Jewish, Arab - they're all Palestinians

[Calla]

One thing I don't understand in the discussion of creating a physical state for Palestine is why the Palestinian territory EAST of the Jordan river is never brought up. The entirety of the current countries of Israel and Jordan are what was Palestine before 1923. Jordan accounts for 3/4 of Palestine's original land mass. The other thing that puzzles me is that up until the 1940's both the Jews and Arabs living in the Palestinian lands were called Palestinians. I'm unclear why that terminology changed to exclude the Jews who had also lived there for thousands of years and the Jordanians.

 

I have maps loaded below to show the land ownership progression.

 

1517-1917 Turkey's Ottoman Empire controlled a vast Arab empire, a portion of which is today Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

 

1917 - During World War I, Turkey supported Germany. When Germany was defeated, so were the Turks, and they lost control of some of their territory. The southern portion of their Ottoman Empire was "mandated" (given, to look over and administer) to France and Britain under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France - Palestine (today's Jordan, Israel and West Bank) was assigned to Great Britain.

 

 

 

1923 - the British divided the Palestine portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts. Jews would be permitted only west of the Jordan river, Arabs could be either West or East of the Jordan river but were encouraged to move East. The area East of the Jordan river was now called Trans-Jordan. The division of Palestine was to have this effect: 25% of Palestine (West of the Jordan River) was to be the Jewish Palestinian homeland. 75% of Palestine East of the river was to be the Arab Palestinian homeland. This was to ease tensions and make governing the area easier for the Brits.

 

 

 

 

1947 - the British had enough and turned the Palestine matter over to the newly formed United Nations. The 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and a second Arab Palestinian State (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population concentrations. The Jewish Palestinians accepted, but the Arab Palestinians rejected the UN Resolution.

 

 

 

1948 - On May 14, 1948 the Palestinian Jews declared their own State of Israel and became "Israelis." The next day, seven neighboring Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen) invaded Israel. The UN estimates a bit over 400,000 Arab Palestinians fled Israel during this short war.

 

When the 19 month war ended, Israel survived. The Arabs who did not flee became today's Israeli-Arab citizens. Those who fled became the first wave of Palestinian Arab refugees.

 

The end result of the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence was the creation of a Jewish State slightly larger than that which was proposed by the 1947 United Nations Resolution 181. What remained of that almost-created second Arab Palestinian State was taken by Egypt (occupying the Gaza Strip) and by Trans-Jordan (occupying Judea-Samaria which we now call the "West Bank" of the Jordan River) and Jerusalem.)

 

 

 

1950 Trans-Jordan formally merged this West Bank territory into itself and granted all the Palestinian Arabs living there Jordanian citizenship.

 

1949-67 All of Judea-Samaria [West Bank & Jerusalem] and Gaza are under Jordanian & Egyptian control.

 

1967 - The 6 Days War. Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies mobilized along Israel's borders in preparation for a massive invasion to eliminate the State of Israel. Israel won the war and the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians lost Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights. Israel also captures the entire Sinai Desert from Egypt.

 

 

 

 

 

1982 - Israel gives the Sinai back to Egypt.

 

 

 

And here we are today. In all the focus over Israel, the world has lost sight that Jordan was created to be, and is, an Arab Palestinian state and Israel was created to be, and is, a Jewish Palestinian state.

[Sub-Husker]

1948 - On May 14, 1948 the Palestinian Jews declared their own State of Israel and became "Israelis." The next day, seven neighboring Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen) invaded Israel. The UN estimates a bit over 400,000 Arab Palestinians fled Israel during this short war.

 

This was not quite an invasion, but a half-arsed attempt by an odd collection to defeat a larger, better trained army on its home soil.

 

The British set up the Jewish settlers, which about 100,000 new settlers arrived in the run-up to the conflict, to dominate that region.

 

I never understood myself why the West Bank wasn't annexed by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt in 1949 after this war.

 

But loosing a war has its consequences, and unless you either assimilate, kill or deport the population of the side that lost; continued occupation will prove to be costly.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah

 

All in all, more than 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during World War II. On May 14, 1941 the Haganah created the Palmach (an acronym for Plugot Mahatz—strike companies), an elite commando section, in preparation against the possibility of a British withdrawal and Axis invasion of Palestine. Its members, young men and women, received specialist training in guerilla tactics and sabotage. During 1942 the British gave assistance in the training of Palmach volunteers but in early 1943 they withdrew their support and attempted to disarm them. The Palmach, then numbering over 1000, continued as an underground organisation with its members working half of each month as kibbutz volunteers, the rest of the month spent training. It was never large — by 1947 it amounted to merely five battalions (about 2,000 men) — but its members had received not only physical and military training, but also acquired leadership skills that would subsequently enable them to take up command positions in Israel's army.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War

 

The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan, without reservation, as "the indispensable minimum,"glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.Arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs with regard to the population balance at that time, the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and even rejected its authority to involve itself in the entire matter. They upheld "that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

 

On the eve of the war, the number of Arab troops likely to be committed to the war was about 23,000 (10,000 Egyptians, 4,500 Jordanians, 3,000 Iraqis, 3,000 Syrians, 2,000 ALA volunteers, 1,000 Lebanese and some Saudi Arabians), in addition to the irregular Palestinians already present. The Yishuv had 35,000 troops of the Haganah, 3,000 of Stern and Irgun and a few thousand armed settlers.

[Cactusboy]

Well there is a lot of missing context and facts in your recap. I'll mention a couple in this reply.

 

 

 

1947 - the British had enough and turned the Palestine matter over to the newly formed United Nations. The 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and a second Arab Palestinian State (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population concentrations. The Jewish Palestinians accepted, but the Arab Palestinians rejected the UN Resolution.

 

THere were Israeli terrorist groups that attacked both Brits and arabs up to this time. Irgun was one of them and here is a list of their attacks. You can see they targeted civilians http://en.wikipedia....f_Irgun_attacks It was after the bombing of the King David Hotel by one of these groups that the Brits finally had enough and turned it over to the UN. The arabs rejected the resoultion because they saw it as unfair. The jews were to get a larger % of the land even though they were a smaller % of the population AND because the quality of the land that was to go to the jews was superior.

 

 

 

 

 

1948 - On May 14, 1948 the Palestinian Jews declared their own State of Israel and became "Israelis." The next day, seven neighboring Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen) invaded Israel. The UN estimates a bit over 400,000 Arab Palestinians fled Israel during this short war.

 

When the 19 month war ended, Israel survived. The Arabs who did not flee became today's Israeli-Arab citizens. Those who fled became the first wave of Palestinian Arab refugees.

 

The Israelis started driving out the local arabs as soon as their state was declared, so they didn't all just flee voluntarily. It was after they started driving them out that the arab armies arrived.

 

ALSO...you act like the arabs living in this land were nomads...that they had no legal or emotional ties to their land/property. As if they can just easily and happy uproot their families and move over to Jordan. People do develop emotional/spiritual/strong ties/bonds to their land that is passed on generation to generation. That happens all over the world including here in the US. So it's understandable that they want to keep it and will go to great lengths to do this. I suspect this would happen w/ family farms in the US...and those usually only go back a couple generations or so.

 

Do you have a link for this stuff your posting, because it is all subtly biased.

 

update - never mind, I found the link.

 

http://www.masada2000.org/

http://www.masada200...historical.html

[Sub-Husker]

Do you have a link for this stuff your posting, because it is all subtly biased.

 

update - never mind, I found the link.

 

http://www.masada2000.org/

http://www.masada200...historical.html

 

Both your post and mine highlighted inaccuracies and omissions, but it is impossible to hit all the key facts in one post. But you did a good job in summarizing it here:

 

The arabs rejected the resoultion because they saw it as unfair. The jews were to get a larger % of the land even though they were a smaller % of the population AND because the quality of the land that was to go to the jews was superior.

 

And as O put it...

 

The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan, without reservation, as "the indispensable minimum,"glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.Arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs with regard to the population balance at that time, the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and even rejected its authority to involve itself in the entire matter. They upheld "that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

 

And it was not an even war, the Jewish side was better organized, trained and armed.