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I think the currently ongoing apartheid state settler-colonial ethnic cleansing campaign Israel is engaged in has been lost in all this pettifogging about why Palestinians rejected foreign powers planting a newly created Jewish state on top of their homelands back in the 40's.
My perspective is that the US needs to stop funding and providing indispensable diplomatic cover for those crimes against humanity, Israel needs to stop the continued expansion of illegal settlements, treat Palestinians in Israel (Israeli citizens) as full and equal members of society, and begin the process of leaving the illegal settlements while the international community leverages those actions to place global pressure on both parties to find a two state solution so that when (because I don't think it's a matter of if) tensions flare up again it's with the ubiquitous and undeniable recognition of the right to Palestinian self-determination, national defense, international accountability and so on.
Considering the general response to Israel being on its way to replace Netanyahu with someone that identifies to his right, outright rejects the idea of a 2-state solution under any circumstance, and has advocated for what was essentially the systemic forced expulsion and/or subjugation of Palestinians under "The Stability Initiative" there doesn't currently seem to be the international will to stop the expansion of the ethnic cleansing colonial apartheid state Israel is expanding right now.
That said, grassroots solidarity efforts with Palestinians are the largest I've seen in my political life so that is a ray of hope imo.
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On June 04 2021 10:34 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2021 07:52 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 04 2021 03:15 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:On June 01 2021 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 00:27 maybenexttime wrote:On May 30 2021 07:14 Broetchenholer wrote:
Sorry, your question was not clear to me. Maybe i am stupid, maybe your question was not precise enough. Does not matter. So when i read your post, you seem to want to find out if the Jewish settlers were only settling land that was not already settled by "natives". I gave you a source for an example that clearly states, that a Jewish organisation bought land in the most fertile region of Palestine, settled their people and then forced the natives living there out. Some of them got money. I am sure they did not feel like someone alient to their society was taking their land from them. You seem to assume, that Palestine somehow had large patches of land that were waiting for someone to finally work them, because the Palestinians just let them lay dormant. And then the settlers could come in and take that land without hurting anyone. Palestine had not been just hit by a disaster killing of 50% of their population, it was a settled land like anywhere else around the mediteranean sea. There probably were areas that were able to be developed with modern technology, but let's change the variables a little bit.
After WW1, the British Empire is left as overlord of Poland. They have to decide what to do with the land. Poland is of course no state, it hasn't been one in 2 centuries, so why should the Polish people have a polish state. Instead, Britain decides that the Polish land is a perfect candidate for a new Jewish state. So, they allow Jewish settlers from Russia and other parts of Europe to build their own communities in the territory of Poland. After WW2, the Jewish controls more then half of the land of now Poland. Would you in this example say
a) the land wasn't part of a Catholic Polish state anyway, so you can't argue half the polish land was taken.
b) It wasn't Polish land. Did any of the land settled by Jewish people belong to Polish people before?
It is ridiculous how you assume that this land in Palestine was just free and that the people living their for centuries had no right to call it theirs. You can only make that argument if you believe that somehow palestinean people have less rights then polish or german or jewish. That their right for self determination is less real then that of other people.
Not saying you agree with that decision, but how many refugees did Poland accept in the migrant crisis? In Germany, 1 million refugees was very much doable and we got a huge spike in nationalism and a jump to the right in our politics.How can you not see that to the people of Palestine, this was an invasion? Before you make such analogies you'll have to prove that the demographic situation of Poland or Bavaria was actually comparable to that of the 19th/20th century Palestine. Poland was quite densely and uniformly populated. The same cannot be said about Palestine, from what I can tell. Between the 1st and the 5th century its population was estimated to be around 2-3M. By the 14th century it dropped to just 150k. In the 19th century it reached 250-500k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)I have yet to see any evidence that the Palestinian Arabs controlled, settled, cultivated or owned nearly the entirety of Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration. The region appears to have been quite underpopulated for over a thousand years. Your own link shows that the population of Palestine in 1947 was 2 million people. How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board. As well as that the Jewish population was the minority since the 5th century. Poland is not uniformly populated. Even today before the massive population increase that comes with the agriculturaland industrial revolution and medical technology, there will surely be many areas with low population, woodland or simply areas of lower agricultural worth. Would it then be fine for a Jewish nation to be made there, taking a chunk out of Poland? I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. The argument is strange anyways. It doesn't make it anymore right if certain areas were or were not as densely populated, nor that the modern concept of a nation state had not been achieved by military might by those people, if that people lived in the area we now call Isreal have been forced out and oppressed on the basis of race and religion. If 300 years ago, there was no real concept of a united Italy, nobody called themselves Italians, would then it would be fine for formerly stateless ethnic religios groups to carve out a nation state from the geographical area of Italy?
But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use. I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Today, by military conquest Isreal certainly occupies the highest population city Jerusalem and control what we now call Isreal. By the way the principle of self-determinationis ultimately about claiming land even if it isn't currently being used. For instance there are soveriegn rights being extended miles into the sea even if nobody is using the land and are internationally recognised as such, even if nobody can live at sea and nobody is using them. When the English first settled parts of Ireland, there were certainly areas of Ireland which were unoccupied. So then would it be right that the native population should establish which parts of Ireland they were occupying so as to claim it as part of their country? I don't see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination. The principle is simply about people living in a given place having the right to govern themselves. But using territorial waters as an access point for your ports counts as using them in my book, so it's a moot point. As for Ireland, if what you're describing were in fact the case (i.e. the English settling part of Ireland lying idle), I don't think it would've been wrong. The history of English colonization of Ireland is a history of centuries of ethnic cleansing, population displacement and brutal oppression, though. On June 02 2021 18:46 Broetchenholer wrote:That comparison is only fair if you assume that Israel was in the same power dynamic with Palestine as Poland was with Germany. Again, you are acting as if the civil war between two nationalist parties was the fault of one party and the winner then was morally okay with occupying it's land. If i want to buy something from you, you tell me it costs 100$. I give you 50$ and take the thing from you. You complain that we never agreen on selling it for 50$ and you want your thing back. So i say, if you try to force me to give the thing back, and you fail, i will take my 50$ back and keep the thing. So you try to take it back, you lose, i keep it and take my money back. You then ask the police to retrieve the thing and they are like, nah, you weren't using the thing in the first place and besides, you were violent to retrieve it, we will throw you into Gaza. Palestina was opposed to a jewish state in land that was settled by them. Probably sparsely, but still. 750k people did live there in 1948, and did not live there anymore afterwards. I think that is a position that should be understandable. The mental gymnastics needed to make this position illegit should show you that. Nazi germany and Palestine should be treated dfífferently in peace talks.  I don't see how the power dynamic is relevant. And as JimmiC said, it was different in late 19th/early 20th century than it is now. Your comparison rests on the assumption that the Jewish settlers somehow stole the land from the Arabs prior to the 1948 war. I'd like to see evidence for that. Can you finally prove that the land settled by the Jews actually belonged to the Arabs in any way? They claimed it as theirs, but so did the Jews. How do you determine whose right to self-determination should take precedence in case of conflicting claims? The fact that 750k people got displaced is a consequence of the war their leaders had started. I don't see how that's different from ethnic Germans getting displaced. If you think the Arabs had a valid reason to wage war against the newly formed Jewish state, please, prove it. On June 03 2021 07:53 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 02 2021 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:On June 01 2021 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 00:27 maybenexttime wrote:On May 30 2021 07:14 Broetchenholer wrote:
Sorry, your question was not clear to me. Maybe i am stupid, maybe your question was not precise enough. Does not matter. So when i read your post, you seem to want to find out if the Jewish settlers were only settling land that was not already settled by "natives". I gave you a source for an example that clearly states, that a Jewish organisation bought land in the most fertile region of Palestine, settled their people and then forced the natives living there out. Some of them got money. I am sure they did not feel like someone alient to their society was taking their land from them. You seem to assume, that Palestine somehow had large patches of land that were waiting for someone to finally work them, because the Palestinians just let them lay dormant. And then the settlers could come in and take that land without hurting anyone. Palestine had not been just hit by a disaster killing of 50% of their population, it was a settled land like anywhere else around the mediteranean sea. There probably were areas that were able to be developed with modern technology, but let's change the variables a little bit.
After WW1, the British Empire is left as overlord of Poland. They have to decide what to do with the land. Poland is of course no state, it hasn't been one in 2 centuries, so why should the Polish people have a polish state. Instead, Britain decides that the Polish land is a perfect candidate for a new Jewish state. So, they allow Jewish settlers from Russia and other parts of Europe to build their own communities in the territory of Poland. After WW2, the Jewish controls more then half of the land of now Poland. Would you in this example say
a) the land wasn't part of a Catholic Polish state anyway, so you can't argue half the polish land was taken.
b) It wasn't Polish land. Did any of the land settled by Jewish people belong to Polish people before?
It is ridiculous how you assume that this land in Palestine was just free and that the people living their for centuries had no right to call it theirs. You can only make that argument if you believe that somehow palestinean people have less rights then polish or german or jewish. That their right for self determination is less real then that of other people.
Not saying you agree with that decision, but how many refugees did Poland accept in the migrant crisis? In Germany, 1 million refugees was very much doable and we got a huge spike in nationalism and a jump to the right in our politics.How can you not see that to the people of Palestine, this was an invasion? Before you make such analogies you'll have to prove that the demographic situation of Poland or Bavaria was actually comparable to that of the 19th/20th century Palestine. Poland was quite densely and uniformly populated. The same cannot be said about Palestine, from what I can tell. Between the 1st and the 5th century its population was estimated to be around 2-3M. By the 14th century it dropped to just 150k. In the 19th century it reached 250-500k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)I have yet to see any evidence that the Palestinian Arabs controlled, settled, cultivated or owned nearly the entirety of Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration. The region appears to have been quite underpopulated for over a thousand years. Your own link shows that the population of Palestine in 1947 was 2 million people. How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board. As well as that the Jewish population was the minority since the 5th century. Poland is not uniformly populated. Even today before the massive population increase that comes with the agriculturaland industrial revolution and medical technology, there will surely be many areas with low population, woodland or simply areas of lower agricultural worth. Would it then be fine for a Jewish nation to be made there, taking a chunk out of Poland? I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. The argument is strange anyways. It doesn't make it anymore right if certain areas were or were not as densely populated, nor that the modern concept of a nation state had not been achieved by military might by those people, if that people lived in the area we now call Isreal have been forced out and oppressed on the basis of race and religion. If 300 years ago, there was no real concept of a united Italy, nobody called themselves Italians, would then it would be fine for formerly stateless ethnic religios groups to carve out a nation state from the geographical area of Italy?
But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use. I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Are you serious? That is the core of the pro-Palestinian argument that the Jews colonized Palestine and had no right to form a state there. You see Arab propaganda hammering this point at every opportunity. All those maps showing Jewish settlements vs. the rest of Palestine, implicitly belonging to the Arab population. I will address the rest of your post tomorrow. I have no idea what this Arab propaganda you speak of is, but if so they are correct in that case, for in your very own link which you selectively interpreted the Jewish population was a were a minority population since the 5th century till 1947 where the infomation ends. I wonder what happened in 1948? Zionists settled the area shortly after WW2, and after a series of military actions and several wars, were the lands controlled by what we now call and recognise as the state of Isreal were formed. Do Jews have a right to form a state with the current areas of control they have? Depends. If you think might make right, Isreal has shown itself to be mighty indeed and so have the right to the lands that their might gives. And I also note to add that I distinguish between Jews and Isrealites. You really don't know what Arab propaganda I'm talking about? I mean maps like that: + Show Spoiler +It claims that any land in Palestine that wasn't part of the Jewish settlements belonged to the Arabs. But just because you claim some land, doesn't mean it's yours. That's why I'd like to see some reliable data on the actual extent of the Arab presence in Palestine at the time. The Jewish population was a minority in some parts of Palestine, and a majority in others. There were also areas that lay idle and were fair game for taking. Which ethnic group was the majority of the population of Palestine as a whole is irrelevant. Palestine was an artificial construct. If you draw borders one way, you'll end up with the Kurds being a minority in several countries. If you draw them another way, you'll end up with a Kurdistan full of Kurds. And Jewish settlers have been settling Palestine decades before the 1948 war. Jews and Israelis, I presume. Israelites were an ancient tribe, afaik. You don't see see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination, yet you also claim that the principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. But that is exactly what the principle of self determination that leads to nation states is. To lay claim to people and geograpy. Nowhere is land always constantly occupied. Whenever you divide up land to it's smallest detail, there is always a parcel of land that is not occupied. Vast deserts and mountain ranges and deep rainforests and artic tundra are claimed by nation states, where there is little or no human population. The right to claim land and even by extention waters that extend from land. You talk of lands as fair game for the taking, and yes, they are fair game, by force of arms. You write as if somehow the boundaries of Isreal was formed by selecting areas where the Jewish population already pre-existed, not the historical reality and current situation where Isreal was formed and maintained by force of arms. That Isreal hadn't successfully conducted population displacement and brutal oppression and is currently in the proccess of continuing just that. Remember that the recent events started because Isreal was being too oppressive which sparked off the violence. Now as to the issue of your "Arab propaganda." Never seen that before, but seems to be a fairly accurate representation of land controlled over time. If anything it understates the situation as it appears to count joint Isreali-Palestine control as under Palestinian control. Essentially what we call the state of Isreal today is under Isreali control or occupation. That is the reality, which oddly enough you dismiss as "Arab propaganda". Jews and Isrealis are two different things. One is a citizen of Isreal and the other is semi religious ethnic group called jews whose population around the world far exceeds that of the population in Isreal. You seem to conflate the two regularily for some reason. You seem to disregard Palestinians as a people and prefer to call them Arabs as well. Which is somewhat odd for someone who likes to talk about selfdetermination, but is seemingly happy to disregard calling people as what the have determined themselves to be. I mean that is how they tried to form it with the partician plan. Jewish population did preexist, why do people keep acting like it did not? This was the proposed plan. Territory Arab and other population % Arab % Jewish % total Arab State 725,000 99% 10,000 1% 735,000 Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000 International 105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000 Total 1,237,000 67% 608,000 33% 1,845,000 + Show Spoiler +The land allocated to the Arab State in the final plan included about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[51][52][53] and consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one-third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv.[citation needed] The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[52][53][54] The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley. The bulk of the proposed Jewish State's territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert,[49] which was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the Sea of Galilee, crucial for its water supply, and the economically important Red Sea. And it was not that the Arab Palestinians didn't think it was a fsir split, it is that they were completely against any split and only wanted to remove all jews from the area . Show nested quote +The Palestinian Arabs make a grave declaration before the UN, before God and before history that they will never submit to any power that comes to Palestine to impose a partition. The only way to establish a partition is to get rid of them all: men, women, and children. Also, people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it. It is so wildly historically inaccurate and it does not matter how many people post the history from what sources but people go back to this made up situation. The most recent colonizers were the British and they wanted to give it to Jordan /jews based on a deals made through the war and before that it was the Ottoman Empire. Also this who left right stuff is so silly as well because that has flip flopped a couple times. The USSR (yes it was not the US) was the first country to recognize Isreal AND they were the ones that armed them through the embargo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#:~:text=The United Nations Partition Plan,as Resolution 181 (II)
JimmiC, i really don't understand why you keep quoting people and then argue against somebody else. Who was not telling the story of the jewish migration before 1948? Who was ignoring that here? One side is trying to tell the other that exactly that migration was a valid reason for Arabs natives to be pissed and the other side is arguing that there was no reason to be pissed, because the land was not properly used anyway and somehow the people living there should have been chill to be governed by a destinctly Jewish state.
And no, nobody here is claiming "people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it". Also, no, the British were not colonizers. They did not settle their people in the land, they just kept it for a while, they were shitty overlords. The people creating a self governing colony there where the Jewish people. Also, i think you misjudge the quote you have given from the Palestinian leader. He is saying, if my understanding of english grammar is right, the only way to get a partition is if oyu remove all Palestinian men, women and children from the area, not the jewish. He might infact be okay with displacing all jewish people, you will properly find those quotes as well, but this is not one.
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On June 04 2021 03:15 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +Broetchenholer wrote:
Last try. I will give up on changing your mind afterwards because i am really frustrated with this conversation. You own a fresh hot pizza. I am hungry as well and i take a third of your pizza from you. You protest because it is your pizza, so we get in a heated argument. You are louder because you want your slices of pizza back and i am just trying to not irritate you more. So now the police comes over and says, okay, this dispute is too loud, we must settle it. Fairest thing would be to give me half the pizza. You protest, you want your slices back now, you do not accept the deal. I say i accept the deal and grab the other slice of pizza, so now i have half your pizza and while you are telling me that this is bullshit, i start eating the pizza.
Of course the settlers were for the partition plan, they had just achieved what they wanted. Then, the first chance they got, they ignored it and took another slice. And while the civil war from December 1947 to April 1948 started with terroristic attacks from both sides on each other, the Arab forces somehow did not simply murder every Jewish person they could find. We cannot know what they had done, had they succeeded. Maybe it is indeed better they lost. We can however clearly see what happened after the Jewish victory. But of course that is now okay, because the Arabs were mean and attacked first.
I had to stop at "your pizza". I have yet to see evidence showing that the Arab presence in Palestine encompassed the whole region and not just pockets bigger than the Jewish settlements.
Okay, because you keep insisting, that the people living in Palestina have no right of self determination because their level of using the land is lacking in your mind, here is your proof. Stealing from JimmiC, as common sense is not enough for you to undestand my point.
Territory Arab and other population %
Arab % Jewish % total
Arab State 725,000 99% 10,000 1% 735,000
Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000
International 105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000
Total 1,237,000 67% 608,000 33% 1,845,000
Your arument is, the Jewish population settled land, that was not properly used by the arab population. I give you that point. Have it. There is absolutely no list of arguments against that. But now these communes of purely Juewish people exist, where Arabs were in the way, they are now displaced. I hope you give me that there were occasions where settlements were not created in former deserts and where Arabs were living and that afterwards, Arabs weren't living there anymore. So now, these dots of settlements in areas seperate from Arabs want to form a Jewish state, they don't want autonomy and self-government for these settlements, they want to become Israel. And As you see in these numbers, they want land that consists of Jewish settlements AND palestinan villages. So why do these Palestinian villages, that exist on the land not have a right to form their own Palestinian State on the land? Why do only the Jewish settlers get to decide what happens in that land? Are we now back to might makes right? Are the Palestinians not organized, developed enough to have their own state? Why does the existence of sparse settlements dotted all over the area give the Jewish people the right to claim that land, but not the Palestinian people?
Also, in your mind, how does all of this apply to, let's say the american natives. They never occupied land in permanent settlements. They roamed the land and took what they needed. Were the European settlers then entitled to just take all the land? I mean, it's sparsely populated if you can call it populated at all, so just grab? The Caribbean could be used so much more efficient by the European settlers, the natives didn't even have plantagions there before. It's okay to call it Spanish, right? What is the difference between the scenarios i do not get, because to me it's just that the Jewish settlers really needed a new place to stay.
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On June 04 2021 15:51 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2021 14:24 Broetchenholer wrote:On June 04 2021 10:34 JimmiC wrote:On June 04 2021 07:52 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 04 2021 03:15 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:On June 01 2021 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 00:27 maybenexttime wrote:On May 30 2021 07:14 Broetchenholer wrote:
Sorry, your question was not clear to me. Maybe i am stupid, maybe your question was not precise enough. Does not matter. So when i read your post, you seem to want to find out if the Jewish settlers were only settling land that was not already settled by "natives". I gave you a source for an example that clearly states, that a Jewish organisation bought land in the most fertile region of Palestine, settled their people and then forced the natives living there out. Some of them got money. I am sure they did not feel like someone alient to their society was taking their land from them. You seem to assume, that Palestine somehow had large patches of land that were waiting for someone to finally work them, because the Palestinians just let them lay dormant. And then the settlers could come in and take that land without hurting anyone. Palestine had not been just hit by a disaster killing of 50% of their population, it was a settled land like anywhere else around the mediteranean sea. There probably were areas that were able to be developed with modern technology, but let's change the variables a little bit.
After WW1, the British Empire is left as overlord of Poland. They have to decide what to do with the land. Poland is of course no state, it hasn't been one in 2 centuries, so why should the Polish people have a polish state. Instead, Britain decides that the Polish land is a perfect candidate for a new Jewish state. So, they allow Jewish settlers from Russia and other parts of Europe to build their own communities in the territory of Poland. After WW2, the Jewish controls more then half of the land of now Poland. Would you in this example say
a) the land wasn't part of a Catholic Polish state anyway, so you can't argue half the polish land was taken.
b) It wasn't Polish land. Did any of the land settled by Jewish people belong to Polish people before?
It is ridiculous how you assume that this land in Palestine was just free and that the people living their for centuries had no right to call it theirs. You can only make that argument if you believe that somehow palestinean people have less rights then polish or german or jewish. That their right for self determination is less real then that of other people.
Not saying you agree with that decision, but how many refugees did Poland accept in the migrant crisis? In Germany, 1 million refugees was very much doable and we got a huge spike in nationalism and a jump to the right in our politics.How can you not see that to the people of Palestine, this was an invasion? Before you make such analogies you'll have to prove that the demographic situation of Poland or Bavaria was actually comparable to that of the 19th/20th century Palestine. Poland was quite densely and uniformly populated. The same cannot be said about Palestine, from what I can tell. Between the 1st and the 5th century its population was estimated to be around 2-3M. By the 14th century it dropped to just 150k. In the 19th century it reached 250-500k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)I have yet to see any evidence that the Palestinian Arabs controlled, settled, cultivated or owned nearly the entirety of Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration. The region appears to have been quite underpopulated for over a thousand years. Your own link shows that the population of Palestine in 1947 was 2 million people. How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board. As well as that the Jewish population was the minority since the 5th century. Poland is not uniformly populated. Even today before the massive population increase that comes with the agriculturaland industrial revolution and medical technology, there will surely be many areas with low population, woodland or simply areas of lower agricultural worth. Would it then be fine for a Jewish nation to be made there, taking a chunk out of Poland? I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. The argument is strange anyways. It doesn't make it anymore right if certain areas were or were not as densely populated, nor that the modern concept of a nation state had not been achieved by military might by those people, if that people lived in the area we now call Isreal have been forced out and oppressed on the basis of race and religion. If 300 years ago, there was no real concept of a united Italy, nobody called themselves Italians, would then it would be fine for formerly stateless ethnic religios groups to carve out a nation state from the geographical area of Italy?
But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use. I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Today, by military conquest Isreal certainly occupies the highest population city Jerusalem and control what we now call Isreal. By the way the principle of self-determinationis ultimately about claiming land even if it isn't currently being used. For instance there are soveriegn rights being extended miles into the sea even if nobody is using the land and are internationally recognised as such, even if nobody can live at sea and nobody is using them. When the English first settled parts of Ireland, there were certainly areas of Ireland which were unoccupied. So then would it be right that the native population should establish which parts of Ireland they were occupying so as to claim it as part of their country? I don't see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination. The principle is simply about people living in a given place having the right to govern themselves. But using territorial waters as an access point for your ports counts as using them in my book, so it's a moot point. As for Ireland, if what you're describing were in fact the case (i.e. the English settling part of Ireland lying idle), I don't think it would've been wrong. The history of English colonization of Ireland is a history of centuries of ethnic cleansing, population displacement and brutal oppression, though. On June 02 2021 18:46 Broetchenholer wrote:That comparison is only fair if you assume that Israel was in the same power dynamic with Palestine as Poland was with Germany. Again, you are acting as if the civil war between two nationalist parties was the fault of one party and the winner then was morally okay with occupying it's land. If i want to buy something from you, you tell me it costs 100$. I give you 50$ and take the thing from you. You complain that we never agreen on selling it for 50$ and you want your thing back. So i say, if you try to force me to give the thing back, and you fail, i will take my 50$ back and keep the thing. So you try to take it back, you lose, i keep it and take my money back. You then ask the police to retrieve the thing and they are like, nah, you weren't using the thing in the first place and besides, you were violent to retrieve it, we will throw you into Gaza. Palestina was opposed to a jewish state in land that was settled by them. Probably sparsely, but still. 750k people did live there in 1948, and did not live there anymore afterwards. I think that is a position that should be understandable. The mental gymnastics needed to make this position illegit should show you that. Nazi germany and Palestine should be treated dfífferently in peace talks. I don't see how the power dynamic is relevant. And as JimmiC said, it was different in late 19th/early 20th century than it is now. Your comparison rests on the assumption that the Jewish settlers somehow stole the land from the Arabs prior to the 1948 war. I'd like to see evidence for that. Can you finally prove that the land settled by the Jews actually belonged to the Arabs in any way? They claimed it as theirs, but so did the Jews. How do you determine whose right to self-determination should take precedence in case of conflicting claims? The fact that 750k people got displaced is a consequence of the war their leaders had started. I don't see how that's different from ethnic Germans getting displaced. If you think the Arabs had a valid reason to wage war against the newly formed Jewish state, please, prove it. On June 03 2021 07:53 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 02 2021 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:On June 01 2021 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
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Your own link shows that the population of Palestine in 1947 was 2 million people. How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board. As well as that the Jewish population was the minority since the 5th century. Poland is not uniformly populated. Even today before the massive population increase that comes with the agriculturaland industrial revolution and medical technology, there will surely be many areas with low population, woodland or simply areas of lower agricultural worth. Would it then be fine for a Jewish nation to be made there, taking a chunk out of Poland? I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. The argument is strange anyways. It doesn't make it anymore right if certain areas were or were not as densely populated, nor that the modern concept of a nation state had not been achieved by military might by those people, if that people lived in the area we now call Isreal have been forced out and oppressed on the basis of race and religion. If 300 years ago, there was no real concept of a united Italy, nobody called themselves Italians, would then it would be fine for formerly stateless ethnic religios groups to carve out a nation state from the geographical area of Italy?
But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use. I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Are you serious? That is the core of the pro-Palestinian argument that the Jews colonized Palestine and had no right to form a state there. You see Arab propaganda hammering this point at every opportunity. All those maps showing Jewish settlements vs. the rest of Palestine, implicitly belonging to the Arab population. I will address the rest of your post tomorrow. I have no idea what this Arab propaganda you speak of is, but if so they are correct in that case, for in your very own link which you selectively interpreted the Jewish population was a were a minority population since the 5th century till 1947 where the infomation ends. I wonder what happened in 1948? Zionists settled the area shortly after WW2, and after a series of military actions and several wars, were the lands controlled by what we now call and recognise as the state of Isreal were formed. Do Jews have a right to form a state with the current areas of control they have? Depends. If you think might make right, Isreal has shown itself to be mighty indeed and so have the right to the lands that their might gives. And I also note to add that I distinguish between Jews and Isrealites. You really don't know what Arab propaganda I'm talking about? I mean maps like that: + Show Spoiler +It claims that any land in Palestine that wasn't part of the Jewish settlements belonged to the Arabs. But just because you claim some land, doesn't mean it's yours. That's why I'd like to see some reliable data on the actual extent of the Arab presence in Palestine at the time. The Jewish population was a minority in some parts of Palestine, and a majority in others. There were also areas that lay idle and were fair game for taking. Which ethnic group was the majority of the population of Palestine as a whole is irrelevant. Palestine was an artificial construct. If you draw borders one way, you'll end up with the Kurds being a minority in several countries. If you draw them another way, you'll end up with a Kurdistan full of Kurds. And Jewish settlers have been settling Palestine decades before the 1948 war. Jews and Israelis, I presume. Israelites were an ancient tribe, afaik. You don't see see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination, yet you also claim that the principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. But that is exactly what the principle of self determination that leads to nation states is. To lay claim to people and geograpy. Nowhere is land always constantly occupied. Whenever you divide up land to it's smallest detail, there is always a parcel of land that is not occupied. Vast deserts and mountain ranges and deep rainforests and artic tundra are claimed by nation states, where there is little or no human population. The right to claim land and even by extention waters that extend from land. You talk of lands as fair game for the taking, and yes, they are fair game, by force of arms . You write as if somehow the boundaries of Isreal was formed by selecting areas where the Jewish population already pre-existed, not the historical reality and current situation where Isreal was formed and maintained by force of arms. That Isreal hadn't successfully conducted population displacement and brutal oppression and is currently in the proccess of continuing just that. Remember that the recent events started because Isreal was being too oppressive which sparked off the violence. Now as to the issue of your "Arab propaganda." Never seen that before, but seems to be a fairly accurate representation of land controlled over time. If anything it understates the situation as it appears to count joint Isreali-Palestine control as under Palestinian control. Essentially what we call the state of Isreal today is under Isreali control or occupation. That is the reality, which oddly enough you dismiss as "Arab propaganda". Jews and Isrealis are two different things. One is a citizen of Isreal and the other is semi religious ethnic group called jews whose population around the world far exceeds that of the population in Isreal. You seem to conflate the two regularily for some reason. You seem to disregard Palestinians as a people and prefer to call them Arabs as well. Which is somewhat odd for someone who likes to talk about selfdetermination, but is seemingly happy to disregard calling people as what the have determined themselves to be. I mean that is how they tried to form it with the partician plan. Jewish population did preexist, why do people keep acting like it did not? This was the proposed plan. Territory Arab and other population % Arab % Jewish % total Arab State 725,000 99% 10,000 1% 735,000 Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000 International 105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000 Total 1,237,000 67% 608,000 33% 1,845,000 + Show Spoiler +The land allocated to the Arab State in the final plan included about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[51][52][53] and consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one-third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv.[citation needed] The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[52][53][54] The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley. The bulk of the proposed Jewish State's territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert,[49] which was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the Sea of Galilee, crucial for its water supply, and the economically important Red Sea. And it was not that the Arab Palestinians didn't think it was a fsir split, it is that they were completely against any split and only wanted to remove all jews from the area . The Palestinian Arabs make a grave declaration before the UN, before God and before history that they will never submit to any power that comes to Palestine to impose a partition. The only way to establish a partition is to get rid of them all: men, women, and children. Also, people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it. It is so wildly historically inaccurate and it does not matter how many people post the history from what sources but people go back to this made up situation. The most recent colonizers were the British and they wanted to give it to Jordan /jews based on a deals made through the war and before that it was the Ottoman Empire. Also this who left right stuff is so silly as well because that has flip flopped a couple times. The USSR (yes it was not the US) was the first country to recognize Isreal AND they were the ones that armed them through the embargo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#:~:text=The United Nations Partition Plan,as Resolution 181 (II) JimmiC, i really don't understand why you keep quoting people and then argue against somebody else. Who was not telling the story of the jewish migration before 1948? Who was ignoring that here? One side is trying to tell the other that exactly that migration was a valid reason for Arabs natives to be pissed and the other side is arguing that there was no reason to be pissed, because the land was not properly used anyway and somehow the people living there should have been chill to be governed by a destinctly Jewish state. And no, nobody here is claiming "people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it". Also, no, the British were not colonizers. They did not settle their people in the land, they just kept it for a while, they were shitty overlords. The people creating a self governing colony there where the Jewish people. Also, i think you misjudge the quote you have given from the Palestinian leader. He is saying, if my understanding of english grammar is right, the only way to get a partition is if oyu remove all Palestinian men, women and children from the area, not the jewish. He might infact be okay with displacing all jewish people, you will properly find those quotes as well, but this is not one. People are most definitely leaning it that direction. And I was responding to his "You write as if somehow the boundaries of Isreal was formed by selecting areas where the Jewish population already pre-existed, not the historical reality and current situation where Isreal was formed and maintained by force of arms." Pointing out that this is exactly what they were trying to do with the partition plan, they picked the areas that had the most Jewish people and were going to make it the Jewish part. And it was a lot of desert. Now they got about half the land when they only had a 1/4 of the people, and only about half in the place they were in so you can argue about how fair it was. But explicitly saying he is acting like exactly what was done is wrong, when it was exactly what was done is pretty off base. And yes the British were colonizers there like they were in India and much of Africa (along with other european powers). It is not about filling it with your people, though that can happen, it is about establishing control over the indigenous people of an area and appropriating for their own use which is to make their empire and homeland more powerful. And there are both Jewish and Arab Palestinians that would be indigenous before someone goes down that rabbit hole. And both were fighting to free them of their oppression. And the Palestinian Arabs also didn't want the Jordan king to rule them either. When you read into the history you see part of the reason the Arab palestinians had many less fighting men even way more population is many of the Arabs fighting the Jews didn't want to arm the Palestinian Arabs because they also wanted to dominate them after they took the area.
I believe he refers to the jewish population before zionist movement started. So, if you put some people in a place and then argue they occupy that place, they should form a state here, then you should also extend that benefit to the natives of that area. And in terms of 1920, picking an arbitrary point in time before 1948, that partition plan would have looked very different. So, claiming that the partition plan was just reflecting the population of the time is nonsense from an arab point of view, as the adult generation could think of a time where there were zero independent jewish communities and the whole land was ruled by native arab and jewish leaders. Then a new power comes in, against the will of a majority of the natives, feels strong enough to claim land by the power of their military strength, and Israel is born. No one is denying the fact that by 1948, the population of all of Palestine was one third Jewish and they werepredominantly occupying what was the Jewish state in the partition plan. No one is denying, that settlements were at that point between 45 and 10 years old. I am saying that this does not entitle anyone to have their own independent government, especially if one does not plan to integrate the natives fully into that country.
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On June 04 2021 11:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
My perspective is that the US needs to stop funding and providing indispensable diplomatic cover for those crimes against humanity, Israel needs to stop the continued expansion of illegal settlements, treat Palestinians in Israel (Israeli citizens) as full and equal members of society, and begin the process of leaving the illegal settlements while the international community leverages those actions to place global pressure on both parties to find a two state solution so that when (because I don't think it's a matter of if) tensions flare up again it's with the ubiquitous and undeniable recognition of the right to Palestinian self-determination, national defense, international accountability and so on.
I don't think anybody disagrees that there should be some international pressure to stop the settlements (i think it might already be enough to start talking about lowering/stopping funding israel from the US side). Without getting rid of Hamas first, a two state solution is impossible to work towards though right now. I don't think you can expect Israel to work with a terrorist organization which literally doesn't do anything else than use everything they got to build rockets to shoot at them (apparently there are around 30.000 in gaza right now). Opposition in gaza is either dead or supressed, which is another issue. Also how exactly do you put pressure on Hamas? You would need nations like Iran for that which as far as i know don't even recognize Israels right to exist right now.
As much as I am for a two state solution, I think it won't happen for a long time. At best, the settlements will be stopped which preserves the status quo but still leaves palestinians in a shit position.
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On June 04 2021 17:29 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2021 15:51 JimmiC wrote:On June 04 2021 14:24 Broetchenholer wrote:On June 04 2021 10:34 JimmiC wrote:On June 04 2021 07:52 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 04 2021 03:15 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:On June 01 2021 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 00:27 maybenexttime wrote:[quote] Before you make such analogies you'll have to prove that the demographic situation of Poland or Bavaria was actually comparable to that of the 19th/20th century Palestine. Poland was quite densely and uniformly populated. The same cannot be said about Palestine, from what I can tell. Between the 1st and the 5th century its population was estimated to be around 2-3M. By the 14th century it dropped to just 150k. In the 19th century it reached 250-500k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)I have yet to see any evidence that the Palestinian Arabs controlled, settled, cultivated or owned nearly the entirety of Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration. The region appears to have been quite underpopulated for over a thousand years. Your own link shows that the population of Palestine in 1947 was 2 million people. How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board. As well as that the Jewish population was the minority since the 5th century. Poland is not uniformly populated. Even today before the massive population increase that comes with the agriculturaland industrial revolution and medical technology, there will surely be many areas with low population, woodland or simply areas of lower agricultural worth. Would it then be fine for a Jewish nation to be made there, taking a chunk out of Poland? I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. The argument is strange anyways. It doesn't make it anymore right if certain areas were or were not as densely populated, nor that the modern concept of a nation state had not been achieved by military might by those people, if that people lived in the area we now call Isreal have been forced out and oppressed on the basis of race and religion. If 300 years ago, there was no real concept of a united Italy, nobody called themselves Italians, would then it would be fine for formerly stateless ethnic religios groups to carve out a nation state from the geographical area of Italy?
But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use. I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Today, by military conquest Isreal certainly occupies the highest population city Jerusalem and control what we now call Isreal. By the way the principle of self-determinationis ultimately about claiming land even if it isn't currently being used. For instance there are soveriegn rights being extended miles into the sea even if nobody is using the land and are internationally recognised as such, even if nobody can live at sea and nobody is using them. When the English first settled parts of Ireland, there were certainly areas of Ireland which were unoccupied. So then would it be right that the native population should establish which parts of Ireland they were occupying so as to claim it as part of their country? I don't see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination. The principle is simply about people living in a given place having the right to govern themselves. But using territorial waters as an access point for your ports counts as using them in my book, so it's a moot point. As for Ireland, if what you're describing were in fact the case (i.e. the English settling part of Ireland lying idle), I don't think it would've been wrong. The history of English colonization of Ireland is a history of centuries of ethnic cleansing, population displacement and brutal oppression, though. On June 02 2021 18:46 Broetchenholer wrote:That comparison is only fair if you assume that Israel was in the same power dynamic with Palestine as Poland was with Germany. Again, you are acting as if the civil war between two nationalist parties was the fault of one party and the winner then was morally okay with occupying it's land. If i want to buy something from you, you tell me it costs 100$. I give you 50$ and take the thing from you. You complain that we never agreen on selling it for 50$ and you want your thing back. So i say, if you try to force me to give the thing back, and you fail, i will take my 50$ back and keep the thing. So you try to take it back, you lose, i keep it and take my money back. You then ask the police to retrieve the thing and they are like, nah, you weren't using the thing in the first place and besides, you were violent to retrieve it, we will throw you into Gaza. Palestina was opposed to a jewish state in land that was settled by them. Probably sparsely, but still. 750k people did live there in 1948, and did not live there anymore afterwards. I think that is a position that should be understandable. The mental gymnastics needed to make this position illegit should show you that. Nazi germany and Palestine should be treated dfífferently in peace talks. I don't see how the power dynamic is relevant. And as JimmiC said, it was different in late 19th/early 20th century than it is now. Your comparison rests on the assumption that the Jewish settlers somehow stole the land from the Arabs prior to the 1948 war. I'd like to see evidence for that. Can you finally prove that the land settled by the Jews actually belonged to the Arabs in any way? They claimed it as theirs, but so did the Jews. How do you determine whose right to self-determination should take precedence in case of conflicting claims? The fact that 750k people got displaced is a consequence of the war their leaders had started. I don't see how that's different from ethnic Germans getting displaced. If you think the Arabs had a valid reason to wage war against the newly formed Jewish state, please, prove it. On June 03 2021 07:53 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 02 2021 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:On June 02 2021 07:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On June 01 2021 06:11 maybenexttime wrote:
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How is that relevant? Nobody is denying that a large number of Palestinians had to (or chose to in many cases) relocate as a result of the 1948 war. What I'm trying to determine is how valid the assertion that the Arab Palestinians lost half of their country as a result of the 1948 war is. I'm under the impression large swaths of Palestine were indeed largely unpopulated, for similar reasons to how large swaths of what is now Ukraine were. I'm trying to find out whether the Arab population expanded to previously unused parts of Palestine as their population exploded around the same time the Jews were colonizing Palestine or the Arabs lived more or less across the whole of Palestine and their population just grew across the board.
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I'm using criteria of using the land that are very charitable to the Palestinians - living on it, cultivating it, owning or controlling it. In that sense, there wasn't any piece of land that the population of Poland at the time didn't use. The principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way.
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But it does matter if both Jews and Arabs were effectively colonizing Palestine around the same time. It invalidates the "we've been here before you" card that the Arabs use.
I don't understand what the modern concept of a nation state has to do with anything. I'm trying to establish which parts of Palestine the Arab population used in any way so as to be able to claim it as part of their country. Why would it matter? You might as well try to establish which parts of what we now call Isreal did the Jewish population which was a minority in the area used in any way so as to claim it as part of their country. Are you serious? That is the core of the pro-Palestinian argument that the Jews colonized Palestine and had no right to form a state there. You see Arab propaganda hammering this point at every opportunity. All those maps showing Jewish settlements vs. the rest of Palestine, implicitly belonging to the Arab population. I will address the rest of your post tomorrow. I have no idea what this Arab propaganda you speak of is, but if so they are correct in that case, for in your very own link which you selectively interpreted the Jewish population was a were a minority population since the 5th century till 1947 where the infomation ends. I wonder what happened in 1948? Zionists settled the area shortly after WW2, and after a series of military actions and several wars, were the lands controlled by what we now call and recognise as the state of Isreal were formed. Do Jews have a right to form a state with the current areas of control they have? Depends. If you think might make right, Isreal has shown itself to be mighty indeed and so have the right to the lands that their might gives. And I also note to add that I distinguish between Jews and Isrealites. You really don't know what Arab propaganda I'm talking about? I mean maps like that: + Show Spoiler +It claims that any land in Palestine that wasn't part of the Jewish settlements belonged to the Arabs. But just because you claim some land, doesn't mean it's yours. That's why I'd like to see some reliable data on the actual extent of the Arab presence in Palestine at the time. The Jewish population was a minority in some parts of Palestine, and a majority in others. There were also areas that lay idle and were fair game for taking. Which ethnic group was the majority of the population of Palestine as a whole is irrelevant. Palestine was an artificial construct. If you draw borders one way, you'll end up with the Kurds being a minority in several countries. If you draw them another way, you'll end up with a Kurdistan full of Kurds. And Jewish settlers have been settling Palestine decades before the 1948 war. Jews and Israelis, I presume. Israelites were an ancient tribe, afaik. You don't see see what territorial waters have to do with the principle of self-determination, yet you also claim that the principle of self-determination doesn't give anyone the right to claim land they don't actually use in any way. But that is exactly what the principle of self determination that leads to nation states is. To lay claim to people and geograpy. Nowhere is land always constantly occupied. Whenever you divide up land to it's smallest detail, there is always a parcel of land that is not occupied. Vast deserts and mountain ranges and deep rainforests and artic tundra are claimed by nation states, where there is little or no human population. The right to claim land and even by extention waters that extend from land. You talk of lands as fair game for the taking, and yes, they are fair game, by force of arms . You write as if somehow the boundaries of Isreal was formed by selecting areas where the Jewish population already pre-existed, not the historical reality and current situation where Isreal was formed and maintained by force of arms. That Isreal hadn't successfully conducted population displacement and brutal oppression and is currently in the proccess of continuing just that. Remember that the recent events started because Isreal was being too oppressive which sparked off the violence. Now as to the issue of your "Arab propaganda." Never seen that before, but seems to be a fairly accurate representation of land controlled over time. If anything it understates the situation as it appears to count joint Isreali-Palestine control as under Palestinian control. Essentially what we call the state of Isreal today is under Isreali control or occupation. That is the reality, which oddly enough you dismiss as "Arab propaganda". Jews and Isrealis are two different things. One is a citizen of Isreal and the other is semi religious ethnic group called jews whose population around the world far exceeds that of the population in Isreal. You seem to conflate the two regularily for some reason. You seem to disregard Palestinians as a people and prefer to call them Arabs as well. Which is somewhat odd for someone who likes to talk about selfdetermination, but is seemingly happy to disregard calling people as what the have determined themselves to be. I mean that is how they tried to form it with the partician plan. Jewish population did preexist, why do people keep acting like it did not? This was the proposed plan. Territory Arab and other population % Arab % Jewish % total Arab State 725,000 99% 10,000 1% 735,000 Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000 International 105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000 Total 1,237,000 67% 608,000 33% 1,845,000 + Show Spoiler +The land allocated to the Arab State in the final plan included about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[51][52][53] and consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one-third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv.[citation needed] The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[52][53][54] The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley. The bulk of the proposed Jewish State's territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert,[49] which was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the Sea of Galilee, crucial for its water supply, and the economically important Red Sea. And it was not that the Arab Palestinians didn't think it was a fsir split, it is that they were completely against any split and only wanted to remove all jews from the area . The Palestinian Arabs make a grave declaration before the UN, before God and before history that they will never submit to any power that comes to Palestine to impose a partition. The only way to establish a partition is to get rid of them all: men, women, and children. Also, people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it. It is so wildly historically inaccurate and it does not matter how many people post the history from what sources but people go back to this made up situation. The most recent colonizers were the British and they wanted to give it to Jordan /jews based on a deals made through the war and before that it was the Ottoman Empire. Also this who left right stuff is so silly as well because that has flip flopped a couple times. The USSR (yes it was not the US) was the first country to recognize Isreal AND they were the ones that armed them through the embargo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#:~:text=The United Nations Partition Plan,as Resolution 181 (II) JimmiC, i really don't understand why you keep quoting people and then argue against somebody else. Who was not telling the story of the jewish migration before 1948? Who was ignoring that here? One side is trying to tell the other that exactly that migration was a valid reason for Arabs natives to be pissed and the other side is arguing that there was no reason to be pissed, because the land was not properly used anyway and somehow the people living there should have been chill to be governed by a destinctly Jewish state. And no, nobody here is claiming "people keep writing as if there was a Palestine country full of only Arabs and European jews came in with a army and colonized it". Also, no, the British were not colonizers. They did not settle their people in the land, they just kept it for a while, they were shitty overlords. The people creating a self governing colony there where the Jewish people. Also, i think you misjudge the quote you have given from the Palestinian leader. He is saying, if my understanding of english grammar is right, the only way to get a partition is if oyu remove all Palestinian men, women and children from the area, not the jewish. He might infact be okay with displacing all jewish people, you will properly find those quotes as well, but this is not one. People are most definitely leaning it that direction. And I was responding to his "You write as if somehow the boundaries of Isreal was formed by selecting areas where the Jewish population already pre-existed, not the historical reality and current situation where Isreal was formed and maintained by force of arms." Pointing out that this is exactly what they were trying to do with the partition plan, they picked the areas that had the most Jewish people and were going to make it the Jewish part. And it was a lot of desert. Now they got about half the land when they only had a 1/4 of the people, and only about half in the place they were in so you can argue about how fair it was. But explicitly saying he is acting like exactly what was done is wrong, when it was exactly what was done is pretty off base. And yes the British were colonizers there like they were in India and much of Africa (along with other european powers). It is not about filling it with your people, though that can happen, it is about establishing control over the indigenous people of an area and appropriating for their own use which is to make their empire and homeland more powerful. And there are both Jewish and Arab Palestinians that would be indigenous before someone goes down that rabbit hole. And both were fighting to free them of their oppression. And the Palestinian Arabs also didn't want the Jordan king to rule them either. When you read into the history you see part of the reason the Arab palestinians had many less fighting men even way more population is many of the Arabs fighting the Jews didn't want to arm the Palestinian Arabs because they also wanted to dominate them after they took the area. I believe he refers to the jewish population before zionist movement started. So, if you put some people in a place and then argue they occupy that place, they should form a state here, then you should also extend that benefit to the natives of that area. And in terms of 1920, picking an arbitrary point in time before 1948, that partition plan would have looked very different. So, claiming that the partition plan was just reflecting the population of the time is nonsense from an arab point of view, as the adult generation could think of a time where there were zero independent jewish communities and the whole land was ruled by native arab and jewish leaders. Then a new power comes in, against the will of a majority of the natives, feels strong enough to claim land by the power of their military strength, and Israel is born. No one is denying the fact that by 1948, the population of all of Palestine was one third Jewish and they werepredominantly occupying what was the Jewish state in the partition plan. No one is denying, that settlements were at that point between 45 and 10 years old. I am saying that this does not entitle anyone to have their own independent government, especially if one does not plan to integrate the natives fully into that country.
1. They didn't claim the land via military strength. The idea that the motivation for the declaration of independence was that they suddenly thought they had the military might to do so is absurd.
2. At this point, jewish people were a majority in the parts of the country that would be Israel after the UN partition plan. Why wouldn't they have a right for self-determination?
3. The declaration of independence states that everyone in the state was to be treated equally.
4. By your own arguments, a palestinian state would not be legit because there were clearly no plans to integrate the jews or treat them equally.
Finally, your ability to excuse murders and war from your favourite side is amazing. "The muslim palestinians had a right to be angry about the jewish migration, that's why it was okay for them to start murdering them and eventually invading. What else could they have done."
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1) No it's not. There were plenty of Jewish people in the time before that tried to get their state by military might before. That's why they bombed people. They couldn't do it because the British would have crushed them, but when the British left, suddenly the only power hindering them from doing it were the Arabs and they felt they could win. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
2) Why don't you allow the Palestinians 30 years earlier a right to self determination? Why only the side you are on?
3) Oh yeah, so how did that go?
4) Yes. The Palestinians can also not simply declare that all the land belongs to them and the Jews need to go. But at least they can claim that they had been in that land before for a few generations, so their claim on the land is better.
Finally, your ability to excuse murders and war from your favourite side is amazing. "The Jewish Europeans had a right to be angry about palestinians not letting them settle land they wanted, that's why it was okay for them to bomb markets with only civilian casualties and trains, also with civilian casualties. What else could they have done?"
Nobody is arguing any of what you are implying. Or are you now excusing the terrorist attacks of the Jewish settlers just because you believe the Palestinians had a bigger part of the guiltpie then i do?
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You are quoting posts and then say "people" say x. I have just told you that i don*t read x in the post you quoted. I am perfectly happy if dangermousecatdog corrects me and tells me that he agrees with your assesment of his post, and then i will apologies to you. But here i did not think your response to the quoted post was warranted.
Also, you are arguing, you are acting as if your statements somehow are just facts, but if you respond to a post with a fact, you are using it to argue against the position maid. And when i believe that the statement is not valid to counter the argument, or not a statement of fact, then i should tell you that.
And to this post, i think you are still not understanding the argument you want to correct with facts.
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Well , I`ve been reading this thread for a while , and i would like to take part of the discussion if thats OK , my English is not my native language so you would excuse me if some of my posts will be "rude" or poorly written , I will do my best!
First , lets get it out of the way , the majority of Israeli citizens are not some crazy settlers trying to "claim god land" or whatever BS I see in this thread , most of the Jewish population are non religious or they are religious as someone who claims he is Christian but lives his life without really following the religion , most ppl want to go to work at night and eat dinner with their families.
Second important point to make , my parents , myself and my kids were born and raised in Israel (my grandma was the only person to get away from the holocaust , losing all of her family) , this is my home , I am not going to just leave , where would I go ? who would take us ? why should we go? the fact is that reality is not always fair , and yes , we got to build our country due to some crazy "perfect storm" of holocaust "guilt" and a sense of opportunity to build a place where Jewish population will be safe , not going to argue who was here 100 years ago , who was here 2000 years ago , all of that is irrelevant once we got our independence from the UN (i.e the world) , the Europeans colonized half the world , are we going to argue that those countries need to go back to the native population (which still can be found in this colonized world of ours) , in 200 years you will look at Israel the same way you look at the USA in that sense.
Now a reality check for the day2day life in Israel (Gaza and west bank will be addressed later) , we have racism in our country , no denying it , and its sadness me , but this is NO DIFFERENT then any other country and ive been in many , we had years of racism vs Jewish that came from Arab countries , we have racism vs russians that came in the90`s , jewish Ethiopian that we brought in planes , and yes , we have racism vs Arabs , are we going to pretend we dont have racism in Europe ? no racism in the US ? give me a break and get off the high horse , look into your own country and tell me you have no racism , this is an illness of humanity and its not related to Israel.
In the Israeli Arab case , there is still a LOT we need to do as a country , but we are still a young country that had wars in the last 70 years some of them for our survival , those wars take our society apart as you can imagine , but we are making strides , you can talk about how you believe the life of the Israeli Arab are bad or they are poor and we abuse them , but the fact is that they were the poorest ppl in all of the middle east region, no oil no nothing , we now have a big population in the Israeli Arab population that are high tech workers , doctors , lawyers , hospital managers , football players , business owners (biggest meat growing business in Israel is Arabic owned) so on and so forth.
Again , we need to do better , I personally trying to do so by choosing a left party in the election , my kids go to school with a mix of Arabs and "Jews" (as i am really an atheist's) and we have a lot of folks who feel the same way as me , I have Arab friends both at work and off work , they are happy to be here as they should as its where they were born , they got an opportunity their parents never had in regards to opportunities in life, there is an upside to live in Israel , we have great free health care , we have free school system , our best universities cost around 4K$ a year , and Arabs get all of those benefits as every other person holding an Israeli ID.
Sure , we never had an Arab prime minister , and we wont have one in the upcoming years (sadly its a given), sure some portion of our society are uneducated idiots that can shout racist shit towards Arabs (same as their idiots do to Jewish population) , but really , most of the population understands we are in this shit TOGETHER and we can only move forward TOGETHER , we should've had an Arab party in our ruling party ages ago and not just in our "congress/kneset" , but we going to have it now for the first time ,and it wont be the last.
I want the Arabs in this country to be happy , to have the best lifes that they can get , i want them to go to our/their universities and their best and brightest to work in our hightech industry and be great doctors , we need them to do good , we need to raise the bar for the weakest groups so we can have a more competitive country in the global competition and have a country we can be proud of and enjoy our days in , and we are doing so as we speak , Israeli Arabs are great ppl and a lot of them take the opportunity to make their life better by leveraging what Israel the country offers them.
If you want me to talk about Gaza/West bank , I will , sorry if my post was tiresome to read , looking back it is a long one , and a bit all over the place  (emotional)
We are not some warmongering crazy Zionist country , its sadness me to read such claims all over the internet , sure no human should live the way the ppl of Gaza are living these days , but to blame Israel for all of it is wrong , again if you like i can write my POV on this matter as well.
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United States41961 Posts
I don’t know how you can claim it’s wrong to blame Israel for the conditions in Gaza when Israel is actively blockading shipments of vital aid from reaching Gaza. Israel is actively inflicting these conditions.
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On June 05 2021 04:48 KwarK wrote:
I don’t know how you can claim it’s wrong to blame Israel for the conditions in Gaza when Israel is actively blockading shipments of vital aid from reaching Gaza. Israel is actively inflicting these conditions.
Hopping in here. Please don't interpret what I'm about to say as a lack of empathy - as an Israeli left-leaning moderate I do recognize that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is in part a result of the Israeli restrictions, to my understanding at least.
With that said, I think assigning "blame" or looking for the bad guy is not very productive, and does not help make sense of the situation. What's more useful in my eyes, is to learn why the blockade was imposed in the first place, what is the potential "cost" (non-monetary) of not having a blockade, and what can be done to gradually lift it and move forward towards two neighboring free societies. I can share my thoughts on all of that if anyone is interested.
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Thanks JimmiC for taking the time to read up , you might be the only brave souls in this thread !
First I want to start with a simple statement that is shared with the majority of the population of Israel , Gaza civilians are suffering big time and they shouldn't, no human should be in a situation where he has no real way of changing his life for the better on the back of effort and ability , a kid born in Gaza is born into hopelessness (it happens in other places in the world that no one really cares about unfortunately) , this is clear to any sane person , more over to Israeli citizens , which around 1/2 of them had families that went through the holocaust not long ago.
We had a time where we had left wing ruling parties trying their best with the backing of the country to resolve the conflict and create 2 countries that can live side by side (note that we had years of prosperity of commerce with the westbank , so we proved we can live with one another) , after Rabin failed , which was the more famous leader , we actually tried several times more , with the last serious time being the most promising one actually , Ehud Barak and Arafat were in camp david with Clinton , and although Barak really was willing to give up a lot (he was the leader that left the border of Lebanon which we had outposts at) the talks broke down , it is documented by Bill Clinton that Arafat did not came in good will and was the one responsible for the failing peace talks , it is no coincidence that it was found that Arafat wife is living in Paris with millions in her bank account , he was not going to make peace due to personal interest , not long after camp david failed the 2nd intifada started with suicide bombing inside Israel and other terrorist attacks vs civilians , this was the turning point in Israel politics , and the rise of the right wing started , this also started a circle of violence and negligence of peace talks , this in turn made Hamas more relevant on the Gaza side until they took over , today Gaza and westbank are basically 2 different "countries" , their leaderships are basically enemies , and if things continue to be bad i have no doubt that Hamas will takeover the westbank as well.
The problem we have in Israel is that the right wing took over the "normal' population , in which i mean normal ppl who want normal life believe now that there is no chance to talk to Hamas and in turn they wont vote for left wing parties , the ppl who live in the south part of israel who get bombarded by rockets are going right , this in turn make the cost of voting right wing very expensive for everyone as some of the parties that join the "Likud" as part of the government are the crazy settler's and they get funding by the right wing ruling party.
Think of it like world war with Japan or twin towers bombing or Iraq invasion , once the US or its interests got attacked the reaction was brutal and not proportional to make a point of "you will not attack the USA and get away with it" I believe the majority of the USA population was behind the retaliation as attacks vs your country triggers a will to retaliate , so when Israel was attacked by suicide bombers the instinctive reaction of the public was to be behind the retaliation , but years goes by and i think everyone are again fed up with the "you throw a rocket on me ill bomb you back" and hopefully we can make something happen in this go around , the popular opinion is that we need to make peace with the westbank first , that will hopefully show the Gaza population that things can be different and better , but for now it looks like Hamas has no interest of making peace as Arafat didnt , they get paid a lot of money to keep fighting and are considered the elite in Gaza , basically Hamas is the ruling party in a Gaza dictatorship , they are not going to give it up easily , they parade the conflict as the reason to rule.
In regards to force used vs Gaza and the "you are stronger you should not abuse it" , there needs to be an understanding here , our civilians are being attacked by rockets for years , you can argue that this is our fault and Israel "deserves" to be attacked , it doesnt change the fact that our cities are being bombarded by rockets , and the fact is we retaliate in a very moderate force , it might look brutal when you open CNN , but it really isnt , we can look at other countries response when they are being attacked in any way.
The USA went to war on the back of 1 terrorist attack , did we talk about why it was done , does the US citizen even care ? should he care ? would you care ? not saying that their reasons were valid , as of course they werent and it was a hideous act of terrorism , I am saying their reasoning didnt matter and no one wouldve cared if they did provide one , if for example the bombing was done by an Iraqi group that would claim that the US invaded their country and killed 250,000 people with no reason , and this is their retaliation to it , what would the general public think ? my guess the public would want retaliation without even addressing the "why" , JimmiC , do you think in such scenario the American public will have a conversation on the validity of the terrorist attack claims ? if for example some of the claims of the terrorists were just , hypothetical , i.e the USA did indeed something wrong to some other population somewhere in the world , would you say the public/government will be OK with the twin tower bombing ? or would they want brutal retaliation ?
editing here - Point being (hope it was made..not sure i managed to get the point across) , countries and societies get more aggressive when they are being attacked , regardless if they are in the right or wrong or in the middle, this is sadly what is happening in Israel and Gaza societies but without a pause to settle down the aggression into reasonable level , we have cycle after cycle of violence , some our fault some theirs , and both sides are getting more 'right winged" and more militant as time goes on.
Back to Israel , I see 3 options going forward , best to worst:
1) we find a way to solve it , probably starting with a westbank country and work from there - this is the best option , giving them a country to live in is the right and moral thing to do.
2) we continue this conflict to a point where the west denounces us and put boycotts and what not , in that scenario we will be going to the east , and China will probably be our new 'sponsor' in the region , our tech industry will work for them instead for the western countries companies and our army will be backed up by CN.
3) we get into another regional war , be it due to Iran or Iran`s proxies or "yom kipur" style war - if we win , we stay , if we lose..... welp.....needless to say that this is a worst case scenario , wars are always shit for everyone involved.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/INTERACTIVE-Ethnic-cleansing.png?w=770&resize=770%2C770)
