Asymmetrical Information

I don't think the Irish were ever as depraved as the Palestinians. How do you go back from a mind set that celebrates people who blow themselves up?

Well, the World War II movies on TCM don't seem to have fatally wounded our culture. They're chock a block with suicide bombing missions.

I think you might be a little distracted by popular outcry. The foundations of the State of Israel were nowhere near as imperialistic as you portray them:

MYTH
"The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine."

FACT
Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘ absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was at a time when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million.

The British actually limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.

In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine — some 35,000 square miles — to create a brand new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sherif Hussein's son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan's emir.

The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that “the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.2

Ultimately, the British admitted the argument about the absorptive capacity of the country was specious. The Peel Commission said: “The heavy immigration in the years 1933-36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”3

MYTH

"The British allowed Jews to flood Palestine while Arab immigration was tightly controlled."

FACT
The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country's absorptive capacity.

During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000.4 Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated.

In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5

The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6

The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.

By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.8

The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”9

The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”10

MYTH

"As the Jewish population in Palestine grew, the plight of the Palestinian Arabs worsened."

FACT
The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II, while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000.13 In fact, the permanent Arab population increased 120 percent between 1922 and 1947.14

This rapid growth was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states — constituting 37 percent of the total immigration to pre-state Israel — by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible.15 The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945 and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.16

The Arab population increased the most in cities where large Jewish populations had created new economic opportunities. From 1922-1947, the non-Jewish population increased 290 percent in Haifa, 131 percent in Jerusalem and 158 percent in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42 percent in Nablus, 78 percent in Jenin and 37 percent in Bethlehem.17

MYTH

"Jews stole Arab land."

FACT
Despite the growth in their population, the Arabs continued to assert they were being displaced. The truth is that from the beginning of World War I, part of Palestine's land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. About 80 percent of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins.18

Jews actually went out of their way to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap and, most important, without tenants. In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as "the most important asset of the native population." Ben-Gurion said "under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them." He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. "Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement," Ben-Gurion added, "should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price."19

It was only after the Jews had bought all of the available uncultivated land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.20

When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: "They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."21

In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government's legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.22

In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi al­Qawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.23

The Peel Commission's report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that "much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased....there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land."24 Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was "due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population." The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.25

In his memoirs, Transjordan's King Abdullah wrote:

It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (emphasis in the original).26

Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938, the British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.27

The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. "In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."28

By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin.29 Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As'ad el­Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews.30

1Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World, (NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1970), p. 172; Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 146.
2Moshe Auman, “Land Ownership in Palestine 1880-1948,” in Michael Curtis, et al., The Palestinians, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 25.
3Palestine Royal Commission Report (the Peel Report), (London: 1937), p. 300.[Henceforth Palestine Royal Commission Report].
4Arieh Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession, (Tel Aviv: Hidekel Press, 1984), p. 28; Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929, (London: Frank Cass, 1974), pp. 17-18.
5Porath (1974), p. 18.
6Cohen, p. 53.
7Yehoshua Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977), pp. 17-18, 39.
8John Hope Simpson, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, (London, 1930), p. 126.
9Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 291.
10Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 242.
11George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East, (NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 23.
12Cohen p. 174.
13Dov Friedlander and Calvin Goldscheider, The Population of Israel, (NY: Columbia Press, 1979), p. 30.
14Avneri, p. 254.
15Curtis, p. 38.
16Avneri, pp. 264; Cohen p. 60.
17Avneri, pp. 254-55.
18Moshe Aumann, Land Ownership in Palestine 1880-1948, (Jerusalem: Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1976), p. 5.
19Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 32.
20Porath, pp. 80, 84.
21Hope Simpson Report, p. 51.
22Avneri, pp. 149-158; Cohen, p. 37; based on the Report on Agricultural Development and Land Settlement in Palestine by Lewis French, (December 1931, Supplementary; Report, April 1932) and material submitted to the Palestine Royal Commission.
23Netanel Lorch, One Long War, (Jerusalem: Keter, 1976), p. 27; Sachar, p. 201.
24Palestine Royal Commission Report (1937), p. 242.
25Palestine Royal Commission (1937), pp. 241-242.
26King Abdallah, My Memoirs Completed, (London, Longman Group, Ltd., 1978), pp. 88-89.
27Porath (77), pp. 86-87.
28Aumann, p. 13.
29Abraham Granott, The Land System in Palestine, (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952), p. 278.
30Avneri, pp. 179-180, 224-225, 232-234; Porath (77), pp. 72-73.

Thank goodness it is a slow day at work.

MYTH

“The United Nations unjustly partitioned Palestine.”

FACT

As World War II ended, the magnitude of the Holocaust became known. This accelerated demands for a resolution to the question of Palestine so the survivors of Hitler's "Final Solution" might find sanctuary in a homeland of their own.

The British tried to work out an agreement acceptable to both Arabs and Jews, but their insistence on the former's approval guaranteed failure because the Arabs would not make any concessions. They subsequently turned the issue over to the UN in February 1947.

The UN established a Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) to devise a solution. Delegates from 11 nations* went to the area and found what had long been apparent: The conflicting national aspirations of Jews and Arabs could not be reconciled.

The contrasting attitudes of the two groups "could not fail to give the impression that the Jews were imbued with the sense of right and were prepared to plead their case before any unbiased tribunal, while the Arabs felt unsure of the justice of their cause, or were afraid to bow to the judgment of the nations."1

Although most of the Commission's members acknowledged the need to find a compromise solution, it was difficult for them to envision one given the parties' intractability. At a meeting with a group of Arabs in Beirut, the Czechoslovakian member of the Commission told his audience: "I have listened to your demands and it seems to me that in your view the compromise is: We want our demands met completely, the rest can be divided among those left."2

When they returned, the delegates of seven nations — Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay — recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, to be joined by economic union, with Jerusalem an internationalized enclave. Three nations — India, Iran and Yugoslavia — recommended a unitary state with Arab and Jewish provinces. Australia abstained.

The Jews of Palestine were not satisfied with the small territory allotted to them by the Commission, nor were they happy that Jerusalem was severed from the Jewish State; nevertheless, they welcomed the compromise. The Arabs rejected the UNSCOP's recommendations.

The ad hoc committee of the UN General Assembly rejected the Arab demand for a unitary Arab state. The majority recommendation for partition was subsequently adopted 33-13 with 10 abstentions on November 29, 1947.3

“It is hard to see how the Arab world, still less the Arabs of Palestine, will suffer from what is mere recognition of accomplished fact — the presence in Palestine of a compact, well organized, and virtually autonomous Jewish community.”

— London Times editorial4

MYTH

“The partition plan gave the Jews most of the land, and all of the cultivable area.”

FACT
The partition plan took on a checkerboard appearance largely because Jewish towns and villages were spread throughout Palestine. This did not complicate the plan as much as the fact that the high living standards in Jewish cities and towns had attracted large Arab populations, which insured that any partition would result in a Jewish state that included a substantial Arab population. Recognizing the need to allow for additional Jewish settlement, the majority proposal allotted the Jews land in the northern part of the country, Galilee, and the large, arid Negev desert in the south. The remainder was to form the Arab state.

These boundaries were based solely on demographics. The borders of the Jewish State were arranged with no consideration of security; hence, the new state's frontiers were virtually indefensible. Overall, the Jewish State was to be comprised of roughly 5,500 square miles and the population was to be 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. The Arab State was to be 4,500 square miles with a population of 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews.3a Though the Jews were allotted more total land, the majority of that land was in the desert.

Further complicating the situation was the UN majority's insistence that Jerusalem remain apart from both states and be administered as an international zone. This arrangement left more than 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem isolated from their country and circumscribed by the Arab state.

Critics claim the UN gave the Jews fertile land while the Arabs were allotted hilly, arid land. This is untrue. Approximately 60 percent of the Jewish state was to be the arid desert in the Negev.

The Arabs constituted a majority of the population in Palestine as a whole — 1.2 million Arabs versus 600,000 Jews. The Jews never had a chance of reaching a majority in the country given the restrictive immigration policy of the British. By contrast, the Arabs were free to come — and thousands did — to take advantage of the rapid development stimulated by Zionist settlement. Still, the Jews were a majority in the area allotted to them by the resolution and in Jerusalem.

In addition to roughly 600,000 Jews, 350,000 Arabs resided in the Jewish state created by partition. Approximately 92,000 Arabs lived in Tiberias, Safed, Haifa and Bet Shean, and another 40,000 were Bedouins, most of whom were living in the desert. The remainder of the Arab population was spread throughout the Jewish state and occupied most of the agricultural land.5

According to British statistics, more than 70% of the land in what would become Israel was not owned by Arab farmers, it belonged to the mandatory government. Those lands reverted to Israeli control after the departure of the British. Nearly 9% of the land was owned by Jews and about 3% by Arabs who became citizens of Israel. That means only about 18% belonged to Arabs who left the country before and after the Arab invasion of Israel.6

MYTH

“Israel usurped all of Palestine in 1948.”

FACT
Nearly 80 percent of what was the historic land of Palestine and the Jewish National Home, as defined by the League of Nations, was severed by the British in 1921 and allocated to what became Transjordan. Jewish settlement there was barred. The UN partitioned the remaining 20-odd percent of Palestine into two states. With Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank in 1950, and Egypt's control of Gaza, Arabs controlled more than 80 percent of the territory of the Mandate, while the Jewish State held a bare 17.5 percent.6a

MYTH

“The Palestinian Arabs were never offered a state and therefore have been denied the right to self-determination.”

FACT
The Peel Commission in 1937 concluded the only logical solution to resolving the contradictory aspirations of the Jews and Arabs was to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs rejected the plan because it forced them to accept the creation of a Jewish state, and required some Palestinians to live under "Jewish domination." The Zionists opposed the Peel Plan's boundaries because they would have been confined to little more than a ghetto of 1,900 out of the 10,310 square miles remaining in Palestine. Nevertheless, the Zionists decided to negotiate with the British, while the Arabs refused to consider any compromises.

Again, in 1939, the British White Paper called for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine within 10 years, and for limiting Jewish immigration to no more than 75,000 over the following five years. Afterward, no one would be allowed in without the consent of the Arab population. Though the Arabs had been granted a concession on Jewish immigration, and been offered independence — the goal of Arab nationalists — they repudiated the White Paper.

With partition, the Palestinians were given a state and the opportunity for self-determination. This too was rejected.

MYTH

“The majority of the population in Palestine was Arab; therefore, a unitary Arab state should have been created.”

FACT
At the time of the 1947 partition resolution, the Arabs did have a majority in western Palestine as a whole — 1.2 million Arabs versus 600,000 Jews.7 But the Jews were a majority in the area allotted to them by the resolution and in Jerusalem.

Prior to the Mandate in 1922, Palestine’s Arab population had been declining. Afterward, Arabs began to come from all the surrounding countries. In addition, the Arab population grew exponentially as Jewish settlers improved the quality of health conditions in Palestine.

The decision to partition Palestine was not determined solely by demographics; it was based on the conclusion that the territorial claims of Jews and Arabs were irreconcilable, and that the most logical compromise was the creation of two states. Ironically, that same year, 1947, the Arab members of the United Nations supported the partition of the Indian sub-continent and the creation of the new, predominantly Muslim state of Pakistan.

MYTH

“The Arabs were prepared to compromise to avoid bloodshed.”

FACT
As the partition vote approached, it became clear little hope existed for a political solution to a problem that transcended politics: the Arabs' unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in Palestine and the refusal of the Zionists to settle for anything less. The implacability of the Arabs was evident when Jewish Agency representatives David Horowitz and Abba Eban made a last-ditch effort to reach a compromise in a meeting with Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha on September 16, 1947. Pasha told them bluntly:

The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful solutions.8

1Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), pp. 369-370.
2Cohen, p. 212.
3 Voting in favor of partition: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian SSR, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukrainian SSR, Union of South Africa, USSR, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Voting against partition: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

Abstained: Argentina, Chile, China, Columbia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, UK, Yugoslavia. Yearbook of the United Nations, 1947-48, (NY: United Nations, 1949), pp. 246-47.
3aHoward Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 292.
4London Times, (December 1, 1947).
5 Cohen, p. 238.
6 Moshe Aumann, "Land Ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948," in Michael Curtis, et al., The Palestinians, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 29, quoting p. 257 of the Government of Palestine, Survey of Palestine.
6aHistoric Palestine comprised what is today Jordan (approximately 35,640 square miles), Israel (8,019 square miles), Gaza (139 square miles) and the West Bank (2,263 square miles).
7Arieh Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 252.
8David Horowitz, State in the Making, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 233.

Louis, you're using a flood of irrelevancies to drown the basic fact: no nation on earth, not ruled by an imperial power, would have allowed the magnitude of immigration that occurred, especially not from a group that had specifically stated its goal was ethnically swamping the current occupants. Indeed, I expect that if Mexico tried the same thing under, say, EU dominion, we'd see violent reaction from Americans. I find it particularly odd that so many conservatives who object to essentially zionist rhetoric from the Aztlan people find it wholly unobjectionable on the part of the original Zionists.

Nor is there any way to cast the partition as fair, either on the basis of ownership (jews owned about 7% of the land at the time) or population. It was a grossly unfair response to an even grosser injustice; but there was no reason that the injustices of Europe should have been mostly paid for by the Palestinians.

And who cares who voted for it? I wouldn't give a toss if the rest of the world voted to take America and hand it over to Mexico. That's not something they're entitled to have a vote on. IMHO, the inability of Israel's supporters to recognize that any injustice was done is one of the reasons this conflict can't be resolved. This in not way exonerates the Palestinian choice of tactics, but the grievance is real, and entirely valid.

Good post, Jane. I admire you for putting your hand in this particular disposal, too.

The Michael Collins analogy is a good one: it implies that whoever fills the role would be willing to take a bullet for peace, as Michael Collins did. Or, at the very least, risk it.

Many people believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a just a proxy for a worldwide Clash of Civilizations. I don't hold that view myself, but in the off-chance it really is true finding any solution will far, far harder than it was to solve the Ireland problem.

Clearly, you haven't spent enough time talking to Irish Americans. Forget Clash of Civilisations; the Conflict is the primordial battle between Good and Evil. ;-)

I think the word invasion gives the resettlement of European Jews within the Palestinian Mandate a bad rap.
I will not deny that injustices have occurred on the part of Arabs living within the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. However, I will also make mention of the oppression of Kurds living in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, Ba'athist regimes imposing fascist policies in Syria, the high-jacking of the Lebanese political system by a terrorist group, well I guess now its en vogue to refer to them as a "political party," and Muslim Arab pressure leading Christian Arabs to leave the Palestinian territories from cities such as Beit Lechem, amongst other injustices occurring within the same region of the world that are ignored on a regular basis.

The fact remains is that the two-state compromise was not reached because of Arab insistence that nothing less than 100% of the land should belong to Arabs. Currently, the Arabs in the Palestinian territories have the highest standard of living with better access to education and infrastructure than their peers in the rest of the Arab world. However, anger over an ancestor's decision to sell his arid land to a group of crazy Jews from Europe does not make a good argument for driving those same Jews into the sea.

Obviously, a peaceful compromise is the best solution. And to the best of my knowledge, no Arab entity has proposed one, except the wholesale expulsion of the Jews from the state of Israel. I merely was bringing up historical documentation of how distorted most views of the Israeli-Arab conflict are from what actually happened.

I appreciate that I live in a state where I have the freedom to debate. Additionally, I appreciate your ability to debate this divisive topic.

I wish everyone here happy holidays and happy New (Gregorian) Year.

No one is going to be able to discuss the I/P conflict in the English language without offending someone, but this is the best and most even-handed summary I've seen in recent memory.

no nation on earth, not ruled by an imperial power, would have allowed the magnitude of immigration that occurred, especially not from a group that had specifically stated its goal was ethnically swamping the current occupants. Indeed, I expect that if Mexico tried the same thing under, say, EU dominion, we'd see violent reaction from Americans. I find it particularly odd that so many conservatives who object to essentially zionist rhetoric from the Aztlan people find it wholly unobjectionable on the part of the original Zionists.

But Jane - there was no "nation on earth" whose territory was Palestine - post WWI Palestine was stolen from the Ottoman Empire for siding with the Germans. What you have than is British administered colonial property with the intention of restoring a Jewish homeland. Eventually a brand new Arab nation is created with more than half of the land (Jordan) and UN General Assembly Resolution 181 creating a small autonomous Jewish state was proposed to resolve Arab/Jewish conflict. Under this plan religiously signifigant sites would remain in international hands (Bethlehem, Jerusalem). It wasn't the Zionists who rejected Resolution 181...

Given that history I can understand the anger of Arabs who hoped to have an Arab state in charge of Jerusalem and in all of the modern day state of Israel. What I cannot muster is much sympathy - the fragmented state of any autonomous Palestinian nation is due in very large part to the inability to accept any compromise the repeated aggressive actions by Arab states surrounding Israel.

It was a grossly unfair response to an even grosser injustice; but there was no reason that the injustices of Europe should have been mostly paid for by the Palestinians.

This also is reading back modern ideas into the situation of the time. The partition divided up the remaining sliver of the the Palestinian territories (formerly Ottoman colonial posessions, now British colonial posessions). The Palestinians already had been given a brand new nation on the majority of the territory known as Palestine. Again, I'm open to the argument that Palestinians should have ended up with more territory than they currently have, but my sympathy is limited by the knowledge of how things got this way...

Louis, you're using a flood of irrelevancies to drown the basic fact: no nation on earth, not ruled by an imperial power, would have allowed the magnitude of immigration that occurred, especially not from a group that had specifically stated its goal was ethnically swamping the current occupants.

But there was no existing nation, Palestinian nationalism being a post-1948 phenomenon, and the territory and population had been ruled by imperial powers since, let's see, Turks, Muslim caliphates with Crusaders mixed in, Greeks, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, make that the 8th century BC. Since the mandatory power was considering how to create self-determined nation states for the first time on territories that had always been under imperial dominion, I'm not sure your statement has any relevance. There were no vested political rights, and no property rights were harmed. The partition plan didn't give the Arabs all the political and territorial rights that they wanted, but I don't see how the offer was worse than living under mandatory rule or under any of the political regimes of the past 2,700 years.

What became Jordan was never, save for a few years after WWI, considered to be part of Palestine. The Jordan River's been an administrative boundary in that part of the world since Roman times.

And the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gets quoted _very_ selectively---the original Declaration supports a national home for Jews, _but only if the rights of the non-Jewish population are respected_---which they were not. Many British administrators came out as gung-ho pro-Zionists, because that was the only side of the case that had backing in Britain, only to become anti-Zionist when they actually got acquainted with the country.

And the Irish nationalists made, IMHO, an understandable but terrible mistake when they coupled Irish nationalism with Catholicism. Before the 1798 rebellion, many Irish nationalists, like Wolfe Tone and Roddy McCorley (of bridge fame) were Protestant. When they decided that to be an Irish nationalist, you had to be Catholic, they drove the North straight into Britain's waiting arms.

Louis,

Your thoughtful, thorough, and (thank you) calm post is, sadly, largely irrelevant. The reason is easy to see, but involves leaving your keyboard. Come join me.

Let's go to the Golan Heights. You've been there, right? Off the main northern road is a tourist site now known as Nimrod's Castle. Let's stop there -- the views are breathtaking. Wander about the castle a bit. Notice that the stonework is generally massive but crude, except for one section with much finer craftsmanship.

When you understand why the stones are thus, you'll understand why your post and all it links to matter little more than a musty footnote - and why the Israelis need a to cut a deal with a Palestinian Michael Collins even more urgently than the Palestinians need to produce such a leader.

I should also add that being tied up with historical analogies is generally a weakness in this situation. As far as I can tell, the history of mandatory Palestine (imperial power ceding foreign imperial territory to another imperial power operating under an "international" mandate to establish new soverign states) has no parallels.

Tyler,

I agree that the Israelis need to make a compromise with a Palestinian Arab leader soon. There is too much at stake economically for a perpetual stalemate to occur.

But going back to the Golan Heights. The first time I visited, we saw a maggot encrusted carcass of what was once a pastoral mammal. Unfortunately the grazing mammal stumbled his way into a mine field which Syria holds the only map.

Assad is now realizing that if he continues to play along with Iran in a 'Clash of the Civilizations,' he is going to become irrelevant when the forces of free-trade and globalization pass his fascist Syria by.

However, the problem is that the Israelis do not have anyone to compromise with currently. Sharon, the war-mongering hawk as portrayed by most Western media, was willing to broker a compromise after he defected from Likud and founded Kadima. Unfortunately, his health prevented him from an opportunity.

Additionally, the Palestinian Arab clans are still unwilling to unify for anything. The majority are moderate and willing to compromise with Israel on a great many things. However, their representatives in government are increasingly polarized and are willing to start a civil war over whom holds the reins. Yasser Arafat (born in Egypt) did more to set the Palestinian Arab cause backwards than anyone else, save for the leaders of Hamas whom reside in Damascus.

One of the saddest stories I heard was that after the evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza, the greenhouses and other pieces of sophisticated agricultural equipment were ransacked as opposed to being used to benefit the Gaza economy. The leaders of the Palestinian Arabs have created a society of impoverished, feuding clans/sects while their distant cousins whom live in the State of Israel proper live within the highest standard of living in the Middle East.

When I was a student in Israel, our bus driver was an Israeli Arab. When asked if he would relocate to a Palestinian state if one were established, he responded with a resounding no. He explained that he had a good, steady job, a nice home and his children were getting a better education than they could have elsewhere. He also explained that the leaders of the Palestinian Arab movements were corrupt and extremists and that despite its flaws, Israel provided a better home for him and his family.

tylerh-Interesting "tone" to your post re "Nimrod's Castle". I'd be grateful if you could elaborate. From the above, one can only speculate as to: The Mongols are returning? The Germans are returning? The crusaders failed to ever take it? Nimrod was a Jew? Bilique's masons in a time of relative peace did better work? The Golan has always been a strategic position? What?

Louis's posts make an important point that bears repeating. The Palestinians are not interested really in building their own prosperous, free state. If so the Gaza Strip would not be the hell hole it has become since Israeli withdrawal, and Jordan would be Arab paradise, or at the very least an appealing alternative to the poverty of the PA.

What the Palestinians want is to loot the wealth that has been created by the Jews in Israel. They want the Israelis gone, but the infrastructure for themselves. The fact that the Palestinian Mandate saw such large influxes of Arabs looking for a better life (created by Jewish hard work and capital), only proves that Palestinian claims of displacement are BS.

Obviously there have some injustices perpetrated on some Arab Palestinians, but I can't feel that bad for a group that refuses to build a functioning state just because they don't like their neighbors.

Um, no, the analysis Israel was created as compensation for the Holocaust is not the only reasonable way to read it. It's merely the most facile way. Israel was created, solely and entirely, because of the Balfour Declaration, which happened well before the Holocaust.

Because that UN resolution? Didn't matter one bit as to how Palestine actually got divided. Israel's borders were determined entirely by the founding war, and the territory the Jews got is because the pre-Holocaust Jewish settlers in the region won that war. The basic facts on the ground were decided long before; the Jewish settlers and Arabs were already at each others' throats, and either partition or non-partition would have resulted in a war.

Creating a Jewish state in Bavaria might have been justice, but it would not have preempted the creation of an Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. You have to change pre-Holocaust British policy to stop the creation of Israel.

Similarly, the Holocaust is not why Stalin provided assistance to the settlers in that war; the chance to create a friendly socialist client to counterbalance the British-dominated monarchies in the area was his goal. (It didn't work out, but plans fail.)

The only thing the Holocaust really did was make sure the British would not send its troops to assist the Arab states in crushing the settlers' state, instead of just selling arms to the Arabs during the war.

"the World War II movies on TCM don't seem to have fatally wounded our culture. They're chock a block with suicide bombing missions"...I hope you didn't mean this seriously. However dangerous the missions were, the crews hoped to get back alive--they did not view their own deaths as a consumation devoutly to be wished. Entirely different from the values of the death cult that we now face.

wefwrfwrfwrhi

Two Missing Climbers Still Sought; Body of Third Identified

Jane, I was going to quibble with your understanding of history, but Louis already hit a lot of the points.

However, I don't think he made this one:

The Palestinians have a very good point: they didn't have anything to do with the Holocaust, and it was pretty appalling that Western powers decided to atone for their guilt by taking a lot of land from brown people who couldn't vote, and giving it to the vastly wronged Jews.

On the contrary, the Mufti of Jerusalem was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator and an admirer of the Final Solution. If the Palestinians didn't contribute much to the Holocaust, it wasn't for lack of interest.

Better beer? Even a Guinness fan like myself can't say that without qualification. Heck, there's Bass, John Courage and that A&W Cream Soda of beers -- one can have a bunch before one knows it and suffer little the next morning -- Newcastle Brown Ale. English beers hold their own.

Thought experiments: what if the Palestinians did find a Michael Collins-like leader and, against all odds, he wasn't quickly murdered. Suppose this leader turned his attention to agriculture, education, and industry.

What would be the attitude of the "intifada" supporters among American academics, journalists, entertainers, etc?

I think they would quickly lose interest in the cause. After all there are a lot of people in the world who consider themselves to be oppressed. It is specifically the nihilistic violence favored by the Palestinian leadership that makes this cause so attractive to Western "progressives." The thuggishness is "a feature not a bug," as they say in the software biz.

Nor would even the most pro-immigration libertarian in America (like, er, me) support the basic idea of the Zionist movement--"Hey, why don't we move enough people into another country so that we can take over the government!

The government still exists, as Jordan is a Palestinian state and Egypt is also still around. The issue is more one of succession than civil war, so far as I can tell. Which is why your analogy to Ireland is most apt, as mentioned earlier.

And in regards to the Native Americans who were horribly displaced as America was settled by people of European stock, the US based tribes do still have their own governments with a certain degree of autonomy from the US Gov. I don't know of any similar offer of representation being made by the Arab states. Jews were driven from Arab countries, and those same countries tried to drive them from Israel. It was made clear that losing the Israeli war for independance would result in the slaughter of the native Israeli population. The reaction to Israeli independance was not an attempt to 'partition things more fairly' but to take everything. Law is, ultimately, an application of a fair standard to all parties. The arab states have argued explicity for a very unfair standard via their actions. If Israel used the standard established by some Arab states, there wouldn't still be a Palestinian population in Israel. They would have been driven out by government fiat and by violence.

The Palestinians have a very good point: they didn't have anything to do with the Holocaust

Unfortunately, this is not entirely true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni

On the demographic note, it's significant that the PLO has argued for a "Palestinian right of return" to Israel (rather than Jordan) and tacked it onto the end of otherwise reasonable peace offers. Okay, we'll make peace, but we'd like to overrun your country via immigration. Are you okay with that? And it's significant that the Palestinian population in Israel is higher that the Jewish population in the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians have never had any problem using demographics as a weapon when it favored them.

Yes, injustices have been committed on both sides.
But most of the analogies people use to describe the situation not only don't fit, but frame the situation in such a way that leads inherantly to a bad conclusion. Israel isn't a colonial enterprise. As was previously mentioned, Britain opposed its creation in many ways (arms imported for self defence were also considered contraband by the Brits.) Colonialism is a very specific economic system involving production of raw materials for processing in a foreign industrial power. I realize you chose your words more carefully, Jane, but I've seen too many people try to associate Israel and colonialism. The Colonial powers predominantly favored the Arabs prior to the creation of Israel. It might be fair to call Israel a client state of other powers after creation, but then the same thing would apply to the Palestinians and other Arab groups.

I also note that I don't recall Abbas saying things like this when his party was in power, and don't recall that he did anything to restrain Palestinian terrorism. I'd wager that his goals with this statement are (1) to get Israeli and U.S. support in his contest against Hamas so that his party can regain power, and (2) to see if the Palestinians actually meant it when they voted Hamas in and maybe want to reconsider and put Fatah back in (hoping it was a referendum on PA/Fatah leadership more than a pro-Islamist/destruction of Israel vote). Any actual interest in peace is way, way, down there.

One semi-serious idea floated in the immediate aftermath of World War II was establishing a Jewish homeland in Paraguay. It's really a shame that it didn't happen, as we can be certain that the Guarani Indians would be a whole lot more reasonable than the Palestinians.

Jane,
You make an interesting point about a Palestinian Michael Collins. But I'm afraid there may be a vital difference between Ireland then and Palestine now: The existence of powerful third party actors with a vested interest in Palestine remaining but a pawn in the larger manoeuvrings/conflicts in the area: read Sunni-Shia power balance, with Israel being the third vertex of a hate triangle.
Lebanon today is an interesting, sadly even a laboratory, case of the game that's afoot.
Iran is, to digress a bit, it seems to me, sitting pretty in all this: I'd be very surprised if they don't endeavour hard, by whatever means necessary, to consolidate an indirect hold on the extensive oil reserves concentrated in Shia dominated areas of Iraq if, as I expect, Iraq will end up being some kind of a federation if not entirely partitioned three ways. That, coupled with their nuclear ambitions raises quite a spectre.
Anyway, you were brave to dip your toes into this touchy topic; well done.
Saloner.

The Arabs of Palestine were given some 3/4 of British Palestine in the form of the Kingdom of Transjordan, and were offered most of the rest under a UN plan to divide it between them and the Jews.
They decided 90 percent wasn't good enough, and that throwing the Jews into the sea would be a better way to go.
That didn't work out, and 60 years later, while they keep on trying, seemingly intelligent people are seriously writing about a wrong done to the Palestinians...

Jane does have a valid point though. Trying to infiltrate an existing country with the intention of taking over would not have worked. Indeed, Zionism would never have taken off if a functional Arab state had existed in Palestine. But there wasn't any. You had a scarceley populated, desolate region, negligently ruled by the Ottoman Empire, which wasn't local, Arab (or very functional). That's why Zionists even thought they could build a state out of that piece of desert.

So yeah, even smart people get things very wrong at times.

Some commenters seem to miss a point that is obvious to me: The introduction of mass Jewish immigration into Mandate Palestine, and the later assignment of land to the new immigrants en masse by the UN, were both monumentally unjust actions imposed on the local Arab populace by foreign powers.

Much that is irrelevant has been mentioned to defend this act, such as:

(1) The creation of Jordan and the existence of Egypt...

But it doesn't matter that Transjordan was carved out of Mandatory Palestine and "given" to the Arabs. The Arabs were living there to begin with and, in terms of justice, the land was already theirs. Britain's acknowledgement that Jordan was an Arab place in no way justifies the creation of Israel on the /rest/ of Mandatory Palestine. That too was predominantly Arab land before Britain began allowing mass Jewish immigration (after the Balfour Declaration).

Arabs had other states, but so what? Those were other Arabs. The fact that Virginians had a Commonwealth in the 18th century didn't mean that Pennsylvanians had no right to one, even if both were Americans. Neither does the existence of Jordan or Egypt mean that those human beings living in the Mandate of Palestine had no right to self determination because their fellows nearby had their own states.

(In fact the Palestinian Arabs had been pursuing representation and more self-determination within the Ottoman Empire before WWI. Nationalism was a growing force throughout the world in the early 20th century -- but the Arabs in Palestine had their rights curtailed by Britain and the organized Jewish immigrant movement. They were humans who had rights that the colonial powers ignored.)

Or (2) the fact that Britain put some limits on Jewish immigration...

The aim of the Zionist movement was to import a sufficient population of Jews into Palestine to create a Jewish state there. The Arabs already living there did not want this to happen. Britain's actions allowed it to happen. Whether it was done at full speed or half-speed (thanks to halfhearted British "limits" on immigration) is beside the point.

Maybe it is (3) That the land was purchased?

But it wasn't. Only 7% of the Palestine Mandate was owned by Jews when 55% of it was apportioned to Jews by the UN.

Some Ottoman or Arab landowners sold land that made up some of that 7%, yes, but so what? Whether the Arabs in Palestine were landless peasants or landowners isn't relevant to their rights to decide the questions of statehood for themselves.

The fact is that most of the land was not purchased but expropriated, and that even the purchase of 7% of the land did not entitle the buyers to impose a Jewish state on the Arabs (landless peasants or not) who were the majority in both population and land ownership.

Or (4) That the Palestinian Arab population increased during the time of the Mandate?

That is a fact, but drawing conclusions from it is incredibly dangerous. Egypt's population increased tremendously during the same period, as did Jordan's and Syria's. There was the end of a famine and a post-WWI population boom across the region--not just in areas where Jewish people immigrated.

And so what if the population increased? How does this bear on the rights of people to self-determination?

**

It doesn't strike me that any valid reason for the creation of a Jewish State in Mandate Palestine has been given.

That said, Jane is right. Israel is here to stay, and all nation-states have blood and injustice in their birth. If Palestine becomes a state, it too will have to contend with sins in its past.

Maybe Michael Collins is what's needed. What is striking to me is how difficult it is for people to even realize the essence of this. Michael Collins accepted a raw deal for the Irish and got a good result out of it in the long run. Few people here can bring themselves to admit that Palestinians are getting a raw deal.

Jane and others,
I think you missed Louis's point. He gave lots of facts which are well worth your attention, because they show that about half the Arabs of Palestine by the end of the British Mandate were immigrants themselves. Of the earlier half, an unknown number were also immigrants, and throughout this period the Arab immigration was free while the Jewish one was restricted, first by the Turks and then by the British. My maternal great grandparents, who were among the founders of Tel Aviv in 1909, were expelled by the Turks during WW1 and came back only after the war.

If you pay due attention to the facts, you'll have to ask yourselves why do you consider one type of immigration (the Arab) legitimate, but not so the other (the Jewish).

Second, numerous sources (some quoted by Louis) make it clear that the Jews did not intend to displace the Arabs, and that none were in fact displaced until the 1948 war, which was initiated by the Arabs. The truth is precisely the opposite: since the 1920s it has been the Arabs who repeatedly attempted to displace the Jews. If you don't believe the sources, look at the results. Israel still has Arab population with equal rights (precisely like the conditions of the Balfour Declaration), while practically all Jews have been expelled from Arab lands including the Arab parts of previous Palestine. In fact, until the recent Russian immigration, the majority of Israeli Jews were those expelled from Arab countries, chiefly Morroco, Egypt and Iraq. Many other Jews from Arab countries resettled in Europe and America.

And as somebody noted above, the Arabs are not entirely innocent with regard to the Holocaust. At that time they were led by the Hussienis, a Nazi-styled "national" movement who murdered opponents wholesale (most of them Arab), and collaborated with Nazi Germany even on European soil.

Jane,
One thing more. If you want some of the truth about the Arabs of Palestine, you may like to look at an important article written by a German political scientist, originally left-wing, who at some point began to research the facts:
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/islamic-antisemitism-and-its-nazi-roots

Louis goes off into a selective list of 'facts', but 'forgets' to mention how the British, in a typical divide-and-rule move, used the Jewish Haganah to quelch Arab uprisings ('uprising' is also how the Boston Tea Party was referred to by the British, btw).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagganah
"During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, it participated actively to protect British interests and to quell Arab rebellion. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads."

Next, Ryan finds a muslim who collaborated with the nazis, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni) and concludes that the statement that 'Palestinians were not responsible for the holocaust' is faulty.
I suppose this long list of collaborators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborationism) proves that anyone who claims that the French, Belgians, British, Americans etc. did not start the Holocaust, are also wrong.

And 'AT' writes "Palestinian nationalism being a post-1948 phenomenon", while I read in the entry on the collaborating muslim mentioned above a caption like "Palestinian nationalism prior to WW II". Priceless stuff.

Let the selective quoting and word-twisting begin!

How does this bear on the rights of people to self-determination?

Again, what rights precisely did they have? There had never been self-determination. Why, in 1922, were the local Arabs suddenly entitled to political self-determination in a nation state, even though none had ever existed there? Why was the Jewish population not so entitled? I infer that you would not have considered an 8:1 Arab:Jewish division in 1922 fair either. And yes, why was mass immigration okay for the population that had been there for over a thousand years, but not okay for the one that had been there for over 2,000 years?

Jane and others,
I think you missed Louis's point. He gave lots of facts which are well worth your attention

Jane and others may not agree with the Arab position, but they have accepted the Arab context to the conflict. To the Israelis, the conflict is about competing rights and how to apportion them, using facts and history in their arguments. Historically, they have tended to be rather smug and not justified their actions to the outside world, assuming that the facts of their cause speak for themselves. To the Palestinian Arabs, the conflict is about justice and correcting the unprecedented historical wrongs committed against them. They tend not to be fact-focused, instead relying on the fundamental righteousness of their cause to sway outsiders.

As for me, whatever sympathy I may have had for supposedly unprecedented historical wrongs hasn't survived the actions of the past 5, 10, 30, or 60 years.

AT said: "Historically, they have tended to be rather smug and not justified their actions to the outside world, assuming that the facts of their cause speak for themselves. To the Palestinian Arabs, the conflict is about justice and correcting the unprecedented historical wrongs committed against them. They tend not to be fact-focused, instead relying on the fundamental righteousness of their cause to sway outsiders."

I must disagree. There is nothing smug about allowing the facts to speak. It's called truth. "Truth" is not fashionable, I know, but who is being smug now?

If the pro-Arab narrative runs contrary to facts, it's untrue. No matter how many outraged exclamations of supposedly "unprecedented historical wrongs" your narrative contains, falsely.

I must disagree. There is nothing smug about allowing the facts to speak.

Not bothering to present facts that speak for themselves, and remaining indifferent to the whole PR conflict, can be considered smug.

"And the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gets quoted _very_ selectively---the original Declaration supports a national home for Jews, _but only if the rights of the non-Jewish population are respected_---which they were not."

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what rights were not respected? I know of a few that people like to yammer about - but they don't hold up if you look at the facts:

1) The right to "self-determination": Self-determination of what nation? The last self-ruled nations in that area were Judea and the original Israel. The Arabs living there when the Jews began to return weren't "Palestinians", they were Arab subjects of the decrepit Turkish empire, belonging to a clan or tribe and to Islam, but not to any particular nation. By the time of partition, half the Arabs were immigrants, with no more local ties than the Jews had. Finally, every time the Arabs were offered self-determination in a partitioned Palestine, they rejected that in favor of trying to drive the Jews out entirely.

2. A right to their land: It seems that a large part of the problem is that it wasn't "their land" in the first place. It was absentee landlords' land. The Zionists bought land from the absentee landlords who were willing to sell. Sometimes this might have resulted in the expulsion of Arab tenants, but as much as possible the Zionists bought marginal and uncultivated land - and made it so productive that Arabs were immigrating from all over to join in the prosperity. Any Arab problems with this weren't about their land rights, but about jealousy of the Jews' success.

The second Jewish land acquisition was tracts of unclaimed/government-owned land that passed from the Turkish Empire to the British Mandate, and that were given to the Jews. This was desert and other land that the Arabs had little or no use for.

Finally, there was the Arab land that many Arabs left behind when they left to clear the way for, and often to join, the Arab armies that attacked in 1948, with the intention of destroying Israel and "driving the Jews into the sea". That last phrase is clearly code for genocidal intentions. No sane nation allows people who have left under those circumstances the "right" to return and pursue their treasonous and murderous intentions from within.

3) What about the Jewish terrorist gangs? It's true that by 1948 there were such, and some of the Arabs that left were afraid of them. It's also true that some former terrorists later held high positions in Israel, including at least one Prime Minister, IIRC. However, the Jews didn't introduce terrorism to the region. They only began to arm themselves after hundreds of Jews were murdered by Arab terrorists, starting in the 1920's, and the British response varied from feeble attempts to stop the violence, to supplying weapons to the Arabs while trying to prevent the Jews from getting any. By 1948, in some regions there had been a low-key terrorist war against the Jews going on for over 20 years. (I'm defining "terrorist" as targeting mainly noncombatants.) The Jews formed militia in self-defense, and some units went bad and responded in kind. I don't want to excuse their actions, but I cannot think of a national culture that wouldn't have done the same or worse in similar circumstances.

Louis and others have neatly illustrated the backdrop of the current conflict. I would urge Jane to read Margaret MacMillans's Paris 1919 for further insight on the creation of Israel.

I think too that there's one other consideration why the Palestinians' claims deserve less merit than they would otherwise get: their behaviour for the last several decades has been simply barbaric. Why would I support their quest for statehood over, say, that of the Kurds, Tibetans or anyone else? If they were given a country they would only use it as a weapon.

Jane: "Well, the World War II movies on TCM don't seem to have fatally wounded our culture. They're chock a block with suicide bombing missions."

I don't recall any of those movies showing Allied military going out looking for a school bus loaded with children so they could blow it up.

The Arabs were living there to begin with and, in terms of justice, the land was already theirs.

Only if you ignore the fact that the Israelis had conquered and settled the land they live in now (and far more besides) by about 1500BC, and then lived in it for a millenium until being largely carted away into captivity by foreign invaders (at which point the foreign captors repopulated much of the land with colonies of imported settlers, some of whom were very likely ancestors to the present-day Palestinians). A substantial remnant of Jews lived there until the Roman Empire lost control of the region, although some of the Jews living in the area when the state was re-created were potentially the continuing descendants.

What criterion dictates that we can ignore that history, but not the (considerably shorter) history of the Palestinians so-called, and then call the Palestinians the rightful owners?

Michael Collins should have been a proper Irishman and emigrated. The Knights of Columbus chapter in Peoria and the local Catholic Churches would've been inspired by 'Blessed are the peacemakers..' and loved to have had him.

anony-mouse,
Thanks, but as as Israeli I say that while the ancient history is important internally as collective memory, the real argument in favour of Israel concerns RECENT history of the last 150 years.

In this RECENT history the wronged side has been the Jews, not the Arabs. The present narrative of the so-called "Palestinians" is a fallacious spin. It is the Arabs, not the Jews, who have tried to steal land for religious reasons, Jihad. For this purpose they spin all facts.

One example mentioned above: seeing that at some point in the early 20th century Jews owned privately less than 10% of the land, the spinners immediately declare that over 90% were owned by the "Palestinian" Arabs, which is a lie. As Louis says correctly, about 70% have always been government land, that is successively Turkish, British and Israeli/Jordanian. Of the remainder, some belonged privately to local Arabs and some to Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians. At this point the spinners change course and declare that all this doesn't matter because the people actually on the ground for generations were the Arabs. This is another spin. The truth is that almost all inhabitents of the land are immigrants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, none of them any less legitimate than the others. Singling out the Jews for delegitimization is something I wouldn't like to call by name.

And so on and so on, with practically every detail of the saga you care to check factually.

For truth lies in all the little details of the time, for which Jane and others on this thread have no time.

55% of Palestinian land?

Was the land called Palestinian land then? Or Arab land?

Israel is, of course, a small fraction of Arab land.

Come to think of it, Ulster was a small fraction of Catholic land...

Wow, Jane (perhaps you should be addressed by your Irish name?), you have really given us something to ponder over this Christian holiday of peace.

Like you, I have been fascinated by the historic parallels between Palestine and Ireland, and especially the fate of Michael Collins (BTW, Collins was a fairly ruthless killer of Englishmen before he sat down with Lloyd George) after he settled for 3/4 of a loaf. More interesting, though, is the history of both countries since WWI.

After Ireland's partition, large numbers of Irish people, especially in the Diaspora, amongst whom I count myself, supported reunification by any means. Remember, the anti-partition government of the Republic, led by the man who perhaps ordered Collins's murder, refused to help in the fight against the Nazis because it would mean defending British rule in Northern Ireland. When Hitler died, the government of the Irish Republic expressed its "condolences" to the Nazis. On the other side, descendents of the planters created a provincial government that had just about no rights for the 2/5 of the people not descended from the planters, and they were avidly supported in this by the British, especially the esteemed Mr. Churchill. The Nationalist community of Northern Ireland had good reason to view the RUC, Northern Ireland's police force, and its reserves as terrorists.

So maybe the Palestinians now have a Michael Collins, but things may not change until Hamas gets a Gerry Adams. Gerry Adams has a lot of blood on his hands, and a lot of that is innocent blood. At some point in the 1990s Adams must have realized that he was not going to be able to kill all the Unionists or drive them back across the Irish sea. Adams was helped to this realization by Irish people and Irish-American politicians who made it clear that he would get no more support from them if he was going to continue the terrorism. On the other side, Bill Clinton made it clear to Tony Blair, and Blair made it clear to the Unionists that they would get no more support unless they brought Sinn Fein into government.

So, the Irish lesson is clear, Palestinians have to give up the idea that they can kill all the Jews or send them back to Europe. In that, they need to get a clear message from abroad from other Arabs, from the Iranians, from the EU, and from people like Jimmy Carter, that terrorism will get no more support. In this regard, it may not be helpful to go over what happened in the 1920s or blame it all on the British, as much as they deserve it in both cases. That, I think, is what the Irish have done to bring peace to their country. Everyone has got to get over it and move on.

I could not possibly care less about the historical context and the relative merits of the Israeli and Palestinian positions.

I would like to see Israel (or the US, preferably both) nuke every last Muslim in the region. I've had it with those people. I am tired of the complex history, the subtle differences in ideology between Fatah (terrorist political party #1, supported by Arafat and the Al Aqusa Martyr's Brigade) and Hamas (terrorist political party #2). Let's just solve the problem and wipe the bastards out.

The Israelis should have done it long ago. I cannot believe how long they have allowed themselves to take casualties. Why are they so weak? Americans would never tolerate what the Israelis have, for reasons unbeknownst to me, putting up with for decades.

Wow - These history lessons are enough to make my head spin!
None of this changes Jane's central point - unless your goal is omly to cry to the audience or enrage your populace, you have to deal with the reality you've got.
We've seen Israel try to compromise from time to time (succsesfully with Egypt. We've seen no such collective will on behalf of the Palestinians.
Even if they had such a will, it is rare that a person such as Michael Collins comes along.

Jane,

The problem is, if I'm not mistaken, that Abbas has made similar overtures in the past regarding some sort of settlement. The result is that was that he lost the Palestinian elections. Like it or not, I don't think we're likely to see much in the way of progress until more Palestinians have a greater concern for doing well for themselves than doing harm to the Israelis. Unfortunately, my sense is that the majority of this particular demographic has already made lives for themselves in other places.

Two points that didn't get covered in this long thread:

1. When Israel was created in 1948 the Arab countries expelled most of their Jewish populations. These Jews were not immigrants from Europe but refugees from Arab/Muslim persecution.

see: http://www.meforum.org/article/263

2. The Jihadist motivations of the Palestinians have been largely ignored. In their ideology, land conquered by Islam is Muslim forever. That's why Osama whines about Spain, even though the invading Muslims were finally driven out in 1492. In Muslim minds, the creation of a Jewish state on land conquered by Islam centuries ago is a wrong that must be righted. You would have to change their religion before you could get them to compromise. In the meantimes it is all Hudna, Taqiyya and Kitman (Islamic terms worth googling).

Pat: your essentialization or stereotyping of ALL Muslims-over one billion people-is the height of stupidity.

"In Muslim minds, the creation of a Jewish state on land conquered by Islam centuries ago is a wrong that must be righted."

Louis:
"I will not deny that injustices have occurred on the part of Arabs living within the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority."

you might want to add, these injusticies CONTINUE to occur, including placing walls in Palestinian land that seperate many from their work, school, and places of worship.

AT:
"The partition plan didn't give the Arabs all the political and territorial rights that they wanted, but I don't see how the offer was worse than living under mandatory rule or under any of the political regimes of the past 2,700 years."

Well, there is a sense of Arab solidarity, so many Arab Palestinians view attacks against other Arabs as attacks against their own people, which they are. So you know, when Israel destroys a country like Lebanon, like it did a couple months ago, it really is different than Ottoman or British rule.

Markm:
"I don't recall any of those movies showing Allied military going out looking for a school bus loaded with children so they could blow it up. "

what's worse, suicide bombing and blowing up automobiles or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Locations_bombed_Aug13.jpg

RICKM,

If you can't see the distinction between the deliberate targeting of civilians and military responses, I genuinely feel sorry for you.

RICKM: It's not just the delivery method [1], but the target. Israel's attacks are in response to Palestinian attacks on their soil, targeted to prevent future attacks as much as possible. That's a proper military action; not just the launch sites, but also the roads, ports, and airports that the missiles were shipped by are military targets. Palestinian attacks are aimed at innocent civilians whenever possible, in preference to anyone who might fight back. If you don't see the difference, you're as morally corrupt as the Palestinian leaders.

[1] A note: There are two things objectionable about the suicide bombing delivery method, as practiced by the Palestinians.
a) For the most part, the bombers are impressionable children, sent out by old men who stay in safe areas like the cowards they are; you can say this is similar to the relationship of the troops and generals in any war, but these kids are very young and they're not just sending them into danger, but to certain death.
b) They're doing this without any realistic hope of winning.
However, the worst thing about this is still the targets, not the suicide bombing. I contrast this with the Japanese Kamikazes. They were also fighting on after the war was lost, and they were going to certain death, but any pilot who qualified to join the Kamikazes was an adult (because of the length of training, if nothing else), an officer, and educated, and most of all, they only attacked military targets.

Bill,
First of all, as indicated above, I do see a distinction between deliberate targeting of civilians and, as you euphamize, "military responses", for if I did not see a distinction, I would not have asked what was "worse" (the implication being that there is a comparison to be made). I wonder if you still feel sorry for me.

The one's I feel sorry for are the silent and unspokenfor victims of Israeli military policy. If you think that the destruction of Lebanon-including the pride of the nation, the newly built airport- is a worthwhile and proportionate "military response", then the only reasonable inference than an observer can make is that Arab lives are, at best, depreciated vis-a-vis Israeli lives, or, at worst, expendable.

For a fruitfuil excercise in casuistry and moral enlightment, tally up the respective number of dead Israelis and Palestinians since the creation of Israeli, and then try to apologize for that horrendous discrepancy.

RICKM,

I'll pose a simple question for you. Which was being used for military purposes: the airport or the busload of SCHOOLCHILDREN?

RICKM,

I'll pose a simple question for you. Which was being used for military purposes: the airport or the busload of SCHOOLCHILDREN?

Sorry for the double-post, folks

The one's I feel sorry for are the silent and unspokenfor victims of Israeli military policy. If you think that the destruction of Lebanon-including the pride of the nation, the newly built airport- is a worthwhile and proportionate "military response", then the only reasonable inference than an observer can make is that Arab lives are, at best, depreciated vis-a-vis Israeli lives, or, at worst, expendable.

I kmow I shouldn't feed PLO trolls, but I'm pretty sure cutting the supply lines for Hesbollah terrorists firing thousands of rockets at your territory is an appropriate response. You also have no understanding of the concept of proportionality. (Hint: it doesn't mean that A can only use the same tactics and inflict the same casualties on B as B inflicted on A. But you either already know this or are too dumb to care.)

For a fruitfuil excercise in casuistry and moral enlightment, tally up the respective number of dead Israelis and Palestinians since the creation of Israeli, and then try to apologize for that horrendous discrepancy.

For a fruitfull (sic) excercise (sic) in casuistry (sic) and moral enlightenment, tally up the respective number of dead Japanese/Germans and Americans in World War II and then try to apologize for that horrendous discrepency.

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