Everything comes in the wake of something, doesn't it
It wasn't just what it was in the wake of, but what it was in the current context of. The Brits tried to broker a deal whereby the parties signed a truce, Israel took the Jews from the Arab lands, the Arab countries took the Arabs from the part of Palestine that became Israel, and everybody signed a peace treaty. The Arabs took the first part, the truce (they were losing) and reneged on the rest.
So the deal they offered the infant state of Israel was: we remain in a state of war with you (we'll get you next time), we'll send you 700,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab lands (in addition to the 300,000 penniless Holocaust survivors they had already, the total was greater than the pre-war Yishuv), and by the way we absolutely demand you take back all the Arabs of Palestine, whom we told to leave.
Ben Gurion and cabinet seriously debated the issue, they understood the plight of the refugees, but decided that to take back the Arab population was suicide. There was no peace treaty, so how could they take back a population that would shoot them in the back in the next war - and they had to assume that the Arab countries would smuggle plenty of fighting men in among the refugees, had they been foolish enough to accept this very lopsided deal.
Context. That's what you refuse to look at. Context. |
