Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Dill]

(12-28-2023, 03:05 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: The partition plan also meant thousands of Jewish settlers who had lived there for awhile at that time had to leave their homes and lands and resettle. For those people, there was no question about moving due to anger and recriminatory actions. But the Palestinians who were within the area reserved for the "Jewish state" .... did have another option. When Israel became a nation, citizenship was offered to the Palestinians living within the borders (along with other groups such as Druze, Arabs, Christians, etc. living within the borders). And thousands did accept that citizenship. Today, there approximately 1.6 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Not denying that there are issues with being a Palestinian Israeli citizen (especially under the current repressive regime there). But those who stayed have overall fared far better than those who left in almost all aspects of life.

My only point in mentioning this is that at that time, there was another viable option for the people within the Jewish partition rather than flight. I can understand why many did not trust that option, particularly in light of the terrorist activities by some Jewish organizations prior to that (yes, I do acknowledge those events). There was "bad blood" on both sides during that time period (hence the pressing need felt by the U.N. to get involved). And what I am really focusing on in my posts are the ancestors of the Palestinians who did choose to leave at that time....

Yo B! I'll start here by addressing the bolded, especially as it frames Jewish settlers in the Arab Partition as without choice, while Palestinians in the Jewish Partition had "a viable option." 

Remember that in '47, The Jewish Agency proposed to the UN its plan for converting the mandate into a Jewish state; the Arab Higher Committee representing Palestinian Arabs proposed a single state, but one based on ethnic equality. The original Partition plan was a compromise which proposed that Arabs in the Jewish state would automatically be citizens thereof, same for Jews in the Arab state. 

Neither side liked this. The Jewish Agency approved it nevertheless, since it gave them the majority of the Mandate and Palestinian-owned land. But so far as I can tell, their leadership had no intention of allowing a 47% Arab majority in a Jewish state. E.g., Ben Gurion, in Dec. '47, stated that a 60% Jewish state was not viable; it needed to be at least 80%. The AHC rejected a plan which gave the majority of Arab-owned land to immigrants from Europe. 

I agree with you that Jews in the Arab Partition faced "violence and recriminatory actions." But the historical record we now have suggests that violence against Jews then was largely spontaneous, unorganized and retaliatory.*  In contrast, violence against Arabs in the Jewish Partition was systematic from Dec. '47 on, and by March '48, planned and organized with the goal of "cleansing" (Ben-Gurion's term) the Arab population, first from the Jewish Partition, then from the remainder of the Mandate. Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency's higher committee determined which regions were to be depopulated, using lists of villages with numbers of inhabitants, which had been compiled earlier. Having observed in December how Palestinian civilians fled from attacks on villages, the Hagenah command hit on the idea of using terror systematically to depopulate areas (called Plan Dalet).

In the countryside, this meant assaulting villages from three sides, allowing them to flee through the open one. This morphed into a serious terror when accompanied by rape and massacre.  The 2nd ed. of Benny Morris' The Origin of the Palestinian Refugee problem lists 20 village massacres. Probably the most well known was at Deir Yassin (04/09/48), in which some 90+ villagers were summarily executed, including 30 babies, and after a number of women were raped. 

Cities were besieged and the inhabitants driven out. E.g., Haifa fell on 23 April 48; 70,000 Arabs were expelled, Jaffa fell on 13 May, '48. It had been defended by about 1500 fighters, including German colonists (Templars) who had settled there in the 19th century. 5,000 Hagenah overwhelmed them and expelled 50,000.  By the time of the declaration of independence, some 250,000 had fled the Jewish Partition in terror, and another 400+ thousand would be driven from the Arab Partition by Nov. '48. 

You may ask how it was that some Arabs remained to become the 1.6 million current Arab citizens of Israel? In some cases, villages were spared at the request of nearby Kibbutzim who needed the labor.  When Haifa fell, 4,000 were allowed to remain, relocated to a poorer section of the city, their homes and furnishings given to Jewish settlers. That remainder was eventually "offered citizenship" as you say above.

Despite that remainder, it seems to me that the majority of Palestinians in the designated Jewish state did not, in practice, have an "option" to stay and become citizens should they want to. The mass were systematically driven out by violence and terror until the needed 80% Jewish goal was reached.

*E.g., the oil refinery massacre you mentioned, in which 39 Jewish workers were killed by a mob, was triggered by an Irgun terror attack which killed six Arabs. 

(12-28-2023, 03:05 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: By November 1947, the U.N. approved the partition plan. The British police force began withdrawing from the area in December 1947, and by April 1948 no longer had any effective control anywhere in the country. During that time, there were a back-and-forth series of murders and reprisals between the two groups, with violence escalating to terrorist attacks (by both sides... apparently, that needs to be said here). There was also maneuvers by groups from each side to seize what they thought might be key terrain or locations prior to one side or the other or both declaring independence and nationhood (in the event, there would be only one side declaring themselves a nation). As examples of Jewish violence, Jewish settlers attacked the villages of Balad ash-Sheikh and Hawassa and Irgun and Lehi bombed busy bus stops. As examples of Palestinian violence, they enacted a massacre at the Haifa Oil Refinery and blockaded the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

So groups on both sides were basically "dispensing withr international law" (btw- Does international law apply to a people who have no nation yet?)* and universal human rights. So, what is the difference between the two sides? Just one. One May 14, 1948, the day before the British Mandate expired, Israel declared itself a nation. The Palestinians did not. The Israelis began the process that would lead to recognition as a sovereign nation by most of the community of nations. This was recognized by the U.N. when they voted to admit Israel in 1949. With that comes certain responsibilities and benefits. One benefit is citizenship for the people of that nation. Most Palestinians do not have this now. One of the responsibilities is following and enforcing international laws.

Well, an independent state of Palestine was declared in Gaza in Sept. of '48 too, but the critical difference here is not dates and declarations so much as the military force and territorial control behind the claims. So I'd say the critical difference between the sides was, from the get go, the imbalance of forces. 

The Jewish Agency had been, in effect, a para-state during the Mandate, with a parallel control over public works in many places, educational institutions and its own diplomatic core. This was because the British intended to create a "national home" for the Jews in Palestine, and did not intend to ask the Arab population what they thought about that. In Nov. '47, the JA could easily operate as a centralized,  independent government. The Palestinians had nothing comparable to that centralized organization, which had been forbidden them during the Mandate, and the majority of their political leaders had been deported in '36-37.  Critically, also, the Jewish Agency had outside resources--money from America and modern arms from Czechoslovakia. The Palestinians only foreign resources were those which could be mustered from poor, newly liberated and relatively disorganized Arab countries. One of them, as you've noted, collaborating with the JA to grab Palestinian land.

In Jan. '48, on the ground for the civil war phase of the "war for independence," the Hagenah had about 50,000 armed men at its disposal, at least 20,000 trained in the British Army. The Palestinians had about 7,000 armed men--mostly scattered in defense of villages, plus another 1,000 from Iraq which arrived in February, plus a few hundred other volunteers from Egypt and Syria. No centralized command.

So from a historical distance, one can certainly see "both sides" dispensing with international law and maneuvering for position and murdering each other, but up close it is something rather different--a settler society, with the blessing and help of European powers, who did not want Jews in their own countries, and the US, displacing an indigenous population resisting that displacement. 

Anyway B, I'll address the second part of your post on Sunday.  Meantime, I'm curious to get your take on all this. Perhaps the discussion should turn to sources as well. 

*International Humanitarian Law does apply to stateless actors, yes.