What if Britain had let all the Jews of Europe into Israel in the 30s?

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There had been fighting long before that. There was the uprising of 1936, in response to the growing Israeli presence in the country .

Again same reason, an absolute refusal to compromise, something that would not happen in the POD as the Jews would not look so weak.


and the increasingly strict rules the Arabs lived under compared to the Israelis. For example, the Israelis were allowed to form their own militia and carry firearms openly, while it was a crime punishable by death for an Arab to carry an heirloom dagger..

Not true many Jews were arrested for carrying weapons, imprisoned etc


The Germans had a little something called WW2 and the Holocaust to atone for. Which, again, is something the Europeans did .

Indeed

and the Palestinians wound up paying the bill for, despite them not having a hand in it at all. If the Europeans were so bleeding heart about the Jews, why didn't any of them offer their lands as a new homeland for the Holocaust survivors? Why is it the Palestinian who is forced to give up his ancestral lands to make amends for something he didn't do?.

A strawman argument, check the dates the mandate for creating a Jewish homeland was created long before the Holocaust. Israel is not payment for the Holocaust.


You mean that big chunk of land we call 'Jordan'? Yeah, what a real privilege, being allowed to keep your land. Maybe the Pals and Jordanians can commiserate over their loss while they generously give their lands away to the European Jews, who've never been to this land for millennia.

The Israeli politicians had several opinions on this. Some radicals wanted to claim it all as "rightful Israeli land", and kick out the Jordanians too so the whole farce is applied to other Arabs. Others just wanted to dump the Palestinians there in reservations and the like, never mind they'd be tossed out of ancestral homes and places they've been living in for generations..

We are talking mandate here. Almost all of it was given probably illegally as far as the mandate is concerned to the Arabs. By the way under the Turks, Palestine did not exist, a Palestinian then meant a Jew, it still did until very modern times. Most non-Jewish Arabs in the area considered themselves Egyptians, Southern Syrians, etc.

For all its worth in biblical times much of Israel then was in Jordan.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ap.svg/1200px-12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map.svg.png


The whole point is, Germany's losses were the result of Germany's actions, and they happened after WW2, when they were too exhausted and tired to object and just wanted to rebuild. The Palestinians had every choice and issue forced on them, and when they resisted, people made them out to be the bad guys. The 1936 Revolt failed, so they tried the 1948 War. That failed, so they continued to be resentful and angry over choices they never made but were instead forced upon them..

They had choices and clearly, the Palestinians picked wrong. I think morally not just legally too but I am sure you will not agree with me there.

The point is from the point of view of this POD because Israel looked so weak, the Palestinians thought that they could win militarily.


Please stop lumping in Jordan with Palestine. It just shows ignorance of the situation on the ground. And Jordan is mostly desert, except for Irbid, Amman, and Kerak..

Until they went to war with Israel in 1967, they had a prime agricultural region in the West Bank.

Calling the West Bank and Gaza "plum areas" is insulting. Gaza is one of the most heavily populated areas in the world, almost two million people stuck in a two-by-one kilometer area, and they have no control over their borders or their harbors. Gaza was effectively isolated and dependent on Israel's goodwill, and this was before Israel and Gaza got into a prolonged cold/hot war for the past decade now. The main reason Israel wants to be rid of Gaza is because it's a demographics time bomb; ever since they conquered it in 1967, they never really managed to get it under their yoke, and they never could Hebrew-ify it because the Palestinians there breed like rabbits. They couldn't get enough settlers there, and if they keep it they'll end up buried up to their armpits in Arabs, which is severely damage the status and identity of the Israeli state..

While the West Bank is better off, it's still suffering from chunks of it being shaved off for settlements, plus a lot of the historically and religiously important areas are a bureaucratic battleground between Arab and Israeli authorities to claim as much of the Holy Land as possible. And the Israelis have by far the bigger and better budget..

This is true now but not when it was taken by the Egyptian and Jordan forces, then it was the richest part of the country, it is like they took from the USA the richest regions and left the US with the poor areas,

Another point to consider is that when Israel controlled the Gaza it was poor but it was economically blooming.

(a)
The problem is not what Israel has done in these areas but what the Palestinians have done.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/...llionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/



Because by doing so, they break the very foundation of Israel. By accepting and assimilating the Arabs, Israel goes from "Hebrew State" to "Arab-Hebrew Dual Ethnic State". And to top it off, the Arabs breed fast, so in a decade or so, it'll end up flipping over to being a Jewish minority in an Arab majority state - and into an Arab state. The Arabs will win simply by virtue of the ballot box, rendering the Israelis a minority in their own state - and that's something they created Israel to avoid.

Maybe but many countries have split because of ethnic or religious differences eg India and Pakistan, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Norway, etc. Nothing wrong with it as such. In fact, that was the plan in the mandate the Palestinian rejected.

I can't blame Israel for the shitty neighborhood, nor for the governments overseeing the camps. However, when the Palestinian living in said camps under said regimes is stopped for the 20th time for a minor suspicion by the cops who clearly don't like him and don't want him there, the mystique of a Palestinian homeland is going to be much more alluring. And by dwelling on the loss - which was forced on their parents and grandparents, by the way - they get more and more bitter about the forced handover of Palestinian territory to foreigners.

The PLO got into power because it was the only organization with any sense of organization or presence in the Palestinian territories, and it was the official representative of the Palestinians. Over time, however, it proved unable to stand up for Palestinian rights, as it was either forced to accept all Israeli demands on security and gain little back, or fight the Israeli government and get bitch-slapped down. Inevitably, the PLO is tainted as it's seen as a collaborator, and a more radical regime becomes the popular option.

Staying between other Arabs who had their own issues and weren't pleased with having to put up with them (introducing a new ethnic group to a system teeming with them doesn't improve stability), having no prospects, no choices, and having to swallow every bullshit others force on them. Like how Trump's "Deal of the Century" basically means the Pals have to eat shit and give up any claim to Jerusalem, their historic and religious ancestral capital.

Remember when Mahmoud Abbas went on Palestinian TV and started insulting Trump in what has to be the least professional action and most obvious public breakdown? It's because he knows he got fucked, hard and proper. For years, decades even, the PLO tried to show itself as "the moderate option", that working with the USA and Israel will bear fruit - only for Trump, in the most obvious Israel-pandering act possible, declares Jerusalem the sole capital of Israel, an act that previous US Presidents have been very reluctant to make to avoid angering the Arabs, and then offers the Palestinians a token amount to shut up and take it like a good bitch. Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was also recently revealed to have offered Abbas US$25M to take the deal. An act which would have destroyed any remaining credibility or legitimacy for the PLO. Abbas knows he got fucked hard, and if he accepted the cash, he would have destroyed himself as a politician. He had the rug pulled out from under him, and his years of work as the 'moderate voice' have been undone in an instant. No wonder the man's mad; he's practically desperate at this point.

It's shit like this that pisses off the Palestinians. Someone else does shit and forces them to swallow it.

Shit happens but often we create the shit we live in, the example you quote is of the Germans who elected Hitler and got shit, afterwards built themselves up and created a wonderful society. Now the society the Palestinians is shit see (a) above. It has not picked itself up and is now in almost any terms economic, social rights, democratic, etc shit.

Now let us do a thought experiment say the situation was reversed and the Jews had taken Gaza and West Bank and little else and had full access to Egypt and Jordan economically, the Arabs had what the Jews now which part do you honestly believe would be richer and which parts would people live better in.
 
Again same reason, an absolute refusal to compromise, something that would not happen in the POD as the Jews would not look so weak.
Because the general feeling is, their lands were taken forcibly by them and given to foreigners who had no right to it. You're still thinking "Kaliningrad". Try "Native American". I doubt the Apaches, Sioux, Iroquois and what have you feel that they need to "get over" what's been done to them. Especially since they've lost everything in the process.
Not true many Jews were arrested for carrying weapons, imprisoned etc
And yet, while the British favored the Arabs, it was because the latter was a nice amenable servant race. The 1936 riots were seen as "Oriental irrationality", rather than, you know, a desire for liberty and for the British to stop bringing in Europeans to settle their land against the local's wishes. Arabs were more harshly policed, and according to one policeman, "most accidents out here are caused by police as running over an Arab is the same as a dog in England except that we do not report it."

https://www.meforum.org/1251/mandate-days-british-lives-in-palestine-1918-1948

Israel may not have caused this atmosphere, but it certainly continued it. Starting in 1985, Yitzhak Shamir engaged in an "Iron Fist" policy of curfews, deportations, home demolitions, and harsh countermeasures intended to enforce a status quo of de facto annexation. Needless to say, it backfired, resulting in the 1987 Intifada that raged on for several years and well up to the 1990s peace talks. Even before that, Israel had a habit of forced land confiscation without recompense, curfews, expanding settlements, and assorted acts aiming to force the population to heel. Such acts do not endear you to the locals, it only puts everything inside of a pressure cooker until it erupts.
A strawman argument, check the dates the mandate for creating a Jewish homeland was created long before the Holocaust. Israel is not payment for the Holocaust.
The Balfour Declaration predates the Holocaust, and is generally seen as the start of the loss of Palestine to a tide of Jewish settlers. It was done, again, in response to European antisemitism, as there was still a strong wave of dislike for the Jews, so the British government set about trying to give them their own lands - which, btw, was at the expense of the native people.

It's not even the first time Britain pulled this. Check the history of the Tamil in Sri Lanka, and the history of ethnic strife in Fiji. Both continued long after Britain left. Israel just had more guns.
We are talking mandate here. Almost all of it was given probably illegally as far as the mandate is concerned to the Arabs. By the way under the Turks, Palestine did not exist, a Palestinian then meant a Jew, it still did until very modern times. Most non-Jewish Arabs in the area considered themselves Egyptians, Southern Syrians, etc.
The historic territory of Palestine is clearly defined, even if it was part of the Levant. While the current national identities of nations are the result of colonial powers divvying up nations between them, there is still a strong element of it in local identities. While such divisions were initially artificial, time and habit made them very real. Also, prior to 1900, there were very few Jews living in Palestine.
For all its worth in biblical times much of Israel then was in Jordan.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ap.svg/1200px-12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map.svg.png
Still not an argument for kicking out the Jordanians too. I also notice said territory also covers South Lebanon, which Israel invaded and occupied in 1982 until it withdrew in 2000. Due to the iron-handed Israeli control of the area, they only ended up strengthening opposition to their presence, resulting in their embarrassing history with Hezbollah.

Somehow, I don't think throwing the Jordanians on the pile would have made things better. And to be honest, that's not worth much; Israel lost all its territory there millennia ago at the hands of the Romans and other local powers, something which happened before the Arabs moved in and settled the place in earnest. Why should the Arabs pay for something they didn't do (in regards to the loss of traditional Israeli territory)?
They had choices and clearly, the Palestinians picked wrong. I think morally not just legally too but I am sure you will not agree with me there.

The point is from the point of view of this POD because Israel looked so weak, the Palestinians thought that they could win militarily.
For most of the struggle, it was not the Palestinians who fought the wars with Israel. The 1936 Riots were crushed by the British, and those were for desires of liberty and "occupier go home". The 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars were between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries. The Palestinians engaged in guerrilla warfare post-1976, when it was clear the other Arab states were no longer interested in fighting Israel. By then, of course, Israel looked far from 'weak', but they kept trying.

And whatever ethics and morals the PLO had, the original delivery of Arab lands to the Jews was illegal. It's a handover of territory against the locals' wishes to other people, done by an occupying power by force of arms and military superiority, and a complete disregard for the well-being of the native populace.
Until they went to war with Israel in 1967, they had a prime agricultural region in the West Bank.
Which is slowly being eroded by Israeli seizures, expanding settlements, and increasing "Security measures" that strips the Arabs of the land without compensation or redress.
This is true now but not when it was taken by the Egyptian and Jordan forces, then it was the richest part of the country, it is like they took from the USA the richest regions and left the US with the poor areas,
This is blatantly untrue. Jaffa (where Tel Aviv is now) up to Haifa is prime growing territory for fruits and other agricultural goods. The Gallilee lowlands are also similarly rich growing territory, and much of North Palestine is good farmland. And while Egypt and Jordan took the remaining Palestinian territory according to the 1948 decision, they lost that land not 17 years later, effectively giving Israel everything from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

If you're talking desert, that's in the Negev desert down south. And yet Eilat is still a good fishing spot and trade center.
Another point to consider is that when Israel controlled the Gaza it was poor but it was economically blooming.
But not for the Palestinians, who were merely paid laborers and workers on Israeli farms, and the economy was generally stifled if you weren't an Israeli. Again, deportations, stifling bureaucratic red tape, limits on the size of Palestinian farmlands due to seizures and inheritance issues, and so on.
(a)
The problem is not what Israel has done in these areas but what the Palestinians have done.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/...llionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/
While there is corruption endemic to the system, bear in mind these people took over in 2004. The Palestinian issues date from well before that, and the issues during the PLO leadership stemmed from a) corruption and b) continuous kowtowing to Israeli security demands at the cost of national pride and self-respect.

Your argument is that they brought it upon themselves. My argument is that this has been building up for years and decades prior, and pointing out to such issues doesn't absolve the Israelis of their mistakes. And Israel continues to punish them for it, as was seen with the recent exchange of fire between the two. And really, who's the guy on the ground going to blame? His people, or the asshole in the plane dropping the bombs on him and his family?

The Allies of WW1 did a similar mistake; blamed Germany for WW1 while conveniently ignoring their own complicity in the lead-up to the war. No wonder the Germans were more than a little miffed, paving the way for radicals to take over.
Maybe but many countries have split because of ethnic or religious differences eg India and Pakistan, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Norway, etc. Nothing wrong with it as such. In fact, that was the plan in the mandate the Palestinian rejected.
For most of those countries, the ethnic divides were created after centuries of ethnic lines shifting and changing, but there are lines to be followed generally. The Palestinian mandate was artificial because all the territory was Palestinian until forced Jewish settlements were made, first by the British then by the Israelis.
Shit happens but often we create the shit we live in, the example you quote is of the Germans who elected Hitler and got shit, afterwards built themselves up and created a wonderful society. Now the society the Palestinians is shit see (a) above. It has not picked itself up and is now in almost any terms economic, social rights, democratic, etc shit.
Sure. Hand over several billions of dollars in a Marshall program, anyone can make that work. The US oversaw where every single dollar went, so without it going to corruption, it would work.
Now let us do a thought experiment say the situation was reversed and the Jews had taken Gaza and West Bank and little else and had full access to Egypt and Jordan economically, the Arabs had what the Jews now which part do you honestly believe would be richer and which parts would people live better in.
The Israelis, on account of the massive amounts of guilt money, weapons, and international support post-1948. And they would have not settled for just those lands, but tried to take everything else in the country.

This does not relate to the question of "why should the Palestinians bury the hatchet". They've been getting kicked around for decades, and when they finally think they're going to get a state, it comes with so many strings attached it's less a country and more a marionette show.
 
You do not answer my questions but inventing new ones of your own so unless you present something brilliant, this is my last response to you on this question. Besides, there are many better-placed places on the net you can discuss these questions.

Because the general feeling is, their lands were taken forcibly by them and given to foreigners who had no right to it. You're still thinking "Kaliningrad". Try "Native American". I doubt the Apaches, Sioux, Iroquois and what have you feel that they need to "get over" what's been done to them. Especially since they've lost everything in the process.

The American Indians have gotten over it. How many American Indians wars have there been in the 21st Century? It is bad but they have moved on.



And yet, while the British favored the Arabs, it was because the latter was a nice amenable servant race. The 1936 riots were seen as "Oriental irrationality", rather than, you know, a desire for liberty and for the British to stop bringing in Europeans to settle their land against the local's wishes. Arabs were more harshly policed, and according to one policeman, "most accidents out here are caused by police as running over an Arab is the same as a dog in England except that we do not report it."

https://www.meforum.org/1251/mandate-days-british-lives-in-palestine-1918-1948

Israel may not have caused this atmosphere, but it certainly continued it. Starting in 1985, Yitzhak Shamir engaged in an "Iron Fist" policy of curfews, deportations, home demolitions, and harsh countermeasures intended to enforce a status quo of de facto annexation. Needless to say, it backfired, resulting in the 1987 Intifada that raged on for several years and well up to the 1990s peace talks. Even before that, Israel had a habit of forced land confiscation without recompense, curfews, expanding settlements, and assorted acts aiming to force the population to heel. Such acts do not endear you to the locals, it only puts everything inside of a pressure cooker until it erupts..

Since the Jews were not doing the rebelling its not much of an argument and since Shamir in 1985, came much later than 1936, it is irrelevant.


The Balfour Declaration predates the Holocaust, and is generally seen as the start of the loss of Palestine to a tide of Jewish settlers. It was done, again, in response to European antisemitism, as there was still a strong wave of dislike for the Jews, so the British government set about trying to give them their own lands - which, btw, was at the expense of the native people..

So the Holocaust is irrelevant too to your arguments, the lands were not promised because of the Holocaust.

It's not even the first time Britain pulled this. Check the history of the Tamil in Sri Lanka, and the history of ethnic strife in Fiji. Both continued long after Britain left. Israel just had more guns..

Israel did not have more guns, in fact, they had very few that is why the Arabs went to war against them when the British pulled out. As I keep saying changing the military balance as this POD would do would stop the wars.


The historic territory of Palestine is clearly defined, even if it was part of the Levant..

As the historical maps, I showed it clearly was not clearly defined.

While the current national identities of nations are the result of colonial powers divvying up nations between them, there is still a strong element of it in local identities. While such divisions were initially artificial, time and habit made them very real. Also, prior to 1900, there were very few Jews living in Palestine..


There not many Arabs there then either.
https://zionismandisrael.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/mark-twain-in-the-holy-land/

Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:

“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

He was amazed by the smallness of the city of Jerusalem:

“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.”

There was also in the 1930s no ethnic difference between Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinian. They all considered themselves Arabs, spoke the same language, ate the same foods, most of them were the same Muslims, etc.

Still not an argument for kicking out the Jordanians too. I also notice said territory also covers South Lebanon, which Israel invaded and occupied in 1982 until it withdrew in 2000. Due to the iron-handed Israeli control of the area, they only ended up strengthening opposition to their presence, resulting in their embarrassing history with Hezbollah.

There were no Jordanians then, Jordan is a British creation. Lebanon is a French creation.


Somehow, I don't think throwing the Jordanians on the pile would have made things better. And to be honest, that's not worth much; Israel lost all its territory there millennia ago at the hands of the Romans and other local powers, something which happened before the Arabs moved in and settled the place in earnest. Why should the Arabs pay for something they didn't do (in regards to the loss of traditional Israeli territory)?

Actually, it was the Arab invaders, not the Romans that drove out the Jews, they did out of many other countries too.

For most of the struggle, it was not the Palestinians who fought the wars with Israel. The 1936 Riots were crushed by the British, and those were for desires of liberty and "occupier go home". The 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars were between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries. The Palestinians engaged in guerrilla warfare post-1976, when it was clear the other Arab states were no longer interested in fighting Israel. By then, of course, Israel looked far from 'weak', but they kept trying.

In 1948, it was the Palestinians, that started the wars. The Palestinians have always taken an active part in these campaigns.

And whatever ethics and morals the PLO had, the original delivery of Arab lands to the Jews was illegal. It's a handover of territory against the locals' wishes to other people, done by an occupying power by force of arms and military superiority, and a complete disregard for the well-being of the native populace.

Even if true, it does not make the act illegal. By the way, the land was never Arab, the land was owned before Israel by the British mandate and before that by the Turkish government. There is and never has been much private property in the region. What you can say is that before the Israeli owned it, the British government owned the land and before that the Turkish government.

Which is slowly being eroded by Israeli seizures, expanding settlements, and increasing "Security measures" that strips the Arabs of the land without compensation or redress.

I always say if the Arabs compensated Jews for what they took from them, the Palestinians could be paid out of petty cash.

This is blatantly untrue. Jaffa (where Tel Aviv is now) up to Haifa is prime growing territory for fruits and other agricultural goods. The Gallilee lowlands are also similarly rich growing territory, and much of North Palestine is good farmland. And while Egypt and Jordan took the remaining Palestinian territory according to the 1948 decision, they lost that land not 17 years later, effectively giving Israel everything from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

If you're talking desert, that's in the Negev desert down south. And yet Eilat is still a good fishing spot and trade center..

This is now, then it was all very poor and I mean really poor, several Polish Jews coming to the region in the 1930s reported that Poland was very poor but this area was much poorer still.

But not for the Palestinians, who were merely paid laborers and workers on Israeli farms, and the economy was generally stifled if you weren't an Israeli. Again, deportations, stifling bureaucratic red tape, limits on the size of Palestinian farmlands due to seizures and inheritance issues, and so on..

There was nothing stopping Arabs from going into business, when I was in Gaza then I often went to Arab owned businesses.

While there is corruption endemic to the system, bear in mind these people took over in 2004. The Palestinian issues date from well before that, and the issues during the PLO leadership stemmed from a) corruption and b) continuous kowtowing to Israeli security demands at the cost of national pride and self-respect.

Indeed there is much corruption in the Palestinian areas and believe me when you go there "you must continuous kowtowing to Palestinian security demands at the cost of national pride and self-respect."


Your argument is that they brought it upon themselves. My argument is that this has been building up for years and decades prior, and pointing out to such issues doesn't absolve the Israelis of their mistakes. And Israel continues to punish them for it, as was seen with the recent exchange of fire between the two. And really, who's the guy on the ground going to blame? His people, or the asshole in the plane dropping the bombs on him and his family? .

There is a big moral difference between the terrorist and the security forces, you should know that.

The Allies of WW1 did a similar mistake; blamed Germany for WW1 while conveniently ignoring their own complicity in the lead-up to the war. No wonder the Germans were more than a little miffed, paving the way for radicals to take over.

So you blame Hitler on the Allies in ww1? Some truth in that but I would argue that even so, it does not excuse the Germans who voted Hitler into power.


For most of those countries, the ethnic divides were created after centuries of ethnic lines shifting and changing, but there are lines to be followed generally. The Palestinian mandate was artificial because all the territory was Palestinian until forced Jewish settlements were made, first by the British then by the Israelis.

Sure. Hand over several billions of dollars in a Marshall program, anyone can make that work. The US oversaw where every single dollar went, so without it going to corruption, it would work.

The Israelis, on account of the massive amounts of guilt money, weapons, and international support post-1948. And they would have not settled for just those lands, but tried to take everything else in the country.

This does not relate to the question of "why should the Palestinians bury the hatchet". They've been getting kicked around for decades, and when they finally think they're going to get a state, it comes with so many strings attached it's less a country and more a marionette show.

Even if true, see my example of Germany, the same is true of much of Eastern Europe, the American Indians that you quoted about and I am sure you can think of many other examples.
 
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Actually the same came be said of the Palestinians, with there refusal to accept anything, and after the UN voted to create Israel, it was the Palestinians that started the fighting in open warfare. If they had not gone to war, they would have most the area of Israel now.
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Yeah certainly only Palestinian attacking Jews yep, definitely.

And the UN didn't exactly ask the Palestinians did they or protect them when the nascent Israel stopped saying please and thank you when taking their land. Picture it this way if the UN says to where you live that sorry you are giving up your land and vacating your homes and business to allow a bunch of people form elsewhere it move in you'd be fine with that more importantly your wider population would be fine?

Why should the Palestinians have accepted the creation of a new country over theirs?


Again same reason, an absolute refusal to compromise, .
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See above, but more importantly you don't think Palestinian have compromised, I suggest you look at the pre 1948 borders
 
See above, but more importantly you don't think Palestinian have compromised, I suggest you look at the pre 1948 borders
I seem to recall that the surrounding Arabs attacked immediately over those borders, with some in Egypt and the Arab League extolling the concept of driving all the Jews into the Sea.
 
Prior to 1918-1920 there were no countries in the "Middle East", with the exception of Persia/Iran. In North Africa you had Egypt and Morocco which were semi-independent, the rest was either Ottoman Empire divided in to administrative districts much like any other country with internal administrative divisions or some imperial/colonialareas. Along the rim of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea there were a few really small Emirates. WWI ended the Ottoman Empire and the UK and France drew lines somewhat based on Ottoman administrative lines and created Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Palestine, Iraq and defined the limits of Saudi Arabia and the small states along the edges of the Arabian Peninsula. Between WWII and the 1960s, you had independence for the area, including North Africa where the equally "artificial" countries of Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria came in to being. The point being that over a period of 100+ years the current boundaries in the "Arab world" were created by a combination of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the picking up of the pieces by various colonial powers. Also remember that the Ottomans were NOT Arabs (call a modern Turk an Arab and he/she will be pissed off) although they were Sunni Muslims and the Sultan was the titular Caliph. The Ottomans were as much an imperialist/colonialist power as the British, French, or Italians and controlled the area for much longer (centuries rather than decades).

It is also worth noting that the number of Jews expelled or "encouraged" to leave from Arab countries after 1947/48 is more or less equal to the number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. We are talking about the original refugees not their descendants here. Without going in to the morality of population exchanges, no matter how conducted, the movement of Germans out of the Sudetenland and Western Poland, Poles from what is no part of Byelorussia or Ukraine, Finns out of Karelia, Hindus/Muslims after Indian independence and more all as a result of conflicts of one sort or another since 1939. Shall we talk about the Greeks of Anatolia after WWI, or the Armenians. The situation in Palestine/Israel is by no means unique.

Here's an interesting point, historically speaking if you lose a war there is usually some sort of penalty applied, you don't get to take a Mulligan. This is something one should take in to account before you start a war. If we confine ourselves to the 20th century we see Germany (after two wars) lost core territory, Austria-Hungary did after WWI, the Ottomans, the mess of the Balkan Wars and shifting lines, the Japanese, and others. I have not seen anyone suggest Poland give back parts it took from Germany after both world wars, Russia give back territory acquired from several folks following WWII and more.

Just some facts, from the real world we live in the not perfect one that does not and never will exist. Remember what Platosaid, "only the dead have seen the end of war." Sad but true.
 
The American Indians have gotten over it. How many American Indians wars have there been in the 21st Century? It is bad but they have moved on.
"Gotten over it" in terms of "stopped fighting the clearly superior invader"? That they did, over a century ago.
"Gotten over it" in the sense of "stopped being bitter about living in reservations with Third World living status in the middle of one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world"? I'm going with "no".
Since the Jews were not doing the rebelling its not much of an argument and since Shamir in 1985, came much later than 1936, it is irrelevant.
The original argument was that the Palestinians never had the chance to "Get over it". From 1919, when the British took over Palestine, to 1987, things never got better for them. They never got their own state, they repeatedly got treated as scenery rather than people, and they have repeatedly been ignored in favor of a nation with bigger friends. No, they are not "getting over it", they were never given a chance, and quite frankly, I don't see how they could.
So the Holocaust is irrelevant too to your arguments, the lands were not promised because of the Holocaust.
They were not promised because of the Holocaust, but the crux of this thread, if you'd bother to remember, is that the Palestinians should have just rolled over and given 9 million Jews their land. And the Holocaust was, without a doubt, the single biggest catalyst for giving the Jews their own ethnic nation-state homeland. The Balfour Declaration was the precursor, but the Holocaust effectively cemented the existence of Israel by making it hard to act against it.
Israel did not have more guns, in fact, they had very few that is why the Arabs went to war against them when the British pulled out. As I keep saying changing the military balance as this POD would do would stop the wars.
Lehi, Haganah, Palmach, Irgun, etc... several Jewish militias existed in Palestine as far back as the 1920s, and they were heavily armed and trained to the point that the British used them to crush the Arab revolt of 1936.

And after WW2, European Jews, many of whom were members of armed resistance forces against the Nazis. Many brought their guns with them.

I would hardly call Israel "poorly armed", even back then.
There not many Arabs there then either.
https://zionismandisrael.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/mark-twain-in-the-holy-land/

Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:

“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

He was amazed by the smallness of the city of Jerusalem:

“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

You might want to read that rather than quote a writer who gives no numbers. Palestine was poorly populated because it was an non-industrial territory in the 19th century and backwards medicine. Twain is an excellent writer, but his job isn't to give a proper census. By the numbers given, the Arabs, especially the Muslims, were the majority population of the Palestine region prior to WW1. That is the crux of the issue.

Also, note that it didn't have the infrastructure to support more than a couple millions, so the OP post about sending 9 million Jews there would have been insanity. Unless you want to take Jordan too - and Jordan was even worse at the same time. Hell, we barely have room for 9 million people today.
There was also in the 1930s no ethnic difference between Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinian. They all considered themselves Arabs, spoke the same language, ate the same foods, most of them were the same Muslims, etc.

There were no Jordanians then, Jordan is a British creation. Lebanon is a French creation.
Except the differences persist, and are rather marked today. While Arabs will commiserate with other Arabs, Beirut and Amman have little desire to become a new homeland for the Palestinians. These differences were created by colonial powers, true, but they have caused far deeper divides than can be healed properly. Citizens of Tyre and Kerak may sympathize with refugees from Al-Llod and Hebron, but they have little desire to accommodate them in their house. And thus the refugees still have nothing.
Actually, it was the Arab invaders, not the Romans that drove out the Jews, they did out of many other countries too.
There's a difference between the Neo-Babylonian Empire of 600BC and the Arab expansion of post 600AD, by about 1,200 years. While they're both Middle Eastern cultures, there is a considerable gap between them.

Furthermore, check your history, buster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...re#Dispersion_of_the_Jews_in_the_Roman_Empire
Your knowledge of history is seriously under doubt.

And furthermore, the Arabs didn't kick people out. The Farsis still live in Iran. The Berbers populate North Africa as they always did. Spain remained majority Spanish. The Muslim empires at no point engaged in massive ethnic cleansing the way the Romans did if they ran into troublesome tribes.
In 1948, it was the Palestinians, that started the wars. The Palestinians have always taken an active part in these campaigns.
Which they considered a matter of right. It's their homeland, why shouldn't they fight for it? Or just roll over for the Israelis and take it in the ass?
Even if true, it does not make the act illegal. By the way, the land was never Arab, the land was owned before Israel by the British mandate and before that by the Turkish government. There is and never has been much private property in the region. What you can say is that before the Israeli owned it, the British government owned the land and before that the Turkish government.
And before the Ottoman Empire came down - you know the 'Turkish' government - the Mamelukes (an Arab dynasty) ruled it, and before that were the Ayyubids (Kurdish dynasty, but ruled through an Arab majority), and before that came the Umayyad Caliphate and the Rashidun.

Between them, I'd say the Arabs owned the land for over 800 years. A lot longer than the Turks, and certainly a fuckload longer than the British.

And the Balfour Declaration was made in 1917, while they were still fighting in the Middle East. They didn't even control the land they were going to give away, for crying out loud.
I always say if the Arabs compensated Jews for what they took from them, the Palestinians could be paid out of petty cash.
While the Holocaust is undeniably one of the greatest tragedies of human history, this is clearly taking the piss by belittling the suffering of others, just because they're not people you care for.
This is now, then it was all very poor and I mean really poor, several Polish Jews coming to the region in the 1930s reported that Poland was very poor but this area was much poorer still.
That land was historically very fertile and good for growth. As I said, it's a distinct lack of infrastructure and poor medical technology that kept the Palestinian territories population at around 2 million prior to the creation of Israel. Poland had centuries of infrastructure and historically more developed lands. Palestine lost most of its infrastructure with the decay of the Muslim empires between the Mamelukes and the fall of the Ottomans.

The Jews being poor in Poland is because they were generally regarded as the scum of the earth, forced to live in ghettos and despised by the Polish population. Hell, some Poles were eager to let Hitler in because they thought he'd rid them of their Jew problem. It's about then he made it clear he also had a "Poland problem" he intended to solve.
There was nothing stopping Arabs from going into business, when I was in Gaza then I often went to Arab owned businesses.
No rules preventing it, certainly, but the biggest business and corporations were clearly the Israeli-run ones. The ones with bigger capital and international markets.
Indeed there is much corruption in the Palestinian areas and believe me when you go there "you must continuous kowtowing to Palestinian security demands at the cost of national pride and self-respect."
And you wonder why the Palestinians are still bitter?
There is a big moral difference between the terrorist and the security forces, you should know that.
That is one of the biggest, most morally complex and utterly unanswerable question of the 20th and 21st century. One can argue the Americans who made hit-and-run attacks on the British during the American Revolutionary War were terrorists. And there is such a thing as state terrorism.

That is all I'll say on the subject.
[quote]So you blame Hitler on the Allies in ww1? Some truth in that but I would argue that even so, it does not excuse the Germans who voted Hitler into power.[/quote]
It was certainly a factor in his rise.
http://theconversation.com/world-wa...y-of-versailles-for-the-rise-of-hitler-106373

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/war_end_01.shtml

https://www.theholocaustexplained.o...he-effects-of-the-first-world-war-on-germany/

While I would admit the majority of the blame lies on those who helped Hitler rise to power (which would be the Junkers and people like Franz von Papen, who helped Hitler because they thought they could control him, NOT the Germans - only 40% of the Germans voted for him, and he would have lost the next election had the Reichstag fire not happened), the Allies aren't blameless. Not to mention that up until 1938, they considered the fascist forces in Germany as a natural counterbalance to the rising red tide in the USSR.
Even if true, see my example of Germany, the same is true of much of Eastern Europe, the American Indians that you quoted about and I am sure you can think of many other examples.
And yet there are several hotspots in the world where the locals kept fighting to retain their ancestral homelands. The Rohinga and the Karen in Burma, the Vietnamese independence movement from the French, Algeria's independence from France, the decolonization movement... If those guys had just "gotten over it" and accepted foreign rule, I doubt it would have gone very well for them. In fact the Karen are still very much alive because they refuse to roll over and die. France regarded Algeria as rightful French territory, but it was eventually forced to accept that in the end, the Algerians have a right to self-rule, and not have some arrogant nanny from Paris decide what's best for them.

The Native Americans are still up shit creek without a paddle, but hey, if they've gotten over their centuries of humiliation and loss, good for them. For all the good it does them.
 
The Israel/Jewish Palestine conundrum is further complicated because it has it's roots in an ethnic cleansing/population dispersion undertaken by the Roman Empire nearly 2000 years ago. You may well ask is that historic event relevant to todays situation, yes it is, for to a Jew, the Palestine Arab is a squatter on their historic homeland.
Now presumption of a birthright to the land gives a fundamental underpinning to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, at least in Jewish circles. It does not matter whether this claim is in any way valid. What is important to modern politics is that it, along with the Holocaust it empowers the modern Israeli political apparatus to do what ever it thinks it has to do for the "security of Israel and the Jewish People'.
As to the POD, flooding Palestine with millions of Jewish immigrants/refugees in the 1930's would IMVHO have resulted in a bloody civil war/uprising which would have made the invade seem tame. The last thing the British Government wanted was to have "their boys' being "piggy in the Middle" of such a conflict. So it was very much in the British interests at the time to invoke the terms of the mandate and limit Jewish immigration.

Please note, I am not taking sides or advocating the rights of one Racial group or another, I am simply trying to shed light on an historically generated humanitarian problem.
 
I seem to recall that the surrounding Arabs attacked immediately over those borders, with some in Egypt and the Arab League extolling the concept of driving all the Jews into the Sea.

Good thing I was talking about the Palestinians then isn't it?


Arabs =/= Palestinians (certainly not in the context of who invaded Israel)

Interesting that when thinking of Isreal's Borders your mind went straight to the Syrian and Egyptian borders though ;)
 
The Israel/Jewish Palestine conundrum is further complicated because it has it's roots in an ethnic cleansing/population dispersion undertaken by the Roman Empire nearly 2000 years ago. You may well ask is that historic event relevant to todays situation, yes it is, for to a Jew, the Palestine Arab is a squatter on their historic homeland.
Now presumption of a birthright to the land gives a fundamental underpinning to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, at least in Jewish circles. It does not matter whether this claim is in any way valid. What is important to modern politics is that it, along with the Holocaust it empowers the modern Israeli political apparatus to do what ever it thinks it has to do for the "security of Israel and the Jewish People'.
As to the POD, flooding Palestine with millions of Jewish immigrants/refugees in the 1930's would IMVHO have resulted in a bloody civil war/uprising which would have made the invade seem tame. The last thing the British Government wanted was to have "their boys' being "piggy in the Middle" of such a conflict. So it was very much in the British interests at the time to invoke the terms of the mandate and limit Jewish immigration.

Please note, I am not taking sides or advocating the rights of one Racial group or another, I am simply trying to shed light on an historically generated humanitarian problem.
This is... pretty much spot on. Said squatter's been there for centuries, and wasn't involved in the ejection of the Jews, but then again, the Jews need a homeland too, especially after what's happened to them.

Also, Britain set up Israel as a way to ensure its continued influence in the region. Create a little ethnic tension to have the locals keep calling for British help. It backfired when they were forced to leave the Middle East and leave a stronger, revitalized Zionist movement.

Plus, as I mentioned above, Palestine barely had 2 million people in 1948. Having 9 million people show up in 1938 would have utterly destroyed the infrastructure and balance of the system. Probably have ended in a region-wide conflict.
 
Yeah certainly only Palestinian attacking Jews yep, definitely.

And the UN didn't exactly ask the Palestinians did they or protect them when the nascent Israel stopped saying please and thank you when taking their land. Picture it this way if the UN says to where you live that sorry you are giving up your land and vacating your homes and business to allow a bunch of people form elsewhere it move in you'd be fine with that more importantly your wider population would be fine?

Why should the Palestinians have accepted the creation of a new country over theirs?




See above, but more importantly you don't think Palestinian have compromised, I suggest you look at the pre 1948 borders

The UN did appoint an enquiry and they did ask everyone involved to speak up. Nor did it at the end ask the Palestinians have accepted the creation of a new country over theirs, it called for two states. I do not see how looking at the pre 1948 border shows anything.
 
The Israel/Jewish Palestine conundrum is further complicated because it has it's roots in an ethnic cleansing/population dispersion undertaken by the Roman Empire nearly 2000 years ago.
.

Arab actually, we know from archeology that the Romans did not depopulate the area and the area was largely Jewish till the Arabs arrived.

The last thing the British Government wanted was to have "their boys' being "piggy in the Middle" of such a conflict. So it was very much in the British interests at the time to invoke the terms of the mandate and limit Jewish immigration. .

Which brings back to the problem that by its actions the British violated the mandate terms which is ultimately why the lost so badly in 1947 in the UN.
 
Interesting that when thinking of Isreal's Borders your mind went straight to the Syrian and Egyptian borders though ;)

Under late Ottoman control, was administered as part of the Vilayet of Syria(and the 1888 split of that into the Vilayet of Beirut), plus the Sanjak of Nablus and Acre, excepting the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, after that was separated from the Vilayet of Syria in 1872, and placed under direct Imperial Control.
Before the 1870s, it really just was considered 'Southern Syria'
Palestine was a Byzantine invention that went away with them.
 
Under late Ottoman control, was administered as part of the Vilayet of Syria(and the 1888 split of that into the Vilayet of Beirut), plus the Sanjak of Nablus and Acre, excepting the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, after that was separated from the Vilayet of Syria in 1872, and placed under direct Imperial Control.
Before the 1870s, it really just was considered 'Southern Syria'
Palestine was a Byzantine invention that went away with them.

I think the Palestinians (or if you like those people who at that time where calling themselves that but had been there as an ongoing population for a lot longer than that) might argue it was still about in some form given they were still there

But OK if we're going with Palestine wasn't really thing because it had only been around since the 1870's what does that mean for Israel (or even Judea as some like call bit of the OT) which hadn't been around for considerably longer?
 
Arab actually, we know from archeology that the Romans did not depopulate the area and the area was largely Jewish till the Arabs arrived.
.

You got a cite for that claim? I know the story is the area was Jewish until it wasn't, but the reality is the area has been a mix of people for a very long time the Jews being one of many groups. (our God has given us this lovely empty land form this point until forever is an oft heard refrain but seldom a true one)
 
The UN did appoint an enquiry and they did ask everyone involved to speak up..


Yes and the Palestinian opinion were put in place yes?



Nor did it at the end ask the Palestinians have accepted the creation of a new country over theirs, it called for two states..


yes and how did that end up, and how well has the UN manged to keep that initial two states thing going.

I do not see how looking at the pre 1948 border shows anything.

That was the joke there wasn't any, so any Creation of a new state is functionally a compromise for the Palestinians who were already there in Palestinian, so i'd say they compromised plenty.
 
This is... pretty much spot on. Said squatter's been there for centuries, and wasn't involved in the ejection of the Jews,


Can you define squatter, even better can you apply your definition of squatter and rightful owner to the rest of the world and what it might mean for who get's kicked out of where. That's assuming your definitions doesn't hinge on Jewish or not in the Levant


you have to be bit careful with this squatters idea even if Churchill would have agreed when discussing a Jewish homeland during the Peel commission

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place

(Extra irony points for Winny given the language some have used about Jews down the centuries)

but then again, the Jews need a homeland too, especially after what's happened to them.
.

Only unless were going to find an unclaimed bit of virgin wilderness who's going to give up a bit of there's to make it, shall we ask for volunteers? Show of hands.... what no takers, funny that?

So let's be clear what you actually mean here is the Jews need a homeland over and above the wishes of the people who might be living in the bit they choose.


I agree it all would have been so much easier If only that old claim that Palestine was empty just waiting for the return of it's absentee owners was true, but it's not
 
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You got a cite for that claim? I know the story is the area was Jewish until it wasn't, but the reality is the area has been a mix of people for a very long time the Jews being one of many groups.
Most of the Jews (and Samaritans, don't forget them) had been dispersed and/or converted to Christianity when the Byzantine Palaestina Prima and Secunda were taken by the Sassanids and their Arab allies, the Lakhmids, briefly retaken, and lost for good under the first Caliphate.

Then some ethnic cleansing as we would call it today, with settlers from the Arabian Tribes filling in and the preexisting population of Christians and Jews converting over the following Centuries.
 
Yes and the Palestinian opinion were put in place yes?

They got a very good deal, many Palestinians I have spoken too have told me they should have taken it. So do most Israeli, I have spoken too.


yes and how did that end up,

The Arabs grabbed most land set aside for the Palestinians, with the Palestinian agreement and help and then the Arab governments kept the land they conquered for themselves. A Palestinian state could have been established anytime up to the 1967 war, without Israel at all. The reasons why it was not are interesting.

and how well has the UN manged to keep that initial two states thing going.

We now have three states Gaza, West Bank and Israel, you could say its worked out not as well as it should have though.

That was the joke there wasn't any, so any Creation of a new state is functionally a compromise for the Palestinians who were already there in Palestinian, so i'd say they compromised plenty.

Not much of a joke, the Palestinians did not compromise at all, like a gambler in a casino that goes double or nothing, that is why like so many such gamblers they ended out so badly but that is mainly their own fault.
 
You got a cite for that claim? I know the story is the area was Jewish until it wasn't, but the reality is the area has been a mix of people for a very long time the Jews being one of many groups. (our God has given us this lovely empty land form this point until forever is an oft heard refrain but seldom a true one)

Start off here.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History...in_the_Land_of_Israel#/Middle_Ages_(636–1517)

It was depopulated many times deliberately and it very depopulated in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:

“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

He was amazed by the smallness of the city of Jerusalem:

“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.”
 
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