[navarre]

(Original post by floridadad55)
, the UK giving up Gibralter and the Falklands,

What a laughable comparison. Gibraltar and the Falklands are only occupied by people who choose to be British and have their own self determination. It is not an occupation by a foreign power in any sense of the word.

[Clessus]

(Original post by floridadad55)
My point is that after WW II, both Russia and Poland were awarded German land, because Germany was the aggressor in a war it lost.

Only partially true, much of the land which was in Eastern Poland at that time had been part of the RSFSR (later USSR) before the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, it was returned to them as a sop to Stalin. Poland was compensated for this loss by gaining parts of Eastern Germany.

Nasser, and various other arab countries, tried to destroy Israel, but lost the War.

Are you referring to the Six Day War? If that is the case, I think you will find that Israel attacked Egypt first. One can argue that it was a preemptive strike (though this is by no means certain), but to compare it to Hitler's war of aggression is silly and demigogic.

Palestinians 20 years ago could work in Israel. Now, they are kept out. This is a response to their terrorist activities.

If we are going to go down that road, then the 1948 war was in response to terrorist activities by Zionist forces, and therefore fully justified.

I would rather be an arab in Haifa than an arab in Egypt or Syria.

You know fine rightly that the controversey is for the West Bank/Gaza, not Haifa, in which place the situation is much different.

If they try and kill jews, then don't be surprised if a wall is build to keep them out.

Likewise, if you come with the stated intention of expelling the polulation, don't be surprised if the people living there get a bit uppity. If you subject a people to over 40 years of millitary occupation, don't be surprised if they try to "kill Jews" (or whoever is doing the occupying, btw I have no real problem with the wall in principle, as you say Israel has faced a real danger of terrorist attacks, in the fact that it goes through, rather than around the West Bank, that caused the controversy).

If the two sides would simply agree to make peace, and simply agree that some outstanding issues will be settled 20 years from now, after 20 years pass, you will see that most of these issues would have melted away. The tourism money alone the two sides would share would be in the tens of billions of dollars.

I agree with you, the rejectionists on both sides need to be crushed (Hamas, and extreme zionists like the Shas respectively), and both sides need to agree on peace. Peace must be negotiated, it cannot be dictated.

Also, before Israel gives back its occupied territories, how about the rest of the world first doing so, such as China giving up Tibet

China should indeed give up Tibet, as it is far more oppressive in the territory than most people realise. I gladly express my solidarity with the Tibetan people .

the UK giving up Gibralter and the Falklands

This is a silly comparison, for the reasons stated above.

Turkey giving up Cyprus

Firstly, Turkey's occupation of Cyprus came after Israel's occupation of the West Bank/Gaza. Secondly, it has been the Greek Cypriots who have rejected most attempts at compromise. Like the Israel-Palestine dispute, one should be more even handed when talking about the Cyprus question, as let's face it, the Greeks were hardly blameless for what happened.

the muslims themselves, who yelp the loudest about Palestinian occupation, giving the Kurds their own state from Kurdish land they occupy

You are aware that Kurds are Muslims themselves, aren't you? The Kurdish people do have their own autonomous region in Iraq.

American giving up Hawaii, California, and Texas, which are essentially stolen territories.

This is another silly comparison, as the people of there territories want to be American (although land grabs such as Texas would never be tolerated in the modern world). And secondly, these were all legal annexations, done with the consent of both parties (the Mexicans and the Americans in the case of Texas).

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Clessus)
If we are going to go down that road, then the 1948 war was in response to terrorist activities by Zionist forces, and therefore fully justified.

The civil war started in 1947 when the Arab population in Palestine revolted against the Jewish presence and the UN's partition. It had little to do with responding to Zionist force, which only really came into the equation when Israel gained arms in 1948.

Likewise, if you come with the stated intention of expelling the polulation, don't be surprised if the people living there get a bit uppity. If you subject a people to over 40 years of millitary occupation, don't be surprised if they try to "kill Jews" (or whoever is doing the occupying, btw I have no real problem with the wall in principle, as you say Israel has faced a real danger of terrorist attacks, in the fact that it goes through, rather than around the West Bank, that caused the controversy).

They didn't go with the stated intention of expelling the population. Also, there is no excuse for wanting to kill Jews because they are Jews. Excusing this kind of hatred away by blaming it on the occupation is simplistic and takes responsibility away from the mass murderers themselves. To understand is to excuse.

[Clessus]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
The civil war started in 1947 when the Arab population in Palestine revolted against the Jewish presence and the UN's partition. It had little to do with responding to Zionist force, which only really came into the equation when Israel gained arms in 1948.

Zionist terrorism went back to the 1920s, although it became intense during the 1940s. Between 1945 and 1947 almost 1,000 British soldiers (and hundreds of civillians) were killed by Zionist terrorists.

They didn't go with the stated intention of expelling the population. Also, there is no excuse for wanting to kill Jews because they are Jews. Excusing this kind of hatred away by blaming it on the occupation is simplistic and takes responsibility away from the mass murderers themselves. To understand is to excuse.

If you actually read the writings of the Zionist leadership, you will see that they at the very least considered expelling (or "transfering") the polulation. The "civil war" (which was so one sided as to be laughable) was little more than a pretext for this. And no, this is not intended to excuse Anti-Semitism, which is in my view the product of a disturbed mind.

It is entirely legitimate to explain the reasons for hatred, bigotry and genocide, rather than simply chalk it up to the pure evil of the purpotrators. However, you are correct, this does not excuse them, or take responsibility away from the purpotrators.

@floridadad55

A better comparison I just thought of would be for Russia to end its occupation of Chechnya, which has been far more brutal than anything that Israel has done since 1967.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Clessus)
Zionist terrorism went back to the 1920s, although it became intense during the 1940s. Between 1945 and 1947 almost 1,000 British soldiers (and hundreds of civillians) were killed by Zionist terrorists.

But Israel was not actually founded on the backs of terrorism, it was founded by a vote of the United Nations, and the war was caused by the fact that the Palestinian and Arab leadership rejected the plan. The actions of the Irgun and Lehi were roundly discouraged and criticised by the Zionist leadership at the time. The Israeli state was founded by institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and the pre-state settlement organisations headed by David Ben Gurion and the like, not by the shadowy terrorist organisations. (And if you're looking for a state that wasn't founded on an act of violence you'll be searching for quite a long time.)

Secondly, I'm not sure where you're getting the 1,000 figure from. No real numbers have been released and you're count probably includes British soldiers killed when they fought on the side of the Jewish community against the Arab uprising known as the Arab Revolt.

If you actually read the writings of the Zionist leadership, you will see that they at the very least considered expelling (or "transfering") the polulation. The "civil war" (which was so one sided as to be laughable) was little more than a pretext for this. And no, this is not intended to excuse Anti-Semitism, which is in my view the product of a disturbed mind.

The original goal of the Zionist movement until the late 1930s was the transfer of Arabs and the establishment of a Jewish state in all of Mandatory Palestine, as promised by the Balfour Declaration. However the circumstances changed and, especially with the rise of Nazi Germany and the start of the Holocaust, they viewed the idea of transfer with more suspicion. You have to remember that at the start of the twentieth century the Zionists were arguing for a Jewish homeland in an overwhelmingly Arab area; transfer seemed the only solution (and the British agreed). When the circumstances changed however, the Zionist leadership began to realise that a Jewish state could be achieved through partition (and this was the view of the international community) due to the increasing Jewish population thanks to Jewish refugee immigration from Europe. The mainstream Zionist leadership, Ben-Gurion et al, accepted partition as a solution quite early on, and only the revisionists wanted all of Eretz Yisrael and were shunned for their beliefs. The Arab countries on the other hand did not accept partition as a solution, so in the wake of the UN acceptance of partition, they launched hostilities against the Jewish state with the aim of preventing the emergence of a Jewish polity. there. The Zionists had accepted a Jewish state with 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs, but since the Arabs within that state (45% of the population) identified mainly with the Arab side and assisted them in their attacks on Jews. Arab citizens of the Jewish state fired on Jewish convoys and settlements with the support of the Arab world. In the course of the 1947-48 War of Independence 750,000 Arabs fled. Most of them fled from fear of being caught up in the war, some left on the orders of local Arab leaders, and some (around 12% according to Benny Morris) were expelled by Jewish troops having been seen as a fifth column within the Jewish state. Benny Morris notes that, "It was only at the start of April, with its back to the wall (much of the Yishuv, in particular Jewish Jerusalem, was being strangled by Arab ambushes along the roads) and facing the prospect of pan-Arab invasion six weeks hence, that the Haganah changed its strategy and went over to the offensive, and began uprooting Palestinian communities, unsystematically and without a general policy." (Source) Israel after independence banned these refugees from returning due to their status as a potential subversive group who would destroy Israel from within - they had, after all, just tried to do that.

Spoiler:

Show

From the source I linked to:

Zionist leaders, from Herzl through Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, between 1881 and the mid-1940s, occasionally expressed support for the "transfer" of Arabs, or of "the Arabs," out of the territory of the future Jewish state. But three salient facts must be recalled. First, the Zionist leadership throughout never adopted the idea as part of the movement's political platform; nor did it ever figure in the platforms of any of the major Zionist parties. Second, the Zionist leaders generally said, and believed, that a Jewish majority would be achieved in Palestine, or in whatever part of it became a Jewish state, by means of massive Jewish immigration, and that this immigration would also materially benefit the Arab population (which it generally did during the Mandate). Third, the awful idea of transfer was resurrected and pressed by Zionist leaders at particular historical junctures, at moments of acute crisis, in response to Arab waves of violence that seemed to vitiate the possibility of Arab-Jewish co-existence in a single state, and in response to waves of European anti-Semitic violence that, from the Zionist viewpoint, necessitated the achievement of a safe haven for Europe's oppressed and threatened Jews...

Moreover, during the 1930s and 1940s, the espoused policy of the leader of the Palestinian Arab national movement, the Muslim cleric Haj Amin al Husseini, was frankly expulsionist about the Yishuv. He repeatedly stated that he was willing, in his future Palestinian state, to accommodate as citizens only those Jews who had been residents or citizens of Palestine up to 1917--say, 60,000 to 80,000 in all. When asked in 1937 by the Peel Commission what he intended to do with the 80 percent of the Jews who had been born in or come to Palestine after that date, he responded that time will tell...

In other words, the surge in thinking about transfer in the late 1930s among mainstream Zionist leaders was in part a response to the expulsionist mentality of the Palestinians, which was reinforced by ongoing Arab violence and terrorism. The violence resulted in Britain's severely curtailing immigration to Palestine, thus assuring that many Jews who otherwise might have been saved were left stranded in Europe (and consigned to death), while at the same time foreclosing the traditional Zionist option and aim of achieving a Jewish majority in Palestine through immigration. Mearsheimer and Walt rightly take to task the anti-Arab terrorism of the Irgun in those years; but they omit to mention that the Irgun unleashed its bloody operations in response to Arab terrorism, and that in any case it represented only the fringe right wing of the Zionist movement, of which the mainstream--unlike the Palestinian Arab national movement--consistently rejected and condemned terrorism.

During the early 1940s, against the backdrop of the Holocaust and official British deliberations about a postwar solution to the Palestine problem based on partition, all understood (as had the Peel Commission) that any partition not accompanied by a transfer of Arabs out of the territory of the Jewish-state-to-be would be unstable or pointless, as the large Arab minority, if left in place, would be disloyal and rebellious, and would inevitably enjoy the support of the surrounding Arab world. Such a settlement would solve nothing. British officials and Arab heads of state (who, of course, feared to state these views in public) shared this view. That is why the British Labour Party Executive in 1944 supported partition accompanied by transfer, and that is why Jordan's Emir Abdullah and Iraq's prime minister Nuri Said, among other Arab statesmen, supported such a population transfer if Palestine was to be partitioned.

And, indeed, in 1947-1948 the Palestinian Arabs, supported by the surrounding Arab world, rebelled against the U.N. partition resolution and unleashed a bloody civil war, which was followed by a pan-Arab invasion. The war resulted in a large, partial transfer of population. The chaos that all had foreseen if Palestine were partitioned without an orderly population transfer in fact enveloped the country. But this is emphatically not to say, as Mearsheimer and Walt do, that the Zionists' occasional ruminations about transfer were translated in 1947-1948 into a overall plan and policy--unleashed, as they put it, when the "opportunity came," as if what occurred in 1948 was a general and premeditated expulsion.

So no, I don't agree that Zionism necessitated the expulsion of the Arabs. Up until the late 1930s it would have, given the demographics. However the large influx of Jewish immigrants meant that partition was possible without transfer. Also, to relate the argument to your original point, the idea of transfer was held by absolutely no one in power by 1967 and the start of the occupation.

It is entirely legitimate to explain the reasons for hatred, bigotry and genocide, rather than simply chalk it up to the pure evil of the purpotrators. However, you are correct, this does not excuse them, or take responsibility away from the purpotrators.

If I tell you that Jim hit John because of some wrong John committed against Jim, then it may not excuse Jim's actions but it at least sanitises it. Explaining suicide bombings and anti-Semitic rhetoric by pointing to the occupation does the same thing, in effect.

[tufc]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
But Israel was not actually founded on the backs of terrorism, it was founded by a vote of the United Nations, and the war was caused by the fact that the Palestinian and Arab leadership rejected the plan. The actions of the Irgun and Lehi were roundly discouraged and criticised by the Zionist leadership at the time. The Israeli state was founded by institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and the pre-state settlement organisations headed by David Ben Gurion and the like, not by the shadowy terrorist organisations. (And if you're looking for a state that wasn't founded on an act of violence you'll be searching for quite a long time.)

Secondly, I'm not sure where you're getting the 1,000 figure from. No real numbers have been released and you're count probably includes British soldiers killed when they fought on the side of the Jewish community against the Arab uprising known as the Arab Revolt.



The original goal of the Zionist movement until the late 1930s was the transfer of Arabs and the establishment of a Jewish state in all of Mandatory Palestine, as promised by the Balfour Declaration. However the circumstances changed and, especially with the rise of Nazi Germany and the start of the Holocaust, they viewed the idea of transfer with more suspicion. You have to remember that at the start of the twentieth century the Zionists were arguing for a Jewish homeland in an overwhelmingly Arab area; transfer seemed the only solution (and the British agreed). When the circumstances changed however, the Zionist leadership began to realise that a Jewish state could be achieved through partition (and this was the view of the international community) due to the increasing Jewish population thanks to Jewish refugee immigration from Europe. The mainstream Zionist leadership, Ben-Gurion et al, accepted partition as a solution quite early on, and only the revisionists wanted all of Eretz Yisrael and were shunned for their beliefs. The Arab countries on the other hand did not accept partition as a solution, so in the wake of the UN acceptance of partition, they launched hostilities against the Jewish state with the aim of preventing the emergence of a Jewish polity. there. The Zionists had accepted a Jewish state with 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs, but since the Arabs within that state (45% of the population) identified mainly with the Arab side and assisted them in their attacks on Jews. Arab citizens of the Jewish state fired on Jewish convoys and settlements with the support of the Arab world. In the course of the 1947-48 War of Independence 750,000 Arabs fled. Most of them fled from fear of being caught up in the war, some left on the orders of local Arab leaders, and some (around 12% according to Benny Morris) were expelled by Jewish troops having been seen as a fifth column within the Jewish state. Benny Morris notes that, "It was only at the start of April, with its back to the wall (much of the Yishuv, in particular Jewish Jerusalem, was being strangled by Arab ambushes along the roads) and facing the prospect of pan-Arab invasion six weeks hence, that the Haganah changed its strategy and went over to the offensive, and began uprooting Palestinian communities, unsystematically and without a general policy." (Source) Israel after independence banned these refugees from returning due to their status as a potential subversive group who would destroy Israel from within - they had, after all, just tried to do that.

So no, I don't agree that Zionism necessitated the expulsion of the Arabs. Up until the late 1930s it would have, given the demographics. However the large influx of Jewish immigrants meant that partition was possible without transfer. Also, to relate the argument to your original point, the idea of transfer was held by absolutely no one in power by 1967 and the start of the occupation.



If I tell you that Jim hit John because of some wrong John committed against Jim, then it may not excuse Jim's actions but it at least sanitises it. Explaining suicide bombings and anti-Semitic rhetoric by pointing to the occupation does the same thing, in effect.

I quite agree. Having studied the conflict in great detail this year, the basic conclusion seems obvious to me: the state of Israel would not exist - or, perhaps, would not be anywhere near so large or oppressive - if the Arabs had taken one of numerous chances to compromise.

[Clessus]

If you're looking for a state that wasn't founded on an act of violence you'll be searching for quite a long time[/QUOTE

True, many states are founded on foolishness, injustice and bad ideas, and it is foolish to pretend Israel is unique in this regard, like some people do.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you're getting the 1,000 figure from. No real numbers have been released and you're count probably includes British soldiers killed when they fought on the side of the Jewish community against the Arab uprising known as the Arab Revolt.

No, I am only referring to those killed by Zionist terrorist groups.

The original goal of the Zionist movement until the late 1930s was the transfer of Arabs and the establishment of a Jewish state in all of Mandatory Palestine, as promised by the Balfour Declaration.

It was not promised in the Balfour Declaration.

The mainstream Zionist leadership, Ben-Gurion et al, accepted partition as a solution quite early on, and only the revisionists wanted all of Eretz Yisrael and were shunned for their beliefs.

They were hardly shunned, as some (Menachem Begin, who did not accept partition), later became Prime minister.

In November 1947 an unwritten agreement was reached between King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine between themselves following the termination of the British mandate. Britain knew and approved of this secret Hashemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine between themselves rather than along the lines of the UN partition plan.

The Arab countries on the other hand did not accept partition as a solution, so in the wake of the UN acceptance of partition, they launched hostilities against the Jewish state with the aim of preventing the emergence of a Jewish polity.

Not quite as simple as that. It is true that all the Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, rejected the UN partition plan. It is true that seven Arab armies invaded Palestine the morning after the State of Israel was proclaimed. It is true that the invasion was accompanied by blood-curdling rhetoric and threats to throw the Jews into the sea. It is true that in addition to the regular Arab armies and the Mufti's Holy War army, various groups of volunteers arrived in Palestine,the most important of which was the Arab Liberation Army, sponsored by the Arab League and led by the Syrian adventurer Fawzi al-Qawukji. More importantly, it is true that the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for the invasion and that this plan was all the more dangerous for having had more limited and realistic objectives than those implied by the wild pan-Arab rhetoric.

But King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in Palestine, wrecked this plan by making last minute changes. His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, but to make himself master of the Arab part of Palestine which meant preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Since the Palestinians had done next to nothing to create an independent state, the Arab part of Palestine would have probably gone to Abdullah without all the scheming and plotting, but that is another matter. What is clear is that, under the command of Glubb Pasha, the Arab League made every effort to avert a head-on collision and, with the exception of one of two minor incidents, made no attempt to encroach on the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN cartographers.

There was no love lost between Abdullah and the other Arab rulers who suspected him of being in cahoots with the enemy. Abdullah had always been something of a pariah in the rest of the Arab world, not least because of his friendship with the Jews. Syria and Lebanon felt threatened by his long-standing ambition to make himself master of Greater Syria. Egypt, the leader of the anti-Hashemite bloc within the Arab League, also felt threatened by Abdullah's plans for territorial aggrandizement in Palestine. King Farouk made his decision to intervene in Palestine at the last moment, and against the advice of his civilian and military experts, at least in part in order to check the growth of his rival's power. There were thus rather mixed motives behind the invasion of Palestine. And there was no single Arab plan of action during the 1948 war. On the contrary, it was the inability of the Arabs to co-ordinate their diplomatic and military plans that was in large measure responsible for the disaster that overwhelmed them.

The one purpose which the Arab invasion did not serve was the ostensible one of coming to the rescue of the embattled Palestinians. Nowhere was the disparity between pan-Arab rhetoric and the reality greater than in relation to the Palestinian Arabs. The reality was one of national selfishness with each Arab state looking after its own interests. What was supposed to be a holy war against the Jews, quickly turned into a general land grab.

So no, I don't agree that Zionism necessitated the expulsion of the Arabs. Up until the late 1930s it would have, given the demographics. However the large influx of Jewish immigrants meant that partition was possible without transfer.

I do, even in the partitioned Jewish state, the Jew's majority would have been extremely tenious, especially given the Arab's high birth rate, but I'll agree to disagree.

Also, to relate the argument to your original point, the idea of transfer was held by absolutely no one in power by 1967 and the start of the occupation.

My original point was ment for 1948, apologies for the confusion.

(I would respond more, particulary on the section relating to Benny Morris, an historian about whom my views are mixed, but it's almost 3 in the morning, and I am too tired )

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Clessus)
No, I am only referring to those killed by Zionist terrorist groups.

Then I'd be interested to hear where you got the numbers from. The only source I can find is the one referred to under the claim that 1,000 died on Wikipedia. The source itself is a probably unreliable website dedicated to small wars, but it's interesting that it is used as the source of the '998 dead' claim on Wikipedia despite the fact that the site itself says 784.

It was not promised in the Balfour Declaration.

The establishment of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine was promised by the Balfour Declaration. "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." And before you point out that the Declaration respects the rights of the Arabs too, it respects their civil and their religious rights. It does not preclude the establishment of a Jewish state which facilitates these rights.

They were hardly shunned, as some (Menachem Begin, who did not accept partition), later became Prime minister.

For the first several decades of the state's existence these people were a negligible political force. My claim was that the original supporters of expulsion did not hold any real power in the War of Independence or the years that followed. Begin was not the head of government until the late 70s - long after even the Six Day War.

In November 1947 an unwritten agreement was reached between King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine between themselves following the termination of the British mandate. Britain knew and approved of this secret Hashemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine between themselves rather than along the lines of the UN partition plan.

This adds more credence to my argument that the Jewish community wholeheartedly adopted the idea of partition as opposed to transfer. Anyway, it is pointless because there is no evidence for such a meeting. It is rumoured that Golda Meir met Abdullah and decided to frustrate the UN's plan and divide the land for themselves. "First, a careful examination of the two documents used to substantiate the claim of collusion - reports by Ezra Danin and Eliyahu Sasson, two Zionist officials - proves that Meir implacably opposed any agreement that would violate the U.N. partition resolution passed twelve days later. In no way did she consent to the Transjordan annexation of Arab areas of Palestine." (Karsh)

"Of course, 'Abdullah preferred to co-opt all of Palestine, with the Jews receiving an "autonomous" zone (a "republic," he called it) inside his expanded kingdom. He repeatedly offered this to the Jewish Agency. But the Jews wanted a sovereign state of their own, not minority status. So partition it would have to be. This was agreed in principle in two secret meetings in August 1946 in Transjordan between 'Abdullah and Jewish Agency emissary Eliahu (Elias) Sasson. (Incidentally, 'Abdullah and his prime minister, Ibrahim Hashim, believed - as had the Peel Commission - that such a partition, in order to be viable and lasting, should be accompanied by a transfer of the Arab inhabitants out of the area of the Jewish state–to-be.)" (Morris)

Not quite as simple as that. It is true that all the Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, rejected the UN partition plan. It is true that seven Arab armies invaded Palestine the morning after the State of Israel was proclaimed. It is true that the invasion was accompanied by blood-curdling rhetoric and threats to throw the Jews into the sea. It is true that in addition to the regular Arab armies and the Mufti's Holy War army, various groups of volunteers arrived in Palestine,the most important of which was the Arab Liberation Army, sponsored by the Arab League and led by the Syrian adventurer Fawzi al-Qawukji. More importantly, it is true that the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for the invasion and that this plan was all the more dangerous for having had more limited and realistic objectives than those implied by the wild pan-Arab rhetoric.

But King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in Palestine, wrecked this plan by making last minute changes. His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, but to make himself master of the Arab part of Palestine which meant preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Since the Palestinians had done next to nothing to create an independent state, the Arab part of Palestine would have probably gone to Abdullah without all the scheming and plotting, but that is another matter. What is clear is that, under the command of Glubb Pasha, the Arab League made every effort to avert a head-on collision and, with the exception of one of two minor incidents, made no attempt to encroach on the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN cartographers.

There was no love lost between Abdullah and the other Arab rulers who suspected him of being in cahoots with the enemy. Abdullah had always been something of a pariah in the rest of the Arab world, not least because of his friendship with the Jews. Syria and Lebanon felt threatened by his long-standing ambition to make himself master of Greater Syria. Egypt, the leader of the anti-Hashemite bloc within the Arab League, also felt threatened by Abdullah's plans for territorial aggrandizement in Palestine. King Farouk made his decision to intervene in Palestine at the last moment, and against the advice of his civilian and military experts, at least in part in order to check the growth of his rival's power. There were thus rather mixed motives behind the invasion of Palestine. And there was no single Arab plan of action during the 1948 war. On the contrary, it was the inability of the Arabs to co-ordinate their diplomatic and military plans that was in large measure responsible for the disaster that overwhelmed them.

The one purpose which the Arab invasion did not serve was the ostensible one of coming to the rescue of the embattled Palestinians. Nowhere was the disparity between pan-Arab rhetoric and the reality greater than in relation to the Palestinian Arabs. The reality was one of national selfishness with each Arab state looking after its own interests. What was supposed to be a holy war against the Jews, quickly turned into a general land grab.

This all looks vaguely familiar. If you're going to use Shlaim at least source it or put quotation marks around it like I did with Morris.

I'll deal with your (apparent) dislike and/or mistrust of Morris first. It's important to separate his history from his politics. His later works, such as One State, Two States, are obviously written with a political bent that he has adopted in his later years, however his scholarship on the Palestinian refugee issue, notably in Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, is respected by people on all sides of the debate, especially people like Shlaim. The article I quoted was a response to Meirsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby and everything he says corresponds to his writings from earlier books.

The point I'm going to make succinctly (with back-up from Morris in the spoiler) is that to think the Arab states only had one war aim is fallacious. It was not all about 'driving the Jews into the sea' on the part of Jordan, but this does not mean that the other states did not have this aim, and the fact that it turned into a land grab doesn't undermine this salient point.

Spoiler:

Show

"The Arab war aim, in both stages of the hostilities, was, at a minimum, to abort the emergence of a Jewish state or to destroy it at inception. The Arab states hoped to accomplish this by conquering all or large parts of the territory allotted to the Jews by the United Nations. And some Arab leaders spoke of driving the Jews into the sea[19] and ridding Palestine "of the Zionist plague."[20] The struggle, as the Arabs saw it, was about the fate of Palestine/the Land of Israel, all of it, not over this or that part of the country. But, in public, official Arab spokesmen often said that the aim of the May 1948 invasion was to "save" Palestine or "save the Palestinians," definitions more agreeable to Western ears. The picture of Arab aims was always more complex than Zionist historiography subsequently made out. The chief cause of this complexity was that fly-in-the-ointment, King 'Abdullah. Jordan's ruler, a pragmatist, was generally skeptical of the Arabs' ability to defeat, let alone destroy, the Yishuv, and fashioned his war aim accordingly: to seize the Arab-populated West Bank, preferably including East Jerusalem. No doubt, had his army been larger and Zionist resistance weaker, he would have headed for Tel Aviv and Haifa;[21] after all, for years he had tried to persuade the Zionist leaders to agree to Jordanian sovereignty over all of Palestine, with the Jews to receive merely a small, autonomous zone (which he called a "republic") within his expanded kingdom. But, come 1948, he understood the balance of forces: the Jews were simply too powerful and too resolute, and their passion for self-determination was not to be denied. Other Arab leaders were generally more optimistic. But they, too, had ulterior motives, beyond driving the Jews into the sea or, at the least, aborting the Jewish state. Chief among them was to prevent their fellow leaders (especially 'Abdullah) from conquering and annexing all or too much of Palestine and to seize as much of Palestine as they could for themselves. This at least partly explains the diffusion of the Egyptian war effort and the drive of its eastern arm through Beersheba and Bethlehem to the outskirts of Jerusalem. It is possible that the commanders of the main, western wing of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, advancing up the coast from Rafah, were instructed to halt, at least for a time, at Isdud, the northernmost point of the southern portion of Palestine allotted by the United Nations for Arab sovereignty. But had the Israelis offered minimal resistance and had the way been clear to push on to Tel Aviv, I have no doubt that the Egyptians would have done so, in line with their public rhetoric. Their systematic destruction of all the Jewish settlements along the way—a phenomenon that was replicated by the Arab armies in the West Bank and Jordan Valley—is indicative of the mindset of the armies and governments involved."

Sources

"19. The phrase—"to drive the Jews in Palestine into the sea"—was reportedly used, for example, by 'Izzedin Shawa, a representative of the AHC in London, in a conversation with an American diplomat (see Gallman, London, to secretary of state, 21 January 1948, USNA, box 5, Jerusalem Consulate General, Classified Records, 1948, 800–Palestine). In his memoirs, Kirkbride quoted Arab League secretarygeneral gAzzam saying to him, just before the invasion: "We will sweep them into the sea" (Kirkbride, From the Wings, 24).
20. Sam Souki, UP, quoting al-Qawuqji speaking to his troops, undated but from
February or March 1948, CZA S25-8996.
21. Jordanian prime minister Abul Huda said as much to Kirkbride (see Kirkbride to Bevin, 15 May 1948, PRO FO 816/120)."

(Taken from 1948 by Morris)

I have emboldened the most important part of this, which shows that Jordan's aims were to proceed to abort the emergence of the Jewish state if they could. "No doubt, had his army been larger and Zionist resistance weaker, he would have headed for Tel Aviv and Haifa." The source listed is also important: "Jordanian prime minister Abul Huda said as much to Kirkbride (see Kirkbride to Bevin, 15 May 1948, PRO FO 816/120)." If you have a copy of 1948 to hand, pages 187 to 196 are worth a read for general Arab war aims. Here it is demonstrated that the Arab states wanted to start a war to "save the Palestinians" and to "eradicate Zionism" (i.e. the goal of establishing a Jewish state).

[Clessus]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Then I'd be interested to hear where you got the numbers from. The only source I can find is the one referred to under the claim that 1,000 died on Wikipedia. The source itself is a probably unreliable website dedicated to small wars, but it's interesting that it is used as the source of the '998 dead' claim on Wikipedia despite the fact that the site itself says 784.

Perhaps, but its still a significant number

The establishment of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine was promised by the Balfour Declaration. "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." And before you point out that the Declaration respects the rights of the Arabs too, it respects their civil and their religious rights. It does not preclude the establishment of a Jewish state which facilitates these rights.

In the Balfour Declaration (which had no legal status to begin with, and was frankly the case of an imperial power giving something away which didn't belong to them), there is no mention of the word "state". Nor is there any mention of the word "state" in the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine. The word is "national home", which is not the same as a state. This is re-iterated in the British White Paper of 1922 and again in the British White Paper of 1939.

For the first several decades of the state's existence these people were a negligible political force. My claim was that the original supporters of expulsion did not hold any real power in the War of Independence or the years that followed. Begin was not the head of government until the late 70s - long after even the Six Day War.

Perhaps, although to be fair the Irgun and other extremists (even some of the Haganah) were incoroprated into the army.

This adds more credence to my argument that the Jewish community wholeheartedly adopted the idea of partition as opposed to transfer. Anyway, it is pointless because there is no evidence for such a meeting. It is rumoured that Golda Meir met Abdullah and decided to frustrate the UN's plan and divide the land for themselves. "First, a careful examination of the two documents used to substantiate the claim of collusion - reports by Ezra Danin and Eliyahu Sasson, two Zionist officials - proves that Meir implacably opposed any agreement that would violate the U.N. partition resolution passed twelve days later. In no way did she consent to the Transjordan annexation of Arab areas of Palestine." (Karsh)

"Of course, 'Abdullah preferred to co-opt all of Palestine, with the Jews receiving an "autonomous" zone (a "republic," he called it) inside his expanded kingdom. He repeatedly offered this to the Jewish Agency. But the Jews wanted a sovereign state of their own, not minority status. So partition it would have to be. This was agreed in principle in two secret meetings in August 1946 in Transjordan between 'Abdullah and Jewish Agency emissary Eliahu (Elias) Sasson. (Incidentally, 'Abdullah and his prime minister, Ibrahim Hashim, believed - as had the Peel Commission - that such a partition, in order to be viable and lasting, should be accompanied by a transfer of the Arab inhabitants out of the area of the Jewish state–to-be.)" (Morris)

I'll just say its controvertial, but the idea that the Arab nations just wanted to exterminate all the Jews isn't really true. I would say however, that I have zero respect for Karsh as an historian

This all looks vaguely familiar. If you're going to use Shlaim at least source it or put quotation marks around it like I did with Morris.

Sorry

I'll deal with your (apparent) dislike and/or mistrust of Morris first. It's important to separate his history from his politics. His later works, such as One State, Two States, are obviously written with a political bent that he has adopted in his later years, however his scholarship on the Palestinian refugee issue, notably in Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, is respected by people on all sides of the debate, especially people like Shlaim. The article I quoted was a response to Meirsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby and everything he says corresponds to his writings from earlier books.

I do respect Morris as an historian, far more than that idiot Pappe, but I disagree with his political opinions, and some of his statements are frankly quite disturbing. I also don't believe he is as "neutral" as he likes to think he is.

The rest of your comment is very interesting, and stuff I will research more into.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Clessus)
Perhaps, but its still a significant number

I'm not denying that it's significant, but there is no source provided on that site either. It is especially confusing when you consider that the Jews fought on the side of the British against the Arab uprising in Palestine, and also on the side of the Brits during World War Two.

In the Balfour Declaration (which had no legal status to begin with, and was frankly the case of an imperial power giving something away which didn't belong to them), there is no mention of the word "state". Nor is there any mention of the word "state" in the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine. The word is "national home", which is not the same as a state. This is re-iterated in the British White Paper of 1922 and again in the British White Paper of 1939.

From what little of what we now call international law existed in those days, the League of Nations granted the British Government control over the area that is now Israel, Palestine and Jordan in the form of the legal instrument the Mandate for Palestine. Britain exercised sovereignty over the area in accordance with the wishes of the international community as represented by the League of Nations and then the United Nations. The land did not have a governing authority of its own (the previous ruler was the Ottoman Empire) and trying to organise the mainly rural, familial culture of the Palestinians into deciding on their national future before most of them even embraced the idea of a Palestinian nationality would not have worked either. The words 'national home', when combined with 'political rights', hint at the idea of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. The White Papers may represent reversals in the policy in terms of reducing immigration, but they do not disqualify the idea of a Jewish state existing. The fact that the British turned the problem over to the UN, who then voted to partition the land into two states, is also important, as is the Churchill White Paper which reiterated the Balfour Declaration.

Perhaps, although to be fair the Irgun and other extremists (even some of the Haganah) were incoroprated into the army.

Yeah, I know, but my point still stands: the irredentists and expulsionists of the Irgun didn't have power during the War of Independence and did not set policy. This isn't to say that Israel hasn't glorified terrorists; it has.

I'll just say its controvertial, but the idea that the Arab nations just wanted to exterminate all the Jews isn't really true. I would say however, that I have zero respect for Karsh as an historian

But this was their stated aim and it matches the actions they took during the numerous wars. Karsh is a fool, but he's right on this point. In fact in this Zionist-Hashemite meeting, Golda Meir specifically ruled out the idea of partitioning the land between the Jews and the Jordanian rulers.

Sorry

Don't worry about it. I use Opera web browser and it allows you to save text to notes. The problem is that it doesn't tell you what the original source is, so if I use the text I've stored I find often that I'm just copying someone else's work.

I do respect Morris as an historian, far more than that idiot Pappe, but I disagree with his political opinions, and some of his statements are frankly quite disturbing. I also don't believe he is as "neutral" as he likes to think he is.

Well as I said I don't think that his early works have been influenced by his increasingly radical political views. 1948 is free of the kind of bias you and I are talking about. This is why I avoid his writings on sites like National Interest and go for his earlier books. Not all of what he says today is bunk, though. His critique of Pappe was quite excellent really.

[floridadad55]

It has been axiomatic for years now that if Israel is to make peace with the arabs, that they would have to reach a peace agreement with Syria.

Does anyone truly believe that any agreement reached with Assad can be relied upon? If he kills thousands of his own people, would he hesitate for a second in killing Israelis?

An agreement with him would be as useful as the agreement that Chamberlain reached with Hitler.

The same would hold true for any agreement with Hamas, or Hezbollah.

The only way America and the UK were able to make peace with Germany and Japan were by defeating them militarily.

[Stalin]

(Original post by floridadad55)
It has been axiomatic for years now that if Israel is to make peace with the arabs, that they would have to reach a peace agreement with Syria.

Does anyone truly believe that any agreement reached with Assad can be relied upon? If he kills thousands of his own people, would he hesitate for a second in killing Israelis?

An agreement with him would be as useful as the agreement that Chamberlain reached with Hitler.

The same would hold true for any agreement with Hamas, or Hezbollah.

The only way America and the UK were able to make peace with Germany and Japan were by defeating them militarily.

The paramount issue straining Israeli-Arab relations is Palestine: it is the root cause of the Arab's vehement hatred for the Zionists, the rallying call that unifies all Arabs, and indeed every Muslim together as one. If the region is ever to reconcile, specifically Jews and Sunnis, because the Shi'a question is another one altogether, Syria won't be the focal point.

Let us imagine, for a mere second, that tomorrow morning, as you turn on your TV and happen to be bombarded by the Olympics, that Israel and Palestine have agreed on a historic peace deal. This agreement would establish the State of Palestine, and, for argument's sake, Netanyahu and his boys have accepted to use the 1967 borders. After coming to terms with what has happened, just as Michael Phelps is well and truly on his way to becoming the most world's most decorated Olympian, Bibi, Abbas and Haniyeh are all in Jerusalem, holding hands and celebrating. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, are destroying the West Bank barrier a la Berlin in '89, and are going to smash the Guinness Book of Records' record for the world's largest conga line.

Or, alternatively, Assad and Netanyahu agree to a comprehensive peace agreement, whilst the people of Syria are being gunned down and more is stolen in the occupied West Bank.

Which of the two scenarios do you believe will lead to peace between Israel and the Arab world? I'm slightly dubious about Syria, but maybe that's just me.

[davidjones90]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
But Israel was not actually founded on the backs of terrorism, it was founded by a vote of the United Nations, and the war was caused by the fact that the Palestinian and Arab leadership rejected the plan.

Are you referring to the United General Assembly UN Resolution 181?

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by davidjones90)
Are you referring to the United General Assembly UN Resolution 181?

Sorry, that was a rash way of me to say it - what I meant was that 181 gave the state's eventual founding a legal and moral legitimacy, and that the pressures of international Jewry and mainstream agencies like the JNF ultimately contributed more to the state's founding than did the actions of the Irgun.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
...

Are you against US's foreign aid to Israel? And are there any resolutions that the US vetoed regarding Israel that you disagree with? And if Israel decides to preemptively strike Iran, what do you think international community should do?

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
Are you against US's foreign aid to Israel? And are there any resolutions that the US vetoed regarding Israel that you disagree with? And if Israel decides to preemptively strike Iran, what do you think international community should do?

I'm ambivalent about foreign aid, I think the pros may outweigh the cons though. I think it's quite right that the US veto pointless resolutions that only serve to appease Arab nations rather than push for actual peace. That being said I think they are wrong to veto resolutions criticising settlement building. If Israel attacks Iran it would depend on the form of attack. If it were airstrikes against nuclear facilities then the international community should push for action by the UN to restore order. The last thing anyone needs is some kind of Israeli ground force remaining in Iran whilst the regime collapses (if it does).

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
I'm ambivalent about foreign aid, I think the pros may outweigh the cons though. I think it's quite right that the US veto pointless resolutions that only serve to appease Arab nations rather than push for actual peace. That being said I think they are wrong to veto resolutions criticising settlement building. If Israel attacks Iran it would depend on the form of attack. If it were airstrikes against nuclear facilities then the international community should push for action by the UN to restore order. The last thing anyone needs is some kind of Israeli ground force remaining in Iran whilst the regime collapses (if it does).

What are the pros, out of curiosity? Isn't Israel a rich nation? Why can't Israel buy it if it wants military hardware? How do these fit in with your libertarian principles?

Why? Isn't that like a teacher not disciplining a student because the person who told on the student wants to see him disciplined? As long as the facts are true and they agree with it, then they shouldn't veto surely?

I don't think the regime will collapse if it's nuclear facilities are stricken. Do you not think such a attack would be grounds for Iran to strike or even invade Israel (if it wished)? The way I see it is, the situation would be like a accused child molester being attacked because the father of the child thinks that the court are taking too long and the child molester is out on bail and thus risk to his child whose attempting a recovery, especially as he has heard that his planning a kidnapping of the father's child. Then, the accused child molester shoots the father whose attacking him. Would you not agree that the accused had the right to do that? And that the father should have be patient and gone through official procedures (IEAE/UN)? Do you think my analogy is accurate?

[Organ]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
I'm ambivalent about foreign aid, I think the pros may outweigh the cons though. I think it's quite right that the US veto pointless resolutions that only serve to appease Arab nations rather than push for actual peace. That being said I think they are wrong to veto resolutions criticising settlement building. If Israel attacks Iran it would depend on the form of attack. If it were airstrikes against nuclear facilities then the international community should push for action by the UN to restore order. The last thing anyone needs is some kind of Israeli ground force remaining in Iran whilst the regime collapses (if it does).

Airstrikes would do nothing but strengthen the Iranian government and would be completely illegal. The UN should respond to air-strikes by placing sanctions on Israel. What sort of mad world do you want to create in which it is justifiable to randomally launch blitzkriegs with the potential to create a nuclear disaster on sovereign states?

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Organ)
Airstrikes would do nothing but strengthen the Iranian government and would be completely illegal. The UN should respond to air-strikes by placing sanctions on Israel. What sort of mad world do you want to create in which it is justifiable to randomally launch blitzkriegs with the potential to create a nuclear disaster on sovereign states?

Was I the one who raised the prospect of airstrikes? Perhaps you should actually read what I said. All that being said your blanket "they're illegal" statement is just wrong.

[Super Cicero]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
I don't think the regime will collapse if it's nuclear facilities are stricken. Do you not think such a attack would be grounds for Iran to strike or even invade Israel (if it wished)? The way I see it is, the situation would be like a accused child molester being attacked because the father of the child thinks that the court are taking too long and the child molester is out on bail and thus risk to his child whose attempting a recovery, especially as he has heard that his planning a kidnapping of the father's child. Then, the accused child molester shoots the father whose attacking him. Would you not agree that the accused had the right to do that? And that the father should have be patient and gone through official procedures (IEAE/UN)? Do you think my analogy is accurate?

But what if waiting for the "official procedures" to solve the problem does nothing to solve the problem, and by the time we realise our mistake in trusting in them, it is too late? By your logic during the 1930s, Britain and France should have ignored the threat of Hitler and chosen to appease him and wait for the "official procedures" (diplomacy, the League of Nations) to solve the problem. That didn't work. Britain and France did nothing but give Hitler time to prepare, when they should have attacked him in 1936 when he remilitarised the Rhineland - if they'd attacked at that point they could have beaten the Nazis (something which Hitler himself acknowledged). The situation is the same for Israel today. Should it do nothing and wait around, giving Iran time to build up its nuclear arsenal, like how the British and French gave Hitler time to build up his armed forces? Or should they strike now while they still can, and save their country from future annihilation?