Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant/ Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants/ C.i.f. London:  documents at sight,/ Asked me in demotic French/ To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel/ Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

Let me dissent from this view. The Palestinian Arabs still didn't think there should be any Jewish state in 1948. They rejected the plan and they ended with a much larger Jewish state than partition envisaged. But they didn't use is as justification for "eradicating Palestinians from their homes." You may think the Arabs in Palestine and the bordering states were justified in starting the war. But they did start the war.

The UN partition plan granted one third of the population that owned a smaller proportion of the land over half of the territory and arguably a more agriculturally valuable part.  A compromise is something both sides actually agree on.  The UN partition plan was, if a compromise at all, a compromise between some Westerners and other Westerners.  Kind of like the "compromise" that Belgium gets the Congo and England gets Nigeria.

I can't think of any group of people in history that has accepted a "compromise" made by others of that sort.

Richard Cohen's argument, which I think is valid and even obvious, is that the Palestinians of 1948 and continuing have an actual legitimate reason to oppose the arrangement imposed by the UN and they can be expected to continue to oppose that arrangement indefinitely.

The US can continue to prop up "moderate" dictatorships around Israel, that while moderate by US standards are way outside of the mainstreams of their own societies.  And the US can continue to attempt to overthrow "extreme" dictatorships and democracies such as Hussein and Hamas even though these "extreme" governments represent normal views towards Israel in their societies. But that gets very expensive and a lot of people die whenever the US slips at the wheel, including some Israelis.

Cohen's point, which very few Americans get, is that the anti-Israel position is not only the normal and more popular position - but it is actually justifiable and not necessarily driven by rage or hatred.

South Africa and Zimbabwe, for all the indignity of European derived folks living in non-European majority states, have been far safer over the last 15 years for White South Africans than Israel has been for Jews.  And that is without even considering how much better life is for the non-Europeans.

For those who do not want a one state solution, the key is the refugees.  Hold a conference, come up with a number that they will vote for, if its 200,000 per head then come up with that amount.  The problem is that it is not clear that they will accept this "blood money" and it is not clear that there are countries that will take them in.

If for any reason it is impossible to come up with an offer that the refugees will willingly accept, then the most reasonable solution is what Iran calls for - a referendum that would end Israel's Jewish identity but that would safeguard the lives and property of Jews as individuals.

If neither a resolution of the refugee issue acceptable to the refugees or a one state solution is possible then somebody, meaning the US, is committed to spending a lot of blood and treasure propping up and protecting unpopular governments throughout the Middle East indefinitely.

Now we're geting to the heart of the matter: the question of Zionism itself. It's taken long enough. Pretty soon we'll be able to discuss the "Right" of "Return," (specifically of 3 million Russians since 1990.)

Again, as with Baer and Rosenberg, the readership has taken the lead.

Thousands of innocent Lebanese have been forced from their homes by the bombings, especially in the South, and have headed up to Beirut (which the Israelis are also indiscriminately bombing). Some 100,000[!] Lebanese have fled to Syria, though Israeli bombing of roads and bridges has not made it easy for them to get out. Although, because of widespread Western racism, very few over here care about these displaced persons, they face a desperate situation. Roads have been bombed out, and bridges are gone. Lebanese television reported on numerous villages bombed. Rescue teams attempting to take an injured woman to a better hospital with more supplies were blocked when they found the bridge destroyed. ...The European Powers all ceded the Levant to the US-Israeli sphere of influence a long time ago. They will not get out ahead of the US. They mostly deeply dislike the Apartheid policies of Israel in the Occupied Territories, but they also deeply dislike and fear Hamas and Hizbullah, having their own large Muslim populations that they don't want radicalized.

So, basically, the Palestinians and the Lebanese are screwed. The Lebanese might not have been in such a vulnerable situation if they had not kicked out the Syrians, though the Syrians were there in 1982 the last time Israel invaded.

That is why there is terrorism in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories has been barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hamas. The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon was barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hizbullah. A wise Great Power can walk back such bad situations, as the US did in Europe and Japan after World War II. Unwise Powers get stuck with the Tar Baby.

But terrorism is a weapon of the weak and should not be over-estimated as a deterrent for Great Powers. Mostly they see it as a cost of doing business, and even where the Powers suffer from it, it has the advantage of rallying home populations behind militaristic policies.

I'm not sure I understand your point here Matt. While to much of the world the partition plan might have looked like a "compromise", surely most Arabs in the region could not have viewed it as such - and you don't have to be "intransigent" or a "rejectionist" to see their point.

To those on the ground the plan looked like an outrageous land grab - one that was now not just sponsored by colonialist Western powers, but was being stuffed down their throats by the whole "international community", such as it existed. It delivered to the Jewish settlers all sorts of land which they didn't even inhabit, much less own. (I believe those settlers were in possession of 6%-7% of the land of Palestine at the time, but Israel was to be given 55% of Palestine by the partition.)

We could say that the Arabs should have responded, "well, the UN is now behind this giant ripoff, so I guess we'll just have to read the writing on the wall and accept it." And perhaps they should have had the foresight to recognize that if they didn't go along with this forced giveaway, they would have even more territory seized from them and annexed by an Israeli war for independence. But this sort of collective resignation and cold acceptance of an unjust disposition is probably an ideal that is too high for most of humanity.

How many people could accept such a "compromise"? If you have already taken 7% of what I think is mine, and we are struggling over that, how is it a compromise to hand over 50% of what I have left?

I don't think you have really addressed the substance of the issue of whether or not the establishment of Israel was a mistake. It is not enough simply to note the intelligibility of the motives of those who wanted to establish it. Obviously the Jews who flocked to Palestine, both before the war and after, had abundantly good reason for wanting to go there. Their desire for a state that could serve as a future refuge for Jews is completely understandable. And given the religious attitudes and historical self-conception of the Jewish settlers, their desire that the new state exist in what was roughly Palestine is also eminently intelligible.

But the question is, taking those motivations into account, was the establishment of Israel a smart decision for the world as a whole. Surely the history of Israel in the decades leading up to its founding, and in the years since - a history which includes an expanding circle of violence and zealous hostility around that tiny corner of the Near East, hostility that periodically threatens the security of people well outside the region in question - lends a prima facie plausibility to the claim that it was a mistake.

How about the role of the United States here? Most of those Jewish refugees, exiles and emmigrants could have come to the United States and settled here as US citizens. Or perhaps a state could even have been established here. There are regions of the United States which could have provided land for a Jewish state - even more than Israel actually possesses - and establishing a state on those lands would in the end have displaced far fewer people than have been displaced by the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine. The fact that this proposal seems just laughable to many is evidence of the continued hold on us of the bigoted sense that all of that land occupied by the whiter peoples of the world in the first half of the 20th century was "already taken", but the status of the land where all the brown people lived was still "up for grabs" or "yet to be determined".

Some would argue, "A Jewish state in North America? Well that's just ridiculous! Delivering some portion of the United States to the Zionist movement would have been politically unachievable. It just wasn't doable. No US government could have proposed it, or carried out the proposal."

But has the history of Palestine and Israel over the past century suggested that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was any more realistic?

Zimbabwe? Are you kidding? The violent confiscation of white farms was the beginning of the current famine. This constitutes being "safer" for "European folks"?

As for "refugees" - the Palestinian leadership ordered their own people to leave back when they were preparing for war against Israel in the late '40s. Yes, Israel accepted this as a gift; but it wasn't of Israeli creation. Since most of the Palestinian "refugees" are of more recent birth, you are arguing that the children of those who have left a land voluntarily (or at the order of their own leaders) inherit a "right" to move back to that land? That's like saying that my parents sold a house (and the Israelis did purchase much of the land the Palestinians were largely squatting on from its legal owners), but because my parents lived there, I have a right to come back and take up residence, even after the subsequent owners have vastly improved it (and the standard of living among Palestinians who remained in Israel is higher than that of Arabs in surrounding countries).

There is a profoundly racist reaction to Muslim terrorism that would not apply if the terrorists were white of Western European origin. The latter
we'd take entirely seriously as to their threat, and the need to take any and all measures to destroy them, if they were conducting bombings on the same level as the Muslim terrorists currently are world-wide. But too many of us on the left racistly believe that brown people, by virtue of some genetic incapacity, can never be a threat deserving of a full response - want to treat them as just children playing a rough game, rather than adults gone far over the line beyond which we'd judge of our own kind that they need to be killed if they can't be disarmed or jailed.

I don't have statistics, do you?

I doubt that over a thousand whites have been killed by non-Whites in Zimbabwe over the past 15 years.

I offered Zimbabwe as a worst case.  As far as I know, it is still better than Israel. 

The "mistake" debate has been rendered moot by history.

Rightly or wrongly, Israel is here to stay. The only remaining issue is how to achieve a durable peace.

Any country that wants to eradicate any of the countries involved has no standing to participate in a satisfactory solution, and should be subject to the civilized world's opprobrium or worse.

Palestinian civilians -- as with civilians enywhere else -- are entitled to continue living on their own land in their own homes regardless, and Israel was not legally or morally justified in ethnically eradicating them pursuant to "Plan D" regardless.

Please, Dan K, go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and see for yourself how readily Jewish refugees from Nazi genocide could come to the U.S. between 1933 and 1965. Or go rent Ship of Fools which depicts the fruitless efforts of about a thousand of them to find refuge in Cuba or the U.S. or any safe place in 1938. People like you make Hitler smile wherever he is.

Some "moderate dictatorship" Israel--let's see, schmuck, between 2001 and 2006 Israel has ahd two elections that had none of the shennanigans the GOP used to manipulate the results in our last two elections. And, just in the past week there have been anti-government demonstrations in Israel by Israeli Jews who want a cease fire. Some "dictatorship"

I definitely agree that some sort of reparation system needs to be put in place.

It's worth pointing out that most historians do not accept that the Palestinians left because they were ordered to. Most historians (Morris, Tessler, etc.) agree that most Palestinians left as refugees fleeing to safety to avoid the fighting. At the time of partition, the land of Israel was 90% owned by Arabs. Most of that land was not purchased, although prior to partition, Jews did acquire most, if not all, of the land they owned by purchase. I suggest you read a decent history of the conflict. Tessler's A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is pretty balanced and a good starting point.

umm, you missed the point - the writer was talking about "moderate" dictatorships AROUND Israel - ie, not Israel. Try to read a little more carefully next time before getting all hot and bothered.

I agree with the previous two commentators that the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine is a fait accompli, and that constructive approaches to peace in the region must accept this fact as one of the starting points.

However, I don't believe the history is "moot", or that it is pointless or counterproductive to discuss the history of the formation of Israel.

First, because a clearer understanding of the history of the international role in Palestine may serve as an important lesson in the case of future conflicts, and for similar international decision.

Second, because understanding what sort of settlement makes sense and is achievable, and the dispositions and character of the people involved, requires an informed view of the history of the conflict.

To take one obvious example of the importance of history, I have met many Americans who believe that (i) the state of Israel has existed since biblical times, and (ii) the present conflict was caused when that long-established state was invaded by Arab Muslim neighbors.

Clearly, anyone who believes this is likely to believe that the Palestinian Arabs are uniformly just crazy and bloosthirsty fanatics and marauders who can't be bargained with, and can only be dealt with through violence.

Of course, these observers are fairly crude. But the continuing perception among more sophisticated observers that the Arabs in Palestine are all a bunch of intransigent and obstreperous rejectionists is based, in part, on historical judgments such as Matt relays here. According to these supposed lessons, the Palestinians have had many perfectly reasonable opportunities for a settlement in the past, but "have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" due to their irrational maximalism.

If the analogy were perfect, the correct solution to the Israel/Palestine issue would be the same as the agreements reached in Mandela's South Africa.

But the analogy, unfortunately, is NOT perfect.

Whether or not partition was really the correct solution in 1948, I think it has to be considered the correct policy now. Unlike the ANC, there is no Palestinian leadership that can be trusted to assume leadership of a pluralistic democracy and protect the rights of a Jewish minority. Like you, I'm sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, not the methods. However, the methods have long since corrupted the cause.

After nearly 60 years of war and terrorist attacks, the wave of suicide bombings that followed the Oslo accords, and the attacks from Gaza that followed the IDF withdrawal, it is simply naive to assume that the violence would end if Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders, or any other internationally-acceptable arrangement. The dead-enders, particularly (but not exclusively) on the Arab side, will fight any peace agreement. I say this not to excuse the Israeli settlement policy, which is abhorrent, or to excuse their current bombing of Lebanon, which I deplore. This is just simply obvious.

I believe the only reasonable solution is the one attempted in 1948 -- a UN-mediated partition. As with Pakistan/India/Bangladesh, there will probably need to be 3 independent states. Israel then withdraws all troops and settlers within its designated borders. Afterwards, if the dead-enders want to keep fighting, there's not much than can be done to stop Israel from bombing the Arab states, but at least the final map will exist for whenever the people are ready to accept it.

In fact, one proposal that was entertained (although not as seriously as the Palestine option or the Uganda option) was Jewish settlement in Australia's Northern Territories.

I've also often wondered about the feasibility of the Sinai as the Jewish state, alongside Jewish settlement in Palestine (though not as a majority-Jewish state).

Granted, these are all counterfactuals, not present-day solutions. As some others have pointed out, mistake or not, Jewish Israelis are in historical Palestine to stay; the only question now is whether that will be a Jewish state of Israel within the pre-1967 borders, or a binational state in all of the former British Mandate of Palestine.

I am afraid you history is a bit wanting. There have been Jews living in the area for about 2500 years. The name Palestine was that of a Roman province. The land that is now Israel and Paletine has been ruled by Greeks, Seljuk Turks, Christians, Mongols, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks and the British.

Had the British and the French, especially the British not wanted to punish the Ottoman empire there might be no Arab nations, not Saudi Arab, Iraq, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon. They were all part of the of the Ottoman Empire. Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and the Trans-Jordan were all part of the province of Great Syria.

With the begining of the First Zionist Congress in 1898 Jews started buying land in Palestine, from Turkish landlords. After WWI and the eviction of the Turks the Jews started buying land from Arab landlords.

The Jews started increasing their population by purchasing land and having Jews come from Europe to work their land. An Arab riot in 1923 was supressed by the British.

Jews kept increasing their population by purchase and natural population growth. As anti-Semitism in Europe grew so did emmigration to Palestine.

This led to the Arab riots of 1936-1939. The British had no tolerance for this and they crushed the Palestinians.

During WWII many of the Jewish Palestinians fought for the British while the Palestinians sided with the Germans. When the war was over Britain promoted a new partition of their Mandated territory. A small Jewish state and a larger Palestinian state.

Upon the partition the Arabs of Palestine began a civil war against the Jews. They were in no position to overcome the Israelis. When that phase of the war was winding down the other Arab nations led by King Abdullah of Jordan began the next phase of the war. Abdullah working with the British moved into the West Bank and took over a large part of the Palestinians state. The rest of the "Arab nation" then acted for their own interest and entered into cease fires with Israel.

As Benny Morris the favorite new Israeli historian of those who oppose Israel as said most of the Palestinians displaced by the war itself. Had the Arabs not attacked Israel maybe Israel would have ousted the Arabs but those who advocated such a view were much the minority of Israel.

I am unclear why the Arabs have been morally justified in trying to destroy the Jewish homeland.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Zimbabwe is better than Israel?

Zimbabwe:
Life expectancy at birth: 39.29 years
infant mortality rate: 51.71 deaths/1,000

West Bank:
Life expectancy at birth: 73.27 years
Infant mortality rate: 19.25 deaths/1,000

Zimbabwe under majority rule has been an utter disaster: famine, AIDS, social upheaval, destruction of the existing civil society and environmental despoliation.

The West Bank under Israeli control has seen a rise in literacy, a rise in life expectancy, a decrease in infant mortality, a rise in GDP. This is not to argue that Israel has a right to continue the occupation; but the material and social conditions of life on the West Bank are no worse than in most of the Arab world.

Seth Edenbaum quotes a writer who says that Hamas and Hezbollah are the result of "barbaric and intolerable" conditions imposed by the Israelis. Precisely the reverse is the case. When the PLO tried to set up a state within a state in Jordan, the Jordanians (who are ethnically Beduin, not Palestinian) massacred them in the tens of thousands. When the Palestinians attempted to take over Lebanon, the Syrians massacred them and drove them out of Northern Lebanon, confining them to the South. The Palestinians have learned from this: don't try to fight other Arabs, they will kill down to the last child.

Israel can't do this. It can't conduct the sort of ruthless elimination of entire families and communities that the Jordanians did in 1971, or that the Syrians did at Hama in 1982. Its press is too free and it is too dependent on Western good will to conduct these sorts of genocidal activities. And Israel has a large Palestinian citizenship (unlike Palestinians in Lebanon, who are refused citizenship) - Israel cannot afford for them to become radicalized.

The thing about genocide is that it works. Various Arab states have used it regularly, against various minority groups of Arabs, including Palestinians, to great effect. The Palestinians can resist Israeli occupation precisely because the Israelis are not barbaric, and cannot use genocide as a tool of occupation.

It's a great pity that the Palestinians never understood this. If there were ever an occupation that could have been resisted through civil disobedience, this was it. If Palestine had had a Gandhi instead of an Arafat, there would have been a Palestinian state years ago.

Cohen's assertion that Israel itself was a mistake means that the founding of Israel falls in the category of actions that have created blowback. It was an action that made sense, for certain purposes, at the time, but also one that needed careful management if it was to succeed.
It is very difficult to tell whether Israel over the years has been the tail wagging the dog of US policy, or whether it has been the tool of US policy.
Most of the failures of managing Israel, though, are due to some conception of US policy at the time, usually having to do with oil. So, whether Israel was originally a mistake or not (or, as it seems to me, something inevitable at the time), over a time it has become a great failure (or mistake) or US foreign policy.

This is not to argue that Israel has a right to continue the occupation; but the material and social conditions of life on the West Bank are no worse than in most of the Arab world.

This is completely wrong. According to the CIA World Factbook, the per capita GDP in the West Bank is $1,100. This compares with $2,300 for Zimbabwe, $3,900 for Egypt, $4,700 for Jordan, $8,300 for Iran, $12,800 for Saudi Arabia, $19,200 for Kuwait, $24,600 for Israel, $27,400 for Qatar, $41,800 for the United States, and $43,400 for the United Arab Emirates.

Thanks for the standard Zionist version of history which paints the Zionists as the innocents and the Ay-rabs as the evil enemies.

Whether "the Jews" lived there 2500 years ago or not, that is still no justification for Zionists to ethnically cleanse civilians -- of whatever religion -- from their homes today.

And ethnic cleansing accompanied by mass rape and massacres is precisely what Israel did to the Palestinians.

Read about it all from Benny Morris, an ISRAELI historian -- who then attempts to justify it all by claiming "You can't make an omellete without breaking some eggs"

http://www.counterpunch.org/shavit01162004.html

So the Israelis don't do genocide like them nasty terrible Ay-rabs? PUHLEEZE! Read about how ISREALI historian Benny Morris exposes this myth of Israeli "purity":

"What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves....

In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?

"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"?

"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist."

I don't hear you condemning him.

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

Yes, massacres in the middle of a war for existence occured. War is not a nice thing. It was a shame that the Arabs launched the war rather than allow Israel to come into existence.

The idea that only if the Israelis were sainted do they get not to be murdered and to have their state is what is grotesque.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Ezra or Tom ?

The 1.5 rating is disappointing . I understand why that applies to the last
sentence but the rest of the content is appropriate.

Maybe because I grew up listening to Father Coughlin and reading Social Justice it is
easier for me to agree that what Sage says needs to be said.

Two points. A large part of the Jewish territory was the Negev Desert. After the riots of the late 1930s and the British restriction on Jewish emigration prevented the Zionists from achieving their population goals.

What the anti-Israeli crowd always ignores is the role of the British in guaranteeing that the Palestinians would be frustrated in their goals and their allying with the Jordanians in depriving the Palestinians of the West Bank.

Purple State maybe you would explain to me why all the anti-Israeli voices fail to mention that prior to 1967 Gaza was Egyptian and the West Bank Jordanian?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

"As for "refugees" - the Palestinian leadership ordered their own people to leave back when they were preparing for war against Israel in the late '40s."

My mother left Palestine in 1948 when zionist forces shelled her home in Jaffa. Her family boarded up the windows and slept on the floor for days, but when the shelling worsened my grandfather cobbled up enough money together to pay a truckdriver to drive them to Syria and safety. As they drove through northern Palestine, they feared for their lives, having heard stories of massacres of Palestinian civilians elsewhere.

I guess my "refugee" mother lied to me because she's an anti-semite. Who knew?

Gaaahh! Yet again, I am foiled by the "read more" link, which suggests that there is more Yglesias content on the flip. But when the 50+ comments finally load and make the page visible, there is no sweet Matt-writing before my eyes... just an ocean of comments. (Not that I dislike your comments, good commenters! it's just that I was curious to pursue Matt's writing to its end.)

Mistakes were made... by whoever designed these pages! Down with needless "read more" links!

I'm highly critical of how the British handled the entire Middle East. It's not just Palestine they messed up . . . look at Iraq, for just one glaring example of British arrogance and mismangement!

Well, I hope we all know about Jordan and Egypt holding the West Bank and Gaza respectively, but what of it? That isn't the genesis of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has little to do with its continuance today.

The problem started with the creation of a Jewish state against the will of the majority non-Jewish population. That was bound to cause problems. I know you think it's a shame the Arabs didn't just accept this, but would you "just accept" it if the fundamentalists turned the US into a Christian state? I hope not. I'd be right with you in manning the barricades and fighting against such an outrage!

You are mistaken. Ben Gurion and the Zionists understood that a war was coming. They had thee experience of fighting either in the British army or in Syria and Lebanon, both part of Vichy France. However, the Palestinians launched a civil war that they had no chance of winning. The rest of the countries with King Abdullah in command then engaged Israel pretty much after the Palestinians had been defeated. It made it much easier for the Arab countries to gain advantages for themselves at the expense of the Palestinians.

Largely the British, who had very little use for the Palestinians, virtually guaranteed that the best bet for the Palestinians was the acceptance of the partition.

One of the ironies is that the borders as that the Arabs rejected between 1948 and 1967 are now the borders the Arabs demand.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Thanks for the standard Zionist version of history which paints the Zionists as the innocents and the Ay-rabs as the evil enemies.

I have to say that I'm royally sick of this notion that anyone who defends Israel thinks that every Israeli action, anywhere and at any time, was justified and moral.  There's virtually no one who thinks that.  What defenders of Israel DO say is that there is NO moral equivalence between the actions of Israel and those of her enemy.  What Israel does, the way it behaves and the attitudes of its people simply exist on an infinitely higher moral plain than the Arabs.  The Arabs are not interested in compromise while Israel is.  The Arabs - or a significant chunk of them - countenance the deliberate murder of civilians.  Israel tries whenever possible to AVOID civilian casualties. And so on.  To compare the actions of Israel - whatever her faults - to the actions of the Arabs is simply disgusting and the mark of the true Israel hater.

The point is that none of this is somehow incompatible with the notion that Israel has in the past committed morally questionable acts. 

Whether "the Jews" lived there 2500 years ago or not, that is still no justification for Zionists to ethnically cleanse civilians -- of whatever religion -- from their homes today.

What's with the scare quotes around "the Jews"?  Are you denying that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for that long (or longer, actually)?

And ethnic cleansing accompanied by mass rape and massacres is precisely what Israel did to the Palestinians.

Read about it all from Benny Morris, an ISRAELI historian -- who then attempts to justify it all by claiming "You can't make an omellete without breaking some eggs"

At no time does Benny Morris, or anyone else, accuse the Zionists of "mass rape".  That there were massacres of Arab civilians in the 1948 was has been well known for decades.  They make up a tiny fraction of the Palestinians who left their homes in 1948.

What the so-called "new historians" like Morris have tried to do is set the record straight about the history of the 1948-49 period, warts and all.  As an exercise in democracy and truth-telling, it is probably a good thing.  Zionism, like all nationalisms, is subject to mythologizing and it is useful and worthwhile to correct some of the more exaggerated claims, including the claim that all the Arabs who left in 1948 left of their own accord.  But this has nothing to do with trying to say that Zionism itself is illegitimate.  Israel, in common with virtually every nation in the world, has some aspects in its past that do not look good by contemporary moral standards.  The question has to be: Why is Israel continually singled out for special opprobrium?

Ben Gurion and the Zionists understood that a war was coming. They had thee experience of fighting either in the British army or in Syria and Lebanon, both part of Vichy France. However, the Palestinians launched a civil war that they had no chance of winning.

How do you define "launched a civil war" what did the Palestinians that you are claiming made them the initiators of the armed conflict?

The Zionists understood that war was coming.  So they mobilized, armed and began shooting Palestinians who at the time were not yet organized.

Then a war came.

That reminds me of how Hussein started a war with the United States in 2003.  The US understood a war was coming, so it staged hundreds of thousands of troops in Kuwait, then bombed Iraq then sent the soldiers onto Iraqi territory to overthrow Baghdad.

Ever hear the one about how the US launched a pacific war in Pearl Harbor?  See the Japanese understood a war was coming ... 

I read Cohen’s column more generously. He earns credit for speaking about these issues outside the confines of the usual boxes which constrain this topic. All he is saying–in his thematic point–is that the creation of the state of Israel where it was created was bound to turn out badly. Probably there was no better option available to the displaced Jews of Europe, but that does not make his thesis wrong. In a sense, I read Cohen to be saying that creating a Jewish homeland in the midst of an Arab and Islamic part of the world was a mistake that probably had to be made. But no one should therefore be surprised by all the endless strife that has been the result.

As I see it, there were three factors involved in the placement of Israel: 1) all that Zionist religious frenzy about the "Holy Land" (and religious ideology is always a bad basis for public policy); 2) the fact that no other part of the world was willing to offer a welcoming homeland for the Jews; 3) the Middle East was like the Indian reservations during America’s removal and resettlement of its "undesired" population. That is, America created Indian reservations in places where nobody else wanted to be; and the U. N. did something similar with the creation of Israel. Of course the problem was–and this is Cohen’s point–that there was already someone there, someone for whom the Jews were in every way an unwelcome foreign presence.

Given this thesis, it is then understandable why Cohen cannot offer any more "constructive" thoughts on what to do about the current conflicted state of affairs. If the history of the state of Israel ought to have taught us any lesson thus far, it has to be that all our bright ideas for how to fix the Middle East all come to grief when confronted by the ugly reality of things. To which the fully rational response might well to be to lapse into a weary accepting pessimism. In other words, Cohen is basically right: the Middle East is a god-awful mess and we might as well learn to live with it as best we can.

Are you suggesting that Israelis should do to the Arabs what has been done in the United Staes, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to their native peoples?

Do you believe that the Indians would be given back their homes? How about the Mexicans who's families came from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or California?

Why is it exactly that only Jews are asked to justify their homeland. Especially by people lving in settlements their ancestors had absolutely no claim to?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Good question, Hoppy. Though one could argue that Native Americans have the right to either live on Tribal reservations or anywhere else in America and that they have full political rights no matter what choice they make. Is that true for Palestinians in Israel? I'm actually asking that honestly, not rhetorically, because I really don't know.

If a Palestinian lives in Israel, as opposed to PA territory, can they vote, run for office, etc?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

There are Arab members of the Knesset.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Read a history of Australia. If you want to know about genocide Australia is the place to read about it. Before the Australias gave their aborigine any rights they all be exterminated them. Similarly the Maoris did not fare to well in New Zealand. Neither group is any political threat to the "colonial" population.

The Palestinians can have their own state and all the political rights all the Arab nations have.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Thanks for clearing that up, Daniel and PurpleState.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

You make some excellent points, Whit, but I want to flesh out one, even though it's a corrolary issue.  Confiscation of white-owned farms in Africa indeed may be the start of a famine episode, but the coup d' grace was the lack of credit.  It's the same old story all over the globe.  Land reform projects in Latin America traditionally fail because the beneficiaries are not given credit.  The Mexican Ejido is a classic example.  On a broader scale, Chile stands out as a perfect example.  When Allende won his election, Chilean farmers shut down their operations in protest (most of them being wealthy beneficiaries of the US "Green Revolution" which packaged high credit ratings with improved seed. Allende mobilized the army to run the farms, but immediately discovered that Chase Manhattan (I use Chase generically) had cut off credit.)  As shortages increased, the middle class got very upset, and we got Pinochet.

I think it's important to consider this, at least to counter the silly argument that those dumb Africans can't run a business. 

Neoboho

My cousins next book is actually going to focus on this point. She has interviews members of Islamist parties in Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco. She may have been to a few other countries as well plus she has interviewed people in London.

One of the questions she is addressing is the desire of the Islamists to have free elections in most of the Arab countries. It is generally believed they will be elected particularly since the ruling regimes have suppressed most secular opposition to themselves. However, most of the Islamist parties ideologically do not believe in elections. Thus my cousin is looking at whether these will be examples of "one man one vote once" or if they will actually allow opposition parties to run against themselves.

Apparently the answer is dependent on which country is at issue. I have not spoken to my cousin since she returned from the Middle East this summer but I would not count on elections solving any problems in the Middle East.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Two things Daniel:

First, there's always tension when immigrants come to any country--just look at the hysteria right now about Mexicans coming to our own country. Part of the problem was that the Jews brought a Western culture that didn't fit well with the indigenous Arab culture. Jews had lived in peace with Arabs for centuries in Palestine--but those Jews were part of the local culture. The new immigrants came from Europe and brought very different habits and values with them.

Second, the Zionists' intentions to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine were well known by the early 1910s. The Balfour Declaration was made in 1917. That pretty much made it clear that Britain was willing to create a Jewish homeland of some sort in Palestine.

What Israel does, the way it behaves and the attitudes of its people simply exist on an infinitely higher moral plain than the Arabs.

I'm confused. Are you including Israeli Arabs among the people who exist on a higher moral plain--or is it only Israeli Jews who are superior beings?

I think the first step is to elect a Democratic Congress in 2006. The Bush Administration is shrouded in such a web of lies, deception and secrecy that it's impossible to know what's really going on.

The Israelis might be taking their marching orders direct from the Office of the Vice President, for all we know. "Where are we?" has to come before "where do we go from here?".

-- 

-- All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. (John Kenneth Galbraith) --

You raise several interesting points, without clear answers. Simply as a partially related point of reference, it may be worth considering Turkey, a majority Muslim but non-Arab state.

By most democratic standards, it's a contradiction, where polls indicate that popular elections indeed might happen once and produce an Islamic government -- except, uniquely as far as I know, the military's tradition of insisting on secular government keeps free elections alive. The particular Turkish circumstances are unlikely to occur elsewhere.

The closest thing that I can think of, perhaps even more bizarre, was Bolivia, where the three military services (yes, landlocked Bolivia has a Navy) rotated the presidency, but allowed free legislative elections. One election year, however, the presumptive president was killed in an accident, and they had a civil war.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Wow - I could take your argument and just change a few nouns and create an essay of what was wrong with the Alaska Native settlement in the '70s. That settlement had been procrastinated by the US for at least a half century. But then the Alaska pipeline issue arose. The Environmental lobby pretty much lost their case, but a stuttering Pt. Barrow Eskimo genius, Charlie Edwardsen, set out for DC and single-handedly tied up the pipeline on the strength of Alaska Native issues, which specifically amounted to the native right to transit fees.

So the US immediatly set out to "settle" with the Natives, who legally owned the state of Alaska (The Russian's didn't have a legal claim of ownership in the first place.) Another Alaska Native, State legislator Willie Hensley, played a key role in hammering out the specifics of the settlement, and was rightfully proud of his accomplishments, even though the Natives were given title to a small percentage of the state.

Willie then set out on a speaking tour to address tribes who were involved in land claims issues, and I was present when he talked to the Pit River Tribe of Northeastern California. It was a good talk, but at the end the Pit River Tribal Council Chairman, Ross Montgomery, told him: "I wouldn't tell my people to do what you are saying. Yes, you got title to ten percent of your land, but you gave away the rest to the whiteman. That's not a very good deal!" [I probably have the percentages wrong, it was a long time ago.]

Neoboho

pardon my ignorance of history, but did they ever catch the palestinian that killed rabin?

The fact is that the vast majority of Israelis want peace.

Well of course, now that they have the land.

The United Nations Human Development Index for 2005, which summarizes life expectancy, literacy, school attendance, and GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), ranks the "Occupied Palestinian Territories" as 102nd in the world, ahead of Syria and Egypt and only a little behind Jordan. Zimbabwe ranks 145th.

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_HDI.pdf

Don't know for sure -- haven't looked at the facsimile of Ezra's edits -- but think it likely to be Tom.  IIRC the latter wrote an essay for The Times arguing against nationalism and the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.

Woodrow Wilson -- from whom all our sorrows come. 

To see why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so intractable, one has to understand the Palestinians' point of view.

Make the following thought experiment:

Suppose someone invaded your home and evicted you.

Wouldn't you try your best to get your home back?

Would you recognize the right of the people who evicted you to retain possession of your home?

Suppose that the people who evicted you claim that God gave them the right to posses your home because THEIR prophets said so, but your prophet does not agree with this. Would you listen to this argument?

If you shot at the people who are currently living in your house, would you consider yourself morally justified or would you consider yourself a terrorist?

It would have been much better if the Jewish refugees after WWII had been allowed to enter the Unites States. They would have been a very valuable asset, as those Jew who did come here have been.

"Do all descendents of Native Americans have a "right of return" to the land where their forefathers were driven out?"

Yes they do. American Indians are U.S. citizens with full rights and oblications of citizenship. They can live on reservations if they want to, or can leave the reservations and live anywhere in the U.S. they choose, as many have chosen to do.

For example, the area in which I live was originally part of the territory of the Cherokee. Any Cherokee is free to buy a house in my home town. As a matter of fact, he/she would be free to rent an apartment in the apartment house in which I am living.

This was not an important point to me.  The Palestinians would not have been wrong if they had fired first.

It just so happens that the Zionists were using organized military units to apply force to accomplish military objectives before a Palestinian indigenous resistance organized and before any Arab state either intervened or announced any intention to mobilize to intervene.

It is just not the case that the Arabs fired first.

I don't care if you are going to call it a civil war or not.  Daniel insists on it.  Maybe you should respond to his post the way I did.  "Launched a civil war" was a direct quote from Daniel presented in blockquotes. 

The UN didn't pluck them down; they came first because of their belief in Zionism and later as refugees. They tried to buy the land, different sources dispute the legitimacy of that.

I can't think of other examples where the UN (and I always substitute the words "international community" when I read UN) forced the victor in a war to accept a lesser territory than they had won or relinquish territory, but it may have happened. Regardless, Israel is a sovereign nation, and the UN can't just force them do so.

I do agree that cash will be required for a final settlement.

You cousin seems to be going to states that now do not hold anything like open elections, but that have "moderate" - as defined by the US - positions towards Israel.

If she asks members of these Islamist parties how they would behave if there were absolutely no checks on their power I guess it is possible that they would prefer to remain permanently in power.

Karl Rove, similarly, if there were no checks on the power of the Republican party, may well prefer a permanent ruling majority.

Does that mean it is impossible for there to be a political system in which Islamists could run without abolishing elections? Absolutely not.  Will any of the people your cousin interviews tell your cousin that they will only participate in an electoral system that gives them the power to abolish later elections? Certainly not.

What I am afraid of is that the Islamists your cousin interviews will say the types of things Karl Rove might say if his guard is down and your cousin will translate that to an argument to maintain the current system where "moderate" pro-US/Israel rulers remain in power undemocratically. 

Somehow she'll cast an argument for supporting the conveniently moderate-towards-Israel undemocratic leaderships in power into an argument for democracy.

Nothing would make me happier than to be proven wrong on this. 

Per Capita GNP is irrelevent - it's the median you want to compare, which will root out those Billionaire Saudi princes who skew the numbers badly

I guess this is an attempt at dry wit, as if to say: see, they're just the same.  Both sides have their extremists.  Both sides have the same proclivity to violence.

No.

What was the reaction in Israel to the Rabin assassination?  It was an outpouring of hundreds of thousands of people into the main Tel Aviv square to rally for peace. To show the world that this act was not Israel, not representative of the Israeli people.

What was the reaction when the murderer Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 Arabs at prayer in Hebron?  Across the political spectrum, leader after leader in Israel stood up to denounce this barbarism, this act of savagery that could never be justified under any circumstances.  Rabin himself stood up and denounced it on the Knesset floor.  I still remember the words, addressed to the nut Goldstein and his tiny band of sympathizers, "You are a foreign implant.  Sensible Judaism spits you out."

Compare that with the scenes of Palestinians dancing in the streets and passing out candy when missiles fell on Tel Aviv in the first Gulf War, when Israel was hit with missiles again just this past week and, lest we forget, when America was hit on 9/11.

They're a sick, morally depraved society.

Again, my understanding is that the portion of the Palestine mandate that had been purchased by the Zionists at the time of the establishment of the state in 1948 was somewhere between 6 and 7 percent. Is that incorrect?

My comment did contain a criticism of the role of the United States and other countries in the postwar period. As you note, countries all over the world failed to respond after the war to the problem of displaced persons with humanity and alacrity, particularly in the case of displaced Jews. What puzzles me is that somehow the Palestinian Arabs are routinely and ferociously excoriated for being particularly "intransigent" for for their resistance to handing over the majority of their actual land to these refugees, while the behavior of other countries is depicted as somewhat shabby, but "normal" or "understandable". Interestingly, these other countries wrote the new rules of the game, which were then imposed on the Arabs.

The United States, and other countries, could have absorbed these refugee populations with much less overall sacrifice than that asked of the Palestinian Arabs. And yet it is the Palestinians who are the bad guys here, who are denounced for "rejecting reasonable favorable compromise proposals." Where were the reaonable favorable compromise proposals tendered by the world community to the Christian countries that one would think had the greatest obligation toward the displaced persons, due to their legacy of antisemitism, pogroms and genocide? They were never even made! Such proposals would have been regarded as laughable.

But none of the many fierce Western critics of the Palestinian Arabs finds anything laughable in the proposal made by the war's victors to the Arabs that they turn over more than half their land to the refugess. And why do they not find it laughable? Well, perhaps in some cases it is because in their hearts they they think that the people involved in Palestine were just a bunch of filthy, ignorant Arabs - and Arabs don't count.

But this focus on the problem of the postwar refugees distorts the pre-existing historical situation. Those refugees were only one additional wave of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. The Zionist movement was committed to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine from the very beginning, and rejected alternative proposals for other homelands, long before there was a refugee problem. No proposals for homelands carved from existing "advanced" countries were even seriously considered - only proposals that took land from undeveloped browner peoples were on the table.

No one said your mother lied to you and no one saidshe lied to you because she's an anti-semite, at least not what I've read. But like your mother, my cousins also were shelled in Jaffa by Arabs (before settling in Tel-Aviv years later) and their "crime" seems to have been legally emigrating to Palestine to escape Nazi persecution before WW2. Who knew immigrants were going to get such a nasty welcome? Look, both Israelis and Arabs have plenty of blood on their hands; Jews aren't leaving Israel because Cohen or Ahmadjadine feel it was a mistake; and I do not want to see any more displacement and suffering by Arabs either. I believe Israel right now is pursuing a very aggressive posture which like the American effort in Iraq is bound to fail. On the other hand, there have been a shitload of Arab atrocities and miscalculations as well. In a real sense, Arafat at the very least, should have given Barak more political cover instead of paving the way for bloody Sharon.

Perhaps, in light of the current situation, the Arabs saw starting the war as a "pre-emptive" or "preventative" war as the Bushies currently use the term.

Not saying that was a correct thing to do, but it would tend to modify the idea that the whole purpose was just to "push the Jews into the sea" out of racial hatred.

The main issue would seem to be whether there was any legitimate reason to form a Jewish state against the Palestinians wishes, or whether it would have been better to attempt to form a Palestinian state that encompassed both Jews and Palestinians.

I don't see how one can unilaterally come down on either side of who started the war without an appreciation of the underlying reason for it - that the Israelis were forming a Jewish state on Palestinian land WITHOUT including the Palestinians AND doing so with UN blessing.

I'd start a "war" or "resistance" under those conditions if I were the Palestinians.

What the motivations of the Arab states surrounding Israel were, I don't know. If they had motivations of seizing the Palestinians land for themselves, that would be incorrect. If they had motivations of not wanting to deal with Palestinian refugees, that might be reasonable in some sense. If they had motivations to just get rid of the Israelis because of ethnic or religious problems, that would be incorrect.

According to the basic Wikipedia entry on this:

"The Arabs had rejected the November 1947 UN Partition Plan, which proposed the establishment of Arab and Jewish states in Palestine. Arab militias had begun campaigns to control territory inside and outside the designated borders. Joint Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi troops invaded Palestine, which Israel, the US, the Soviet Union, and UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie called illegal aggression, while China broadly backed the Arab claims. The Arab states proclaimed their aim of a "United State of Palestine"[1] in place of Israel and an Arab state. They considered the UN Plan to be invalid because it was opposed by Palestine's Arab majority, and claimed that the British withdrawal led to an absence of legal authority, making it necessary for them to protect Arab lives and property."

It's not clear to me if there were other motivations in the Arab attack, but the ones stated seem perfectly clear and at least capable of being debated. The goal of replacing Israel and Palestine with a "single state" solution also seems clear here.

What is also clear from the statements of the leaders of Zionism throughout history is that the Arab plan was not acceptable.

The UN Division for Palestinian Rights article on this period states the following:

" At the end of the First World War, Palestine was among the several former Ottoman Arab territories which were made mandated territories by the League of Nations. The relevant provisions of the League's Covenant (Article 22) referred to these territories as "certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire [which] have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative assistance and advice by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory".

All but one of these Mandated Territories (categorized as class "A" Mandates) whose independence was provisionally recognized became fully independent States, as anticipated. The exception was Palestine where, instead of being limited to "the rendering of administrative assistance and advice" the Mandate had as a primary aim the implementation of the "Balfour Declaration" issued by the British Government in 1917, conveying that Government's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". This commitment was included in the mandate for Palestine, formally allotted in 1922 to Great Britain by the League of Nations, without having ascertained the wishes of the Palestinian people, as required by the Covenant."

"The only exception was Palestine, a sui generis where the transition to independence had been impeded by violence arising out of the self-contradictory terms of the Mandate. Where in principle it should have provided a transition to independence, the Mandate's commitment to establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine had created a situation where conflict between Arabs and Jews in the area about the character of the future Palestinian State complicated the process. British attempts to resolve the issue by the partition of Palestine into two independent States or by relinquishing the mandate with the consequent emergence of an independent unified Palestine had failed in the face of the opposition of the Palestinian Arabs to the former plan and of the Zionist movement to the latter. Faced with a situation over which it was losing control, the British Government turned the problem over to the United Nations on the ground that the conflicting obligations assumed under the Mandate were irreconcilable."

"Meanwhile, violence continued to spread in Palestine as Zionist terrorist groups, now on the offensive, stepped up their attacks and sabotage. Illegal immigration into Palestine increased sharply."

" A central question in the discussion on the Special Committee was whether the problem of Jewish refugees in Europe should be linked with the Palestine problem. A European delegate stressed the importance of separating the two:

"... the difficulty of finding a just and satisfactory solution to the Palestine question are increased by the linking together of two problems which are not necessarily interdependent.

"The first problem is the question of the future status of Palestine; the second problem is the question of the homeless Jews in Europe. These two problems are usually linked together in every discussion of the Palestine question. It is taken for granted that the only solution of the humanitarian problem of Jewish homelessness is immigration to Palestine and it is thus dependent upon a solution of the political question of the future status of Palestine.

"It must be manifest to everybody that the only effect of linking together these two problems is to render more difficult the solution of each. It is evident that the appalling tragedy of the homeless Jews in Europe makes it much more urgent to find a solution to the question of Palestine, as long as Palestine is considered to be the only place where Jewish refugees can find a home.

"This problem of Jewish homelessness can only be eased if the Member States will grant Jewish refugees a temporary or a permanent home." 11/

The Syrian delegate stressed the Arab view on this issue on the following day, when the delegation, making the above statement had changed its position:

"The representative ... wishes to connect the question of the displaced persons and refugees in Europe with the question of Palestine. We find that there is no way to connect the two ...

"One of the resolutions concerning the refugees and displaced persons in Europe ... states clearly that the resettlement of displaced persons should not be undertaken in any Non-Self-Governing Territory without the consent of the population of that Territory, and that resettlement should not be contemplated in any place where friendly relations between States would thereby be disturbed.

"The organization set up to care for refugees is already established, and it is going on with its work. The resettlement or repatriation of the refugees and displaced persons in Europe should be considered by that organization, and not by the Special Committee which is to be established here.

"The question of Palestine is altogether independent and separate from the question of persecuted persons of Europe. The Arabs of Palestine are not responsible in any way for the persecution of the Jews in Europe. That persecution is condemned by the whole civilized world, and the Arabs are among those who sympathize with the persecuted Jews. However, the solution of that problem cannot be said to be a responsibility of Palestine, which is a tiny country and which had taken enough of those refugees and other people since 1920 ... Any delegation which wishes to express its sympathy has more room in its country than has Palestine, and has better means of taking in these refugees and helping them". 12/

On the other hand, the representative of the Jewish Agency, by now participating in United Nations proceedings, insisted that the two questions be linked and that the Special Committee visit Europe:

"The members of the Committee will ask themselves, I am sure, why shiploads of helpless Jewish refugees - men, women, and children who have been through all the hells of Nazi Europe - are being driven away from the shores of the Jewish national home by a Mandatory Government which assumed, as its prime obligation, the task of facilitating Jewish immigration into that country".

"If it is granted that the Jewish people are in Palestine as of right, then all the implications and corollaries of that premise must be accepted. The foremost is that Jews must be allowed to resettle in Palestine in unlimited numbers, provided only they do not displace or worsen the lot of the existing inhabitants who are also there as of right. If that basic premise is not granted, then there is very little to discuss ..." 13/"

n the plenary, however, the Soviet representative referred to the possibility of the partition of Palestine:

"The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people, and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners, explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration ...

"Thus, the solution of the Palestine problem by the establishment of a single Arab-Jewish State with equal rights for the Jews and the Arabs may be considered as one of the possibilities and one of the more noteworthy methods for the solution of this complicated problem ...

"If this plan proved impossible to implement, in view of the deterioration in the relations between the Jews and the Arabs ... then it would be necessary to consider the second plan which, like the first, has its supporters in Palestine, and which provides for the partition of Palestine into two independent autonomous States, one Jewish and one Arab. I repeat that such a solution of the Palestine problem would be justifiable only if relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine indeed proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them and to ensure the peaceful co-existence of the Arabs and the Jews ..." 16/

The Arab delegations strongly protested the omission of reference to an independent Palestinian State in the terms of reference of the Special Committee:

"... by the stroke of a pen the reference to the independence of Palestine has been in effect removed, the Committee failing even to conform to the spirit of the request of the British Government as embodied in its letter of appeal to the United Nations for a settlement of this problem, we feel indeed that the First Committee has exceeded its powers and was not within its rights when it decided to delete the sentence referring to 'the future government of Palestine' and replaced it by a vague and broad reference to 'the question of Palestine;...'" 17/

The case for the recognition of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs had fared badly in the special session. UNSCOP's charter contained no reference to the termination of the Mandate and independence for Palestine. The issue of Jewish European refugees had been linked with Palestine."

It seems clear here that it was a combination of UN bungling and the opposition of Zionists and Arabs alike to reasonable suggestions of a single state solution that derailed that solution from being considered.

The Zionist view was specified by Ben Gurion, as quoted:

" Upon being questioned on the Jewish Agency's position on a partition of Palestine, Ben-Gurion was non-committal:

'... we stand by the attitude we took last year, that we will be ready to consider the question of a Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine, and that we are entitled to Palestine as a whole.'

He also said that if a United Nations decision in favour of Zionist aims provoked violent protest from the Palestinian Arabs, '... we will take care of ourselves.'"

The Arab position appears clear on this as well"

"The main points of the presentation of the Arab case are summarized in these words:

"... the question of creation of a Jewish State cannot be taken without two other connected problems; that is, the question of immigration and that of foreign subsidies. A Jewish State would, of course, be master of the immigration into Palestine. It might decide that immigration would be without limits and the economic argument, which