region. This is a pre-emptive restructuring before the anti-imperialist forces in the region gain ascendancy.

At this point, there are few who are predicting with any confidence what will be the benefits and costs of this attempted restructuring: or what will be its unintended outcomes. The law of unintended consequences works surreptitiously, always hidden from the gaze of the stronger parties in a conflict whose power and hubris blind them to the resilience and force of the human spirit.

It is unlikely that even the most prescient Zionists had foreseen in 1948 — after they had created a Jewish state with a 90 per cent Jewish population — that the Palestinians would still be around some 57 years later, causing existential anxiety, and still raising questions about the legitimacy of Israel as it is presently constituted. Incidentally, Israel too was an unintended consequence of Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews. There would have been no Israel without the Jews who fled the anti-Semitic horrors unleashed by the Nazis in Europe.

In mounting their terrorist attack on the United States, most likely the Islamist radicals were not expecting this to sting the United States into a hasty revision of its policies towards the Islamic world. It seems more likely that what the United States did was what these Islamists wanted it to do — to invade the Islamic heartlands.

The Islamists expect to turn this into a broader war against the United States to be fought on Islamic territory. It is likely that the United States will deliver this too with an attack on Syria or Iran. Prodded by its neoconservative ideologues, the Bush administration is eager to take on this challenge. They expect to use the ‘war against terrorism’ to restructure the Islamic world, modernize (read: neutralize) Islam, defeat the Islamists, and create a new and deeper system of clientage. The Islamists expect to defeat the United States on their home turf, as the Vietnamese had done a generation before. At this point, it is hard to predict where the chips will fall — or what unintended consequences this will produce for the United States, Israel and the Islamic world.

The writer teaches economics at a university in Boston, US.

E-mail: alqalam02760@yahoo.com

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"The race is not over because I haven't won yet."

Adil Memon
Police Service of Pakistan (P.S.P)
37th Common Training Program