As someone who is Jewish and a student of Zionist history, I am surprised a "Palestinian" would make the claims M Jawed does (Letters, August 1).

His argument, that Jordan is the major part of historical Palestine is, in fact, the argument of the far-Right in Israel who support the "transfer" i.e. expulsion of the Palestinians into Jordan and whose slogan is "Jordan is Palestine".

No Jews were expelled from what is now Jordan in 1922. On the contrary, both the Zionist settlement and the old, anti-Zionist religious Jews, who lived in the cities of Hebron, Safed, Tiberias and Jerusalem, were to the west of the River Jordan.

It is wholly untrue the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon were known as Palestine. This is simply an attempt, post hoc, to rationalise the conquest of these lands by Israel. The area had been under Turkish occupation, the Ottoman Empire, for hundreds of years and was part of Greater or Southern Syria.

Palestine did not exist as a separate entity.

The Mandate system was nothing more than an administrative device for rationalising the conquests of the First World War. The British double crossed both the French and the Arabs by promising both the same pieces of land in the Sykes-Picot agreement and the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, before granting the same to the Zionists.

The inclusion of what became Transjordan in the Mandate, was a temporary device until more suitable arrangements could be made. Indeed it was Winston Churchill, the most pro-Zionist of all British leaders, who sanctioned the move.

The suggestion the granting of Transjordan to King Abdullah "deprived my people (the Palestinians) of the major part of our homeland" is nonsense and is part of Zionist folklore. The Palestinians lived in what is now Israel, before they were expelled in 1947-8, and the West Bank. It was primarily Bedouin tribes who lived in Transjordan.

The Zionist movement wished to created a Jewish State in a land which was occupied by another people - the Palestinians. It sought allies among the imperial powers, reaching agreement in 1917 with the British with the infamous Balfour Declaration.

The problem they faced, of how to create a Jewish State in an area with a non-Jewish majority was solved by expelling the indigenous population into Jordan, the West Bank, Syria etc. Today we see the consequences.

-Tony Greenstein, Crestway Parade, The Crestway, Brighton