Israeli Palestinian conflict

General features

Among the documents and material of the terror organizations captured in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield, the geography notebook of a s tudent apparently living in the Jenin refugee camp was found.

In this notebook, “ The Geography of Palestine ”, the student did his homework on the subjects of Geography and the Historical Geography of Palestine. It provides a rare glimpse into how messages on the subject of geography are instilled into high school graduate boys studying in colleges and universities in the PA areas.

According to the details on the first and last page of the notebook, its owner is a student who had apparently studied in 1999 at the “College for Education Sciences” [“Kulliyyat al-'Ulum al-Tarbawiyah”]. This is a teachers' training college in Ramallah also called the “Ramallah United Teachers' College”. It belongs to UNRWA and accepts sons of refugees from the camps, so we can assume that the owner of the notebook is a youth from Jenin refugee camp studying in Ramallah.

When comparing the motifs appearing in the notebook to those of geography lessons at elementary and intermediary schools, as mentioned above, it appears that the messages they inculcate also emerge in the teachers' training college, often in a more extreme manner . The student learns to treat “Palestine” as one geographical-historical-political entity of Palestinian-Arab-Islamic nature , and to ignore the bond between the land of Israel and the Jewish people or, in turn, to minimize this connection. The terminology used by the student is Arabic-Islamic, while ignoring Israeli and Jewish names and terms.

Examples of the notebook's contents:

Following are examples of what the notebook contained (according to the page numbers of the notebook):

Palestine's borders : Palestine is located on the south-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea bordering Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Red Sea…(p. 4).

Palestine's character : Palestine is an Arab / Middle Eastern / Islamic / Mediterranean state (p.5).

• The Arabs : came to Palestine before Islam and lived there as part of the Semitic tribes.

• The Philistines : inhabited the southern part of the Isle of Crete and migrated to Palestine.

• The Hebrews : as mentioned, they did not maintain a civilization in Palestine. The duration of their presence
in Palestine – 170 years [only].

• The Jews : arrived in Palestine after World War I following the Balfour Declaration and the British pro-Jewish policy.
They flocked from various countries and races.

The origin of the Hebrews : historians are divided on the subject of the Hebrews' place of origin. According to Kamal Salibi, the Hebrews are those who came from the Arabian Peninsula. The place of death of the prophet Moses is unknown. This proves that the Jews did not enter Palestine . Moses was born in Egypt and died in Egypt (p.7). [note: Kamal Salibi is a renowned Christian Lebanese historian, who published a book claiming that the Hebrews originated from the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore have no claim to the land of Israel]

The regions of Palestine : Palestine has four regions: the coastline, the mountainous areas, the valley [Jordan Valley] “the Palestinian desert and the Arava valley [the Negev]. Details of all the areas included in these regions are then provided. Thus, for instance, the mountains of “Umm al-Rashrash” [Eilat] and the Beersheba area are included in the Palestinian desert; Haifa, Acre, and Gaza are part of the coastline. The mountains of Jerusalem, Hebron, and the Galilee are included in the mountainous areas. The Baniyas River, the Hula Valley, and Tiberias are in the Jordan Valley area (p. 12).

Page 13 – the map of Palestine

This map of Palestine is one of many appearing in Palestinian textbooks and on the free market in the PA areas. In Israel, which is not mentioned by name, Arab cities appear, some of “mixed” population which had existed up until 1948, and some “purely” Arab: Jerusalem, Haifa, Acre, Beersheba, (as well as cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, such as Hebron and Nablus). Tel Aviv, Natanya, Hadera, Bat Yam, Holon, and other predominantly Jewish-Israeli cities are not on the map .

The Galilee , which is defined as “northern Palestine” (the page in the notebook is unnumbered): in the map of the Galilee, no reference is made to Jewish-Israeli cities ( the city of Karmiel, for instance, does not exist) or Jewish – Israeli names. The names of streams or mountains are mentioned in their Arabic version only (pp. 35,36); in one place it is mentioned that the upper, lower and central Galilee mountains and the valleys between them “are considered as northern Palestine” (unnumbered page). In his homework regarding the characteristics of the Galilee mountains, the student wrote: “the inhabitants of these mountains [Galilee mountains] are Druze”; the settlement/settlements [“Istitan”] of the Jews in these areas have failed as the required conditions for their settlement [apparently meaning the “Judaization of the Galilee”] were lacking.

The main populated towns and cities [in Palestine] are: Acre, Haifa, Lod, Ramla, Gaza, Rafah, El-Arish, (where is Tel Aviv?) (p. 30).

A Lateral Division of Palestine

Source : The map was published by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities,
in cooperation with PECDAR (the date of publication is not mentioned).

Above are two maps appearing in the notebook dealing with the division of “Palestine” into geographical regions which is different from the accepted division appearing on pages 11-12. In these maps, the division of “Palestine” is lateral and the coastline comprises a continuation of the territorial zone of the Palestinian cities on the hillock. Thus, for example, the “ Hebron heights plain ” constitutes the continuation of Hebron and Hebron heights; “ Jerusalem heights plain ” is the continuation of Jerusalem and Jerusalem heights; “ Nablus heights plain ” is the continuation of Nablus. The largest populated towns and cities are along the coastline and the cities in its center (Tel Aviv, Natanya, Hadera, Bat Yam, Holon, Ashdod, are not mentioned at all, as usual). In our view, this lateral division is aimed at demonstrating (in an extreme and unusual manner) that the coastline (which in reality is densely populated by Israeli-Jews) is no more than an extension of the Palestinian populated areas concentrated on the hillside backbone in the central part of the land of Israel .