When the CIA Said 'It Won't Work'

In 1947, the UN would be voting on a plan of partition to solve the 'problem' of the Palestine Mandate.

What did the CIA think?

Here:

It is apparent that the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states (and an international zone), with economic union between the two states, as recommended by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 29 November 1947, cannot be implemented. The Arab reaction to the recommendation has been violent, and the Arab refusal to cooperate in any way with the five-nation United Nations Commission will prevent the formation of an Arab state and the organization of economic union. The Arabs will use force to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state and to this end are training troops in Palestine and other Arab suites.

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Who Suggested Partition?

From this article:

In November 1933, Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Organization, raised the possibility of partition in Palestine in a meeting with Vito Catastini, the head of the mandates section of the League of Nations secretariat.29 

Catastini's apparent support of the idea perturbed members of the Colonial Office who felt that the subject lay beyond the League's purview. Weizmann seemed to think otherwise, discussing his idea for a territorial division with the head of the Permanent Mandates Commission, Marquis Theodoli, and with Italian head of state, Benito Mussolini, who was beginning to style himself as a protector of the Jews and came out strongly in favour of partition.30

29 This was certainly not the first time that a Zionist leader had suggested partition as a possible solution. The roots of partition in Zionist thought could arguably be traced back to the notion of transferring Arabs out of part or all of Palestine. See for an early example, Theodor Herzl, The complete dûmes of Theodor Herzl, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, NY, i960), 1, p. 88; or for one during the British mandate, TNA, GO 733/231/1. See also Tom Segev, One Palestine, complete: Jews and Arabs under the British mandate, trans, Haim Watzman (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 403-8.

30 Minute, O. G. R. Williams, 4 Dec. 1933; letter from Sir Eric Drummond, British ambassador in Rome, 13 Dec. 1933: TNA, GO 733/248/20. 

Footnote 30 is inexplicable as the idea of "partition" is keeping everyone, more or less, in place but simply dividing the territory.

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The Arabs Started Shooting on November 30, 1947

The newspapers in Mandate Palestine reported in the editions of December 1, 1947 that the previous evening Arabs had attacked Jews, shooting and killing and injuring them.

In Jerusalem, as Davar reported, at 8:45 PM, nurses being transported to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus were shot at while driving through the Nashashibi neighborhood:

The bus was riddled with eight bullets. The Nashashibi neighborhood is today's Sheikh Jarrah. The first Nashashibi clan house was built where now the Ambassador Hotel stands. They were driving along the road that later would be the site of the Hadassah Convoy Massacre, now called Derech Har HaZeitim*.

The Palestine Post reports, it would seem, an additional incident in Jerusalem as well as the major terror attack on Tel Aviv's border with Jaffa:

*
There were Nashashibi houses near St. Stephens' (Flowers) Gate so it may have been along today's Suleiman Sultan Street.

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Haaretz Interprets the 1947 Partition Plan

Haaretz content:

"From the perspective of the Jews, the advantage of Mohn’s map was clear: It gave the future Jewish state 62 percent of the territory of the land, even though demographically the Arab population was double that of the Jews"

Always turning a Zionist disadvantage into an advantage!

In 1922, Transjordan removed, actually postponed or application withheld as per Article 25, from the terms of the Mandate.

In 1937, a first partition suggested with other versions over the next year.

In 1939, a British White Paper reneges on the original intent of the Mandate, to reconstitute a Jewish homeland in, at least, all of Western Palestine.

And as for that Arab demographic item above, many tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Arabs were no less 'recent immigrants' to Palestine than the Jews.  And most of them illegal as well.

Haaretz: in dredt.

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Are You Prepared For November 29th?

On November 29th, 1947, the Arab residents of the Palestine Mandate rejected the vote at the United Nations to create an Arab State within the territory originally to become the Jewish National Home.

They not only refused a generous offer, but they immediately engaged in violence.

Here is from the House of Commons session in London on December 3, 1947:

§Mr. Manningham-Buller (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can make a statement with regard to the grave events reported in Palestine.

§The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Creech Jones) I have not received complete reports yet on recent events in Palestine, but the High Commissioner has already briefly reported incidents on 2nd December, when Arab demonstrations 390 took place in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Nazareth, Ramle, Acre, Tiberias, Beisan and Tarshiha. These disturbances, the High Commissioner informs me, were sporadic and unorganised. In Jerusalem there was mob violence directed against Jews and Jewish property. A number of shops were looted, and there were several cases of arson. Shots were fired by Jews, and possibly also by Arabs, though the latter is not certain. Hagana has been out on the streets in force, and has generally done its best to restrain the Jews from reprisals. Casualties reported are, two Jews seriously wounded, one Jew and four Arabs injured, and one Jewish and two British police injured. A number of Jews with arms were arrested during the day, two of whom had been sniping.

In Haifa, two Jews were injured by Arabs, neither seriously. In Jaffa, Arabs attacked Jewish shops, and police were compelled to make a baton charge. One British policeman was slightly injured. In Lydda, two Jewish clinics were sacked by Arabs. There were a number of cases of Arabs holding up and stoning Jewish transport in the Lydda district. These incidents resulted in one Jew being fatally injured, one Jew seriously injured, and one Jew slightly injured. A fourth Jew was injured when a bus was fired on near Ramle. Among other incidents reported was one near Roshpina, where a car containing Jewish Supplementary Police was held up and stoned by Arabs. Jews fired warning shots and escaped injury. Subsequently, an Arab was found dead in the vicinity, and an injured Jew named as his assailant was found in a nearby colony. He claimed to have been beaten by Arabs. I should add that the Palestine Government is responsible for the maintenance of law and order until the Mandate is finally surrendered, and will continue to take all possible steps to preserve order and to prevent such tragic and unhappy conflicts. The Arab leaders in Palestine are fully informed of this.

Here is from the front page of the Palestine Post's December 3 edition:

Remember:

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Jabotinsky Meets Churchill

Did you know Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Winston Churchill met?

In July 1937?

And that Churchill was impressed and adopted Jabotinsky's points?

Here:

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When Did The Partition Plan of 1947 Become Impotent?

What happened after the November 29, 1947 partition proposal was rejected by the Arabs, diplomatically?

And what possible ramifications were there in the process?

Well, there was U.N. General Assembly Resolution 186: Appointment and terms of reference of a United Nations Mediator in Palestine; May 14, 1948

186 (S-2).
The General Assembly
Taking account of the present situation in regard to Palestine,
Strongly affirms its support of the efforts of the Security Council to secure a truce in Palestine and calls upon all Governments, organizations and persons to co-operate in making effective such a truce;

...1. Empowers a United Nations Mediator in Palestine, to be chosen by a committee...to: (i) Arrange for the operation of common services necessary to the safety and well-being of the population of Palestine; (ii) Assure the protection of the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites in Palestine; (iii) Promote a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine;

...Relieves the Palestine Commission from the further exercise of responsibilities under resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947.

The Arabs of the former territories of the Mandate of Palestine mst certainly did not do what was asked in that decision.

This was followed by the establishment of a Palestine Conciliation Commission [PCC] in December 1948 but as this article suggests, even before the PCC

Following Israel's emergence, some U.S. officials were openly prepared to jettison the Partition Resolution as obsolete. Philip Jessup, a member of the Policy Planning Staff and the deputy U.S. representative on the Security Council in the summer of 1948, was one of them. He was not the only one who believed that the Resolution was no longer applicable; that its proposal for a Palestinian state and an economic union with Israel was unlikely; and that Israel and the United States would be better served by promoting an increased role for Transjordan's King Abdullah in Palestine.

So, the position that the partition was a dead letter less than a year after it was proposed and cannot be now entered into the diplomatic discourse as, for example, that Jerusalem's fate is till undetermined since the last effective act was its declaration as an international regime, as the US maintains, is contradicted by its own diplomats at that time.

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Who Was Anti-Partition in 1937?

Who spoke the following anti-two-state proposal in 1937:-

Pledges have been given on both sides. The pledge which all the world regarded with considerable attention, and which was mentioned by the Secretary of State in his speech, is undoubtedly the Balfour Declaration of policy put forward by the War Cabinet in the crisis of the Great War. It is a delusion to suppose that this was a mere act of crusading enthusiasm or quixotic philanthropy. On the contrary, it was a measure taken, as the right hon. Gentleman who led us in the crisis of the War knows, in the dire need of the War with the object of promoting the general victory of the Allies, for which we expected and received valuable and important assistance. We cannot brush that aside and start afresh as though it had never been given, and deal with this matter as if we had no obligations or responsibility. Therefore...I should have preferred the Government to have persevered in the old policy of persuading one side to concede and the other to forbear, and to carry forward that policy, hard and heavy though it may be, with all its inconveniences.

However, we are now presented with this magnificently written State document, the result of months of inquiry by men of very high character and ability, and we are bound to treat the Report of such a Commission with proper respect and consideration. All the same I must say that I could not vote for the Government Motion that we should approve now the principle of partition. I cannot do so because it seems to me it would be premature for the Government to ask the House to commit itself finally to this main principle. The principle cannot be judged fairly apart from the details by which it is expressed. Take the military aspect alone. The gravest anxieties arise about that. There are two sovereign States, one a rich and small State more crowded than Germany, with double the population to the kilometre of France, and then in the mountains in the surrounding regions, stretching up to Bagdad with the Assyrians and the desert tribes to the south, the whole of this great Arab area confronting this new Jewish State...We have not got before us at this moment any of the vital data upon which we should be able to commit ourselves finally to the principle of partition...Therefore, I feel great difficulty at this stage and at this moment in committing myself to the principle of partition, and if it were the only alternative I should have no choice but to vote against it.

...There are, I believe, signs on both sides that people are thinking that perhaps rather than this they might make some mutual concessions. They have heard of the judgment of Solomon, and how wise that was, in which a baby was held up in order to see which was the true mother. But if sufficient time had not been given for the true mother to proclaim herself by her feelings, I very much doubt whether that parable would have commended itself so much to subsequent generations...

Answer.


BTW -

_________ also met with the Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky (16 July), who urged opposition to partition on the grounds that a truncated state would be afflicted by Jewish demographic weakness within, vulnerability to conquest from without, and an inability to absorb the mass of Jewish refugees. ________ himself used similar arguments in his speech in the Commons opposing partition (21 July) and in an article in the Evening Standard (23 July), 

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The Other, Fourth Partition (and The Temple Mount in 1916)

I, along with others, usually note that the Jews suffered through what were, for all intents and purposes, acts of territorial compromises multiple times but did not achieve through them any peace.  Moreover, not only were they basically rejected by the Arab side, but those acts of geographical diminution only spurred the Arabs to increase their violence, their terror, their pressuring of governments supportive of Zionism and so forth.

I counted three, basically.

The first was the truncation of the Jewish National Home as a territory on both banks of the Jordan River, as originally agreed upon during the Versailles Peace Conference in January 1919 although the Zionist claim to extend the northern border to the Litani was not finalized.

That resulted in the postponement of the terms of the Mandate in the territories east of the Jordan River which became permanent illegally and facilitated the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan:

ART. 25.
In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.

The second, the Partition Proposal of the Peel Commission, was never quite adopted although two years later, the proposal became the 1939 White Paper which reversed the underpinnings of the League of Nations decision to grant Great Britain the mandate ("the establishment of self supporting independent Arab and Jewish States within Palestine has been found to be impracticable. It has therefore been necessary for His Majesty's Government to devise an alternative policy...His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country") based on this 1922 truth, that

...recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country

as written in the preamble.

The third was the 1947 UN Partition Recommendation.  That attempted to fix that

Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed...the boundaries as described in Part II of this Plan are to be modified in such a way that village areas as a rule will not be divided by state boundaries unless pressing reasons make that necessary.

I have now read an article by Uri Heitner in Kivvunim Chadashim [New Firections], No. 28, June 2013, pgs. 251-257.  In it he quotes Levy Eshkol, when, serving as Israel's Prime Minister in the post-1967 period, in a meeting with Gunnar Jarring on December 15, 1967 and in a unfinished and unsent communication with Amos Keinan of August 18, 1968, who considered there was yet an earlier partition of Israel's territory: when the Sykes-Picot Agreement was done in 1915-16.

That agreement stemmed, in part, from the British pro-Zionist desire:

At a Cabinet meeting David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, "referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine."^...In a discussion after the meeting with fellow Zionist Herbert Samuel, who had a seat in the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, Lloyd George assured him that "he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine."

Later,

Prior to the departure of Sykes to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov in Petrograd on 27 February 1916, Sykes was approached with a plan by Samuel. The plan put forward by Samuel was in the form of a memorandum...Of the boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum he wrote:

"By excluding Hebron and the East of the Jordan there is less to discuss with the Moslems, as the Mosque of Omar then becomes the only matter of vital importance to discuss with them and further does away with any contact with the bedouins, who never cross the river except on business. I imagine that the principal object of Zionism is the realization of the ideal of an existing center of nationality rather than boundaries or extent of territory...

In other words, Eshkol, a Labour/Socialist Zionist, was quite well aware that the British had reduced the area of the Jewish National Home already in 1915.

And, as I emphasized in bold above, the Temple Mount was even then a recognized issue.

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And There Was a 1943 Partition Plan

This map

is from here and described here (on p. 44):

After 25 years of fruitless negotiation for Jewish-Arab co-operation, a map dated December 1943 proposes a scheme for the partition of Palestine. The attached report reflects a note of dissent that the planned land redistribution heavily favoured Jews and would incite Arab revolt.

The Arabs consistently and always refused to accept any territorial compromises whereas, despite internal disagreements, the Zionist Movement always, in the end, accepted the principle.

But it never worked.

And it will not work today.



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Proser's Solidarity Speech

From Israel's UN Ambassador Ron Prosor's speech on November 29, 2011:

...Mr. President,

Even more than the words spoken in the speeches here today - or the words in the resolutions before you - it is the words not spoken that speak volumes. This Assembly has made clear that it does not stand in solidarity with many people in our region today. In this hall, I hear no solidarity with the one million Israeli men, women and children who live under the constant rain rockets, mortars and missiles from the Gaza Strip. I hear no solidarity with the 16-year old boy who was killed last April when a Hamas anti-tank missile struck his school bus. Or the thousands of other Israeli civilians who have been killed and injured. I hear no solidarity with the Israeli children who learn the alphabet at the same time that they learn the names Kassam, Grad, and Katyusha - the rockets that keep them out of school for weeks at a time.

I hear no solidarity with the Palestinians who are victims of brutal Hamas rule - with the political opponents who are tortured, the women who are subjugated, or the children who are used as suicide bombers and human shields.

And - Mr. President, today I hear no solidarity with the many people in the Middle East who are being repressed and slaughtered every single day for demanding their freedom. From Syria to Iran to Yemen, these people are no longer content with their leader's explanations that Israel is to blame for all the problems of the Middle East - a fiction that is advanced through resolutions like those before us today. Today the people of the Middle East demand real answers for their plight.

I also heard no discussion today about the incitement that continues to fill the West Bank and Gaza, where the next generation of Palestinian children is being taught that suicide bombers are heroes, that Jews have no connection to the Holy Land, and that they must seek to annihilate the State of Israel. From cradles to kindergarten classrooms; from the grounds of summer camps to the stands of football stadiums; from the names of public squares to the public pronouncements of Palestinian leaders, these messages are everywhere...

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Your Mistake, Mahmoud, and A Continuing Error

As Haaretz reports:-

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday in an interview with Channel 2 that the Arab world erred in rejecting the United Nations' 1947 plan to partition Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state.

..."It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Channel 2 TV in a rare interview to the Israeli media. "But do they (the Israelis) punish us for this mistake for 64 years?"

Wait, Mahmoud.

It is the Arabs who have been punishing us, Israel and Zionists, for 64 years for being smarter than you to have accepted that decision. 

And you still harbor feelings of animus.

But more importantly, why has it taken you 64 years to admit that mistake?

And most important, why do you continue to refuse any compromise?  You surely know that you cannot receive even from the most vacillating of Israel's politicians all that you want.

And why should you?

You engaged in terror for 64 years.  Before the "occupation".  Before any "settlements".

You initiated the 1967 war by pushing the Arab states.

Doesn't "territorial compromise" mean that you, too, need compromise on territory?

Aren't you continuing to make a mistake?  Live in error?

^

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Arab Rejectionism; Jewish Illogic

Rick Richman, writing in the blog section Contentions of Commentary Magazine, contends:

In the National Interest, Benny Morris​ succinctly summarizes the peace process, writing that there can be disagreement about tactical mistakes made over the years, but that:

[T]here can be no serious argument about what transpired in July and December 2000, when Arafat sequentially rejected comprehensive Israeli and Israeli-American proposals for a two-state solution which would have given the Palestinians (“the Clinton Parameters”) sovereignty and independence in 95% of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, and half of Jerusalem (including half or three-quarters of the Old City).

And further that:

[T]here can be no serious argument either about Abbas’s rejection of the similar, perhaps even slightly better deal, offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. (Indeed, these rejections of a two-state solution were already a tradition set in stone: The Palestinians’ leaders had rejected two-state compromises in 1937 (the Peel proposals), 1947 (the UN General Assembly partition resolution) and (implicitly) in 1978 (when Arafat rejected the Sadat-Begin Camp David agreement, which provided for “autonomy” in the Palestinan territories).

That is six Palestinian rejections of a Palestinian state: 1937, 1947, 1978, 2000 (twice), 2008.

Actually, the correct number is seven, since Morris omitted the first one: in 1919, Chaim Weizmann​, president of the World Zionist Organization, and Emir Feisal Ibn al-Hussein al-Hashemi signed an agreement providing for Arab recognition of the Balfour Declaration, Arab retention of the Muslim holy sites, and WZO agreement to the establishment of an Arab state. Later that year, the Arabs repudiated the agreement.

Well, I would add the Woodhead Commission partition plan, even though it is a development of the Peel Partition plan which recommended

the exchange of populations between the Jewish
territory and the Arab territory: “If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population.”

The Commission envisioned a population exchange of approximately 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews. The Commission asserted that partition would benefit the Arabs because it would grant them their independence, free them from the fear of Jewish domination, guarantee the protection of the Muslim holy places, and prevent their own impoverishment. The benefit for the Jews was that partition established a Jewish state free from Arab domination in which Jews constituted the majority, and with no restrictions on immigration...This plan also failed. The Supreme Muslim Council rejected the plan immediately. There would be no concession to the Jews. Palestine was Arab land and the Jews were colonizers who were unwelcome...Source. pgs. 89-90

The Woodhead Commission came to Mandate Palestine late the spring of 1938 and published its report in November. It suggested two alternatives to the Peel Partition. Plan B would have reduced the size of the Jewish State by the addition of Galilee to the permanently mandated area and of the southern part of the region south of Jaffa to the Arab State. Plan C would have limited the Jewish State to the coastal region between Zichron Yaakov and Rehovot while in the northern Palestine, including Emek Yizrael, and all the semi-arid region of the Negev would have been placed under separate mandate.

And there is also the Arab rejection at the St. James Conference in 1939.

The Arabs didn't campaign for that either.

Now, as for the Jews, it seems that there was a choice in the face of this consistent Arab intransigence but the academics and intellectuals thought they knew better, thought they were more rational and logical:

Magnes first voiced ideas on Arab–Jewish cooperation in his presidential address at Hebrew University in 1925...Magnes contrasted his position on Arab–Jewish relations in the aftermath of violence at the wall with that of Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Union of Zionist Revisionists, who advocated the establishment of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River, encompassing the land in both the mandates for Palestine and Transjordan.

Jabotinsky and Magnes occupied the poles of Zionist belief, from militarism at the one extreme to pacifism at the other. Magnes wrote to Chaim Weizmann, then chair of the Jewish Agency Executive:

I think the time has come when the Jewish policy as to Palestine must be very clear, and that now only one of two policies is possible. Either the logical policy outlined by Jabotinsky . . . basing our Jewish life in Palestine on militarism and imperialism; Or a pacific policy that treats as entirely secondary such things as a “Jewish State” or a Jewish majority, or even “The Jewish National Home,” and as primary the development of a Jewish spiritual, educational, moral, and religious center in Palestine.

A pacific policy would be based in Jewish values and would take full consideration of Arab claims. The binational state – a state neither Jewish nor Arab – was Magnes’s pacific policy.  Source here, pgs. 67-68.

Magnes lives on - in J Street, in Meretz, in Jews for Justice, et al.

Arab rejectionism goes hand-in-hand with Jewish radicalism, the blind leading the blind but bumping into all us rationalists and realists.

^

Why Mandate Period History Is Essential

Many times, during interviews, I have been asked not to deal with "history".

Well, Sir Sherard Cowper Coles, former UK Ambassador to Israel, is interviewed on BBC (k/t: HR) and at 1:25 states that Israel should:

make the peace that has been on offer essentially since 1937 when the Peel Commission recommended partition..."

Some people think that Cowper-Coles has been in his recent diplomatic endeavors "out of his lane".  And Melanie Phillips slices him thin.

But let's get back to Peel.

Some of the commission's content:

...The continuous impact of a highly intelligent and enterprising race backed by large financial resources on a comparatively poor, indigenous community, on a different cultural level, may produce in time serious reactions. The principle of economic absorptive capacity, meaning that considerations of economic capacity and these alone should determine immigration, is at present inadequate and ignores factors in the situation which wise statesmanship cannot disregard. Political, social and psychological factors should be taken into account. His Majesty's Government should lay down a political high level of Jewish immigration. This high level should be fixed for the next five years at 12,000 per annum. The High Commissioner should be given discretion to admit immigrants up to this maximum figure, but subject always to the economic absorptive capacity of the country.

...The Palestine Order in Council and, if necessary, the Mandate should be amended to permit of legislation empowering the High Commissioner to prohibit the transfer of land in any stated area to Jews, so that the obligation to safeguard the right and position of the Arabs may be carried out. Until survey and settlement are complete, the Commission would welcome the prohibition of the sale of isolated and comparatively small plots of land to Jews...At present, and for many years to come, the Mandatory Power should not attempt to facilitate the close settlement of the Jews in the hill districts generally.

...The articles of the Mandate concerning the National Home do not apply to Trans-Jordan and the possibility of enlarging the National Home by Jewish immigration into Trans-Jordan rests on the assumption of concord between Arabs and Jews. Arab antagonism to Jewish immigration is at least as bitter in Trans-Jordan as it is in Palestine. The Government of Trans-Jordan would refuse to encourage Jewish immigration in the teeth of popular resistance.

...As regards the Jews' claim for a larger grant for their system of education, the Commission consider that, until much more has been spent on the development of Arab education, so as to place it on a level with that of the Jews, it is unjustifiable to increase the grant to the latter, however desirable it might be in other circumstances. The extent to which the Jews have taxed themselves for education is one of the best features of the National Home; and such "self-help" deserves all support; but it should not be given by altering the present proportion between the grant to the Jews and the amount spent on the Arabs; it should result from an increase in the total expenditure on education.

...The Arabs of Palestine, it has been admitted, are as fit to govern themselves as the Arabs of Iraq or Syria. The Jews of Palestine are as fit to govern themselves as any organized and educated community in Europe. Yet, associated as they are under the Mandate, self-government is impracticable for both peoples. The Mandate cannot be fully implemented nor can it honourably terminate in the independence of an undivided Palestine unless the conflict between Arab and Jew can be composed.

And the above is described so:

They are the best palliatives the Commission can devise for the disease from which Palestine is suffering, but they are only palliatives. They cannot cure the trouble. The disease is so deep-rooted that in the Commissioners' firm conviction the only hope of a cure lies in a surgical operation.

That 'surgical operation' includes these ideas:

...The continuance of the present system means the gradual alienation of two peoples who are traditionally the friends of Britain.

The problem cannot be solved by giving either the Arabs or the Jews all they want. The answer to the question which of them in the end will govern Palestine must be Neither. No fair-minded statesman can think it right either that 400,000 Jews, whose entry into Palestine has been facilitated by he British Government and approved by the League of Nations, should be handed over to Arab rule, or that, if the Jews should become a majority, a million Arabs should be handed over to their rule. But while neither race can fairly rule all Palestine, each race might justly rule part of it.

The idea of Partition has doubtless been thought of before as a solution of the problem, but it has probably been discarded as being impracticable. The difficulties are certainly very great, but when they are closely examined they do not seem so insuperable as the difficulties inherent in the continuance of the Mandate or in any other alternative arrangement. Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace. No other plan does.

...The problem cannot be solved by giving either the Arabs or the Jews all they want. The answer to the question which of them in the end will govern Palestine must be Neither. No fair-minded statesman can think it right either that 400,000 Jews, whose entry into Palestine has been facilitated by he British Government and approved by the League of Nations, should be handed over to Arab rule, or that, if the Jews should become a majority, a million Arabs should be handed over to their rule. But while neither race can fairly rule all Palestine, each race might justly rule part of it.

The idea of Partition has doubtless been thought of before as a solution of the problem, but it has probably been discarded as being impracticable. The difficulties are certainly very great, but when they are closely examined they do not seem so insuperable as the difficulties inherent in the continuance of the Mandate or in any other alternative arrangement. Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace. No other plan does.

The political division of Palestine could be effected in a less thorough manner than by Partition...

If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population.

...To both Arabs and Jews Partition offers a prospect--and there is none in any other policy--of obtaining the inestimable boon of peace. It is surely worth some sacrifice on both sides if the quarrel which the Mandate started could he ended with its termination. It is not a natural or old-standing feud. The Arabs throughout their history have not only been free from anti-Jewish sentiment but have also shown that the spirit of compromise is deeply rooted in their life.

That is a solution?

UPDATE

Benny Morris on Peel via a book review:-

What’s more, in dealing with the Revolt, Bird makes an unforgivable—and tendentious—elision. He completely ignores the Peel Commission’s labors and proposals. The royal commission had gone to Palestine in November 1936, six months into the revolt, to investigate the inflamed situation. In July 1937 it proposed an end to British rule, the partition of Palestine into two polities, one Jewish the other Arab (the latter to be eventually joined to neighboring Transjordan), and the orderly, compensated transfer (and, if need be, expulsion) of Arabs inhabiting the area earmarked for Jewish sovereignty. This was the first international proposal for a two-state solution to the Palestine problem. The Jews were to be awarded 17 percent of Palestine’s land, with the Arabs getting the rest—save for the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area—with a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea via Ramle, which was to be retained by (Christian) Britain. But the Palestinian Arabs, guided by their leader, Haj Amin al Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and the head of the Arab Higher Committee, flatly rejected the proposal, demanding all of Palestine for Arab sovereignty.

And George Antonius, who emerged as the preeminent Palestinian Arab spokesman (despite his Lebanese Christian origins), likewise rejected Peel. Bird quotes at length from Antonius’s book without mentioning Peel, and without quoting Antonius’s specious zero-sum-game argument. Antonius wrote: “No room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession”—even though Peel had only assigned 17 percent of the land to the Jews and recommended the removal of Arabs, or “the Arabs,” only from that 17 percent. Antonius, using a sleight of hand in order to persuade his readers of the immorality of the Peel proposals, implied that the proposed settlement involved the complete dispossession or extermination of Palestine’s Arabs.

Bird completely omits mention of Peel or his 17 percent solution—which the Zionists regarded quite understandably as unjust, though they grudgingly accepted the core notion of partition—and selectively quotes from The Arab Awakening: “The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine … cannot be accomplished without forcibly displacing the Arabs …[Palestine should become an independent Arab state] in which as many Jews as the country can hold without prejudice to its political and economic freedom would live in peace, security and dignity, and enjoy full rights of citizenship.” Such a state “would enable the Jews to have a national home in the spiritual and cultural sense, in which Jewish values could flourish and the Jewish genius have the freest play to seek inspiration in the land of its ancient connection.”

Right. A multinational, multicultural paradise, oiled by tolerance and democracy—for which the Arabs were then, and are today, famous—with an undefined Jewish minority whose size the Arabs would determine in line with their “political” and “economic” calculations. This was what Antonius was selling to his English-speaking readers in the United States and Britain—while back home, in Palestine, intolerance ruled, as Husseini’s gunmen shot and knifed their internal Arab opponents and “moderates” (as well as Jewish farmers and British soldiers).

^

A Beeb Boob

No, that's not being pornographic.

It translates as the BBC has erred.

Here:

The division of the former British mandate of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in the years after the end of World War II have been at the heart of Middle Eastern conflicts for the past half century.

Actually, the Mandate was divided prior to World War II.

In 1923, when the Mandate was authorized at the League of Nations, this article was added on to enable the British to support Emir Abdallah in Transjordan:

Article 25.

In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.

In 1937, another partition was proposed. That of the Peel Commission:

So, is the BBC dependable?

Is it biased?

^

When The Zionist Left Was Anti-Partition

Zionist politics is a complex subject.

Once upon a time, HaShomer HaTzair (the political party before it became Mapam and not strictly the youth movement) was anti-partition, seeking a binational state.

As the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry found out:

As the result of the public hearings and of many private conversations, we came to the conclusion that the Biltmore Program has the support of the overwhelming majority of Zionists. Though many Jews have doubts about the wisdom of formulating these ultimate demands, the program has undoubtedly won the support of the Zionist movement as a whole, chiefly because it expresses the policy of Palestinian Jewry which now plays a leading role in the Jewish-Agency...Palestinian Jewry is riddled with party differences. The number of political newspapers and periodicals bears witness to the variety and vitality of this political life, and, apart from pressure exerted on Jews considered to be disloyal to the National Home, we found little evidence to support the rumors that it was dangerous to advocate minority views...Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist party which, while demanding the right of unrestricted immigration and land settlement, challenges the concept of the Jewish State and particularly emphasizes the need for cooperation with the Arabs. Hashomer Hatzair, though it did not appear before us, published shortly before we left Jerusalem a striking pamphlet in support of bi-nationalism.

And here is the poster that expresses the above view:

It's headline reads:-

Biltmore Means Partition and a Good Partition is Fata Morgana

And here is a Marxist critique:

As regards the bi-nationalism of Hashomer Hatzair, it is an untruth to say that they stand for an Arab-Jewish Republic. Against the official Zionist programme they put forward these demands:

1. To open the doors of Palestine for Jewish immigration.
2. To establish in Palestine a political regime under international control which will give the Jewish Agency the right t carry out Jewish immigration according to the full economic absorptive capacity of the country.
3. To grant the Jewish Agency the necessary authority for the development and building up of the country, including settlement of all government owned lands and uninhabited spaces, in the interests of the two sectors of the population, which will make dense Jewish colonisation possible, and the development of the Arab economy.
4. To establish in Palestine after the war a regime based on the political equality of both peoples; which will enable Zionism to realise its aims undisturbed and will advance Palestine towards political independence in the frame of bi-nationalism. (Against the Stream, Collection of Articles and Speeches, Tel Aviv, 1943, Hebrew).

All matters of immigration and settlement, according to Hashomer Hatzair, must be dealt with by the Jewish Agency, which will be concerned – as it has been concerned until today – with the “development of the Arab economy.”

Of course has Hashomer Hatzair is ready to co-operate with the Arabs on such a basis. They only forget one small question: will the Arab masses accept this as a basis for collaboration? Is not control over immigration and colonisation in such a country as Palestine control over the most important functions of the state? Does the programme of has Hashomer Hatzair differ from the Jewish State programme in other than a greater dose of hypocrisy?

But if any doubt remains as to the extreme Zionism of Hashomer Hatzair, its leaders dispel it when they explain the bi-national programme:

“we aspire to the concentration of the majority of Jews in Palestine and the neighbouring countries.”

“The problem we are all concerned with is what is the most purposeful way to cease being a minority in the country.”

“Ben-Gurion claims that Zionism is not conditioned by the agreement of the Arabs; our position has always been the same.”

“Without agreement with the Arabs, too, we will continue the Zionist undertaking.” (From the speeches of M.Yaari and Y. Chazan in the Inner Zionist Council, 15th October and 10th November, 1942).

What is the basis for agreement with the Arabs? Hashomer Hatzair gives a clear answer:

“A primary precondition for any negotiation will be a declaration and common agreement that negotiations will be a declaration and common agreement that negotiations will be carried on only on the basis of the Mandate, and the unshakable recognition of Jewish immigration into Palestine.” (On the Wall, 1.1.39)

Are not Hashomer Hatzair really enthusiastic about bi-nationalism and fraternity with the Arabs? After all, all they ask of them is consent to only two “small” points – imperialist domination and Zionism.

 ^

So Yesterday

Since 1937, the term "partition" has been the official policy by the nations of the world to "solve" the Arab hostility directed at Jews, their non-recognition of Zionism and their desire to eradicate any sovereign political Jewish presence anywhere in our national homeland and this after the British already separated Transjordan from Jewish settlement although the territory was administered under the Palestine Mandate authority.

It has consistently not worked in any form, not in 1947, not in 1977 when autonomy was offered and not since 1993 when the Oslo Accords were adapted nor after 2005 when Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza. It is the one "solution" that has failed, repeatedly.

So, who said this:

Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure.

Well, the same person who said this:

Let’s put ideology aside; that is so yesterday.

And that person is...

...Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State. April 17 this year.

And she is not only promoting partition but a "settlement freeze" which is almost 40 years old.

Tsk, tsk.

Shimon Says

Mr. Peres feels vindicated for having taken positions once considered divisive. Mr. Netanyahu’s acceptance of the two-state principle, he said, brings the Israeli left and the right full circle 70 years after Mr. Ben-Gurion concluded that there was no choice but to accept a Jewish nation on part of the land, sanctioning partition.

“What finally won was the reality,” he said.

Source


Ah, but if the reality isn't as real as Peres thinks it is?

And if the reality changes?

What then?

I've Been Reminded of Partition

Hugh Eakin has a short interview with Robert Malley in the NY Review of Books.

And that reminded me of a letter I wrote last year that never got published:

Robert Malley and Hussein Agha's article on a possible Israel-Arab peace arrangement ("Into the Lion's Den", May 1) asserts that the Palestinians rejected the 1947 UN partition plan "because at the time they formed a majority in and controlled most of Mandatory Palestine". That is a misleading statement.

The essence of partition was meant, as it had been back in 1937 when first promoted by the British as official policy, to separate territorially the Arab and Jewish communities. It was intended to resolve the violence that the Arabs initiated as early as 1920 and coninued in several waves in 1921, 1929 and in an especially murderous period between 1936-1939. Partition symbolized the British slide into a reneging on their obligations as outlined in the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations decision of 1923 to promote a Jewish National Home, originally in an area on both sides of the Jordan River. Their treachery was accomplished in 1939 when, in a White Paper, which Lloyd George described as an act of perfidy and against which Winston Churchill voted, despite he being a minister in the government, it was declared "His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State". The closing of the gates to immigration doomed millions of Jews to the Hitlerarian Holocaust.

The Arabs rejected partition because they assumed they could roll back the previous twenty years. They did not want the Jews to live as a sovereign and politically independent entity anywhere in the area they called "Palestine", a Latin name for a supposedly Arab country which had never existed and was envisioned by Christian Arabs. Muslim Arabs had first insisted on the idea of a Greater Syria, a concept Bashir Assad currently supports.

Malley's proposals revive those feelings that Jewish rights and the past twenty years can be ignored and rolled back again.

Partition? Incredible? Why?

In an article, Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes, Muhammad Hallaj has written for the Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), he starts off thus:

PERHAPS BECAUSE I was sixteen at the time, and perhaps because I was in school in Jaffa, the epicenter of the political and military earthquake that ended in the destruction of Palestine and the dismantling of Palestinian society, the events of the catastrophe of 1948 retain a searing clarity in my memory sixty years later.

From my youthful vantage point, it began on a morning in late fall 1947. I arrived at my school, al-Amiriyya, in Jaffa. On the wall facing the entrance of the school was a small blackboard where every morning something clever or interesting (referred to as hikmat al-yawm, or “wisdom of the day”) would be written in chalk. That particular day, 30 November to be exact, I glanced at the board, and what I saw there I will never forget: “Yesterday, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations decided to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state in it.” I was stunned. What did it mean to “partition” a country? How could you establish a country inside a country? Why would the United Nations do this? Why didn’t they come and see for themselves that Palestine is our country? The whole idea was absurd and incredible...

Absurd?

Incredible?

Why?

In 1923, Gt. Britain finished the first partition, handing over to a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah ibn 'Ali, all of the eastern portion of the country, originally intended to be included in the territory of the reconstituted Jewish national home.

In 1937, the Peel Commission suggest another partition.

In 1939, the Woodhead Commission made a further partion suggestion.

Partition was on the table for decades as a solution. That it didn't work was the Arabs fault. That Hallaj's teachers did not inform him of the political reality and possibilities is a problem but not one to be blamed on the Jews.

We didn't like the idea but basically, the official Zionist bodies accepted the idea.

The Arabs have only themselves to blame for getting themselves into a perspective that was constantly rejected, to their detriment.