The Palestinian People and Their Right to Self-Determination: A Legal and Historical Analysis.

The Uniqueness of the "Palestinian People" in International Law

The "Palestinian people" and their rights occupy a completely unique place in contemporary international politics and law.

Thus, the UN has a special Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).

It should be noted that there is no other committee in the UN specifically dedicated to the rights of any other particular people.

But in addition to this, there is also a separate United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights (UNDPR).

Furthermore, although the UN structure includes the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there also exists completely separate from it the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) with a separate budget and separate rules (although in this case, as we will see later, this agency initially did not deal with only one "people").

By UN General Assembly Resolution No. 32/40 of December 2, 1977, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People was established, but there are no other International Days of Solidarity established by the UN in support of a specific people.

That is, we see that the "Palestinian people" clearly differs greatly from all other peoples living on Earth, and the protection of their rights (the inalienability of which is even specially emphasized in the name of the special committee) receives fundamentally more attention than the protection of the rights of any other people on our planet.

What is the uniqueness of this people? To understand this, one must examine the history of its emergence and development.

History of the "Palestinian People"

The history of the "Palestinian people" is truly remarkable and fundamentally differs from the history of any other people.

Mythological History

First, there is the mythological history of the Palestinian people. This version of history looks roughly like this: Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people (the name of the country is presumably connected to the name of the people). The Palestinian people have lived in Palestine since ancient times. And so the Palestinian people "hospitably" welcomed Jews fleeing from the Nazis. But then the Jews occupied the territory of the "Palestinian" state and deprived the "Palestinians" of their homeland.

This story is actively supported by propaganda. In social networks, there are numerous posts with old photos captioned "Beautiful Palestine, 1929," photos of coins and banknotes from 1920-30 with the inscription "Palestine" and similar "evidence" that before the arrival of Jews "fleeing from the Nazis," the Palestinian people had their own state.

What is interesting about this story is that it is a lie from beginning to end, but millions of people around the world believe this story, especially Muslims, considering it a well-known and self-evident fact. Thousands of people around the world work to promote this version, and enormous financial resources are invested in its promotion.

Actual History

From Ancient Times to 1964 (Before the Creation of the PLO)

What actually happened?

Palestine, formerly called Judea, is the territory of the former Roman province of Judea. The territory of the modern states of Israel and Jordan.

From 1516 to 1917, this territory was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was not a separate administrative unit but was divided between several provinces (eyalets or vilayets). No one in the Ottoman Empire had ever heard that a "Palestinian people" lived on this territory. Arabs, Jews, Druze, Armenians and others lived on this territory. But there was no such people as "Palestinians."

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire declared war on the countries of the Triple Entente and lost the war. The territory of historical Palestine was occupied by British forces. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild stating that the British government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object," which became known as the Balfour Declaration.

In 1919, a conference calling itself the Palestine Arab Congress was held in Jerusalem (then under British army control), which adopted an appeal to the Paris Peace Conference. It stated, in particular:

"Southern Syria, also known as 'Palestine,' has witnessed Zionist attempts to turn this land into a national home for the Jews..." "We also presented a report outlining the wishes of the Arab people we represent and whose population amounts to one million people, regarding the fate of our country, namely that it should not be separated from its sister, independent Arab Northern Syria, connected to Arab unity and free from any foreign influence or protection"

This testifies that the local Arab population viewed this territory as Syria and did not separate itself from Arabs living in Syria (which was then under French control). And the Arabs of Palestine had never heard of any "Palestinian people."

On April 19-26, 1920, a conference was held in San Remo, Italy — a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Entente powers, which discussed the administration of former Ottoman territories, with the aim of creating national states on them, including a Jewish state in Palestine (establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people). At this time, conference participants knew nothing about the existence of some special "Palestinian people" in Palestine whose homeland was Palestine.

In 1922, the League of Nations issued Britain a Mandate to administer Palestine with the aim of creating a Jewish state on it. In the same year, amendments were made to the Mandate. In accordance with these amendments, an Arab state was supposed to be created on that part of Palestine that was east of the Jordan River, and it was created in 1946 — the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan). No one had heard of any "Palestinian people" either during the approval of the Mandate and the amendments to it in 1922, or during the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in Palestine.

In 1930, the British authorities published a detailed report on the state of affairs and population composition in Palestine (The Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development (the Hope Simpson Enquiry)). This document provides a detailed picture of the population of Mandatory Palestine and, naturally, contains no mention of some local "Palestinian people" separate from Arabs.

During the Mandate period, the term "Palestinian" in the names of public or commercial organizations, for example, The Palestine Symphony Orchestra, Palestine Football Association, Palestine Electric Corporation, was a sign that this was a Jewish organization.

In May 1947, the UN General Assembly formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to develop recommendations regarding the future government of the remaining part of Palestine (west of the Jordan). On September 3, 1947, the Committee presented its report. Based on it, on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution No. 181 with a recommendation to divide the remaining part of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Neither during the Committee's work nor during the discussion of the resolution did anyone hear about the "Palestinian people," and it was not mentioned in any Committee document or in the text of the resolution.

On May 15, 1948, the League of Arab States officially rejected UN GA Resolution No. 181 with its statement and introduced Arab state troops into Israeli territory, beginning a war with Israel. The statement indicated that:

"Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire subject to its rule of law and enjoying fall representation in its parliament, the great majority of its population was composed of Arabs with a small minority of Jews"

Two local armies participated in the war: the Arab Liberation Army and the Army of the Holy War, but none of the participants in these armies considered themselves part of the "Palestinian people." Israel fought with Arabs, and no one — neither Jews nor the Arabs themselves — knew anything about any "Palestinian people" at that time.

That is, before the emergence of the State of Israel, no one, including local Arabs, had heard of the "Palestinian people." On the territory of historical Palestine, i.e., on the current territory of Israel and Jordan, Arabs lived, but they were not familiar with the term "Palestinian people" and did not consider themselves part of such a people. The term "Palestine" itself was connected to biblical, not Muslim tradition. In Muslim or Arab culture, there was no concept of "Palestine" as a historical or cultural phenomenon; moreover, the Arabs themselves viewed this territory as "Southern Syria."

During the Mandate period, the word "Palestinian" denoted geographical, not ethnic affiliation, and was used predominantly by Jews and the British. And the Arabic-speaking population had no "Palestinian identity." That is, there were no collections of tales or folklore of the "Palestinian people," no ethnic "Palestinian" musical or dance groups, or anything similar.

When the UN General Assembly created the "United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees" (UNRWA) in 1949, Palestinian refugees were understood not as representatives of the "Palestinian people," but as Arabs and Jews who became refugees as a result of the 1948-49 war (Jews were then completely expelled from territories captured by Arabs). But in 1952, care for Jewish refugees was transferred from UNRWA to the Government of Israel. And UNRWA, over time, became an organization promoting and financing the idea of the "Palestinian people."

From 1964: The USSR KGB as a Factor of Ethnogenesis

When and where did the "Palestinian people" appear?

The concept of the "Palestinian people" developed as a result of the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The PLO is an organization that was financed and armed by the USSR KGB. Its militants were trained in the USSR at the 165th Training Center for Foreign Military Personnel in the village of Perevalnoye near Simferopol. And most of its leading figures were trained in the USSR (see, in particular, Ronen Bergman. The KGB's Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother Russia). Thus, documents (particularly, documents from the Bukovsky Archive and the Mitrokhin Archive) confirm that Wadie Haddad was a KGB agent, the organizer of several terrorist attacks, including the famous hijacking of an aircraft to Entebbe airport (see Operation Entebbe), whom the USSR supplied with weapons, special equipment and ammunition. The famous PLO terrorist Carlos the Jackal was trained in the USSR, the organizer of one of the most high-profile terrorist attacks of the 1970s — the OPEC siege.

And its current leader Mahmoud Abbas is a KGB/FSB agent with the codename "Krotov," who graduated from the Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in Moscow in 1982.

Particularly valuable in this regard is information published by former Deputy Chief of Romanian Foreign Intelligence (Securitate) Ion Mihai Pacepa:

"I was given the KGB's "personal file" on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth" ... "Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal Communists in our international front organizations."

(Ion Mihai Pacepa, "The KGB's Man" // "Wall Street Journal", 2003-02-22)

In an interview with FrontPage Magazine in 2004, Ion Pacepa said:

"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB... In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow"

(quoted in John Richardson, "The Soviet-Palestinian Lie" // Gatestone Institute, 2016-10-16)

So, the concept of the "Palestinian people" appeared together with the PLO, which declared itself the representative of this people.

It is important to emphasize this: it was not that first an ethnic community or people formed, and then an organization expressing its interests, but first — an organization pursuing a clear political goal (in this case — the destruction of Israel, or at least seizing its territories), and only then was the concept of a "people" created to support its political goals.

The concept of the "Palestinian people" was first formulated in the document that proclaimed the beginning of PLO activities, the so-called Palestinian National Covenant. In its first version of May 28, 1964, a definition of the "Palestinian people" was recorded, on whose behalf the PLO proclaimed this Charter, designating itself as the representative of this "people":

Article 6: The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian.

Article 7: Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine.

From this definition, it is evident that initially the PLO did not yet view the "Palestinian people" as a separate ethnos, but viewed it as a combination of ethnic Arabs and ethnic Jews.

That is, the idea of the "Palestinian people" was still vague at that time. But the fundamental idea of the Charter was to link the Arab population to this land. That is, based on the text of the charter, Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who settled permanently in Palestine, say in 1946, were considered the "Palestinian people," remaining such even after changing their permanent residence to Egypt, Syria or Lebanon.

That is, the territory of Israel was endowed by the Charter with mystical properties — an Arab who settled on it became a "Palestinian" and continued to be one forever, passing this status on to descendants. No other territory in the world possessed such mystical properties. And, say, an Arab who lived for some time in Palestine and moved to permanent residence in Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, no longer became an "Egyptian," "Syrian" or "Lebanese." The territories of Egypt, Syria or Lebanon did not possess such mystical properties of changing national affiliation.

From the context, one can conclude that the term "Palestine" here refers only to that part of Palestine that was intended for the creation of a Jewish state. And Article 24 of the Charter specifically stated:

This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area

At that time, the territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River was occupied by Jordan, the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, and the Himmah area was occupied by Syria. These territories, originally parts of Mandatory Palestine intended for the creation of a Jewish state, were not under Israeli control in 1964.

Thus, Article 24 of the Charter shows that the real task of the PLO was precisely the destruction of Israel, and this organization, supposedly representing the "Palestinian people," was not at all interested in Palestinian Arabs living in that part of Palestine that was not under Israeli control.

After the 1967 war, the mentioned reservation was removed from Article 24 of the Charter.

In 1968, a new version of the Charter was adopted in Cairo, which changed, in particular, the article defining which Jews belong to the "Palestinian people":

Article 6: The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

Thus we see that even in 1964-68, in PLO documents, the "Palestinian people" was still described not as a separate people or ethnos, but as Arabs and Jews living on the territory where the PLO sought to end the existence of the Israeli state.

Although, of course, over time, in their propaganda, Jews stopped being mentioned as "Palestinians," and they spoke only of the "Arab Palestinian people" as a special people whose homeland exactly corresponds to the borders of Israel.

However, the idea of a separate "Palestinian people" proved to be a successful propaganda device, which began to be actively promoted after defeats in the wars of 1967 (Six-Day War) and 1973 (Yom Kippur War), when it became obvious that hopes for the rapid destruction of the State of Israel exclusively by military means had not materialized, and they needed to launch a serious propaganda and diplomatic war against Israel.

From 1973 to the Present Day

The defeat of Arab armies in the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973), that is, the realization that Israel could not be quickly defeated exclusively by military force, actually led to the creation of the concept of the "Palestinian people" in its modern form.

Already in 1974 (after the defeat of Arab armies in the Yom Kippur War), UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 (1974) for the first time at the UN level declared the "Palestinian people" a subject of the right to self-determination.

Initially, even PLO figures themselves spoke about the fact that the "Palestinian people" was just a trick to make claims to the land of Israel. Thus, the head of the military department and member of the PLO Executive Council Zuheir Mohsen in 1977 in an interview with the Dutch newspaper "Trouw" said the following:

"The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine"

But over time, the propaganda machine of the PLO and its allies firmly embedded in the information space the myth that the "Palestinian people" really exists and even existed since ancient times.

Entire pseudo-historical monographs appeared proving that "Palestinians" are an ancient and distinctive people with an identity that existed long before Arafat. See Rashid Khalidi Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), Muhammad Y. Muslih The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (1988) and others.

And now, opening, say, the Wikipedia article in English Palestinians, one can read that "Palestinians" are an ancient people who have lived in the Levant since the Bronze Age (!), "is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins," that "Most Palestinians share a strong genetic link to the ancient Canaanites," and that "Israelites later emerged" on these lands, i.e., later than the "Palestinians."

Characteristically, the Wikipedia articles in Hebrew and Russian have a section "Denial of the existence of the Palestinian people" which provides information refuting the existence of the Palestinian people (link to Zuheir Mohsen's interview, etc.), but the Wikipedia articles about the Palestinian people in English and Arabic have no mention of the existence of a position denying the existence of the Palestinian people.

The idea of the "Palestinian people" allowed what is called reframing. Before, the situation could be described as: "the huge powerful Arab world is trying to destroy a small Jewish state." But using the new concept of "Palestinian people," this could be presented as "evil white colonizers took away the native land from a small people, depriving them of their homeland."

It is ridiculous to say that the creation of a Jewish state deprived Arabs of their homeland, or deprived Arabs of their territory. Arab countries collectively occupy about 13 million square kilometers, while Israel — 22 thousand sq. km., i.e., approximately 0.17% (seventeen hundredths of a percent) of the territory of Arab countries. But when talking about a small oppressed indigenous Palestinian people who have lived on territory captured by evil Zionist colonizers since time immemorial, this picture already found resonance with the general public, especially with leftists in Western countries concerned with the struggle of indigenous peoples against "colonialists."

The Correct Term

Thus, participants in the political movement founded by the PLO, calling itself the "Palestinian people," are not a separate ethnic group or people. And although participation in this movement implies belonging to the Arab people (ethnos), they are not even a sub-ethnos within Arabs (like Hutsuls among Ukrainians or Ashkenazi among Jews), but a political local Arab movement, just as "Hitlerites" is a political movement among Germans, or "Francoists" among Spaniards.

And the use of the term "Palestinian people" or the term "Palestinians" used in the same sense as "Palestinian people" is inadmissible, as it is actually support for this deception or complicity in this deception.

Instead, to designate members of political movements that are part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or movements whose ideological roots stem from the PLO — such as the Alliance of Palestinian Forces (which includes, in particular, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the Palestinian Joint Operations Room, as well as supporters of these organizations from the local population, the term "Arafatists" should be used — that is, a political movement formed by the USSR KGB through Yasser Arafat and his associates within the framework of a propaganda war against Israel.

The term "Arafatists" more accurately reflects both the history and essence of this political movement, as well as the fact that it is not a separate ethnic or national group. This term explains why those who call themselves the "Palestinian people" do not include Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan, which is located in Palestine, and why a significant part of Arabs living in Israel do not call themselves "Palestinians." The term "Arafatists" puts everything in its place.

Regarding Hamas supporters, particularly those living in Gaza, the term "Arafat-Hamasists" can be used.

Such terminology will allow clearly distinguishing ethnic affiliation (Arabs), place of residence (Palestine, i.e., territories of Jordan and Israel) and political affiliation (desire to destroy the State of Israel). It will allow bringing clarity to legal, especially international legal analysis of relevant issues.

Arguments for the Existence of the Palestinian People

Recognition

The only "weighty" argument of defenders of the "real" existence of the Palestinian people in the legal sense that can be used in serious discussion is the abundance of its international recognitions, primarily:

• resolutions of the UN General Assembly (for example, 3236, 67/19),
• the conclusion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004 on the "security wall," where the "Palestinian people" and their right to self-determination are directly mentioned,
• recognition of the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people (first — in the decision of the Arab League and then in the UN).

This strategy is a typical example of propaganda technologies: massive multiple repetition, fixing the formulation in international documents, media, educational materials, and legal conclusions, to turn a controversial statement into "obviousness."

But, in fact, multiple repetitions do not add weight to an argument. A lie, repeated even in a thousand UN GA resolutions and recorded in a dozen advisory opinions of the International Court, still remains a lie. The multiplicity of its repetition does not make it true, but makes it a more cynical and dangerous lie.

That is, the question of how justified the statements contained in UN GA resolutions, advisory conclusions of the UN International Court of Justice, or decisions of the International Criminal Court are is quite legitimate. And this study examines the issue precisely from such a point of view. And it would be absurd to object that the position of UN GA resolutions or conclusions of the UN International Court of Justice is correct merely because such is the position, respectively, of UN GA resolutions or the UN International Court of Justice.

Prevalence of Self-Identification Over Common Sense

One of the arguments put forward in favor of the necessity of recognizing the "Palestinian people" sounds roughly like this: "since millions of people identify themselves as Palestinians, this automatically makes the identity 'real'"

However, accepting such an approach would lead to any group being able to declare itself a "people" and demand separation from any state. Moreover, a national state bordering a state in which people of this nationality constitute a national minority could declare them a separate people and on this basis try to seize territory from such a neighboring state.

As has already happened with the equally maliciously invented "people of the Donetsk republic" and "people of the Luhansk republic" — concepts used by the Russian Federation to seize Ukrainian territories, just as Arab anti-Israeli political movements use the concept of the "Palestinian people" to attempt to seize territories from Israel.

Rapid Ethnogenesis

In discussions on this topic, one may sometimes encounter the argument that "ethnogenesis processes are complex and can occur quickly," and that the "Palestinian people" could have formed in the short period since the creation of the PLO.

Besides the fact that this is, of course, a completely insufficient time for the formation of a truly separate people or even sub-ethnic group, the main point here, if we are talking about legal assessment, is the malicious intent of statements about the existence of the "Palestinian people."

That is, the facts indicate that the very idea of the "Palestinian people" arose not based on historically established characteristics, but only and exclusively to justify claims to Israeli territory. Moreover, it was accompanied by outright lies, such as stories about the existence of "Palestinian identity" before Arafat.

The exclusive desire to deprive a truly existing people of such a right (in this case the Jewish people) cannot be recognized as a legitimate reason for forming a subject of the right to self-determination.

Conclusions

The so-called "Palestinian people" is not an ethnic group, but is a political movement of ethnic Arabs aimed at destroying Israel, falsely presenting themselves as a separate ethnic group in order to use the right to self-determination to justify claims to Israeli territory.

The use of the term "Palestinian people" or "Palestinians" is a factual assertion of this deception, therefore instead of it the term "Arafatists" should be used, or, when referring to Hamas supporters presenting themselves as "Palestinians" — "Arafat-Hamasists," which brings clarity and helps legal analysis, especially in international law.

It is necessary to raise the question in the UN about the liquidation of UN structures specifically dealing with the "inalienable rights" of one people, separately from all other peoples, especially since these "most important people for the UN" do not actually exist.

In particular, it is necessary to liquidate the "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People," the "United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights," the "United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees" (UNRWA).

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Early version of this text (in Russian): What is the "Palestinian people" and do they have the right to self-determination

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