Existence of Israel
From PhiloWiki
Should Israel exist?
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Yes
- "Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes."
- "By 1947 Palestine was a major trouble spot in the British Empire, requiring some 100,000 troops and a huge maintenance budget. On February 18, 1947, Bevin informed the House of Commons of the government's decision to present the Palestine problem to the United Nations (UN). On May 15, 1947, a special session of the UN General Assembly established the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), consisting of eleven members. The UNSCOP reported on August 31 that a majority of its members supported a geographically complex system of partition into separate Arab and Jewish states, a special international status for Jerusalem, and an economic union linking the three members. Backed by both the United States and the Soviet Union, the plan was adopted after two months of intense deliberations as the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29, 1947. Although considering the plan defective in terms of their expectations from the League of Nations Mandate twenty-five years earlier, the Zionist General Council stated willingness in principle to accept partition. The League of Arab States (Arab League) Council, meeting in December 1947, said it would take whatever measures were required to prevent implementation of the resolution."
- "Taken together, the charges against Israel's various "occupations" represent-and are plainly intended to be-a damning indictment of the entire Zionist enterprise. In almost every particular, they are also grossly false.
- In 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded or destroyed to make way for the establishment of Israel. From biblical times, when this territory was the state of the Jews, to its occupation by the British army at the end of World War I, Palestine had never existed as a distinct political entity but was rather part of one empire after another, from the Romans, to the Arabs, to the Ottomans. When the British arrived in 1917, the immediate loyalties of the area's inhabitants were parochial-to clan, tribe, village, town, or religious sect-and coexisted with their fealty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community.
- Under a League of Nations mandate explicitly meant to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish national home, the British established the notion of an independent Palestine for the first time and delineated its boundaries. In 1947, confronted with a determined Jewish struggle for independence, Britain returned the mandate to the League's successor, the United Nations, which in turn decided on November 29, 1947, to partition mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, the other Arab.
- The state of Israel was thus created by an internationally recognized act of national self-determination-an act, moreover, undertaken by an ancient people in its own homeland. In accordance with common democratic practice, the Arab population in the new state's midst was immediately recognized as a legitimate ethnic and religious minority. As for the prospective Arab state, its designated territory was slated to include, among other areas, the two regions under contest today-namely, Gaza and the West Bank (with the exception of Jerusalem, which was to be placed under international control).
- As is well known, the implementation of the UN's partition plan was aborted by the effort of the Palestinians and of the surrounding Arab states to destroy the Jewish state at birth. What is less well known is that even if the Jews had lost the war, their territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians. Rather, it would have been divided among the invading Arab forces, for the simple reason that none of the region's Arab regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct nation. As the eminent Arab-American historian Philip Hitti described the common Arab view to an Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not."
- This fact was keenly recognized by the British authorities on the eve of their departure. As one official observed in mid-December 1947, "it does not appear that Arab Palestine will be an entity, but rather that the Arab countries will each claim a portion in return for their assistance [in the war against Israel], unless [Transjordan's] King Abdallah takes rapid and firm action as soon as the British withdrawal is completed." A couple of months later, the British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, informed the colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, that "the most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and Hebron to Abdallah, and the south to Egypt."
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No
- "There have been five major wars between Israelis and Arabs. While differing in immediate causes, objectives, and impact, each was rooted in the comparatively recent conflict between Jews and Arabs over Palestine. In 1917, the British government pledged to facilitate establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine, and during Britain's Mandate over Palestine (1922-1948) immigration increased the Jewish presence from less than 10 percent of the population in 1918 to one-third by 1947. Overwhelming Arab opposition spiraled into rebellion during the late 1930s, prompting Britain to declare in 1939 that it was not part of Mandate policy that Palestine should become a Jewish state. However, in November 1947, the UN General Assembly recommended partition of Palestine into a Jewish state on 54 percent of mandated territory and an Arab state on 45 percent, with Jerusalem under UN administration. Publicly, most Zionists agreed to this compromise but the Arab countries were opposed, declaring the resolution to be a violation of self-determination. Fighting immediately broke out among the Palestinian Arabs and Jews, and when British forces evacuated in mid-May 1948. the better equipped and more numerous Jewish forces established a clear superiority, capturing territory assigned to the proposed Arab state. Civilians on both sides were targeted, but massacres like that at the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April by Jewish irregulars precipitated a widespread exodus of Arabs from their homes and villages.
- On May 15, 1948, the day after the official formation of Israel was declared, forces from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq entered the fighting in support of Palestinian Arabs. Despite population differences, Israelis placed more soldiers in the field, and had the advantage of working in familiar terrain under unified control. UN-sponsored truces in the summer provided belligerents the opportunity to rearm, while the UN mediator. Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, recommended immediate repatriation of the Arab refugees as a condition for any just and lasting peace. His assassination in September by members of the Jewish underground was followed by renewed fighting in October, which lasted until early 1949. When the last armistice was signed in July, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) occupied over 77 percent of mandated Palestine, including West Jerusalem and Galilee, and it was only the intervention of Arab armies that prevented all of mandated Palestine from coming under Jewish control. The remainder was occupied by Jordan (West Bank and East Jerusalem) and Egypt (Gaza Strip). Palestinian Arabs were not permitted to establish a state and over 800,000 became refugees through flight or expulsion. Chances for peace in 1949 were lost when Israel refused Arab demands for withdrawal to the partition plan boundaries and the return of refugees."
