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This is the best summary of the Israel - Arab conflict I have ever read. It is short and concise and pretty accurate. Reading this will give you a understanding of how The Lord brought the Jews back to Israel and established the nation of Israel again as He said He would long ago in the Holy Scriptures.
On what grounds did the Israeli people go to Palestine, claim the land and declare a state? Isn't it illegal?
David Cardellini
Updated Fri
There are really four Questions here:
(1) The first Question is the easiest: On what grounds did Jews go to Palestine?
On what grounds do hundreds of thousands of Muslims go to secular countries each year to live a better life?
On what grounds did about 60 million Europeans migrate in the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s (the largest migration in human history)? On what grounds would these guys migrate into secular countries, under the rule of law in those new countries, buying homes, starting businesses and living their new lives?
Yes, most of those 60 million Europeans, including about 3 million Jewish Europeans would end up in secular countries in North and South America. A mere 3% of those Jewish Europeans would end up in the SECULAR Ottoman Turkish Vilayet of Syria.
You see, the Ottoman Turks had transformed from a Muslim nation to a Secular nation in the mid 1800’s. No more Muslim Law (Sharia), no Muslim courts. No more dhimmi contract for non-Muslims. These would be the Tanzimat Reforms (1839). Secular laws, absolutely equal rights for all citizens, secular courts, women’s rights and even gay rights by the mid 1800’s. Although the Ottomans played with democracy 1876-1878 and after 1908, we can say that they were a secular autocracy during most of those years of Jewish immigration.
Essentially, there was no difference between those Europeans immigrating into the USA via New York City, or even Uruguay, and those trivial number of Europeans immigrating into the Ottoman Vilayet of Syria, an extremely rural and underdeveloped backwater in the Ottoman Empire.
And MOST of the those Europeans would irritate the native populations in their new host countries. Many of us that are older know that feeling of anger when we see our old neighborhood being transformed by focused settlement of a specific new immigrant group. But that feeling gives way to sadness, then acceptance.
That is just what it means to live in a secular country. Those new immigrants have the same rights as the native who can trace back generations.
That 3% of Jewish Europeans would immigrate peacefully, buying property, disputes heard in local courts in Ottoman Syria over a 70 year period (1878–1948).
The only disruption in that cycle was that the Ottoman government would disappear HALFWAY into that 70-year immigration period, and the British would take over to temporarily administer the region (1919).
Understand that the 12% Jewish population at that point disproportionately drove the economy there by 1914. That was 35 years into immigration, building agricultural communities (over 60), public schools (Hebrew Board of Education: 1914), universities (Technion and Hebrew U: 1912, 1914), new city of Tel Aviv (1909), hospitals, court system, etc, etc.
The dark clouds of conflict were already on the horizon between Arabs and those Jews, with a surge in anti-Zionism in 1913 before start of World War 1.
And what changed with the British governance from the previous Ottoman governance? Not much. Still a secular autocracy, still allowed Jews to immigrate with tight restrictions at times (just like the Ottomans), still allowed Jewish citizens to buy property (yes, that is the way it works in secular countries).
The British even tried to set up a single government with a representative legislature where the industrious Jews would only be a minority (1922). You see, the British ignored the ambiguous Balfour Declaration in their legal Mandate from day one of their administration.
So I hope this answers the first Question: On what grounds did Jews immigrate?
(2) Now the second question, On what grounds did the Jews acquire land?
We do need to break this up into two parts:
a) The 70 year immigration wave from 1878 to 1948, and,
b) the civil/international wars from 1948–1949.
(a)
As mentioned earlier, over those 70 years, those Jews never “took” land. They legally bought property, often at highly inflated prices, disputes heard in Ottoman (then British Mandate) courts. In the very early years of immigration, large tracts of land were purchased from wealthy Arab landowners, at times displacing Arab tenants renting those lands. The Jews quickly learned to avoid those situations, and when necessary, would pay tenants generous 20-year stipends separate from the land purchase. In later years, thousands of land sales were from resident Arab small landowners that simply wished an easier urban life with the generous profits from selling their land.
(b)
Now on the ethnic conflict over territory that occurred between 1948–49.
Let’s begin by generically not assigning blame to either party in that ruckus and just look at the big picture.
Ethnic conflict over territory has pretty much defined most nation-states in the world today.
And those years around 1948 were some of the worst years for ethnic cleansings in human history. In those proximate years, around 60 million people expelled from their homes in conflict. Two of the largest cleansings in history happened at nearly the same time as this 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
After WW2 had ended, in a pure spoils-of-war land grab, East European countries expelled ethnic-German citizens of those countries, most who had lived in those regions for many generations. Some 15 million ethnic-German people were expelled, with about 1 million dying in that violent upheaval between 1945–1950.
Then we have the next largest cleansing in history…the partition of India/Pakistan, again with about 13 million cleansed on both sides of that divide, and, again a million dying in the ensuing upheaval in 1947.
Just these two cases represent about 1/2 of those 60 million expelled in those years.
The Arab-Israel conflict would see about 0.7 million Arabs expelled, and within a few years after conflict, about the same number of Middle Eastern Jews fleeing surrounding Arab countries.
Nobody takes the moral high ground in that conflict….neither Arabs nor Jews. When combatants are in close contact with civilians during ethnic conflict, bad things always occur, and they occurred on both sides in that conflict.
But people pick up the pieces, and move forward in their lives. There are no rebates for history. There were no “returns” of those 60 million people to their original homes.
So, yes in all of these ethnic conflicts, land was “taken” from people, and the same would be true in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is just that the Jews were 20 times more successful than the Arabs in that conflict.
Now if you want to assign some “scale of egregiousness” in that conflict, then you need to understand how that situation arrived at that point in 1948. How did it end in conflict?
What happened in 1922 pretty much tells the whole story here. I mentioned earlier that the British ignored the whole “Balfour” thing, and simply tried to put together a single governmental legislature with a minority of Jews and a majority of Arabs. This was the Churchill offer in 1922.
The Jews accepted this proposal, and shockingly, the Arabs subsequently rejected it.
I am pretty sure that there would NOT be a Jewish state today had pragmatism weighed in on the Arab side at this early date.
The Arabs refused to sit in a legislature with even a single Jew. They wanted the British to completely outlaw property sales to Jewish citizens. And, of course, they were not happy with promised restrictions on Jewish immigration. They wanted exactly zero.
So those Jews had been building their lives for 40 years, living as absolute equals to the Arabs in a secular society, and, suddenly, the Arabs wanted to totally dominate those Jews and take away their equal rights?
So the British simply continued on with the same policy as the Ottomans.
The same offer was made by the British in 1935, only to be rejected again.
And, by 1937, in the middle of the Arab Revolt insurgency, the Peel Commission interviewed and investigated all parties to find a solution. The Arab position had hardened even further. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian leader, now wanted all Jews who had arrived since 1917 to be expelled. That would be some 500,000 Jews expelled (to where?). The Commission would recommend partition (to a very small Jewish state). The Jews accepted. The Arabs refused and the Revolt re-started with a vengeance.
And, if you study what happened leading up to the UN Partition vote in November, 1947, you will learn that the only solution that the Arabs would agree to would be total dominance over Jews in an Arab Unitary State, and a loss of citizenship for Jews going back to 1917 (i.e. about 600,000 Jews would need to leave). The Arabs refused not only the Partition Plan, but also the UNSCOP Minority Report that would have given them dominance over the Jews, stopped Jewish immigration, but would have prevented a mass expulsion of Jews.
The UN’s UNSCOP committee understood that this was mission impossible. They understood that no matter what they decided, what they recommended, that region would descend into civil war , and likely international war.
The decision to recommend Partition was just the least of all the evils in that play.
The Arabs left no other outcome but conflict to that situation, and between their rhetoric and their actions drove conflict in that region, completely underestimating the ability of the Jews to not only defend themselves, but take the offensive.
(3) Next part of question: On what grounds did Israel declare itself a state?
Even under the best of circumstances, the UN has absolutely no ability to create, reject, or even recognize a new state. That point is clearly made in their Charter.
They can only make a recommendation for statehood…….and that is what they did in 1947. Even if both parties had accepted UN GA 181, the UN recommendation has no force of “law” (even for the Security Council).
Now the UN could have been handed the legal title to Mandate Palestine (from Britain) to administer, say, in a trusteeship, etc. But the British refused to hand the UN title to their Mndate. The British simply wanted a recommendation from the UN, and when the final decision did not meet their wishes, they refused to cooperate with the UN.
It is safe to say that British lack of cooperation, and American vacillation back and forth on both support and opposition to the Partition Plan completely undermined the new United Nations and their authority, and, exacerbated the likelihood of conflict in that mess, and even encouraged a continuation of the conflict in the first six months after the UN vote.
But remember…..unless one or more countries (like the USA, Soviets, Britain) were ready to commit troops for a long period to force a solution there, that region WOULD descend into conflict in ANY event.
Those troops (in a forced solution) would absolutely face an insurgency from either Arabs or Jews depending on what outcome they would push for. The British had a tough haul with the Arab insurgency that ran from 1936–1939, and, at that exact moment, the Jews were now in an insurgency against the British, tying up tens of thousands of British troops with many casualties in that ruckus.
Nobody wanted a part of that mess, especially just coming off of World War 2.
So what makes a state: “a state?”
Simply, if enough “important countries” recognize your new state, then you are a “state.”
Nations usually go by the Montevideo Convention for criteria for recognizing new nations, but there are some unspoken ones too. These are just guidelines though.
When Israel was created on May 14th, 1948, they met most of those criterion. Britain had relinquished legal title of their Mandate the day before, the Jews had a government and state infrastructure in place, the ability to hold foreign relations, and they had military control of their territory.
That is it. The US, Soviet Union, and many others including Iran would recognize Israel within the first six months of declaration. Done deal.
(4) And the final question: Was any of the above “Legal?”
Technically, those Jews immigrating into Ottoman Syriaand buying property were legal. In the late 1800’s, some of this immigration was illegal, but amnesty and citizenship was conferred by the Ottomans around 1906.
And, certainly, when the Ottoman lost in WW1, the victors took control of those territories that the Ottomans had lost. They obtained legal title with the blessing of the League of Nations, signed by all 52 member states (and blessed by non-member USA). And one of the victors made the rules, so technically, immigration was legal under the law of the sovereign power-Britain.
Now for “taking the land.”
International law is a very fuzzy, and mostly political construct. There is just no higher power that sits in judgement above all other nations, not back then, and not today.
You have the UN Security Council, where five victors of WW2 (the Permanent Members) can veto anything against themselves or their “buds” (the good ‘ol boy system). You have the International Criminal Court that does not have jurisdiction over the USA, Russia, China, India (i.e. no jurisdiction over most of the world population). Then you have the International Court of Justice that seems to be the only attempt at a non-political world court (but Israel never called in a case against it).
So from an international perspective, you really have to rely on “precedence” in many types of cases. Concerning the result of the 1948 civil and international wars between the Jews and Arabs over Mandate Palestine and the expulsions of populations, one simply needs to examine what happened in those massive ethnic cleansings in those same exact years that I mentioned earlier.
Were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and many other countries cited on illegality of the massive expulsion of ethnic Germans after WW2? Was there ever a drive to return these expelled people to their original homes (or using Palestinian math, expelled people and their descendants, generation after generation)?
How about India and Pakistan? And how about all of those other ethnic cleansings of the same time period?
No, there are no international rulings, no citings of illegality, no demand for population returns in these cases. That is the precedence that weighs heavily in review of the the 1948 Wars.
On what grounds did the Israeli people go to Palestine, claim the land and declare a state? Isn't it illegal?
David Cardellini
Updated Fri
There are really four Questions here:
- On what grounds did Jews go to Palestine?
- On what grounds did Jews acquire land?
- On what grounds did Jews declare a state?
- Was either (1) or (2) or (3) illegal?
(1) The first Question is the easiest: On what grounds did Jews go to Palestine?
On what grounds do hundreds of thousands of Muslims go to secular countries each year to live a better life?
On what grounds did about 60 million Europeans migrate in the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s (the largest migration in human history)? On what grounds would these guys migrate into secular countries, under the rule of law in those new countries, buying homes, starting businesses and living their new lives?
Yes, most of those 60 million Europeans, including about 3 million Jewish Europeans would end up in secular countries in North and South America. A mere 3% of those Jewish Europeans would end up in the SECULAR Ottoman Turkish Vilayet of Syria.
You see, the Ottoman Turks had transformed from a Muslim nation to a Secular nation in the mid 1800’s. No more Muslim Law (Sharia), no Muslim courts. No more dhimmi contract for non-Muslims. These would be the Tanzimat Reforms (1839). Secular laws, absolutely equal rights for all citizens, secular courts, women’s rights and even gay rights by the mid 1800’s. Although the Ottomans played with democracy 1876-1878 and after 1908, we can say that they were a secular autocracy during most of those years of Jewish immigration.
Essentially, there was no difference between those Europeans immigrating into the USA via New York City, or even Uruguay, and those trivial number of Europeans immigrating into the Ottoman Vilayet of Syria, an extremely rural and underdeveloped backwater in the Ottoman Empire.
And MOST of the those Europeans would irritate the native populations in their new host countries. Many of us that are older know that feeling of anger when we see our old neighborhood being transformed by focused settlement of a specific new immigrant group. But that feeling gives way to sadness, then acceptance.
That is just what it means to live in a secular country. Those new immigrants have the same rights as the native who can trace back generations.
That 3% of Jewish Europeans would immigrate peacefully, buying property, disputes heard in local courts in Ottoman Syria over a 70 year period (1878–1948).
The only disruption in that cycle was that the Ottoman government would disappear HALFWAY into that 70-year immigration period, and the British would take over to temporarily administer the region (1919).
Understand that the 12% Jewish population at that point disproportionately drove the economy there by 1914. That was 35 years into immigration, building agricultural communities (over 60), public schools (Hebrew Board of Education: 1914), universities (Technion and Hebrew U: 1912, 1914), new city of Tel Aviv (1909), hospitals, court system, etc, etc.
The dark clouds of conflict were already on the horizon between Arabs and those Jews, with a surge in anti-Zionism in 1913 before start of World War 1.
And what changed with the British governance from the previous Ottoman governance? Not much. Still a secular autocracy, still allowed Jews to immigrate with tight restrictions at times (just like the Ottomans), still allowed Jewish citizens to buy property (yes, that is the way it works in secular countries).
The British even tried to set up a single government with a representative legislature where the industrious Jews would only be a minority (1922). You see, the British ignored the ambiguous Balfour Declaration in their legal Mandate from day one of their administration.
So I hope this answers the first Question: On what grounds did Jews immigrate?
(2) Now the second question, On what grounds did the Jews acquire land?
We do need to break this up into two parts:
a) The 70 year immigration wave from 1878 to 1948, and,
b) the civil/international wars from 1948–1949.
(a)
As mentioned earlier, over those 70 years, those Jews never “took” land. They legally bought property, often at highly inflated prices, disputes heard in Ottoman (then British Mandate) courts. In the very early years of immigration, large tracts of land were purchased from wealthy Arab landowners, at times displacing Arab tenants renting those lands. The Jews quickly learned to avoid those situations, and when necessary, would pay tenants generous 20-year stipends separate from the land purchase. In later years, thousands of land sales were from resident Arab small landowners that simply wished an easier urban life with the generous profits from selling their land.
(b)
Now on the ethnic conflict over territory that occurred between 1948–49.
Let’s begin by generically not assigning blame to either party in that ruckus and just look at the big picture.
Ethnic conflict over territory has pretty much defined most nation-states in the world today.
And those years around 1948 were some of the worst years for ethnic cleansings in human history. In those proximate years, around 60 million people expelled from their homes in conflict. Two of the largest cleansings in history happened at nearly the same time as this 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
After WW2 had ended, in a pure spoils-of-war land grab, East European countries expelled ethnic-German citizens of those countries, most who had lived in those regions for many generations. Some 15 million ethnic-German people were expelled, with about 1 million dying in that violent upheaval between 1945–1950.
Then we have the next largest cleansing in history…the partition of India/Pakistan, again with about 13 million cleansed on both sides of that divide, and, again a million dying in the ensuing upheaval in 1947.
Just these two cases represent about 1/2 of those 60 million expelled in those years.
The Arab-Israel conflict would see about 0.7 million Arabs expelled, and within a few years after conflict, about the same number of Middle Eastern Jews fleeing surrounding Arab countries.
Nobody takes the moral high ground in that conflict….neither Arabs nor Jews. When combatants are in close contact with civilians during ethnic conflict, bad things always occur, and they occurred on both sides in that conflict.
But people pick up the pieces, and move forward in their lives. There are no rebates for history. There were no “returns” of those 60 million people to their original homes.
So, yes in all of these ethnic conflicts, land was “taken” from people, and the same would be true in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is just that the Jews were 20 times more successful than the Arabs in that conflict.
Now if you want to assign some “scale of egregiousness” in that conflict, then you need to understand how that situation arrived at that point in 1948. How did it end in conflict?
What happened in 1922 pretty much tells the whole story here. I mentioned earlier that the British ignored the whole “Balfour” thing, and simply tried to put together a single governmental legislature with a minority of Jews and a majority of Arabs. This was the Churchill offer in 1922.
The Jews accepted this proposal, and shockingly, the Arabs subsequently rejected it.
I am pretty sure that there would NOT be a Jewish state today had pragmatism weighed in on the Arab side at this early date.
The Arabs refused to sit in a legislature with even a single Jew. They wanted the British to completely outlaw property sales to Jewish citizens. And, of course, they were not happy with promised restrictions on Jewish immigration. They wanted exactly zero.
So those Jews had been building their lives for 40 years, living as absolute equals to the Arabs in a secular society, and, suddenly, the Arabs wanted to totally dominate those Jews and take away their equal rights?
So the British simply continued on with the same policy as the Ottomans.
The same offer was made by the British in 1935, only to be rejected again.
And, by 1937, in the middle of the Arab Revolt insurgency, the Peel Commission interviewed and investigated all parties to find a solution. The Arab position had hardened even further. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian leader, now wanted all Jews who had arrived since 1917 to be expelled. That would be some 500,000 Jews expelled (to where?). The Commission would recommend partition (to a very small Jewish state). The Jews accepted. The Arabs refused and the Revolt re-started with a vengeance.
And, if you study what happened leading up to the UN Partition vote in November, 1947, you will learn that the only solution that the Arabs would agree to would be total dominance over Jews in an Arab Unitary State, and a loss of citizenship for Jews going back to 1917 (i.e. about 600,000 Jews would need to leave). The Arabs refused not only the Partition Plan, but also the UNSCOP Minority Report that would have given them dominance over the Jews, stopped Jewish immigration, but would have prevented a mass expulsion of Jews.
The UN’s UNSCOP committee understood that this was mission impossible. They understood that no matter what they decided, what they recommended, that region would descend into civil war , and likely international war.
The decision to recommend Partition was just the least of all the evils in that play.
The Arabs left no other outcome but conflict to that situation, and between their rhetoric and their actions drove conflict in that region, completely underestimating the ability of the Jews to not only defend themselves, but take the offensive.
(3) Next part of question: On what grounds did Israel declare itself a state?
Even under the best of circumstances, the UN has absolutely no ability to create, reject, or even recognize a new state. That point is clearly made in their Charter.
They can only make a recommendation for statehood…….and that is what they did in 1947. Even if both parties had accepted UN GA 181, the UN recommendation has no force of “law” (even for the Security Council).
Now the UN could have been handed the legal title to Mandate Palestine (from Britain) to administer, say, in a trusteeship, etc. But the British refused to hand the UN title to their Mndate. The British simply wanted a recommendation from the UN, and when the final decision did not meet their wishes, they refused to cooperate with the UN.
It is safe to say that British lack of cooperation, and American vacillation back and forth on both support and opposition to the Partition Plan completely undermined the new United Nations and their authority, and, exacerbated the likelihood of conflict in that mess, and even encouraged a continuation of the conflict in the first six months after the UN vote.
But remember…..unless one or more countries (like the USA, Soviets, Britain) were ready to commit troops for a long period to force a solution there, that region WOULD descend into conflict in ANY event.
Those troops (in a forced solution) would absolutely face an insurgency from either Arabs or Jews depending on what outcome they would push for. The British had a tough haul with the Arab insurgency that ran from 1936–1939, and, at that exact moment, the Jews were now in an insurgency against the British, tying up tens of thousands of British troops with many casualties in that ruckus.
Nobody wanted a part of that mess, especially just coming off of World War 2.
So what makes a state: “a state?”
Simply, if enough “important countries” recognize your new state, then you are a “state.”
Nations usually go by the Montevideo Convention for criteria for recognizing new nations, but there are some unspoken ones too. These are just guidelines though.
When Israel was created on May 14th, 1948, they met most of those criterion. Britain had relinquished legal title of their Mandate the day before, the Jews had a government and state infrastructure in place, the ability to hold foreign relations, and they had military control of their territory.
That is it. The US, Soviet Union, and many others including Iran would recognize Israel within the first six months of declaration. Done deal.
(4) And the final question: Was any of the above “Legal?”
Technically, those Jews immigrating into Ottoman Syriaand buying property were legal. In the late 1800’s, some of this immigration was illegal, but amnesty and citizenship was conferred by the Ottomans around 1906.
And, certainly, when the Ottoman lost in WW1, the victors took control of those territories that the Ottomans had lost. They obtained legal title with the blessing of the League of Nations, signed by all 52 member states (and blessed by non-member USA). And one of the victors made the rules, so technically, immigration was legal under the law of the sovereign power-Britain.
Now for “taking the land.”
International law is a very fuzzy, and mostly political construct. There is just no higher power that sits in judgement above all other nations, not back then, and not today.
You have the UN Security Council, where five victors of WW2 (the Permanent Members) can veto anything against themselves or their “buds” (the good ‘ol boy system). You have the International Criminal Court that does not have jurisdiction over the USA, Russia, China, India (i.e. no jurisdiction over most of the world population). Then you have the International Court of Justice that seems to be the only attempt at a non-political world court (but Israel never called in a case against it).
So from an international perspective, you really have to rely on “precedence” in many types of cases. Concerning the result of the 1948 civil and international wars between the Jews and Arabs over Mandate Palestine and the expulsions of populations, one simply needs to examine what happened in those massive ethnic cleansings in those same exact years that I mentioned earlier.
Were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and many other countries cited on illegality of the massive expulsion of ethnic Germans after WW2? Was there ever a drive to return these expelled people to their original homes (or using Palestinian math, expelled people and their descendants, generation after generation)?
How about India and Pakistan? And how about all of those other ethnic cleansings of the same time period?
No, there are no international rulings, no citings of illegality, no demand for population returns in these cases. That is the precedence that weighs heavily in review of the the 1948 Wars.
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