Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Dill]

(12-25-2023, 06:25 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: But back to the Palestinians. Personally, I am of two minds. The Palestinians have been wronged quite a few times over the years. They have some legitimate beefs. But would their position not be better today if they had, at least temporarily, gone along with U.N. Resolution 181 in 1947 and established their own state within the "Two State" proposal? That would have at least made them a sovereign nation. And even if they wanted to war with Israel to regain what they consider as lost land, doing so as a sovereign nation is a far better position than making yourself an orphaned population and relying on the feigned goodwill of neighboring nations... nations which continuously used the Palestinians for their own interests.

In retrospect I think a lot of Palestinians would agree with the bolded--certainly those who supported Oslo. Though it was a hard sell at the time, since it meant hundreds of thousands, who had no say in the resolution process, would have to turn over their homes and land to newly arrived immigrants from Europe. Israelis aren't even ready to give up the West Bank because of the recent settlements there, so you can imagine how hard it would be for people who had lived on land for generations to give it up to settle someone else's desire for a state. In any case, I think our focus should not be on getting people without military power to accept the terms dictated by aggressor nations. Rather, the goal should be to curb aggression, not validate and reward it.

Also, it wasn't really in the national interest of Egypt, Syria or Iraq to attack Israel in '48. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and uncoordinated, but pushed by their populations who were incensed at the dispossession of fellow Arabs, with the aid of European colonial powers, especially Great Britain, which had also occupied Egypt for three generations. So as far as Arab populations were concerned, I don't think the goodwill was feigned. Still isn't. Your final comment could certainly apply to the government of Jordan at the time.

(12-25-2023, 06:25 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Consider this. When Israel seized the Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank (all territories which were to be reserved for a future Palestinian nation) in the Six-Day War of 1968, they did not seize those places from the Palestinians. They seized them from Egypt and Jordan, who basically considered them 'up-for-grabs' since there was no soveign nation claiming them.

There simply was no nation of Palestine prior to the PLO declaring themselves as one in 1988. There was a group of people who called themselves Palestinians, but no nation. Like many other peoples in the world (Kurds, Wigurs, etc.) they were and are a people without their own nation. That is a damn tough position to be in in the modern world. But the Palestinians had the opportunity to incorporate and have their own land and government. Tell me what the Kurds wouldn't give for that opportunity, eh? So, before someone starts arguing "But they owned the land!!!", they did not properly 'own' the land. They inhabited the land for centuries under the Ottomans and later under the British Admin. But they did not legally 'own' it. Recognized ownership in the modern world comes from establishing yourself as a nation.

I'm familiar with this argument, B, and I do love to discuss international law (or at least its philosophical foundations), so three points in response to the bolded:

1. The Ottoman Empire was a recognized "nation" until 1922; through its 500 year administration of Palestine, it generated and maintained land records and deeds which were as "legitimate" as those of any other country. That is why the first two waves of Jewish immigration from Europe and Russia, beginning in 1882, were able to record the land they purchased in an existing legal apparatus with courts, records, surveyed maps, etc. When the British took over the Mandate in 1920, they also took over and maintained land records and a judicial system through which the next three waves of Jewish settlers could continue to buy and privately own land. No way to grant the legitimacy of Jewish ownership recognized in either the Peel proposal of '37 or the UN Resolution of '47, and simultaneously delegitimate Palestinian ownership recorded in the same system.

2. The conception of universal human rights, upon which both the League of Nations (the authority handing Mandatory Palestine to GB) and the UN were founded, was understood to require state recognition for enforcement, but did not require national citizenship before universal rights could apply to people living anywhere.

So when the armed forces of the Jewish settlers in the Mandate (Hagenah, Irgun, Stern Gang) began seizing the property of Palestinians living there and driving them out of cities and villages, there was no sanction for that in international law, and especially not for the additional massacres intended to speed the flight. The Declaration of Universal Human Rights was not yet validated by the UN, but it would establish the protection of property, lives and dignity of humans everywhere, stateless or not, under which the UN was already presumably operating when it proposed partition in '47.

3. The Jewish settlers in Palestine did not have a "nation" either in '47. They took land by force to create one, in the process dispensing with international law and the universal human rights upon which it was supposedly based. Once founded though, and recognized by the US, they have since invoked international law in the form of a "right" to self defense and territorial sovereignty--a right they denied Syria when they annexed the Golan. "Recognized ownership" in the modern world still, apparently, recognizes force over right as a legitimating principle in some cases.