This is someone else’s opinion, but also
my own, a result of sitting in on a CBC TV interview with the Palestinian
Liberation Organization representatives at the United Nations conference on
Habitat, in Vancouver in 1976. They spoke of this then, and life for
Palestinians just became progressively worse these past 50 years, as their
lands and homes were taken by Israeli settlers, and while they were called 'terrorists,' the Israelis were being provided with jets, weaponry and support from the United States. What do you think?
A letter to Donald J. Trump from Prince Turki bin Faisal Al
Saud, a Saudi prince and former government official who served as the head of
Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency from 1979 to 2001. He is a
grandson of Saudi's founder King Abdulaziz and son of King Faisal. He is the
chairman of the King Faisal Foundation's Center for Research and Islamic
Studies.
The letter, written on February 4, 2025:
Dear President Trump,
The Palestinian people are not
illegal immigrants to be deported to other lands. The lands are their lands and
the houses that Israel destroyed are their homes, and they will rebuild them as
they have done after previous Israeli onslaughts on them.
Most of the people of Gaza are
refugees, driven out of their homes in what is now Israel and the West Bank by
the previous Israeli genocidal assault on them in the 1948 and 1967 wars. If
they are to be moved from Gaza, they should be allowed to return to their homes
and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and
villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis.
Mr President, many of the tens of
thousands of immigrants who came to Palestine from Europe and other places
after the Second World War stole Palestinian homes and land, terrorised the
inhabitants and engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Alas, America and
the UK, the victors of the war, stood by and even facilitated the murderous
evictions of the Palestinians from their homes and lands.
America and the UK did not want
to receive the victims of Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, so they were content with
sending them to Palestine. In the book Eight Days at Yalta, the author Diana
Preston refers to a conversation between then US president Franklin Roosevelt
and his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin. Preston writes: “Conversation turned
to the subject of Jewish homelands. Roosevelt said he was a Zionist… When
Stalin asked Roosevelt what present he planned to make [Saudi king] Ibn Saud,
he replied his only concession might be to give him six million Jews…”
Fortunately, when Mr Roosevelt
did meet Ibn Saud, the king disabused him of that offer and suggested that the
Jews should be offered the best lands in Germany as compensation for the
Holocaust. Alas, Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, wholeheartedly supported
Jewish immigration to Palestine and eventually became instrumental in the creation
of Israel.
The violence and bloodshed we
witness today are the result of that action and the previous British complicity
with Zionist ambitions from 1917 until then.
Mr President, your declared
intent to bring peace to Palestine is much lauded in our part of the world. I
respectfully suggest that the way to do that is to give the Palestinians their
inalienable right to self-determination and a state with its capital in East
Jerusalem, as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and 194 and Security
Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the Arab Peace Initiative.
All the Arab and Islamic
countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority, accept the terms of the Arab
Peace Initiative to end hostilities and establish relations with Israel. One
hundred and forty-nine countries recognise the Palestinian state. Please make
your country the 150th. No peace in the Middle East will be realised without
addressing this noble issue justly and fairly.
Be remembered as the peacemaker.
Prince Turki Al Faisal