WEEKEND LONG READ: If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again while anticipating a different result, our approach to Israel and Palestine is crazy.
I will offer two comments. First, Israel is the end result of the territorial dispensation that occurred at the end of WWI when the victorious allied powers took over the Middle East possessions of the defeated Ottoman Empire, something that was entirely consistent with both international practice and consequently international law. Looking at the larger picture, Arabs now rule 99.75% of the former Ottoman lands while Israel not only constitutes the 0.25% balance, but the Jewish people were the only indigenous group to be restored to sovereignty while it was deemed just and proper to subject all the other indigenous groups to the rule of the imperial conquerors who preceded the Turks, namely the Arabs.
Not only did the Arabs famously reject the U.N.’s non-binding partition resolution in 1947 (in fact, this was the second attempted partition of the Mandate territory, the first created today’s Jordan in 1923 - a partition that closed some 78% of the originally designated Jewish historical homeland to Jewish settlement - what now passes for “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is, inch for inch, the lands that were illegally seized by Jordan and Egypt in their 1948 invasion, a war of aggression that violated the fundamental premise of the U.N. Charter (though neither was ever subjected to any negative consequences for this violation of international law). The irony is that OPT can be said to have arisen from an illegal occupation.
The second point is that, while I agree with your description of the central goal of the Palestinian cause is, times have changed dramatically and the driver for that change is the emergence of a hegemonic Shi’a Iran, first abetted by President Obama, that threatens the region’s Sunni Arab states. Prior to then, the goal of those Arab countries was to weaken Israel over time after they gave up on trying to defeat it on the battlefield until it would collapse. Now, those same countries realize that they need a strong and confident Israel on their side to help keep Iran at bay. Consequently, the Palestinian cause is not only no longer their priority (beyond lip service to placate the “Street”) but cuts against their national interests.
As there are no Arab democracies in the Western sense of the word, these Sunni states should manage this transition just fine, especially as the world seems not overly concerned with Muslim-on-Muslim violence. The future suggests that, all else being equal, Saudi Arabia and its allies will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza and the deradicalization of its populace, the result of which should serve as a vision of what a future of cooperation with Israel could look like so that over time the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank will follow along. Of course, all else is never equal in the real world, and many will try to undermine this future not out of love of Palestinians but for their own political calculations. It is understandable why Iran, Russia, China and assorted jihadi groups would try to interfere, but why so many Western apologists would deny a better future to Palestinians is something that needs to be addressed.
Israel has been the victor in every war that has been prosecuted against us and the Arabs have been the losers. As such we have absolutely no responsibility to reward their military defeat nor their ongoing and highly vocal utterances of murderous intent towards us. And yet we remain the recipients of their demands.
The reason for this is clear. Nobody has had the decency to inform the Arab leadership that they lost nor of that failure has consequences. Quite the opposite has in fact been the case with external actors deliberately fueling the flames of delusion and entirely misplaced expectation to skew all the normal realities of war and peace.
In truth, we have not helped ourselves. We have lacked the self-confidence and maturity that comes with sovereign status to act in our own national interest and instead have toed the narrow tightrope of appeasement on one side of which lies our imagined allies and on the other, our avowed enemies. We seem terrified of acting decisively and as Douglas Murray recently said, we remain the only country on the planet who is not allowed to win a war. I believe that much of this lies in our self perception as some sort of probationary project that risks having its benefits removed by its patrons with one small misstep. This has contributed to our current woes and continues to do so.
This position and the perceived politics of inertia from the current coalition sit badly with a people, already riven with political division and now hurting deeply after the events of 7/10. This has prompted some very serious soul searching and the posing of a very fundamental practical and philosophical question. "If after 76 years of statehood we are unable to define our borders and impose civil law on the land and the people within them, if we prevent our citizens from expressing their Judaism at our most holy place, if we outsource our military operations and strategy to a foreign 'ally' and we require permission to ensure the safety and security of our citizens, what is the point of Israel?"
Great piece. Thank you for such a thorough, coherent unfolding of the facts as I understand them.
I also take Charles Knapp’s comment as the next stage in things. The Sunni/Shia conflict, which has endured through time, is the path through to resolution of the situation for Israel, and the rest of us. A world wide Islamic caliphate would mark the end of western civilization as I know it to be. And this is the ultimate goal of Iran and its fundamentalist followers. And it cannot be allowed.
I admire the Abraham Accords as it stands on this understanding and offers a way through the conflict. I don’t know what the end game looks like, but this seems to me like the way through. Mind you, it does rest on the signatory states - UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, (Sudan is signed but unratified) and possible more to come if the Saudis and the others sign on - to give up on their hatred of their Jewish cousins… which in the fullness of time could be too big an ask… but at this time, there seem few options.
You raise the Abraham Accords and I think we need to focus more on this -- if only for our own sanity as for strategic reasons -- there are signs of hope and we need to emphasize and celebrate them!
Yes it's truly mind boggling the Arabs rejected the 1948 borders. Who wouldn't want to give the best parts of their lands to a small minority population of foreign religious zealots who'd waged a twenty year terrorist campaign to drive them out. Your arguments simply presuppose that Israel should exist in the first place and hand waves away the history of the formation of the Israel.
The founders of Israel were not "religious zealots." They were largely secular, assimilated, socialist Jews who emigrated from Europe when they realized, post Dreifus, that they would never be accepted as full citizens. As for the "twenty year terrorist campaign," there certainly was some terrorism on the part of some of the Palestinian Jews just as there certainly was terrorism by some of the Palestinian Arabs. But the emigration didn't begin 20 years before 1948, more like sixty years, in waves, very few of which were religious, unless you consider socialism a religion.
The big idea they had was to live somewhere where they wouldn’t be persecuted because of their heritage. If you want to call them assholes for that, I guess that’s your prerogative. My guess is you’ve never had to face a choice between persecution and emigration. And 6 million of those people who stuck around Europe because they weren’t assholes got killed because they believed they could integrate into European society indefinitely.
And clearly that justifies dispossessing others through force.
If it weren't so grim, one could almost chuckle at the irony. European oppression and violence against the Jews turned them into violent amoral fanatics. Now the Jews are suffering the results of creating violent amoral fanatics through violence and oppression.
Nothing says "not religious zealot" like creating a religious ethno-state. Israel is where it is for nothing but religious reasons. It's not like the Zionists were shy about their goals. Spoiler; their goals were not to create a homeland for secular socialist people.
No, there was not terrorism by "Palestinian Jews". There was terrorism by Polish, Russian, and other European Jews. That terrorism was designed to push the Arabs out so that European Jews could take their land. Then there was the Jewish terrorism directed against the British. Which is odd, as the British did a lot of suppression of the Arabs for Jews. But then again, there's no pleasing zealots.
You are profoundly ignorant, throwing around terms like "religious ethnostate," which you clearly do not even understand. (There * are * religious ethnostates, even very close to Israel, but Israel is not one). The lack of self-awareness by someone accusing others of zealotry while fanatically spouting fictional nonsense is typical, as I said above, of someone with strong opinions and precious little knowledge.
They absolutely were planning to declare a state for secular people. Secular Jews, you don’t seem to understand the Judaism in the context of Israel is not necessarily a religion, but is a nationhood something like a tribe, that does not require any sort of belief in God whatsoever much less in religious Judaism, the British did a lot to keep out Jews and did not honor their requirements to create a mandate for the Jews, and that’s why there was terrorism against them. They’re absolutely was Arab terrorism against the Jews. Not sure where you get your information from and I’m trying not to make this personal , but I suggest maybe you read Benny Morris who is pretty fair minded about all this. There’s quite a large percentage of Jews today in Israel, who are secular, probably the majority, though that’s changing.
It’s precisely, because Europe was not friendly to secular Jews, that secular Jews felt they were not permitted to fully integrate into European society that Zionism came into being . and the secular Jews, who started immigrating in the 1880s were proven right in the 1940s when Europe turned against all Jews, regardless of their level of belief in Judaism. That’s when the theory that the Jews needed a homeland for themselves to be safe, was proven.
And although there certainly are religious arguments for Jews, living in Israel, there are also historical facts, connecting Jews to the land for more than 2000 years. It’s not a religious belief the Jews have a connection to Israel. It’s simply history.
Ahh... the good old Balfort Declaration. Nothing more British than promising something that wasn't theirs to someone who had no right to it in the first place. Weizmann sure got his money's worth out of them. The British did tremendous work for Jews the during the mandate years, running a vicious counter insurgency campaign against the street Arabs and either exiling or coopting their leadership. This was a great contributor to their success in '48. There's a reason there was no Arab equivalent to the Haganah.
The British problem was only part of their foreign policy establishment had been infiltrated by Zionists, leading to bifurcated policy. Meaning they didn't give the Jews everything they wanted all the time. This prompted fanatics like the Stern gang to get all terroristy.
At the end of the day, I do not care who wins in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Both sides are loathsome. What I do care about is the fact that my country is involved in that conflict.
Something that wasn’t theirs? At the time, it was still customary for the losing side in a war to lose territory and it was entirely up to the winning side to decide what to do with it. What was new (or newish) was the US position that it did not enter WWI to help Britain and France expand their colonial empires and so the idea of Mandates was born - even if the US then rejected membership in the League of Nations. In theory, the Mandates were not colonies (even if they were for the most part treated that way by Britain, France, Japan, South Africa and Australia) and, although the precise mechanisms were not really worked out, were slotted for independence once a capable local government and society was established. That smell of racism and, of course, that was the case. All that said, this was seen as enlightened at the time and based on what went before and, more important, was fully consistent with international law - and that law arising from the Mandate for Palestine continues to control Israel’s rights to the former Mandate lands - which is why most anti-Israel partisans studiously ignore that period.
Before we get too high and mighty, the U.N. Charter provides for the establishment of trusteeships which is really the old wine of Mandates in a new bottle. As an aside, trusteeship might be a temporary way forward in Gaza, on the assumption that any country will be willing to risk its soldiers against Iran-backed terror groups - there’s a reason that the EU inspectors who were in charge of the Rafah crossing abandoned their posts immediately upon Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007 and then we have the continuing spectacle of UNIFIL’s fecklessness in Lebanon.
The overall point is that not only was there nothing at all unusual about taking something that wasn’t theirs and giving it to someone else, that was the state of the law at the time. I won’t dignify your comment about Weizmann and money although let’s just say your mask slipped. If you knew the history of the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel, the main reason for the Arab failure to destroy Israel - even if they did illegally occupy about 22% of the land - was their underestimation of Israelis (mostly because they bought into the view of Jews as cowards who couldn’t fight) which then allowed them to worry about preventing their allies from gaining more land than they. One result was Egypt splitting its column that was advancing to Tel Aviv in order to block Transjordan’s Arab Legion (trained, armed and commanded by British generals) from taking the Negev. To pretend that the five Arab armies were no match for the makeshift Haganah is historically inaccurate and a cover for the ultimate failure of the Arab invasion.
What Arab conduct does show, however, should be obvious: they never had any intention of establishing yet another Arab state in “Palestine”, they wanted the land for themselves. Even the PLO officially rejected any sovereign claims to the territories Jordan and Egypt grabbed and illegally occupied after 1948 (article 23 of their 1964 Charter).
It will come as quite a shock to anyone with any knowledge of the British Foreign and Colonial Office to read that it “had been infiltrated by Zionists” while members of the FCO would be insulted. Their policies were intensely anti-Jewish (not just anti-Israel). It was the British, after all, who blocked Jews from entering what is now Israel after WWII, notwithstanding their obligation under the Mandate to encourage Jewish immigration and close settlement. Before then, it was the British who sought to ignore the Mandate completely when, in 1939, it offered the Arabs full control of the Mandate for Palestine so long as they agreed to wait 10 years before independence - an offer the Arabs rejected because they anticipated a German victory (and we all know that the Grand Mufti spent WWII as a working guest of Hitler’s, spending his time raising a Muslim battalion for the Nazis, blocking any German effort to barter Jewish lives and broadcasting antisemitic rants into the Arab world). Even then, the British published their 1939 White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration precisely at the time it would be most needed.
I have only scratched the surface, but it is enough to outline how little you really seem to know about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Fair enough that you “do not care who wins”, but you should care about the facts - starting with the fact that it is the Balfour (not Belfort) Declaration, but as someone guilty of typos, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one.
The big error here is "their lands." The land of Palestine did not belong to the Arabs, and they had no right to decide who could or could not live there. The British took detailed records during their mandate period (1918-1948) and there is ample documentation that many Arabs moved into British Palestine from surrounding countries after WW1 to take advantage of the higher wages, more employment opportunities, better medical care and administration of justice under the British. Under the Turks, Palestine was underpopulated, poverty-stricken, backward and of no real interest to anyone - until the Jews began to restore it, often on worthless land purchased from absentee Arab landlords. It was the Arab mistake to try and push the Jews out. They failed.
This information needs to be more widely disseminated. An excellent source on this and on other basic points is PALESTINE BETRAYED by Ephraim Karsh. He also makes other excellent points, including the highly significant fact that the Palestinian community collapsed and fled due to the pressures of war, while the Jewish community did not.
Karsh has another book called FABRICATING ISRAELI HISTORY: THE "NEW HISTORIANS," describing in detail how leftist Israeli historians systematically and deliberately distort the historical record.
Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur gave two really informative talks at Shalem College in Jerusalem a few months ago. These are full of a different narrative than you'll hear elsewhere. They are deeply thought provoking. You might consider a listen. You can find them on YouTube: "The Great Misinterpretation: How Palestinians View Israel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U and "Israelis: The Jews Who Lived Through History" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKoUC0m1U9E&t=67s. Full of facts and first person references to the past, they are an enjoyable and informative watch. An hour or more each though, so grab a comfy seat and some popcorn.
"There would have been an independent Palestine at the end of the Oslo process, when the Palestinians were offered 97% of the West Bank and Gaza — essentially everything that Western observers insist on believing the Palestinians want."
Anyone who believed that the Palestinians had access to everything they wanted in the Oslo process is being wildly dishonest. The Palestinians wanted the territorial integrity of the West Bank to be respected, East Jerusalem, the right of return, and the right to maintain armed forces. Israel would not accept any of these. Quite possibly Israel was right to not accept any of these. But to claim that the Palestinians were offered "essentially everything they wanted" is wildly stupid.
WHY didn't Palestinians get the territorial integrity of the West Bank to be respected, East Jerusalem, the right of return, and the right to maintain armed forces?
Because they refused to make the one, single concession they were obligated to do under the process: Live in peaceful coexistence.
Commentators like you insist on believing Israel occupies the West Bank out of spite. The reality is they occupy it to prevent the mass murder of Israelis. When Palestinians are willing to live in peace with their neighbors, they will have a state.
I beg to differ. Just like I no longer accept the term antisemitism when in fact it is simply Jew hatred. The “West Bank” to me is Judea and Samaria and these are Jewish lands. Keeping the Jews out of Judea is ridiculous.
I will offer two comments. First, Israel is the end result of the territorial dispensation that occurred at the end of WWI when the victorious allied powers took over the Middle East possessions of the defeated Ottoman Empire, something that was entirely consistent with both international practice and consequently international law. Looking at the larger picture, Arabs now rule 99.75% of the former Ottoman lands while Israel not only constitutes the 0.25% balance, but the Jewish people were the only indigenous group to be restored to sovereignty while it was deemed just and proper to subject all the other indigenous groups to the rule of the imperial conquerors who preceded the Turks, namely the Arabs.
Not only did the Arabs famously reject the U.N.’s non-binding partition resolution in 1947 (in fact, this was the second attempted partition of the Mandate territory, the first created today’s Jordan in 1923 - a partition that closed some 78% of the originally designated Jewish historical homeland to Jewish settlement - what now passes for “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is, inch for inch, the lands that were illegally seized by Jordan and Egypt in their 1948 invasion, a war of aggression that violated the fundamental premise of the U.N. Charter (though neither was ever subjected to any negative consequences for this violation of international law). The irony is that OPT can be said to have arisen from an illegal occupation.
The second point is that, while I agree with your description of the central goal of the Palestinian cause is, times have changed dramatically and the driver for that change is the emergence of a hegemonic Shi’a Iran, first abetted by President Obama, that threatens the region’s Sunni Arab states. Prior to then, the goal of those Arab countries was to weaken Israel over time after they gave up on trying to defeat it on the battlefield until it would collapse. Now, those same countries realize that they need a strong and confident Israel on their side to help keep Iran at bay. Consequently, the Palestinian cause is not only no longer their priority (beyond lip service to placate the “Street”) but cuts against their national interests.
As there are no Arab democracies in the Western sense of the word, these Sunni states should manage this transition just fine, especially as the world seems not overly concerned with Muslim-on-Muslim violence. The future suggests that, all else being equal, Saudi Arabia and its allies will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza and the deradicalization of its populace, the result of which should serve as a vision of what a future of cooperation with Israel could look like so that over time the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank will follow along. Of course, all else is never equal in the real world, and many will try to undermine this future not out of love of Palestinians but for their own political calculations. It is understandable why Iran, Russia, China and assorted jihadi groups would try to interfere, but why so many Western apologists would deny a better future to Palestinians is something that needs to be addressed.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Very welcome!
Israel has been the victor in every war that has been prosecuted against us and the Arabs have been the losers. As such we have absolutely no responsibility to reward their military defeat nor their ongoing and highly vocal utterances of murderous intent towards us. And yet we remain the recipients of their demands.
The reason for this is clear. Nobody has had the decency to inform the Arab leadership that they lost nor of that failure has consequences. Quite the opposite has in fact been the case with external actors deliberately fueling the flames of delusion and entirely misplaced expectation to skew all the normal realities of war and peace.
In truth, we have not helped ourselves. We have lacked the self-confidence and maturity that comes with sovereign status to act in our own national interest and instead have toed the narrow tightrope of appeasement on one side of which lies our imagined allies and on the other, our avowed enemies. We seem terrified of acting decisively and as Douglas Murray recently said, we remain the only country on the planet who is not allowed to win a war. I believe that much of this lies in our self perception as some sort of probationary project that risks having its benefits removed by its patrons with one small misstep. This has contributed to our current woes and continues to do so.
This position and the perceived politics of inertia from the current coalition sit badly with a people, already riven with political division and now hurting deeply after the events of 7/10. This has prompted some very serious soul searching and the posing of a very fundamental practical and philosophical question. "If after 76 years of statehood we are unable to define our borders and impose civil law on the land and the people within them, if we prevent our citizens from expressing their Judaism at our most holy place, if we outsource our military operations and strategy to a foreign 'ally' and we require permission to ensure the safety and security of our citizens, what is the point of Israel?"
BAM! Yes! Exactly. Thank you!
Well said.
You have laid it out, piece by piece, logically, sensibly and fairly. Ty
Great piece. Thank you for such a thorough, coherent unfolding of the facts as I understand them.
I also take Charles Knapp’s comment as the next stage in things. The Sunni/Shia conflict, which has endured through time, is the path through to resolution of the situation for Israel, and the rest of us. A world wide Islamic caliphate would mark the end of western civilization as I know it to be. And this is the ultimate goal of Iran and its fundamentalist followers. And it cannot be allowed.
I admire the Abraham Accords as it stands on this understanding and offers a way through the conflict. I don’t know what the end game looks like, but this seems to me like the way through. Mind you, it does rest on the signatory states - UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, (Sudan is signed but unratified) and possible more to come if the Saudis and the others sign on - to give up on their hatred of their Jewish cousins… which in the fullness of time could be too big an ask… but at this time, there seem few options.
Anyway, thanks for your piece.
You raise the Abraham Accords and I think we need to focus more on this -- if only for our own sanity as for strategic reasons -- there are signs of hope and we need to emphasize and celebrate them!
Absolutely. There aren’t many potential avenues through anymore. I think this is something new and holds potential.
Yes it's truly mind boggling the Arabs rejected the 1948 borders. Who wouldn't want to give the best parts of their lands to a small minority population of foreign religious zealots who'd waged a twenty year terrorist campaign to drive them out. Your arguments simply presuppose that Israel should exist in the first place and hand waves away the history of the formation of the Israel.
The founders of Israel were not "religious zealots." They were largely secular, assimilated, socialist Jews who emigrated from Europe when they realized, post Dreifus, that they would never be accepted as full citizens. As for the "twenty year terrorist campaign," there certainly was some terrorism on the part of some of the Palestinian Jews just as there certainly was terrorism by some of the Palestinian Arabs. But the emigration didn't begin 20 years before 1948, more like sixty years, in waves, very few of which were religious, unless you consider socialism a religion.
Isn't it stunning how know-nothings like Subcomandante have such strong opinions and so little knowledge? Thanks for setting him right.
The subcomandante Mark appears to be one of those semiliterate garden variety Jew haters that really believe in what they think.
The "religious zealots," lived in largely in places like Jerusalem and Sfat for centuries before 1948.
And those people had coexisted with their Arab neighbors all that time. Right up until some assholes from Europe showed up with a big idea...
The big idea they had was to live somewhere where they wouldn’t be persecuted because of their heritage. If you want to call them assholes for that, I guess that’s your prerogative. My guess is you’ve never had to face a choice between persecution and emigration. And 6 million of those people who stuck around Europe because they weren’t assholes got killed because they believed they could integrate into European society indefinitely.
And clearly that justifies dispossessing others through force.
If it weren't so grim, one could almost chuckle at the irony. European oppression and violence against the Jews turned them into violent amoral fanatics. Now the Jews are suffering the results of creating violent amoral fanatics through violence and oppression.
Nothing says "not religious zealot" like creating a religious ethno-state. Israel is where it is for nothing but religious reasons. It's not like the Zionists were shy about their goals. Spoiler; their goals were not to create a homeland for secular socialist people.
No, there was not terrorism by "Palestinian Jews". There was terrorism by Polish, Russian, and other European Jews. That terrorism was designed to push the Arabs out so that European Jews could take their land. Then there was the Jewish terrorism directed against the British. Which is odd, as the British did a lot of suppression of the Arabs for Jews. But then again, there's no pleasing zealots.
You are profoundly ignorant, throwing around terms like "religious ethnostate," which you clearly do not even understand. (There * are * religious ethnostates, even very close to Israel, but Israel is not one). The lack of self-awareness by someone accusing others of zealotry while fanatically spouting fictional nonsense is typical, as I said above, of someone with strong opinions and precious little knowledge.
They absolutely were planning to declare a state for secular people. Secular Jews, you don’t seem to understand the Judaism in the context of Israel is not necessarily a religion, but is a nationhood something like a tribe, that does not require any sort of belief in God whatsoever much less in religious Judaism, the British did a lot to keep out Jews and did not honor their requirements to create a mandate for the Jews, and that’s why there was terrorism against them. They’re absolutely was Arab terrorism against the Jews. Not sure where you get your information from and I’m trying not to make this personal , but I suggest maybe you read Benny Morris who is pretty fair minded about all this. There’s quite a large percentage of Jews today in Israel, who are secular, probably the majority, though that’s changing.
It’s precisely, because Europe was not friendly to secular Jews, that secular Jews felt they were not permitted to fully integrate into European society that Zionism came into being . and the secular Jews, who started immigrating in the 1880s were proven right in the 1940s when Europe turned against all Jews, regardless of their level of belief in Judaism. That’s when the theory that the Jews needed a homeland for themselves to be safe, was proven.
And although there certainly are religious arguments for Jews, living in Israel, there are also historical facts, connecting Jews to the land for more than 2000 years. It’s not a religious belief the Jews have a connection to Israel. It’s simply history.
Thank you Thomas! You are very patient and wise.
Ahh... the good old Balfort Declaration. Nothing more British than promising something that wasn't theirs to someone who had no right to it in the first place. Weizmann sure got his money's worth out of them. The British did tremendous work for Jews the during the mandate years, running a vicious counter insurgency campaign against the street Arabs and either exiling or coopting their leadership. This was a great contributor to their success in '48. There's a reason there was no Arab equivalent to the Haganah.
The British problem was only part of their foreign policy establishment had been infiltrated by Zionists, leading to bifurcated policy. Meaning they didn't give the Jews everything they wanted all the time. This prompted fanatics like the Stern gang to get all terroristy.
At the end of the day, I do not care who wins in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Both sides are loathsome. What I do care about is the fact that my country is involved in that conflict.
Something that wasn’t theirs? At the time, it was still customary for the losing side in a war to lose territory and it was entirely up to the winning side to decide what to do with it. What was new (or newish) was the US position that it did not enter WWI to help Britain and France expand their colonial empires and so the idea of Mandates was born - even if the US then rejected membership in the League of Nations. In theory, the Mandates were not colonies (even if they were for the most part treated that way by Britain, France, Japan, South Africa and Australia) and, although the precise mechanisms were not really worked out, were slotted for independence once a capable local government and society was established. That smell of racism and, of course, that was the case. All that said, this was seen as enlightened at the time and based on what went before and, more important, was fully consistent with international law - and that law arising from the Mandate for Palestine continues to control Israel’s rights to the former Mandate lands - which is why most anti-Israel partisans studiously ignore that period.
Before we get too high and mighty, the U.N. Charter provides for the establishment of trusteeships which is really the old wine of Mandates in a new bottle. As an aside, trusteeship might be a temporary way forward in Gaza, on the assumption that any country will be willing to risk its soldiers against Iran-backed terror groups - there’s a reason that the EU inspectors who were in charge of the Rafah crossing abandoned their posts immediately upon Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007 and then we have the continuing spectacle of UNIFIL’s fecklessness in Lebanon.
The overall point is that not only was there nothing at all unusual about taking something that wasn’t theirs and giving it to someone else, that was the state of the law at the time. I won’t dignify your comment about Weizmann and money although let’s just say your mask slipped. If you knew the history of the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel, the main reason for the Arab failure to destroy Israel - even if they did illegally occupy about 22% of the land - was their underestimation of Israelis (mostly because they bought into the view of Jews as cowards who couldn’t fight) which then allowed them to worry about preventing their allies from gaining more land than they. One result was Egypt splitting its column that was advancing to Tel Aviv in order to block Transjordan’s Arab Legion (trained, armed and commanded by British generals) from taking the Negev. To pretend that the five Arab armies were no match for the makeshift Haganah is historically inaccurate and a cover for the ultimate failure of the Arab invasion.
What Arab conduct does show, however, should be obvious: they never had any intention of establishing yet another Arab state in “Palestine”, they wanted the land for themselves. Even the PLO officially rejected any sovereign claims to the territories Jordan and Egypt grabbed and illegally occupied after 1948 (article 23 of their 1964 Charter).
It will come as quite a shock to anyone with any knowledge of the British Foreign and Colonial Office to read that it “had been infiltrated by Zionists” while members of the FCO would be insulted. Their policies were intensely anti-Jewish (not just anti-Israel). It was the British, after all, who blocked Jews from entering what is now Israel after WWII, notwithstanding their obligation under the Mandate to encourage Jewish immigration and close settlement. Before then, it was the British who sought to ignore the Mandate completely when, in 1939, it offered the Arabs full control of the Mandate for Palestine so long as they agreed to wait 10 years before independence - an offer the Arabs rejected because they anticipated a German victory (and we all know that the Grand Mufti spent WWII as a working guest of Hitler’s, spending his time raising a Muslim battalion for the Nazis, blocking any German effort to barter Jewish lives and broadcasting antisemitic rants into the Arab world). Even then, the British published their 1939 White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration precisely at the time it would be most needed.
I have only scratched the surface, but it is enough to outline how little you really seem to know about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Fair enough that you “do not care who wins”, but you should care about the facts - starting with the fact that it is the Balfour (not Belfort) Declaration, but as someone guilty of typos, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Brilliant, Charles, thank you. Marc won't change his zealous mind but others with open minds will have learned much from your piece. Bravo.
The big error here is "their lands." The land of Palestine did not belong to the Arabs, and they had no right to decide who could or could not live there. The British took detailed records during their mandate period (1918-1948) and there is ample documentation that many Arabs moved into British Palestine from surrounding countries after WW1 to take advantage of the higher wages, more employment opportunities, better medical care and administration of justice under the British. Under the Turks, Palestine was underpopulated, poverty-stricken, backward and of no real interest to anyone - until the Jews began to restore it, often on worthless land purchased from absentee Arab landlords. It was the Arab mistake to try and push the Jews out. They failed.
Wow! Joe, I am literally about to post an article making EXACTLY this point! Thank you!
This information needs to be more widely disseminated. An excellent source on this and on other basic points is PALESTINE BETRAYED by Ephraim Karsh. He also makes other excellent points, including the highly significant fact that the Palestinian community collapsed and fled due to the pressures of war, while the Jewish community did not.
Karsh has another book called FABRICATING ISRAELI HISTORY: THE "NEW HISTORIANS," describing in detail how leftist Israeli historians systematically and deliberately distort the historical record.
https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Betrayed-Efraim-Karsh/dp/0300172346/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26HLTBZHVVMKG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3J25DeVuD6AHQK_nBQmLcLH5lLxAExxFgT5TpSWQ958.aUhqYI-qfreU5ojnQQk-JUL-6MNDMTDqL8vFT-FtYoE&dib_tag=se&keywords=palestine+betrayed+by+efraim+karsh&qid=1712694707&sprefix=palestine+betrayed%2Caps%2C128&sr=8-1
Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur gave two really informative talks at Shalem College in Jerusalem a few months ago. These are full of a different narrative than you'll hear elsewhere. They are deeply thought provoking. You might consider a listen. You can find them on YouTube: "The Great Misinterpretation: How Palestinians View Israel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U and "Israelis: The Jews Who Lived Through History" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKoUC0m1U9E&t=67s. Full of facts and first person references to the past, they are an enjoyable and informative watch. An hour or more each though, so grab a comfy seat and some popcorn.
I absolutely will have a listen! Thank you!
"There would have been an independent Palestine at the end of the Oslo process, when the Palestinians were offered 97% of the West Bank and Gaza — essentially everything that Western observers insist on believing the Palestinians want."
Anyone who believed that the Palestinians had access to everything they wanted in the Oslo process is being wildly dishonest. The Palestinians wanted the territorial integrity of the West Bank to be respected, East Jerusalem, the right of return, and the right to maintain armed forces. Israel would not accept any of these. Quite possibly Israel was right to not accept any of these. But to claim that the Palestinians were offered "essentially everything they wanted" is wildly stupid.
WHY didn't Palestinians get the territorial integrity of the West Bank to be respected, East Jerusalem, the right of return, and the right to maintain armed forces?
Because they refused to make the one, single concession they were obligated to do under the process: Live in peaceful coexistence.
Commentators like you insist on believing Israel occupies the West Bank out of spite. The reality is they occupy it to prevent the mass murder of Israelis. When Palestinians are willing to live in peace with their neighbors, they will have a state.
It's really quite simple: No peace? No Palestine.
I beg to differ. Just like I no longer accept the term antisemitism when in fact it is simply Jew hatred. The “West Bank” to me is Judea and Samaria and these are Jewish lands. Keeping the Jews out of Judea is ridiculous.