Where has All of Israel Gone?

At one or two shops in the Old City of Jerusalem and tourist sites in areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority, people can pick up a map entitled “Palestine, the Holy Land Tourist Map”.

Published by the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the large glossy map provides a detailed look at Palestinian cities, towns, villages, as well as holy places and refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

While the map is no doubt a valuable tool for those wishing to explore the deeper recesses of the Palestinian territories, it won?t help tourists wishing to explore Israel.

That?s because, according this map, there is no Israel.

Whereas the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem are brimming with detail where to find museums, zoos, gas stations, recreation sites, the land recognized as Israel by the international community appears as mostly blank space criss-crossed by highways.

A handful of Israeli cities (Netanya, Tel Aviv/Jaffa, Ashdod, Ramla), which were built on or near pre-1948 Arab villages, are shown, but without any references to museums and so forth. The word “Israel” is conspicuously absent.

This despite the fact that the map was financed by the United Nations Development Program/Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People.

Rabbi David Rosen, director of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League, first learned of the map and its funding in early February, when David Bedein, a Jerusalem journalist who specializes in the actions of the Palestinian Authority, brought it to his attention.

“I think it’s deplorable that a UN organization should be supporting such a partisan political propaganda”, Rabbi Rosen says. “In portraying the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River as only ‘Palestine’ and eliminating all reference to Israel is thus implicitly advocating an anti-Israel policy”.

Emanuel Nachshon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, says that his office began receiving complaints about the map four or five months ago.

“Individuals saw it at tourist sites and let us know about it”, Nachshon says. “We think it’s extremely inappropriate that such a map should be published. We see it as part of the wider Palestinian efforts to negate Israel, just like the recent decree by the Mufti of Jerusalem saying that the Jews have nothing to do with the Western Wall”.

Despite the government’s disgust over the map, Nachshon does not believe that it has, or will, take any action to squelch it.

“Look”, he says, “given the depth of the Palestinian violence that we have witnessed during the past months, the issue of the map is just a small aspect of the wider spectrum of problems we have to deal with. Before we establish a dialogue over a map, there are burning issues of terrorism and violence we need to deal with”.

Nachshon refuses to say whether Israel intends to take up the matter with the UNDP, which funds a variety of humanitarian and development programs in the Palestinian Authority.

“I don’t wish to comment on that. It’s a map issued by the Palestinians,? he said.

Bedein, the director of a media center that specializes in uncovering Palestinian corruption and anti-Israel propaganda, is incensed by the Israeli government’s laissez-faire attitude.

“This map and the maps in Palestinian textbooks are a rally point for the Palestinians”,he asserts. “I know how they affect the Palestinian people and their view of things. By printing the tourist map in English, the Palestinians are telling tourists, It’s all ours. It’s part of a terror culture, a culture that says that none of Palestine belongs to Israel”.

Officials in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism deny any implicit or explicit political agenda.

“We printed a tourist map, not a political map”, insists Palestinian Tourism Minister Mitri Abu Aita. “We don’t show official borders and we don?t mention our official neighbors. We just show places in Palestine, a destination for tourism”.

Aita’s voice becomes strained when it is pointed out that the map does indeed mention Egypt and Jordan, as well as the international boundary,? and the armistice line of 1949. He does not reply when asked why a smaller map of the Old City of Jerusalem shows mosques and churches but no synagogues or the Western Wall.

“We must leave politics to the politicians”, he says finally.

Bajis Ismail, the Palestinian tourism ministry’s director general, asks this reporter to ask Israel whether they mention Palestinian areas on their maps. “They don’t identify the line between Israel and the Palestinian areas”.

David Bedein disputes this.

In February 2000, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism published a map clearly showing areas A and B of the Palestinian Authority. Reading the text in a corner of the map, he says, “In area A, the Palestinians have responsibility for civil affairs, internal security and public order. This area is marked in gray, and area B is in yellow”.

Ismail insists that the UNDP only funded the Palestinian map but had no input in its production.

“They are not responsible for the text. They are responsible only for supporting the project financial. It’s not a crime”, he says.

Perhaps not a crime, but most certainly an embarrassment.

In response to the question of how a map of the “Holy Land” funded by the UN could fail to include Israel, Willi Scholl, deputy director the UNDP?s office in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, says, “this was obviously a very unfortunate oversight. It’s obviously a mistake that it was not put in.?

He stresses that his agency didn’t prepare the map. “We didn’t edit it. Our contribution was financial, not intellectual”.

Scholl insists time and again that the UN always puts a disclaimer on its projects stating that the contents do not imply an endorsement in the political sense. “Given the nature of our development program”,he says, “we don’t have any stance on any political issues, especially regarding the Palestinian territories and Israel”.

“The tourism map does not carry this disclaimer”, he acknowledges.

Scholl could not say whether the UNDP would demand the map’s removal from travel kiosks and shops, or whether his own office would stop stocking it.

We will have to sit down with the [Palestinian tourism] minister and tell him we have our misgivings because Israel is not on the map,he says. He adds, however, that “I really can’t see what we can do unless they opt us into the map’s editing team”.

To this Bedein responds, “no dice. They took credit for publishing that map, put up the money to make it and they distribute it”.

He hopes that the incoming foreign minister will do more to hold the Palestinians responsible for their actions. Until that happens, the journalist says, “people should start raising the question of why the UN is publishing maps obliterating Israel?”

This ran on March 3, 2001 in the “Jewish Week”, the newspaper of the Jewish Federation of New York