Re: circumstances?
>Zionist Jews began to move to Palestine early in the 20th Century.
First off, there were plenty of Jews there before the 20th century.
>By the 30's they made up 16% of the population, the rest were mostly Muslim Arabs and some Christians. As the Zionist bought land, the Palestinian farmers/sheep herders were forced out.
You're talking revisionist history here... there was more than enough land to go around- the "Palestinians" (they refused to call themselves that at the time, they felt that they were part of Syria) were not forced out.
.In addition, hostilities increased between the incoming Zionists and the indigenous Palestinians; forcing the exodus of over 100k Palestinians in the mid 30's. They fled to neighboring Arab states.
Huh? Where do you get these figures from?
>By 1947, the UK and US felt some guilt over turning their backs on the Jews during the Holocaust so they agreed to carve out a piece of land from the UN trust that the UK was responsible for and where 1,000,000 Palestinians still lived.
Huh? Britain decided in 1917 that Palestine should be given to the Jews. They were eventually given about a quarter of what they were promised.
>Earlier in the decade, Ben Gurion and his committee had determined the best way to handle the Arab/Jew intermixing was to establish an Arab transfer out of what was to become the Jewish state.
There was no such policy, AFAIK.
>This Zionist policy coupled with considerable hostilities in the late 1940's forced many of the Palestinians out of Israel. Stateless, they ended up as refugees in camps in the WB and neighboring Arab countries.
In 1947, the Arab leaders told the Arabs in the area that was to become Israel to leave, so they could push the Jewish state into the sea right after its establishment. Hundreds of thousands of them left, fully expecting to come back and have all of the land when they returned. However, when the Arabs declared war in 1948, they, well, sort of lost. Those Arabs who had fled before the war were not allowed to return, and any Arabs remaining were asked to either live peacefully with the Jews or leave. Many refused and were expelled.
Once again, 18% of the citizens of Israel are Arab. How could that be if the plan was to expel them all? Israel could've easily done so if it had wished.
>Now, it seems to me the Palestinians got slightly screwed.......but then again, call me crazy.
Yes, but not by Israel.
-Z |
