I know this is a difficult topic to discuss. I have no stakes in the conflict myself, and I’m currently reading up on details I’ve missed before and trying to get a clearer picture.
Let’s try to limit the discussion to the 1947 UN partition plan and what happened immediately afterwards.
From what I have read so far, it to me looks like this partition is pretty one-sided. At this point Jews are about 1/3 of the population and they get 56% of the land. I have no idea about the value of the land, but these are the facts Wikipedia gives me.
Yes, about 60% of the land in Israel was the Negev Desert.
But Israel has used irrigation & desalinization and low-water agriculture to grow lots of produce crops there. An example is cherry tomatoes, which were first developed there.
“Fair” is very subjective, but it would have been a great deal fairer than what is happening now, had all parties accepted it and tried to make it work.
I agree with what everyone is saying that it would be much better if they had accepted the deal at the time.
However, that is outside the scope of the question. It’s easy to look back knowing what happened, but at that point in time, how fair was the deal? That is what I am having trouble figuring out. I know nothing about the value of land at that time.
There seems to be two different narratives here, and it’s very hard to find a relatively unbiased analysis of this question.
I don’t think simple financial value of the land was the point, for either community or their international backers. It must have been envisaged that in each state there would be a minority of the community living and owning property there: but wouldn’t the more pressing question be (as it still is), what would enable both communities to feel in command of their own safety and security?
Non-Jews living in Israel on date of the British withdrawal from the Mandate became fully Israeli citizens with all the same rights as Jews. The first Israeli elections included 3 Arabs Israelis elected to the Knesset.
The status of Jerusalem would have been tricky. The 1947 plan provided for the internationalization of the city, i.e., giving it its own local administration subject to monitoring directly by the UN. The same basic idea had existed in a couple of cities before 1945 (Danzig, Fiume, Tangier are the examples that I can think of), but in the case of Israel and Palestine, it would surely have led to constant quarrelling even if the other provisions concerning the partition of the country had been accepted.
I would phrase it even differently than that: “fair” perhaps would require each group to be able to exist, as a baseline?
My impression is that without mutual economic cooperation between the two nascent states what was to be the Jewish state was not really viable and what was to be the Arab state would have only been viable with strong ties and development support from its Arab neighbors.
So “fair” in the sense that it left both with existential crises?
“Fair” to the belief other Arab governments at the time was that they divided up the area amongst themselves, I think. One can appreciate why that would be their perspective. There had been no previous strong Palestinian national identity and the British were giving it up.
Probably if left as was and the new Arab state had other Arab nation development support Israel would have just collapsed economically.
That seems like a pretty farfetched claim to make, considering that Israel with slightly more land than it would have had otherwise did succeed economically. Do you really think that Beersheva or Tulcarem would have made the difference between a prosperous Israel and a failed one?
Hell, if it meant the Arab-Israeli conflicts would have been avoided, Israel would probably be richer today if it did not have the areas gained in the War of Independence but also did not have to spend significant portions of its GDP (and especially in earlier years, manpower) in repeated wars against the Arab neighboring countries.
As for whether Palestine would have been successful - if relations with Israel were alright, Gaza could have been a major commercial port that would serve Jordan, and it could also send cargo overland to Israeli Eilat to be shipped through the Red Sea to India and beyond, competing with the Suez. In an alternative timeline, one could imagine a major Gaza-Eilat and Gaza-Jerusalem-Amman rail network that would serve as a major shipping artery. As well as resorts on the Gaza shores.
One could imagine Jerusalem governed by representatives from each of its four Quarters, under international supervision.
This sounds like a badass setting for an alternate history novel…
You and I differ on what counts as “slightly” but here is a comparison of before and after. Each state was to be three regions in point contact with each other, not really either having contiguous territory … this checkerboard would have been difficult to impossible IMHO for either to sustain … unless they worked together.
Agreed there could be some great alt history fiction here
That depends on whether one looks at square footage, or where populations were living and how economically productive the land was. When it comes to the question of economic success, I think Israel has all of the most important places to its modern economy - Haifa, Tel Aviv, and so on.
It is the 1960s, since he wasn’t assassinated by Palestinian nationalists who never ended up in Jordan, the aging Abdullah I is still king of Jordan. He is ailing, and before he dies, he wishes to fulfill his dream - a Hashemite king ruling over all of “Greater Syria”.
A tenuous coexistence has enabled both Israel and Palestine to make their place in the post-Mandate world, and recently economic cooperation has allowed both countries to have their first taste of true prosperity. To King Abdullah, this fact along with his advanced age combine to make this his final chance to fulfill his destiny.
Meanwhile, extremists within both Palestine and Israel seek to start a war in order to take what they each view as their birthright- the entire land, from the river to the sea. These groups are egged on by Jordanian agents who seek to prepare the way for an invasion.
Will Israel and Palestine manage to constrain these forces in time to band together and resist Jordan’s assault? Or will they find themselves divided and then picked apart?
It was about as fair as could be expected, I guess, but everyone had a reason to dislike it. Some Zionist leaders weren’t acting in good faith and saw it as a step towards taking the entire country anyway; Arab leaders generally didn’t want to make peace at all.
As others have pointed out, part of the problem is the bizarre checkerboard nature of the division.
If Israel and the Arab world are at peace, why would anyone ship things to Jordan though Gaza when there are closer ports? Why not ship through Ashdod?
