THOSE TROUBLED PALESTINIANS

Illegal Jewish settlements on land where before there were none.

The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is infamous for uttering the bold political statement: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people."

The statement has been a source of ridicule and derision by Arab propagandists ever since. They love to talk about Meir's "racism" when skies are blue and not bloody with Arab aggression they can never admit, eager to suggest she was in historical denial. They love to say her statement is patently false—an intentional lie, a strategic deception.

What they don't like to talk about, however, are the very similar statements made by Yasser Arafat and his inner circle of political leadership years after Meir had told the truth—that there is no distinct Palestinian cultural or national identity.

So, despite the fact that the woefully misnamed "politically correct" wisdom has now proclaimed that there is indeed such a thing as the Palestinian people, Ione must consider a few inconvenient quotations made by Arafat and his thugs when their public-relations guard was down.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

This statement requires no Clintonian parsing. It's even more specific than Golda Meir's statement. And it is hardly the only such statement of its kind. Arafat himself made a very definitive and unequivocal statement along these lines as late as 1993. It demonstrates conclusively that the Palestinian nationhood argument is the real strategic deception—one geared to set up the destruction of Israel.

In fact, on the same day Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles, also known as the Oslo Accords, on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, he explained his actions on Jordan TV. Here's what he said: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

No matter how many people convince themselves that the aspirations for Palestinian statehood are genuine and the key to peace in the Middle East, they are still deceiving themselves.

Let's be plain. In the history of the world, Palestine has never existed as a nation. The region known as Palestine was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their ancestral homeland. It was never ruled by Arabs as a separate nation.

Why has this issue become such a critical priority to those jostling on the world stage for power in this post 9/11 era? The answer is because of a massive deception campaign and relentless terrorism to push Israel completely out. Golda Meir was right. Her statement is validated by the truth of history and by the candid, but not widely circulated, echoes of Arafat and his lieutenants.

The path is before us. Israel and the West must not surrender to terrorism by granting the killers just what they want—a public relations triumph and a strategic victory. It's not too late to JUST SAY NO to another Arab terror state. It's not too late to tell the truth about Palestine, no matter how the apologists dress up their lies in sweet-sounding good intentions.

Now for another truth. On November 29, 2005, the United Nations in a so-called Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, instead wiped Israel off the map. Read more.

And let us not forget that roughly the same people in the United States who vigorously clamor for a Palestinian state and the relinquishing of the "illegal" territories now held by Jewish settlers, also have no qualms about allowing "illegals" to pour into the US from the south, and elsewhere. Even the class dunce sitting with his nose to a corner can spot the trend here.