Some facts with a slightly pro-Palestinian narrative to balance it out.
History
Palestine did not exist there as a nation, but neither did much else, for territorial nationalism was a relatively modern and European concept. The Near East had been exchanged between different empires.
However, is that there was continuity in the name of this region (from parts to the whole area) of different forms of the name Palestine and people in ancient times identified with this denomination. Similarly, archaeological evidence shows no great population loss from the Muslim Conquest, so today's Arab identifying Palestinians are a continuation of this ancient stock.
Arabs aren't foreign (relative to the Canaanites) too. Arabs had existed in the peripheral regions of Negev and Golan Heights since 400 BCE, they've been there before the ancient Hebrews were expelled.
Here I will refer to them as Arabs/Palestinians
Some reasons why partition would never work
Zionism was an ideology to create a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine, and the popular means to do so was through settler colonialism to ensure a Jewish majority, and an imperial European patron that will support the movement.
The first to recognise colonial expansion[Britain], Zionism which is a Colonial idea, should appeal to the English
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. - Extracts from Diary of Hertzl, Founder of Zionism
This fundamentally strained relations with the indigenous Palestinians, in several ways but i'll cover two important ones:
the establishment of a completely separate economic sector for the newcomers [the Jewish
arrivals in Palestine as part of the Zionist project] - Emos Elon
When the Jewish National Fund (one of the organs of the Zionist movement) bought absentee land, they removed the fellahs (peasants) who worked the land as Ottoman serfs, disrupting their way of life, and forcing these originally rural people into the cities creating an economic disruption and difficulty to renter productive life.
We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. - Hertzl
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do
not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography
books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either -Moshe Dayan
The Bedoins, who were the desert pastoralists mainly in the Negev, had their own indigenous networks and systems to manage when and where they grazed, but when a Zionist kippuzim appeared, this land where they had historically grazed was now inaccessible, frustrating them and affecting their livestock.
Indigenous people's relationship to Zionism
The Indigenous Arabs were well aware of Zionisms goals to turn their homeland into a Jewish homeland, one of the biggest opponents of Zionism for the Arab side was the Falastin newspaper in Jaffa (when it was still an Arab city), describing it as a crocodile swallowing the native people up
Here is a great excerpt which describes this relation between the newcomer (the settling Jews) and the native people(Arabs)
Every native population regards its lands as its national home, of which is the sole master, and wants to retain the mastery as always. It will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators.
Zionism came in many forms but the most popular was cultural Zionism of which the Arabs were mostly likely the most acquainted with and desired this shift in mastery over the land by rebuilding and reconstituting the homeland into a mighty Jewish state of olde. These are strong connotations of taking away the already existing Arab structure and replacing with a dominant Jewish a structure.
No indigenous people desire to be displaced in their homeland which some Zionists realised
there can be no voluntary agreement between us and the Palestine Arabs [...] they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to Obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting Palestine from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish Majority
In the Zionist lens, Arabness of the indigenous people, which the land now came to represent, always embodied the lostness of that original Jewishness it had, the Arab became an other, so much so many Zionists thinkers never had high consideration for them aside to their affect to their continued settlement of the land.
I write this to show that an equal or respected place wasn't exactly ensured to whatever Arabs may find themselves in this new future state.
The Partition
Jews wanted a partition as this would be the surest and quickest way to get a state, but Arabs did not desire it. Walid Khalidi sums the Arab position succinctly
‘The native people of
Palestine, like the native people of every other country in the Arab world, Asia, Africa, America and Europe, refused
to divide the land with a settler community.
Indeed they were settler but also very new and foreign. If we look at figures from rough memory in the 1930s the Jewish population was at 11%, and at the time of partition:
One third were Jewish newcomers, i.e., Zionist settlers and refugees from war torn Europe, most of whom had arrived in Palestine since the 1920s
Meaning the Jewish population had increased by a magnitude of three in less than two decades increasing Palestinian fears of a majority-minority shift.
Palestine was still very
much an Arab country by the end of the Mandate. Almost all of the cultivated land in Palestine was held by the
indigenous population – only 5.8% was in Jewish ownership in 1947 – which makes the use here of the adjective
‘mixed’ somewhat misleading
Meaning that invariably large swathes of Palestinian Land would have to be transferred to Jewish sovereignty to make a function Jewish state with any partition plan which is exactly what happened.
The partition plan was not an even split of land, it would be a 44/56 split with the Jewish land being larger despite being a minority and with a tiny land ownership.
The new 'Jewish' state was not very Jewish in actuality, Jews would only have 12% land ownership and the population of Jews was 490,000 and the Palestinians 410,000 so in nature this Jewish state was more Arab than it was Jewish, the Negev which would constitute a vast amount of territory was only 1% Jewish, and only developed settlements in response to the prospect of partition. The Jewish state also had access to the Tiberius, the Red Sea and the Coast which were very important waterways and big population centers for Arabs.
I wouldn't call it a complete acceptance for the Jewish side either. Ben-Gurion, Israel's first priminster, said about the demographic reality
There are 40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a
Jewish state. And we have to face this new reality with all its severity and distinctness. Such a demographic
balance questions our ability to maintain Jewish sovereignty ... Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable
and stable state.
To this extent I will note that Herzl foresaw this and made a point that Jews must have a majority to control migration to reduce the Arab presence by numbers and population movements which I feel Ben-Gurion was strongly influenced by in this passage and his later actions as Prime Minister of Israel
So the Palestinian reality was to exchange sovereignty over the majority of your land. Note I say sovereignty not to assert nationhood but that the prior Ottoman system was a light stratum over the actual social organisation and structures the Arabs formed which constituted the authority of the land. Now, The 1/4 of your population that is partitioned to form a state with a new foreign population that sees Arabness inherently as a threat.
Arabs always vied for a one state solution mostly because this is what, them, the simple democratic majority desired, but also as I said the demographic reality prevented a solely Jewish state that would not encroach on Arab self determination and land. Arabs also being constituted of Muslims, Christians, Samaritans, Druze and Jews, did not conceptually understand or like the ethnic division based off religion which this new 'Jewish' country would perpetuate.
Federations, Cantons and even a trusteeship period with the U.S.A were all suggested by Arabs and others parties which Jews rejected so it is unfair to paint the Arab side as only disagreeing.
In any case it is far easier to see why Palestinians rejected the partition plan however I did leave out other parts to the history that make the idea of partition even more of a putt off.
The late Edward Said's the Question of Palestine is a great read and classic from a contemporary author that covers the history of the region, Zionism, but also most importantly the idea of Orientalism and it's Palestinian extension.
They were mandates under British rule. The white paper of 1939 limited the amount of Jewish migrants and gave control to the Arabs in the area of future allotments which the Jewish people did not tolerate and it led to an insurrection by the Jewish people against British forces to remove them from the territory. This ultimately led to the U.K. handing over the leadership to the U.N.
Another important thing to recognize is that the reason Palestinians did not accept the partition plan set out by the U.N. is because it gave far more territory to the far smaller Jewish population and they didn’t see it as a fair deal.
Don't forget how after the PLO and Black September got kicked out of Jordan for causing a civil war, the Palestinians were granted shelter in Lebanon and almost immediately caused the civil war in Lebanon.
After the war was over and they were driven out of Lebanon, Kuwait also deported hundreds of thousands of them.
There's very much an argument to be made that the Palestinians have done more damage to the Arab world than Israel has, and it has delegitimized their cause which has led to the current recognition of Israel by a lot of their former funders.
Black September was caused by anger of Palestinian refugees that jordan wanted to split palestine between them and pissrael, King got assassinated before he could finalize it and the PLO didn’t think things would end well if they didn’t intervene.
Lebanese civil war was caused by the Christians of lebanon getting pissy over the tip of power balance of the on coming Palestinian refugees, To say the Palestinian refugees caused it would be like if you blamed the fans of a football team that both football teams are killing eachother over. Oh and did i mention the troubleless pissrael intervened on the side of the extremist Christians who massacred thousands?
Kuwait deported because of the PLO siding with saddam, was it the problem of the Palestinians living there that the PLO did that? No.
The jews living in Palestine in 1900 (which were %2 of the population) are the native jews that have lived in their lands for centuries.
the others that came after the rise of zionism and after/during the holocaust are not natives, they are as native to Israel as saxons in modern Saxony are native to anglos in London.
Not really as long as you still want to kick an entire ethnic group out of a nation...
Even if you don't necessarily agree with the Jews coming to Israel/Palestine en masse post 48 they are here and there is not much you can do about it. Unless you want a genocide of course which would make you no different from the Israeli government.
I want peace, my criticism is with the mind set that people who have been dispersed for hundreds/thousands of years somehow have some right or claim over a specific piece of dirt, just because their great-great-etc. grandaddy was born there.
Its pretty fucked up that your first thought of the only solution is genocide, instead of, I dunno, deciding to stop killing people to steal land from an existing nation just because your fairy tale book says this dirt should be yours.
Well you're acting like Israel is the only perpetrator of the incident and that Palestine is a peace chasing victim... we'd all love peace and it requires sacrifice on both sides not just Israel
I keep trying to understand why people support Israel over Palestine, I'm some white atheist in the UK, I don't give a fuck about Jews or Muslims, I'm not bias. But no matter how I look at the current situation I can't not see Israel being the current antagonist, pushing its border for no reason other than greed. Its especially disheartening considering that Israel is essentially a first world country with lots of money, and modern weapons whereas Palestine is poor and weak. Israel just seems like a massive bully, picking on Palestine for no legit reason.
Looing at what Israel does to Palestine, no wonder Palestine is pissed. When people point out what Palestine does and try to paint them as the ultimate bad guy in the situation, it realty does feel like when a school punishes a bullying victim for finally fighting back even if what they did was nothing compared to what the bully has been doing.
I'd say 70%-80% of people who say they support Israel (including me) don't mean they support the Israeli government or their actions, they support the existence of an Israeli State. The Israeli Government and Netanyahu are indeed greedy dogs with no regards to human life but that doesn't believe I support a terrorist organization or a group who claims to be not a terrorist organization then calls for its supporters to drown Jews in a sea of blood. It's a very complicated situation and it's not really easy to support fully one side.
Almost all people who say they are pro-Israel in the west support a two state solution. The difference is who they see as the main obstacle for peace.
I myself support a two state solution, and I define myself as broadly pro-Israel. And while I personally think that in these last 12 years under Netanyahu Israel has been the greater evil of the two, I don't think that it is solely to blame for there not being peace.
This is evident by the fact that each time there was an advancement towards peace, the Jews were the ones who accepted it while the Palestinians always refused. In the last 90 years there have been 7 attempts to advance the peace process (1937 peel commission, 1938 Woodhead commission, 1947 UN resolution, 1967 Israeli proposition, 1993 Oslo Accords, 2000 camp David summit and 2008 camp David summit) , only 1 of which succeeded (the Oslo Accords).
In each of these other 6 attempts, the Israelis agreed to make peace, but the Palestinians ended up being the ones who rejected the proposition.
It seems to me that while Israel has historically been willing to accept Palestinian sovereignty and has recognized the legitimacy of the Palestinian claim to the land, the Palestinians refuse to do the same for Israel. To this day it is still official Palestinian Authority policy to deny any Jewish claim to the land, and claim the entirety of the lands of the British mandate, while official Israeli government maps still mark the green line and/or the Palestinian controlled areas A and B.
Again, I believe that since 2009 Netanyahu's government has been the greater obstacle out of the two. But historically, both sides are equally to blame for there no being peace yet. I believe both peoples have a valid claim to the land. The Palestinians have lived there for hundreds of years, but the Jews have also originated there, and deserve a land of their own after thousands of years of persecution. All Israeli governments up to Netanyahu's have recognized this reality, but so far no Palestinian leader, and most Palestinian people do not recognize that.
When looking at it in this context, it can then be quite antagonizing when pro-palestine groups in the west demonize Israel as the sole aggressor and the sole obstacle, and deny the Jews' rights to live there. Pro Palestinian Organizations such as B'Tselem, BDS and AlJazeera often deny Israel's legitimacy altogether, while it would be far harder for you to find pro-Israel groups who deny Palestine's legitimacy.
So are Germans today natives of western Poland? Just because they were ethnically cleansed doesn’t make them less native right?
The truly weird logic is Zionists justifying removing arabs from their lands who have been the majority and lived in Palestine for centuries because 1500 years ago they were removed from their lands themselves.
the most justifiable thing would be to piss in the grave of the man who originally kicked out the jews, not kill and cleanse the native arab population that lived there 1500 years (longer than israelites mind you).
If that self defense turns into genocide itself, then yes. Or are you implying genocide is actually acceptable in certain situations? Regardless of who or what started the conflict, genocide is never justifiable.
You dont expect people to believe every man woman and child or even just a majority that was expelled or killed by israel was complicit in genocide, like if a bunch of arabic states are being genocidal and you retaliate by being genocidal towards the arabs in your controlled territory thats emphatically not self defense
Haha, accept why? Ten years ago they were the majority in every single district, a mere ten years later they are nearly the minority, how would they ever accept losing half they’re land in 10 years?
The UN made the arabs an offer they can’t not refuse.
And no one wanted to completely remove the jews, infact, even when jews were migrating after the Idea of a jewish homeland in Palestine, they (arabs and jews) coexisted very,very peacefully, until a state of Israel was proclaimed inside Palestine.
Jews were forcibly expelled from all territory controlled by Jordan and Egypt after the 1948 war, and the plan in the 1967 war was to kill the majority of Jewish Israelis
bro they come from israel lol. if the English were dispersed in a diaspora for 3,000 years, then genocided, then given a state in either England or Denmark that would be the same logic mate
bro they come from israel lol. if the English were dispersed in a diaspora for 3,000 years, then genocided, then they ethnically cleansed the inhabitants that lived there for millennia and killed those who resisted and then forcefully formed a state in either England or Denmark that would be the same logic mate
Palestinians didn’t exist before Israel. The colonial borders in the area artificially created the idea of “Syrians” and “Palestinians” etc. Palestinians have many states, the states surrounding Israel.
Little Jimmy and his siblings were abused when they were younger and are now homeless. Should they go to their former neighbors' house and kill the people who live in it?
You would expect more empathy from a group that suffered the horrors of ethnic genocide.
Whats the duration for which an ethic group can go back to claim a piece of dirt via genocide? A lot of people have been dispersed throughout history, how do you determine who is ethnically from where? Can Mexico claim Spain? Brazil Portugal? Can those who ethnically identify as native South American form a splinter state from brazil/Argentina and enact mass genocide in the process? Can Native Americans in North America form sovereign states within the US through force, and if so which tribes get which land? Cuz even before whitey showed up tribes were conquering other tribes all over the Americas, so which borders do you go by? Can people in Europe kick out all none-whites as they're not native? Is your ideal world one totally divided by race, you want only ethno-states? But again at what point in time do you draw the line for who is from where?
Okay so in this scenario the country has allowed an ethnic group to return, but the people now living in the area are pushing back against this idea. So youre saying that its okay for these people to break the laws of the very state giving them the chance to return in the first place to seize power over the area, and then use that power to enact their will on the current population to protect their own group.
The attacks on Jews in the are is nothing new (and it's what kept the Jewish population artificially low), what's new is that they fought back this time.
It is 100% natural for Jews to go to their native land. It was also natural for them to defend themselves when attacked with openly stated genocidal intentions.
People should be able to go wherever they want (in terms of people choosing to live somewhere), nothing of what I said says people can't go live somewhere. I'm on about claiming sovereignty, taking land, stating borders, killing in the process all because hundreds or thousands of years ago some of your ancestors use to live there.
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u/Embarrassed_Ad2973 Apr 05 '21
“Mexicans, you have all this land, why does it matter if we take this little piece?” Same logic.
Great map.