WI: Israel loses the 1948 war

It's what Jordan did OTL; the change would be to a bigger chunk.

Though it is worth noting that the southern part of the West Bank only fell to Jordan after the Egyptians were beaten by the Israelis and retreated.



It is also worth noting that Palestinian leader Fawzi al-Kawkji also met in secret with the Zionists and offered a deal. His special agenda was putting down the Mufti of Jerusalem, whom he hated. And ISTR that even the Mufti tried to cut a deal (at the expense of al-Kawkji and Abdullah of Jordan).

true, I should have said 'a bigger chunk'. If Israel did lose the war, would the victorious Arab armies from the surrounding nations all scramble to incorporate parts of Palestine? You'd think that Jordan would like to have some of that territory on the Mediterranean sea; could they basically seize almost all of Palestine, or would they have to squabble with Egypt and Syria over it?
 
This soon after the Holocaust, a complete Arab victory in 1948 would only increase the sense among surviving Jews that they simply cannot depend on Europeans, the United States, or Euro-centered International Organizations (such as the UN in 1948) to protect them. Those who favored Zionism might become radicalized. Those conservative Jews who didn't favor Zionism in the first place may see this as God's punishment for the establishment of Israel.

This might also magnify the latent guilt felt by many in the west over the historical treatment of Jews in Europe (especially the Nazi holocaust) and increase the hostility between the West and the Arab states. I would not be surprised if France and Britain (at least) intervened militarily in their former mandates to reassert military and political control over Palestine, Jordan, and Syria since the Arab states "obviously" cannot be trusted to abide by UN resolutions and not behave in a genocidal way (remember that in 1948 anti-colonialism was still a new and not widely accepted idea in the west). If enough Jews survived, the European nations might carve out smaller and better defended Jewish enclaves for the surviving population.

Doubtful, just read this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

It was not an isolated incident, the position in England would not be all that sympathetic to the Zionists, given that their bloody war for independence from Britain had just ended. I can see very few being let into the British Empire. Friendly relations with the Arabs is worth cultivating after all, far more so than the feelings of a community who just clearly lost their state.

France I don't know as much about, though Vichy agents were happily sending weapons to Zionist terrorists throughout the War and after that doesn't mean they would care to have large numbers of Jews move to France (perhaps Algeria though?). Certainly there would be a major humanitarian crisis, I would presume that the refugees would initially end up in Cyprus, but I am unsure of that.
 
The idea of a "Palestinian state" came about in the 1960s as a result of Arafat and his new PLO movement. There was no conception of Palestinian national identity before the 1960s; the Arabs of present-day Israel/the Territories thought of themselves as Syrians, Transjordanians, or Levantines.

With no Israel, the former British Palestine is probably equally split between Egypt and Transjordan.
 
You haven't followed news about the gay pride marches in Jerusalem, have you?
One lone lunatic does not mean there is an organized movement. Nobody in Israel supported that one crazy man any more than they supported assassinating Rabin. This is why there is a difference (in the minds of most) between how I think Israeli refugees would have been received and the Syrians of today.

On the other hand, Jews have always been associated, by the demagogues of every Western nation, with Bolshevism so maybe you are right. :(
 
Several points to elaborate on:
1. Sephardim/Jews in Arab countries: The ~200K Jews in Turkey and Iran in 1948 won't have a particular reason to emigrate as they were relatively well integrated in to those societies and relatively well treated. The situation 30+ years in the future when OTL the Shah falls and the mullahs take over in Iran is way beyond the butterflies here. The Jews of French North Africa will probably be OK for the immediate future, but what happens in a few years when the Algerian War starts - I suppose they may go to France with the pieds noirs, although the residual Jewish population of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia will be larger in 1960 than OTL. The Jews of Aden/Yemen are few in number and simple tribes and will likely stay in the same inferior and economically position. In other Arab countries (Iraq, Syria, Egypt) Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism will still see Jews as foreign elements etc - increasing "Nuremburg Law" difficulties and outright expulsion is in the future.
2. Western/English speaking anti-semitism: In 1948 its way beyond casual. Using the USA as an example, quotas in universities, professional schools, employment were widespread and very open. Not only housing developments (new suburbs) but entire communities were "restricted" meaning no Jews were allowed to buy property there or rent there. Of course social anti-semitism like exclusion from clubs, open slurs, and so forth were the rule not the exception. The college quotas, housing restrictions, and the like did not go away until the late 1960s and not even then (One of the questions on a medical school application form in 1974 was "do you have a difficulty in attending classes on Saturday" - and who was that directed at?). I expect the USA at least would try and skim the cream taking the best educated/skilled refugees. While many folks would want to be more accepting, the large chunk of the US population will say "why should we take in these foreign Kikes who we will have to support as they are broke". There will be a groundswell to have the countries of origin or ancestry of the refugee/expelled Jews take them back - it's Germany's/Poland's/Hungary's/Russia's problem, let them go "back home"

A final point, in the early 1920's when the USA developed a quota system for immigrants based on country of origin (and based on US population data before the immigration wave of the late 19th century), there were several exceptions to the "country of origin" system. All "orientals" (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese...) were totally excluded, and there was a separate quota for "Hebrews" no matter where they came from (even "favored" countries like UK, Germany, etc).
Mostly agree--with the addition that most of the Middle Eastern Sfaradim Jews had not been treated semi-decently since the Moorish golden era. To my understanding they were all second-class citizens at very best except maybe in pre-revolutionary Iran. I think the Shah liked Jews quite a bit.
 
There wouldn't be a Palestine even after this scenario. Jordan wanted land that would connect them to the Mediterranean. Egypt wanted all of Palestine. Lebanon and Syria wanted some land in the northern parts and Iraq probably wanted the entire Fertile Crescent.

They would have fought each other next eventually.
 
There wouldn't be a Palestine even after this scenario. Jordan wanted land that would connect them to the Mediterranean. Egypt wanted all of Palestine. Lebanon and Syria wanted some land in the northern parts and Iraq probably wanted the entire Fertile Crescent.

They would have fought each other next eventually.

I remember looking into this and there was a rough sort of agreement that Egypt would get Tel Aviv and Syria Haifa.

I'd expect the actual division to be something like - Jordan getting roughly the OTL West Bank plus the "Jerusalem Corridor" and maybe a nice chuck of the southeastern desert, probably including Eilat which gets subsumed into Aqaba; Egypt getting some desert and a strip along the coastal plain up to about Netanya, and Syria getting the Galilee and coastal plain down to about Netanya. The only real point of contention I can imagine is the area around the Sea of Galilee, which I imagine both Jordan and Syria will want, for its own sake and also for water resources. If it comes to military conflict, Jordan will win.
 
I agree, and we would see more regional wars in the 60s, especially when the Soviets and US start picking allies.
 
(and we might even see an unified arab state) as one of the reason the various arab unified states failed was because there was no territorial continuity.

The reason all the Pan-Arab state projects failed was because the ideas has never been truly popular among the masses, it's usually been something pushed by ideological elites in power, who ended-up disagreeing with each other and breaking back into their constituent countries.
 
I think we're all discounting the UN. Back in 1948, it wasn't clear whether or not it had real teeth; the US thought it did, while the USSR thought it didn't. With this in mind, could the US try to use the UNSC to lead an intervention, and would the USSR support, veto, or abstain?

I think the US would at least attempt it, if for no other reason than to prevent Jewish refugees from flooding into Europe.
 
The idea of a "Palestinian state" came about in the 1960s as a result of Arafat and his new PLO movement. There was no conception of Palestinian national identity before the 1960s; the Arabs of present-day Israel/the Territories thought of themselves as Syrians, Transjordanians, or Levantines.

That's not true. Already in the Nakba, the refugees said "Palestine is lost." It's this Palestinian ethnogenesis that created the PLO, and not the reverse. But even before, there were signs of a growing Palestinian national identity, especially in the 1929 riots. This is in contrast to the situation in 1900 or so, when identity was more regional: people in Jaffa would say "I'm going to the Galilee" on the same basis they would say "I'm going to Syria."

What changed in the intervening decades was mass Jewish immigration, which led the Arabs in the area to develop a national identity attaching to the entire region that the Jews were trying to claim. I bring up 1929 because that's the first time we see the classical us-and-them nationalism on the Palestinian side: in the riots, the Palestinians treated all Jews as enemies, even ones who had been in Jerusalem and such since before Zionist immigration, who had previously had cool relations with the Zionists and warm ones with the Palestinians.

Of note, the UN Partition Plan did not split Mandatory Palestine between a Jewish state, Jordan, and Egypt; it split it between a Jewish state and an Arab state.

One lone lunatic does not mean there is an organized movement. Nobody in Israel supported that one crazy man any more than they supported assassinating Rabin.

No, actually, they did. The attack on the gay pride march followed years of threats and violence from the ultra- and national Orthodox against gay rights activists, especially in Jerusalem, which the Orthodox see as their own turf.

It was even worse with the Rabin assassination. While Rabin was in power, the settler movement protested with slogans like "with blood and fire we'll kick out Rabin." One protest, attended by then-opposite leader Bibi Netanyahu, featured a coffin for Rabin; after the assassination Bibi would claim his back was turned to it so he didn't see it, while the settler leaders who did see it would claim it was actually the coffin of Zionism, which in their view Rabin was killing. There was such a huge sentiment among certain sectors of the settler movement that Rabin should be killed that one rabbi had to publicly proclaim that no, it was not halachically permissible to kill Rabin. Yigal Amir himself looked for rabbis who would confirm it was halachically permissible, and did find one. After the assassination happened, in several settlements people danced in the streets, before then claiming that Yigal Amir did not represent them and the state shouldn't tar an entire group just because of a single bad apple.

On the other hand, Jews have always been associated, by the demagogues of every Western nation, with Bolshevism so maybe you are right. :(

It gets even worse: in 1939, some Americans did not want to admit German-Jewish refugees fearing that they were Nazis.
 
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