Palestine – Where Size Really Matters

Palestine – Where Size Really Matters

False claims that Israel is 78% – not 17% – of historic Palestine whilst the West Bank and Gaza comprise the remaining 22% – not 5% – of historic Palestine have materially derailed efforts to resolve the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.

These spurious claims have been repeatedly made on hundreds of Arab oriented web sites asserting that the Jews established the State of Israel on 78% of Palestine in the War of Independence in 1948 and subsequently conquered the remaining 22% – the West Bank and Gaza – in the Six Day War of 1967.

This has created the perception that Israel now occupies 100% of Palestine, the Arab residents of former Palestine have been deprived of a State of their own in Palestine, and that the only just solution to resolve Arab grievances is the creation of an Arab state in at least the 22% of Palestine captured by Israel in 1967.

This propaganda has been given credence on the web by such diverse and influential opinion makers as

(i) Editor at large of the Washington Times and United Press International Arnaud de Borchgrave,

(ii) Professor of Politics at San Francisco University Stephen Zunes,

(iii) South Africa’s Minister for Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils,

(iv) Journalist and filmmaker John Pilger,

(v) The BBC News Service,

(vi) French intellectual and journalist Professsor Jules Regis Debray and

(vii) Trenchant anti- Zionist critics Assistant Professor Norman Finkelstein, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and Jeff Halper.

John Pilger shows how his thinking has actually been influenced by such propaganda when he writes:

“Shortly after it was founded in 1948, Israel controlled, mostly as a result of a United Nations partition and partly by force, a total of 78 per cent of historic Palestine