Hello, so we've passed the part of the series that is about the establishment of Israel and all the myths surrounding it. Now, it's time to clarify some of the questions, concerns, and arguments. You are free to add your own to the list of things I will respond to here and I will get to respond to them. However, this is about the arguments I found on the internet which seem to be both the best anti-Palestine arguments and the most popular.

"Palestine Didn't Have A President"

Now, there are many versions of this claim. The point of this claim overall remains the same, if Palestine was a country, how come it didn't have a president? Below is a version of this argument:

https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/1725025103237337224
- Imamofpeace

This claim shows not only a high level of ignorance of the region's history but of the world as a whole.

First of all, statehood is a concept that is relatively new. You see, from Germany, Britain, Austria, Poland, Russia, Omayad, and Abbasyd, the Ottomans weren't countries, they were empires, kingdoms, and monarchies, this extends to African countries like Ghana, South Africa, and Uganda, basically most of what you see today as countries weren't countries until mid-last century.

This is in the fourth part of the series, statehood or nation states were a new concept. If we're talking about Palestinians lacking the rights for their land and name because they didn't have a president before the establishment of Israel, then we're talking about most countries not having that right either.

Iraq's first president became such in 1958, Egypt in 1953, Ghana in 1960, Uganda in 1962 and that was Walter Coutts, a British man, it wasn't until 1963 that an actual Ugandan became head of state, South Africa's? Nelson Mandela in 1994. South Africa as a country is only a little bit older than I am.

So, the idea globally doesn't hold merit. In fact, a little bit of digging would show that it is a point for Palestine, not against it.

Mandates

That's what was happening during that era. It wasn't like those places decided not to be a country because they didn't want to or didn't see themselves as a country or Palestinians, it is that they couldn't be. All of the Arabic countries mentioned above and many more were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and when it fell, they fell under mandates to the winning side of the First World War.

All of those countries eventually made it out of those mandates, some suffered more than others in the process like Algeria whose independence was dubbed the "Million Martyr Revolution" for obvious reasons. That was just to escape the French mandate. You need to understand that those mandates weren't just mandates, they were plans for long-term control, just like in Central and South Africa.

So, Palestine was like those Arab countries who eventually got their sovereignty except for Palestine, Do you want to guess the reason? Not only that, surrounding countries like Syria and Lebanon got their independence rather quickly making the fact that Palestine did not have a president actually a point against the ones using it.

Lack of Statehood Doesn't Mean Anything

Forget about countries, forget about statehood and let's say that region didn't have a king or a president for hundreds of years and let's pretend those villages and cities coexisted without the need for one, isn't that the vision here? A lack of statehood doesn't mean anything. It doesn't deny those were villages and cities with people living in them. It doesn't deny the massacres and ethnic cleansing.

Even if we assume those places existed without kings, Sultans, or a Caliphate for the entire time, the region is still not for people from Europe to take and decide what to do with it as was voiced by them since 1920 in the Arab Uprising. Doesn't matter how you spin it, that point is moot, pure and simple.

"Why Don't Egypt Take Them?"

This is actually a point that you could google without writing "Palestinians" and would get results related to Palestine, it also applies to Jordan and the entire Arab world. The idea of this argument is that those countries should take Palestinians as Israel goes in and wipes out Hamas. On the surface, it seems to convince people in the West and actually shows the Arabs to be heartless hypocrites. However, there are two direct answers to this question.

They Can't

This answer is simple and direct to the point, those countries can't host MORE refugees because unlike what you have heard, they do have refugees, we have Palestinians here in Iraq. There are refugees in all Arab countries. However, we can't speak of countries hosting refugees, nearly 2.4 million in Gaza's case alone, without speaking of those countries' economic status.

Egypt's unemployment rate is near 10%, Jordan's 20%, Iraq's over 15%, and so on. Those countries also lack the infrastructure to host refugees. Now, don't get me wrong, there are basically racist concerns among a few voices in those countries and a tone of prejudice against Palestinians, but the fact remains the same, those countries are struggling as it is. As we mentioned above, most of these countries are relatively new and had to deal with colonialism not so long ago. Many of those countries are also currently recovering from war as is the case with Iraq, or a civil war as in Syria and Lebanon, or revolutions and internal wars as is the case in Egypt.

To put this in perspective, while it was undoubtedly Jews were getting killed in bulks in the holocaust, European countries were also not hosting Jewish immigrants as I mentioned previously.

Why Should Arabs Trust Israel?

This is an honest question since I believe many Westerners seem to believe Israel more. But, you have to see it from our perspective, the Palestinians' perspective. Why should we trust Israel and its intentions?

Let's take a simple look at the past, in the late 1940s when there 750 thousand Palestinian immigrants, the UN granted them the Right of Return. How many of those people returned to their lands? Zero, in fact, the number of immigrants has increased to 2 million at the lowest estimate, do you think Gaza's 365 square kilometres always had 2 million?

The villages that were massacred by Zionists and Israel later had none of its inhabitants able to return. Tantura and the two mass graves below it became a literal parking lot for Israeli resorts. Over 500 villages were ethnically cleansed and none of its survivors managed to return. So, you tell me, if you were in the Palestinians' shoes, would you trust the Israeli government?

May I remind you of this video?

The woman hasn't even left the vicinity yet and her house was already taken. Bear in mind, that those millions of immigrants have their Right of Return granted by the United Nations and they're still unable to return, the villages have already been demolished, and settlements have already been built over them. Bear in mind, that the video above is two years old, the ethnic cleansing and settlements are STILL happening.

So, knowing this, do you think Palestinians should still leave until Israel "Settles out the Hamas issue"

There are a few arguments, like "The war would end when Hamas leaves", and "Israel is being singled out because it is a Jewish state" and more, and I will get to those in the next part.

Previous Parts

Follow-up parts

The Tragic Story of Palestine - "It Was A Hamas Base of Operation"
The Tragic Story of Israel
School Lessons From Gaza

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Responding to Arguments and Concerns