The great Global March to Jerusalem, the largest protest in the Palestinian cause, achieved nothing more than a few violent incidents. The organizers tried to recruit armies of irregulars to storm Israel’s borders and re-occupy Jerusalem. They got no closer than Bethlehem, where they live anyway.

 The Global March to Jerusalem

The Global March to Jerusalem involved organizers from Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank”), Gaza, and the Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Our plan is to organize massive marches towards Jerusalem, or to the nearest point possible according to the circumstances of each country, in Palestine (the 1948 seizures, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and the four neighbouring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Internationals will participate in land caravans or fly directly to one of the main sites for the march. In addition, mass protests will [take place] in front of Israeli embassies in the capitals of different countries, or in the main public squares in the big cities of the world.

Embassy protests did take place in Jordan, Tunisia, and India. And — nowhere else.

Two days before the great protest, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz (The Land) reported dissension in the ranks, and among event planners.

Haaretz has learned that major disagreements have developed between leading, mostly Palestinian, protest organizers in the West Bank and neighboring Arab countries, and other activists identified with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

[Also,] the protest organizers, who are billing the event as the Global March to Jerusalem, are attempting to refine their protest message and avoid a physical confrontation with Israeli forces.

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In short, the organizers were already lowering expectations two days in advance. And today their failure became painfully clear. Instead of masses of irregulars swarming toward the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights, and the borders of Egypt and Lebanon, the Global March to Jerusalem produced a handful of incidents, each involving a relative handful of people:

• Approximately 150 violent rioters in Bethlehem hurled rocks and firebombs at Israeli security personnel (see video below).

• Approximately 200 rioters in Qalandia hurled rocks and firebombs at IDF forces.

• Though the media (including the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood) has been uncritically repeating Palestinian claims that politician Mustafa Barghouti was hit in the head by a tear gas canister, requiring medical treatment, the IDF contradicted these claims stating definitively that Barghouti was hurt in a brawl that broke out among the Palestinians over who would lead the protest march.

• The IDF responded to Palestinian violence with non-lethal riot dispersal means.

Some of those rock-throwers in Bethlehem were children. Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon described the worst violence. Palestinian protesters threw rocks and firebombs, and Tzahal soldiers answered with tear gas and rubber bullets. (The embedded video comes from a Twitter user who calls himself “Captain Barak Raz.” That could stand for a Saren Barak Raz of the Israel Defense Forces, if that name and rank title are correct.)

Firebombs on security forces – #peaceful protest??? #yeahright #Bethlehem #gm2j #gmj http://yfrog.us/g1ky4z

Background of the Palestinian issue

Flag of Palestine (Falastin)

CNAV has written about the Palestinian issue before, after Barack Obama said that Israel should return to the 1949 Armistice Line (“1967 Israel borders”). Two and a half weeks ago, attorney Matthiew M. Hausman said boldly, “Jordan is Palestine.”

…The San Remo Conference of 1920 and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922…recognized the right of close settlement and of the Jews to live anywhere in their homeland. The goal was unrestricted Jewish habitation west of the Jordan River.

There was no discussion of a Palestinian homeland because there were no Palestinians at the time. Rather, Arab self-determination was addressed by the establishment of the French Mandate in Lebanon and Syria and the British Mandate in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Transjordan. In contrast, the San Remo Resolution and Palestine Mandate recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and … the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

As Hausman also points out, no sovereign nation existed in the territories of Israel proper, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan from the time that Emperor Hadrian of Rome put down Simon bar Kochba’s rebellion in 135, and the 1948 Israel War for Independence. But a remnant of Jews always lived in the land since Hadrian’s war. A remnant of Jews has always lived in the land, even during the seventy-year “desolation” after Nebuchadnezzar II sacked Jerusalem and burned Solomon’s Temple to the ground in 586 BC.

The term Palestinian refers to a larger Arab ethnic group than those living in Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank”) and Gaza. But most of these people live in Jordan. The Hashemite tribe, from whom comes the royal family, have kept these Palestinians under their yoke ever since British Mandatory Transjordan became, simply, “Jordan.” Moreover, this kingdom unilaterally annexed Judea and Samaria after the 1949 Armistice, though it had no legal basis for that act. Israel seized it back in 1967, but after King Hussein sent his troops to attack Israel, in the mistaken belief that the heavy bombers his troops saw flying in from Sinai were Egyptian bombers preparing to bomb Israel. In fact, they were Israel Air Force bombers returning to base after destroying Egypt’s air force on the ground.

Today, according to Hausman, the Palestinians on the eastern side of the Jordan River would like to live in a secular democracy and cede Judea and Samaria permanently to Israel. The Arabs living on the western side do not care about their “brothers” on the eastern side at all. They want power, and they seek to kill Jews, as they did in their bloody “clean-out” of Hebron in 1929.

This is where Palestinians and Israelis really sit. And if “where you stand depends on where you sit,” this might explain why the Arabs never could muster the masses of irregulars they hoped to deploy today. The larger point is: the true Palestinian homeland is a country named Jordan, not any territory west of the Jordan River.

Related:

• Obama sabotaging Israel?
• Israel prepares for protests, war