BLOGGER
Israeli history disputed: My colleague Iain Murray is carrying on a debate about American war policy and other issues with his friend Bryan. Below, I refute several erroneous points Bryan has raised on Israeli and Palestinian history.And let us not forget that the state of Israel itself was founded some 50 years ago from a policy of terrorism and forced displacement.
After World War II, Britain (the League of Nations Mandate holder) was unable to maintain control over Palestine and transferred responsibility to the United Nations. The United Nations decided that the only means of resolving the escalating conflict between Jews and Arabs was to partition the land into two states. Although Jews constituted only one-third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land, the United Nations partition plan assigned 55 percent of Palestine's territory to the Jewish state. In March 1948, Zionist forces launched major operations throughout Palestine. Their attacks were brutal.
Through terror, psychological warfare, and direct conquests, Palestine was dismembered, many of its villages destroyed, and many of its people expelled as refugees.
A majority of the Arab exodus from Israeli/Palestinian lands was a result of (1) fear (grounded in reality or not) or (2) Arab leaders either encouraging that fear, or promising greater benefits when the citizenry returned triumphantly after the land was reconquered.
Was there Jewish terrorism? Absolutely. Is that what drove out the British? It was one of the factors, yes. The Stern gang and the Hagganah focused their attacks on the British, not the Arabs.
Is Jewish terrorism what drove out the Arabs? Not on your life.
By the time the British withdrawal had been completed, Palestinian resistance had been largely broken. British evacuation and the Zionist leaders' proclamation of the Israeli state on 15 May 1948-forcibly created beyond the area allotted to the Jewish community in the UN partition plan-prompted military intervention by the neighbouring Arab states, precipitating the first Arab-Israeli war.
Israel was not "forcibly created beyond the area allotted to the Jewish community in the UN partition plan." Israeli territory expanded AS A RESULT OF the war of independence. That war of independence began when all the Arab nations' armies invaded Israel, as soon as independence was declared.
Palestine was divided into three parts. The 1949 armistice agreements gave Israel control over 78 percent of the territory of mandate Palestine. Jordan occupied and annexed East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine, thereafter known as the "West Bank" of the Jordan River. Egypt took temporary control of the coastal plain around the city of Gaza, later referred to as the Gaza Strip. Both Jordan and Egypt held on to these respective territories until the 1967 war, during which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Arab state provided for in the United Nations partition plan was never established.
The current problems date back at least to there. The history of Israel does not have a good start and since it is so recent, it is hardly surprising that the dispossessed Palestinians still feel aggrieved especially as they have never been allowed the self determination that the Israelis so proudly defend for themselves.
Never mind that the Arab states controlled Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank and never allowed the slightest bit of autonomy. In fact, residents were generally kept in refugee camps. And most Arab nations took in Palestinian refugees and also kept them in camps rather than allowing them even the freedom to settle. The refugees were constantly told that Israel would soon be reclaimed and the Jews driven into the sea. It should be no surprise now that so many Palestinians expect nothing less than the goal of Israel's outright destruction.
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