...and classical maps

Yaakov Katz is wrong to call the Peel Report of 1937 the “first time... a partition of the land” was “recommended.” It was the third.

The year 1922 saw the first partition of the classical map of Palestine that had been universally envisioned in 1917 – which is not to be confused with the ridiculous distortion of the classical map drawn up by the League of Nations. The League of Nations dishonestly drafted lines of an expanded Palestine to suggest that 77% of it had been given to Abdullah of the Hejaz.

This writer has written a book displaying the classical maps of Palestine exposing this disfigurement of the country that the League of Nations, for the purposes of realpolitik, came up with.

The second partition was agreed upon after five years of negotiations between the British and the French, who had a similar mandate for a part of classical Syria and used it to create the new states of Lebanon and Syria. Not until 1923 did the two superpowers settle on the boundary between Lebanon-Syria and Palestine. That agreement formalized the amputation of the northern tier of Palestine, or the Land of Israel, whose classical northern boundary went as far as the Sidon-Damascus line.

The Peel map was thus the third dismemberment, so that ever since, Israel – even with the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria – rules over less than half of the classical map (47%, to be exact). The remaining 53% is in the hands of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

If Israel is in occupation of Palestine, then these three Arab states are in occupation of even more.

SHA’I BEN-TEKOA

Efrat