What would a Palestinian state have looked like?

In that war, Israel did almost all the ethnic cleansing, expelling 90% of the non-Jewish Palestinians in the territory they controlled, amounting to almost one million people. Israel didn't go on to expel the remaining 10% once they decided to stick to what became the final armistice lines.

Nonsense. Tell me on all the Christian Palestinians the Israelis cleansed. They were around 8% of the population before, and after 1948

But all of the Arab States kicked out their Jews after 1948, and that well over was over 90% effective
 
They were allowed and did assimilate in Jordan.

Partially. Of the over 2 million Palestinians registered as refugees with UNWRA (and so are at least partially non-assimilated), a third still do not have citizenship, after 3-4 generations in Jordan. It is estimated that perhaps over half of Jordan's population is Palestinian, though! Until recently, Palestinians were not allowed in government or the civil service, and they remain highly underrepresented.

EDIT: Also, what does that have to do with a potential Palestinian state in 1948?
 
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oberdada

Gone Fishin'
So what about the British organising a referendum on this plan?

Exiting the Jewish State, because there already was a proto-state in place, but stay for while in the Arab state to do nation building?

A population exchange, as happened between India as Pakistan. But with less victims, especially since the distances are a lot shorter.



Eventually it is very likely that Egypt, Jordan and Libanon ( maybe also Syria) will grab Land.

Jerusalem becomes totally International, gets its own protection force and the UN moves there.

Arab Jaffa becomes a city state, mixture of OTL Hong Kong and Dubai.


(Just some crazy ideas)
 
Actually there have been several court cases in Israel on this question. The figure is much less then 90%. The evidence is that these non-Jewish Palestinians left before the Israeli army arrived. There is an interesting diary of a Palestinian mayor that is well worth reading on this question what he talks about is the breakup of society even before the British left, the lack of public utilities, food shortages etc and the fact that many Palestinians had relatives outside of Palestine.

However, what is clearly indisputable is that ethnic cleansing was practised by the Arab governments after the war and still to this day by these Arab governments and the Palestinians.

http://jcpa.org/article/the-jewish-exodus-from-arab-landstoward-redressing-injustices-on-all-sides/

Nonsense. Tell me on all the Christian Palestinians the Israelis cleansed. They were around 8% of the population before, and after 1948

But all of the Arab States kicked out their Jews after 1948, and that well over was over 90% effective

It was 800,000 people, around 90% of the pre-war non-Jewish population. In that war, it was the Israelis who carried out the ethnic cleansing. The evidence is that non-Jewish Palestinians left to avoid being forcibly kicked out and possibly killed in the process, having heard what happened to those who didn't leave ahead of the Jewish militia and paramilitary groups in the civil war, and the same with later Israeli forces during the 1947 - 48 war. This is indisputably an ethnic cleansing, we have evidence it was planned and carried out from Israeli sources, and demographics show the results, a 90% drop in the non-Jewish population of territories Israel controlled at the final armistice.

I didn't think anyone here is disputing that Arab states kicked out their Jewish population after the war.

The Jewish exodus from Arab states is between the Arab states and the people they kicked out, Israel if that is their representative. The Nakba is between Israel and the Palestinians, it has nothing to do with the Arab states.
 
So what about the British organising a referendum on this plan?

Exiting the Jewish State, because there already was a proto-state in place, but stay for while in the Arab state to do nation building?

A population exchange, as happened between India as Pakistan. But with less victims, especially since the distances are a lot shorter.



Eventually it is very likely that Egypt, Jordan and Libanon ( maybe also Syria) will grab Land.

Jerusalem becomes totally International, gets its own protection force and the UN moves there.

Arab Jaffa becomes a city state, mixture of OTL Hong Kong and Dubai.


(Just some crazy ideas)

They couldn't support the UN partition plan for this, it expanded Israel well beyond the Jewish proto-state territory, and placed a large number of Muslims under the jurisdiction of Israel, movement towards that is partly responsible for the civil war. No referendum would return support for it. An alternate partition with equal population exchanges on both sides would be a more likely outcome if the British stayed around. The Jewish proto-state could have stayed in it's existing borders, and Jewish populations from other parts of Palestine would move there, and they'd evacuate their non-Jewish population.

Egypt would still be likely to come into conflict with Britain over the Suez, and this would mean hostilities against the still British Palestine and the various proto-states Britain is supporting there. This is probably where an independent Palestine comes into existence, as they are armed to fight Egypt alongside Britain and France. If Britain decides not to arm the Palestinian state for some conflict like this, then it's likely that Israel, Jordan, and Egypt grab up the rest of Palestine shortly after the British leave, like in OTL but ten years later.
 
How big was the 'Jewish proto-state'?

You mean what territory it held in some official manner, where the borders were? There weren't any hard borders under the British Mandate, there were places of Jewish majorities and large Jewish minorities where it was the state authority, and during the civil war their authority and militia had already expanded into places with small Jewish minorities or no Jewish population. Then there was the declaration of independence in May 1948, which would give us the first definitive borders, quite close to the partition plan, but deviating from the partition in holding territory around Jerusalem, and without controlling the Negev.

I was using the term 'proto-state' for all the state-like functions already handled by Jewish authorities because @Minchandre used that term, I'd have to go look up the name of all the constituent parts.

It's hard to say. The Zionists had a whole proto-state before 1948, complete with taxes, police, a military, education, and almost any other trapping of government you'd like to name.
 
The partition plan was a compromise that neither side liked, but the Jews accepted and the Arabs did not, with the latter starting a war with the express purpose of "driving the Jews in to the sea". Which Jews would be allowed to stay, if any, was never made clear but the general consensus would be only those who lived there prior to WWI at the most. In the period following WWII there were numerous expulsions and population exchanges in to the early 50s. Ethnic Germans from parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland, various ethnicities from territories the Soviets acquired, various Central Europeans such as Hungarians moving across new borders, Japanese from Manchuria, Formosa, and Korea, and the whole Hindu/Muslim business on the subcontinent. Apologies to other groups not mentioned. These movements were a combination of outright expulsion, voluntary migration to avoid repression (real or expected) by the majority inhabitants, and so forth. Some of these exchanges were abrupt, some a little more protracted. Basically with 3-5 years after the declaration of the state of Israel roughly equal numbers of Arabs (almost all Muslim) had left the territory of post-war Israel and Jews had left the territories of the various Arab states. Most of the Arabs who left were those who decided to leave, whether on their own or encouraged by the Arab powers to get out of the way of the conquering armies, and most of the Jews who left were specifically expelled by various Arab governments. In the case of the Arabs, yes there were those who left/were expelled by violent action, and on the part of the Jews there were those who left on their own. The bulk of those who left their homes were as described, voluntary refugees on one side, expellees on the other.

It is worth noting that the Arab Palestinians lost 100% of the territory given to them under then partition plan, that's right 100%. Some they lost to the Israelis and the some to Egypt and Jordan, which occupied the parts of the Mandate under Arab control at the end of the fighting. From 1948/49 until 1967 you could have had the same Palestinian "state" you see today (actually a little larger) with the West Bank and Gaza (part of Jerusalem and other bits annexed by Israel after the 1967 war included). When Egypt and Jordan gave up their claims to territory occupied in 1948/49, it was after they no longer held it, a point often ignored.

In any case if you fight a war, whether or not you start it, whether or not your cause is just, and lose, there is always a price to pay.(1) Returning to a perfect status quo antebellum almost never happens (would say never but who knows). Of the four wars (48,56,67,73) the Arabs started three and the one they did not start (1956) was precipitated by the nationalization of the Suez Canal and only resulted in a return to status quo antebellum (more or less) due to the intervention of a rather powerful outside party (the USA). In 1973 the negotiated settlement did restore "lost territory" to Egypt, however a peace treaty was concluded, the area was demilitarized and monitored so both sides had gains. The reality of the Arab-Israeli conflicts is that you fight a war and lose, you pay. Always has been that way, always will be. Is this fair, maybe maybe not, but as Jimmy Carter once opined in a rare moment of clarity, "life isn't fair".

(1) Both sides in any war claim that they are fighting in a just cause, nobody ever tells the poor schmucks who have to fight and die "you are fighting for some immoral or worthless cause". The grunts may know or suspect this, but its never explicit. Remember that until the end of WWII the German uniform belt buckles had "Gott mit uns" on the inside.
 
Most of the Arabs who left were those who decided to leave, whether on their own or encouraged by the Arab powers to get out of the way of the conquering armies, and most of the Jews who left were specifically expelled by various Arab governments. In the case of the Arabs, yes there were those who left/were expelled by violent action, and on the part of the Jews there were those who left on their own. The bulk of those who left their homes were as described, voluntary refugees on one side, expellees on the other.

The Palestinians were expelled by the violent action and the realistic threat of violent action from Jewish militia and paramilitaries, and later by Israeli forces. Deciding to leave ahead of conquering armies that have proven to use violent action to expel your people from their homes is not becoming a 'voluntary refugee', if there is such a thing. The Nakba is not a myth.

The various Arab governments made similar threats to the Jews they expelled following the war. Or in some cases, tried to prevent Jews who wanted to move to Israel from leaving, such as in Syria, where helping Jews leave the country was a criminal offense.

It is worth noting that the Arab Palestinians lost 100% of the territory given to them under then partition plan, that's right 100%. Some they lost to the Israelis and the some to Egypt and Jordan, which occupied the parts of the Mandate under Arab control at the end of the fighting. From 1948/49 until 1967 you could have had the same Palestinian "state" you see today (actually a little larger) with the West Bank and Gaza (part of Jerusalem and other bits annexed by Israel after the 1967 war included). When Egypt and Jordan gave up their claims to territory occupied in 1948/49, it was after they no longer held it, a point often ignored.

So from 1967 until now, Israel has had the opportunity to create the Palestinian state.
 
So from 1967 until now, Israel has had the opportunity to create the Palestinian state.
Israel may have had the territory, but they had neither the ability nor the motive. No self-respecting Tel Aviv government was ever going to okay that plan, because they'd be thrown out of office and into a jail cell for merely suggesting it. And that by doing so, they'd be right back where they were in 1967; there was simply no strategic depth to Israel, and the taking of Sinai and the Golan Heights was a desperate attempt to get some territory between the Arabs and the Israeli heartland (even if it did have ulterior motives; the Golan Heights has some excellent water supplies and the Sinai peninsula was holy ground due to the Exodus from Egypt).

Plus, in 1967, after the stunning six-day victory over three Arab nations, there was a strong sense of "Yahweh Mitt Uns", an almost divine sense of vindication about the State of Israel. They defeated - nay, humiliated the Arabs, did so in record time, and received very low casualties in return. In disgrace, Nasser offered to resign, and the US stepped up its foreign aid to Israel. At the moment of its triumph, it could have had a chance to give Palestinian territory, but it was Victory Disease; the very notion of winning everything exactly as planned made the Israelis less responsive to the idea of being gracious winners and try to keep all their winnings. The Yom Kippur War was a serious blow to Israeli invulnerability, but it did little to shake their faith in trying to hold on to everything.

After the Camp David Peace Accord, Egypt withdrew, but Israel still had a case of Victory Disease; it won every war with the Arabs, had a peace deal go mostly its way, and now no longer has to worry about its biggest neighbor. Why should it bend over and weaken its position for some terrorists?

Israel was later willing to give up Gaza (or most of it), but bear in mind this was after the sustained LIC known as the Intifada, which lasted for years, showed no signs of letting up, and the fact that no amount of European immigrants was going to balance out the crazy Arab birthrate in Gaza, resulting in a demographic bomb right near the heart of Israel. And it took a leader brave enough to try the first few steps, and one who was so deeply rooted in Israeli politics and society he couldn't be thrown out as a traitor or weakling. And yet Yitzhak Rabin still got shot for his move.
 
Kick
How did these events prevent Israel from taking the opportunity to create a Palestinian state in the territory they occupied?

States just love to cave into Invasions and Terrorism
/s

Palestinians wanted Wars to get their desire.
failed.

Then they thought that killing civilians would do it.
failed.

Those aren't incentives to give the Arabs what they had in 1948, and outright rejected that more than half for having it all.

They never will get all that they want. Don't be surprised with 70 years of losing, you don't get what was desired.
 

Well yeah. Obviously Israeli extremists have held sway over their government since the start, and for them peace with Palestinians, or the existence of a Palestinian state, or even acknowledging that there are Palestinians, or considering that the whole territory is not theirs to settle, is politically impossible, Israeli moderates have never been able to swing things towards peace.

This could be different in this scenario where the British remain in the region until both sides agree to a border, Israeli moderates might have been in charge all along, they're probably the majority anyway.

States just love to cave into Invasions and Terrorism
/s

Palestinians wanted Wars to get their desire.
failed.

Then they thought that killing civilians would do it.
failed.

Those aren't incentives to give the Arabs what they had in 1948, and outright rejected that more than half for having it all.

They never will get all that they want. Don't be surprised with 70 years of losing, you don't get what was desired.

Jordan and Egypt wanted wars to conquer Palestine for themselves, as they said they wanted to do. Israel also wanted the 1948 and 1967 wars to conquer as much of Palestine for itself, as they said they wanted to do.

So what could they have done in 1967 to convince Israel to have tried to make a Palestinian state on the territory they occupied, on only 20% of the original mandate, with 80% being conceded to remain as part of Israel? Should the Palestinians have caved in to the 1967 invasion, and then caved in to settler terrorism? What could they do instead of returning war or terrorism to Israel in order to get something like 20% of the original mandate?

In 1948 they weren't offered 'more than half', the partition discussed in this thread gives Palestinians less than half, and leaves half their population in a Jewish state, and wasn't recognized by anyone or considered binding anyway. A Palestinian state with a minority of Jews was unacceptable to Jewish leadership, few such deals were even tabled. A Jewish state with a minority of Palestinians was probably unacceptable to Palestinians, although they were never consulted so we don't really know. A Jewish state with a large minority or majority of Palestinians, or those with two-way population transfers moving both Jews and Palestinians to states with territory proportionate to their respective populations, was unacceptable to Jewish authorities, we know because they rejected deals that proposed this, and because they ethnically cleansed it down to a small minority during the 1948 war.


In the scenario for this thread, we have to ask how Israel would have treated the 40% of it's population that would have been Palestinian - better, worse, or the same as it treated the ~15% non-Jewish population in real life, or what it would have done with an extra Palestinian population if it had conquered more land in a future war - given what we know happened to undesirable populations in desirable territories in real life.
 
In the scenario for this thread, we have to ask how Israel would have treated the 40% of it's population that would have been Palestinian - better, worse, or the same as it treated the ~15% non-Jewish population in real life, or what it would have done with an extra Palestinian population if it had conquered more land in a future war - given what we know happened to undesirable populations in desirable territories in real life.

In OTL, that roughly 15% of Israel's Palestinian Arab population lived under martial law for the first twenty years of the State's existence. During that period, Israeli cabinet ministers and party leaders were on record as having stated that "The formation of an educated class [among Arabs] must be averted" and that “We should continue to exhaust all the possibilities [inherent in] the policy of communal divisiveness that bore fruit in the past and has succeeded in creating a barrier – even if at times artificial – between certain segments of the Arab population.” This is near identical to the strategy of maintaining apartheid as advocated by the National Party in South Africa at the time, and it seems almost guaranteed to me that had the Nakba been averted somehow, or had Israel conquered all the territories west of the Jordan River in '48, that it would have implement something identical to apartheid in order to control its far larger Palestinian populace.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...l-marginalized-arabs-from-the-start-1.7066045
 
Until recently, Palestinians were not allowed in government or the civil service,

Huh, the Jordanian Prime Minister "Mohammad Al-Abbasi" was a Palestinian.




It was 800,000 people, around 90% of the pre-war non-Jewish population. In that war, it was the Israelis who carried out the ethnic cleansing. The evidence is that non-Jewish Palestinians left to avoid being forcibly kicked out and possibly killed in the process, having heard what happened to those who didn't leave ahead of the Jewish militia and paramilitary groups in the civil war, and the same with later Israeli forces during the 1947 - 48 war. This is indisputably an ethnic cleansing, we have evidence it was planned and carried out from Israeli sources, and demographics show the results, a 90% drop in the non-Jewish population of territories Israel controlled at the final armistice.

I didn't think anyone here is disputing that Arab states kicked out their Jewish population after the war.

The Jewish exodus from Arab states is between the Arab states and the people they kicked out, Israel if that is their representative. The Nakba is between Israel and the Palestinians, it has nothing to do with the Arab states.


http://www.mideastweb.org/palestine_population_un_1.htm

The total Palestinian population in 1945 was about 564,990, this includes a large population that lived in Gaza and the West Bank so they did not move plus the number that remained in Israel and became Israel citizens so they did not move either, so where does your 800,000 come from so I think just about everyone would dispute your comments? I agree with you that no-one is disputing the killing out of the existing Jewish population by the Palestinian and the Arab countries after the war.
 
http://www.mideastweb.org/palestine_population_un_1.htm

The total Palestinian population in 1945 was about 564,990, this includes a large population that lived in Gaza and the West Bank so they did not move plus the number that remained in Israel and became Israel citizens so they did not move either, so where does your 800,000 come from so I think just about everyone would dispute your comments? I agree with you that no-one is disputing the killing out of the existing Jewish population by the Palestinian and the Arab countries after the war.

I was going from these figures. This is usually the first place I go to get any information on this subject.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/population-of-israel-palestine-1553-present

There are some obvious problems in changing which territory they're measuring, they're including all of Mandatory Palestine before 1945, only territory controlled by Israel for 1967, and then only Israeli citizens for 2005 and 2019. The figures do show the drop in the non-Jewish population in territory controlled by Israel, but don't tell us how many were killed by the expulsion.

From quick searchings, I can only find the low estimate on the site you've linked, and it also contains the more usual estimates. Maybe those figures are for only the population of the territory apportioned to Israel in the partition, or excludes Christian Palestinians.
 
Huh, the Jordanian Prime Minister "Mohammad Al-Abbasi" was a Palestinian.
A bit uncommon before Black September, and there was never another after that. The events of Black September put a glass ceiling on the careers of Palestinian-born or Palestinian-origin Jordanians in both the civil service and the military. They still remain captains of industry and commerce (Talal Abu Ghazaleh and the Arab Bank, two of the biggest corporations in Jordan, were founded and headed by Palestinian-borns), but there is still something of a Jordanian-Palestinian divide even now.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/jordan...-rivalry/40625c8c-8a11-5710-a052-1479d2757adc
 
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In OTL, that roughly 15% of Israel's Palestinian Arab population lived under martial law for the first twenty years of the State's existence. During that period, Israeli cabinet ministers and party leaders were on record as having stated that "The formation of an educated class [among Arabs] must be averted" and that “We should continue to exhaust all the possibilities [inherent in] the policy of communal divisiveness that bore fruit in the past and has succeeded in creating a barrier – even if at times artificial – between certain segments of the Arab population.” This is near identical to the strategy of maintaining apartheid as advocated by the National Party in South Africa at the time, and it seems almost guaranteed to me that had the Nakba been averted somehow, or had Israel conquered all the territories west of the Jordan River in '48, that it would have implement something identical to apartheid in order to control its far larger Palestinian populace.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...l-marginalized-arabs-from-the-start-1.7066045

On the other side of the partition, what does Palestine look like? Will there be attempts by this version of Israel to move their Arab population to Palestine, and if so, would Palestine welcome them, or would they in fact reject them, in favor of trying to support civil rights for the Palestinians in this Israel?
 
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