Palestinian People Quotes
There were Arabs living in Palestine since Roman times. However, there was no concept of Palestinians as a separate people from Jordanians or other Arabs in the Middle East. There had never been a Palestinian government separate from the other Arabs in the region and separate from the Kingdom of Jordan. At the birth of Israel, all the Arab Armies of the region attacked the new state, which managed to defend itself but in the process the Arab governments had told the Arabs of Israel to leave the Area so their Armies would be able to attack all others. After the Arab victory, they could return and could have their land and the Jewish land. The victory never happened and the Arabs who left have been refugees outside of Israel and describe themselves as “Palestinians” which have had a quasi government in the PLO. The Palestinians who stayed in Israel became full citizens of the Jewish State. Other Palestinian refugees left the area and emigrated throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.
The PLO and most of the Arab nations, took the position that the United Nations original partition of Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestinian nations -- UN General Assembly Resolution 181 – was “illegal”. That view has served as the basis for the Arab Israeli problems since. The basis of the illegality they claimed was the right of the Palestinians to self determination. However, it is a right which they deny to the Jews living in Palestine who also had a right to self determination. The UN solution was to partition the land into two nations so that the each had the right of self determination. However, the Arab leadership wanted only Arabs to have the right of self determination.
One of the characteristic of many Muslim leaders is their willingness to sacrifice the lives of their people for political objectives. This has been supported by a willingness of a significant minority of the Muslim population to sacrifice their lives—especially when the leaders have been skilled enough to link their political objectives to the welfare and survival of Islam.
