A common refrain on our side is that the Palestinians are no different from any other Arab. It is entirely appropriate to make this point, however, it requires an explanation of why it is relevant. Without this explanation, our enemies would ascribe our insistence that they are non-distinct to an attempt to justify considering them expendable. Whatever merits there are to arguments about non-distinction between Palestinians and other Arabs, the West will never accept a case that any part of the Arab public is expendable simply because of who they are. What is needed is an alternate explanation of why non-distinction matters.
Such an alternative explanation can be seen in the coincidence that the land that interests the Palestinian Arabs is always exactly the land controlled by the infidels Jews. If the Palestinians are perceived as a distinct people, then it can be claimed that 73% of the southwest Levant being under Jewish sovereignty represents the Palestinians yielding 73% of "their" land and 100% of the southwest Levant under Jewish sovereignty can be portrayed as complete dispossession of the Palestinians. However, if the Palestinians are really just of the larger Arab public, which they are, then the appropriate denominator for land that the Arabs would yield for a Jewish state would be larger with the percentage of Arab land yielded being smaller.
Since the Palestinian Arabs considered themselves part of Syria until Israel was firmly established, I will use the Levant, consisting roughly of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories, as the denominator.
| Area (sq. mi.) | Population | |
| Levant | 235,805 | 42,360,853 |
| Israel (internationally recognized) | 8,522 | 8,238,300 |
| Israel (with disputed territories) | 10,952 |
What these numbers show is that the percentage of the population of the Levant that is Jewish and the percentage of the Levant under Jewish sovereignty are as follows:
| Percentage | |
| Population | 14.5 |
| Land (internationally recognized) | 3.6 |
| Land (with disputed territories) | 4.6 |
What this demonstrates is that whatever portion Israel has of the southwest Levant, the share of the Levant under Jewish sovereignty will be substantially less than the Jewish share of the population of the Levant.
Interesting, Sar Shalom.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this one.