Be that as it may, they were BFPs. Title may have been in dispute in some cases, but they paid good money for it. At one time 700 acres was purchased from the government of Egypt, who then had sovereignty over the land. I don’t know about these so-called “forgeries.” I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
Tamerlane seems to know much about this and appears not to be biased. Perhaps he will jump in where angels fear to tread.
Joes wrote:
> 2) This might be tricky. Since I’m posting this here, and not in GD, I’m hopping that we’ll all mostly stick to facts, and not get into arguing opinions or ideology.
I have been closely interested in this topic for several years, and my experience has been that ideology is impossible to avoid, because even the basic facts are disputed.
Different historical scenarios (e.g., did the Arab refugees “abandon” their land in 1948, or were they driven out? Was pre-Zionist Palestine a 'land without a people for a people without a land," or was it densely populated? etc.) are associated with different ideological positions, so citing a particular scenario runs the risk of associating one with a particular ideology, whether or not one intends it.
OK, here’s part of what I was thinking of – this passage is cited in several places on the Web, including something “published by Jews for Peace in the Middle East”. Admittedly, the authors are not universally considered unbiased (Said is a Palestinian).
See also http://www.btselem.org/Download/Land_Grab_Eng.pdf, also not necessarily unbiased. But the point is that doubt remains among reasonable people that, from the inception of the Ottoman Land Code but especially after 1948 (when it began to be used in earnest to Israel’s advantage and to the Palestinians’ and Bedouins’ disadvantage), the land which was “purchased” was necessarily bought in a completely fair or aboveboard manner for all parties. Regardless of whether Israelis “paid good money for it,” the legitimacy of the purchases is not an uncontested matter.
Please note that I am not arguing for or against the legitimacy of those purchases in this forum.
Oh, I see. So you’re saying that Israel never formally claimed the land as their own. Never filed paperwork or underwent any other formalities to own the land, other than some Israelis buying land, which, of course, isn’t the same thing as one country buying land from another.
Although, even though this thread is probably walking the fine line between being a GQ thread and a GD thread, I’m going to throw in an opinion. About the comment you make about the terrorist attacks constituting a crisis, I have to side with Israel. I mean, if Israel completely pulled out and gave total control of those areas to the Palestinians, then, short of building a wall around Israel, I could only imagine the bombings becoming more frequent.
His race doesn’t make him biased, but his status as a former member of the PLO executive council certainly does. Take anything Said says with a metric ton of salt.
Well, no, I’m not trying to avoid ideas or opinions all together, I mean, even I am posting an opinion or two.
I’m just hoping that this thread will mainly stick to facts, or peoples views of the facts that are in dispute.
“Your use of the word ‘clearly’”.
Perhaps not formally, but it wasn’t completely without coercion.
Joel
No, I don’t think you do see. This isn’t merely a formality. Israel has made a conscious, deliberate, calculated, and political decision to have the territories retain their occupied status. Israel has not simply not claimed the land as their own; they are deliberately acting in a manner that declares that it is not. You might as well say that the US hasn’t filled out the paperwork claiming Canada as part of the US.
The forgies ectera, refer to land in the OT after 1967.
Apples and oranges. We never went to war with Canada and felt the need to occupy Canada with military troops for our own safety.
That being said, I do believe, with the limited knowledge that I have, that Israel should stop building settlements in the occupied territories since that would be one step closer towards the goal of achieving peace, and a separate Palestinian state. However, even if Israel stopped building settlements, and immediately pulled out all its troops and said, “OK Palestinian Authority, here you go, this is all yours, and under your control” groups like Hamas still wouldn’t be satisfied and would still send bombers into Israel. And without military checkpoints and so forth, they would probably be able to send a lot more.
So while I disagree with building settlements, I totally agree with Israel’s military presence. And to back up what I say about attacks even if Israel withdrawals, consider this. A few weeks ago, when the cease fire was in place, and Israel, in addition to what the road map to peace calls for, was releasing Palestinian prisoners, it was pulling out of certain areas and handing control over to the Palestinian Authority. Now you can argue that this was proceeding to slowly, but hey, progress was being made. But still, despite this, the cease fire was broken, and it wasn’t Israel who broke it.
The Zionist movement actually began in the 19th Century. In the last decade of the 19th C, there were two waves of Jewish immigrants. The land was sparsely populated. Will Rogers once made a comment about the sparsely populated lands. I don’t recall exactly what he said but it was to the effect that he could drive all day without seeing another person. See one of my prior posts.
The Arabs abandoned, or fled the lands, during the first war against Israel in 1948. Actually, the leaders left a year early. The Siege by Conor Cruise O’Brien (an Irish journalist), published in 1986 said that in many instances, especially in Haifa, the Jews urged the Arabs to stay and build a strong nation. Even MC acknowledges that that was the case in Haifa, but he disagrees as to the remainder of the country. O’Brien is not Jewish and is an independent journalist. MC said that in some instances the Jews actually shot at the Arabs, but I could not find this in that book or any other book. As I noted in a prior thread, if you care to search for it on GQ, O’Brien said that there was propaganda that in one instance the Arabs were killed by the Irgun, which led the Arabs fleeing the populated centers. MC said there is no question about that attack, but gave no cites. O’Brien said merely that due to propaganda by the Arabs, they fled the populated areas.
The Arabs propably left their lands because of the oncoming war against Israel and they did not want to be caught in the middle. That was definitely the case in Haifa and it also appears the case in other places. They became refugees in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, for the most part, because the Arab states would not admit them. Some did go to Arab states, but not many. There were upwards of 750,000 refugees. The Arabs told them to stay put as they would soon push the Jews to the Sea and they could then reclaim their land.
I’ve never heard anyone deny that Deir Yassin took place, as there exists testimonies from people who led and took part in it. Deir Yassin wasn’t the only massacre either and both Hagannah and Irgun were involved in the clearing of Arab villages.
Will you stop persisting regurgiating this myth, Israel and the OTs does and always has contained regions of barren land, but it was by no means ‘sparsely populated’, as it contained a population of over half a million on the eve of Zionist immigration. I get the feeling that you’re making alot of your information up (for example the ridculous claim that most land was brough pre-1900).
I cited my source, A History of Israel, from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, referenced above. I read the Will Rogers’ statement elsewhere, but cannot recall where.
Please let us stop debating the relative historic population of the land that has become Israel. For a General Question response, the only honest and appropriate answer is that it is contested. As are many of the other facts concerning Palestine, the OT, and Israel. It doesn’t matter how many cites you bring to the debate or who wrote them, it’s still going to be a debate, like it or not.
Yes, but contested implies that it’s not known, that’s untrue there’s census data that proves this assertation is false.
If by “apples and oranges” you mean “in the same category”, then yes. Annexation happens when a one country annexes a piece of land. I don’t understand what’s so difficult about that. The US has not annexed Canada. Israel has not annexed the West Bank. The essential characteristic, the absence of annexation, is present in both cases. Annexation is not occupation, regardless of whether it is done for one’s own safety. The US occupied Germany and Japan, but did not annex them. And actually, the US did go to war with Canada and occupy part of it (briefly). Whether Israel is justified in annexing the West Bank is completely different from whether they have done so.
The facts are:
The West Bank and Gaza strip are contested territory, in the sense that multiple political entities want exclusive sovereignty over these regions.
The areas are disputed, in the sense that just about everything else regarding these regions is a matter of debate, including the legal status of these regions, various sides’ rights to the regions, who’s lived there how long, and so on. Even points that we in western society would consider “undisputable facts” are in this case subject to interpretations of ideology.
When it comes to the Middle East, religion and ideology are heavily involved, to the point where questions of fact become GDs very quickly.
The following numbers are from Benny Morris’s book “Rightous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict”:
“By 1881, on the eve of the start of the Zionist Jewish influx, Palestine’s population was 457,000 - about 400,000 of them Muslims, 13,000-20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christian (mostly Greek Orthodox).”
The source he cites for this is:
McCarthy, Justin (1990). The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate. Columbia University Press.
The books with which I am the most familiar claim that while the Israeli authorities in 1948 had no formal policy for expelling Arab population, they had what might be called a broadly opportunistic policy for doing so, which in some cases was augmented by specific military plans.
Benny Morris cites a quote by David Ben-Gurion: “I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral.” (“Rightous Victims,” p.253)
According to Morris, at the beginning of the War of 1948, Arab populations fled either because of fear of violence, or because of actual attacks:
“The principle cause of the mass flight of April-June was Jewish military attack, or fears of such attack. Almost every instance - the exodus from Haifa on April 21-May 1; from Jaffa, during late April - early May; from Tiberias on April 17-18; from Safad on May 10 - was the direct and immediate result of an attack on and conquest of these neighborhoods and towns. In no case did a population abandon its homes before an attack; in almost all cases it did so on the very day of the attack and in the days immediately following…Haganah documents described ‘a psychosis of flight’ gripping the Palestinian population during this period. The echo of the slaughter on April 9 of the villagers of Deir Yassin, augmented by Arab atrocity propoganda regarding what had happened there, both reinforced and symbolized this.” ("Rightous Victims, p.255)
Simha Flapan, in his “The Birth of Israel,” says:
“It is true, or course, that many Palestinians left of their own accord…but hundreds of thousands of others, intimidated and terrorized, fled in panic, and still others where driven out by the Jewish army, which, under the leadership of Ben-Gurion, planned and executed the expulsion in the wake of the UN Partition Mandate…The balance is clear in the IDF intelligence estimates. As of June 1, 1948, 370,000 Arabs had left the country, from both the Jewish parts and the Arab parts conquered by the Jews. Jewish attacks on Arab population centers, particularly large villages, townlets, or cities, accounted for about 55 percent of those who left; terrorist acts by the Irgun and LEHI, 15 percent; whispering campaigns (psychological warfare) about 2 percent; evacuation ordered by the IDF, another 2 percent; and general fear, about 10 percent. Therefore, 84 percent left in direct response to Israeli actions, while only 5 percent left on orders from Arab bands. The remaining 11 percent are not accounted for in this estimate and may refer to those who left voluntarily.” (p.89)
These figures are as of June 1, 1948. At least the same number again fled later in the war. Both Morris and Flapan describe the expulsion of roughly 60,000 Arabs from the cities of Ramla and Lydda in July of 1948. And in the third stage of fighting in October and November of 1948, some IDF units enthusiastically expelled Arab populations, while some did not:
“…Israeli troops, both in the “Ten Days” in July and during Operations Yoav and Hiram in October-November 1948, were far more inclined to expel Palestinians than they had been during the first half of the war. In Operation Yoav, Allon took care to leav almost no Arab communities along his lines of advance. In Operation Hiram, in the north, where Moshe Carmel commanded the Israeli forces, there was confusion and ambivalence. Despite Carmel’s October 31 guideline “to assist the Arabs to depart,” some units expelled the villagers, others left them in place.” (“Rightous Victims,” p.257).
Based on these sources, a very significant portion of Palestinian refugees fled their homes either because of direct violence, or by immediate fear of violence, rather than because of more abstract reasons.
MC:
While I suppose it depends on exactly what aspects of Deir Yassin you’re referring to, this site (obviously somewhat biased, but you’re contending that you’ve never heard anyone deny it) at least denies that Deir Yassin was a complete expulsion/removal of non-resisting people.
In any case, the entire village of Deir Yassin was a mere 1000 people, at the largest claim. That consitutes not even a single percent of the number of Arabs who left Israel (under whatever circumstance you choose to believe) during the formative years of the state of Israel. It would take more than mentioning Deir Yassin to prove that it was a representative sample.