IvanV wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 9:28 am
EACLucifer wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 4:43 pm
Assuming that Jerusalem must belong to the Palestinians because of the Jordanian annexation is a good example of the "owner by default" fallacy that assumes that all of former territories of the Mandate of Palestine* belonged to the Arab Palestinians and that they were thus taken from the Arab Palestinians if they ended up as part of Israel - sometimes people exempt privately owned Jewish property from this assumption, but even then it is intensely problematic as it still excludes Jews from a claim on publically owned lands in areas they lived and made up the majority.
But ownership by default is what happens after long enough. Which is why London is an English city, the Anglo-Saxons having kicked out what we now call the "Welsh" who lived there until 1500 years ago. Which is why Istanbul is Turkish having partly half-kicked the Greeks out 500 years ago and finishiing the job off 100 years ago, sadly occasioned by a Greek attack on Turkey. So ownership by default, fallacy or not, is what actually happens.
That's not what I was referring to, I was referring to the assumption that all the land in the Mandate of Palestinian inherently belonged to the Arabs, and land that ended up as part of Israel must have been taken from the Arab Palestinians, whereas the reality is that most land was state land or owned by absentee landlords, and all the residents of the Mandate of Palestine - including Jewish ones - had valid claims on where they lived.
All I am saying is that if the 1967 conflict had been avoided, then East Jerusalem would have been a de facto Palestinian settlement, with no going back save for an utterly illegitimate attempt to conquer and ethically cleanse it.
Yes, I know that. I'm not sure why this counterfactual is relevant when I was challenging the idiotic notion that Israel ought to abandon parts of Jerusalem they acquired in 67 after Jordan went all-in on trying to destroy Israel and lost.
The Palestinians ended up where the Palestinians ended up after being ethnically cleansed from other places, and attempts to move them on is still ethnic cleansing, regardless of whether someone different lived there 75 years ago.
Which is why ill-intentioned nations who can get away with it do carry out ethnic cleansing, knowing that after long enough it becomes an irreversible fact on the ground, regardless of its legitimacy at the time. That's what Israel does and has been doing, in fact, for rather longer than 75 years. The sad fact is that during the Ottoman empire, large parts of Palestine were owned by absentee landlords living in places like Lebanon and Syria. A Jewish settler would come along, buy a big piece of land off the Lebanese guy (who sadly had no concern whatever for the tenants), and then gradually kick all the Palestinian tenants out and replace them with Jews. They knew that they were putting facts on the ground as they did that, well before 1947.
This isn't that far off from a BNP attitude to migration. The truth is there was a lot of inward migration in the 19th and 20th centuries, including very extensive migration by Arabs and other non-Jews. In addition, a large amount of the Jewish migration - especially in the nineteenth century, before the Zionist movement began among Ashkenazim - was MENA Jews, notably Yemenis fleeing anti-Jewish policies that would today be considered genocide.
You say that Israel had no intention of fighting in 1947. Well, if they thought they could get away with what they did in 1947 without much fighting, they were exceedingly naive. So, I don't believe you.
They idea that "What they did in 1947" was some evil that inevitably lead to war is deeply f.cking questionable. There was violence in both directions in the 45-47 period -though most Jewish violence at this point was against the British colonial occupation - following on from extensive violence against Jews before WWII, including the Hebron massacre, and going back at least as far as the mid nineteenth century. In 47, Zionists lobbied the UN to support the partition plan, and the day after it was voted on, there were massacres of Jews when busses were attacked.
The Israelis were outnumbered - there are sources claiming otherwise, but these only count Arab fighting units and don't include militia, while the Israeli count includes logistics personnel as well, with only about 40% of the nominal Israeli number actual conbatants - and heavily outgunned - the Arab forces had a dozens to one tank and artillery advantage and the Israeli guns were 65mm mountain guns so antiquated they were nicknamed "Napoleonchiks" for their appearance.
In addition, Jewish fighters struggled with an arms embargo that did not affect supply of arms to the Arab nations, and struggled to secure sufficient arms, mostly by smuggling in stuff from Czechoslovakia, where the arms industry was desperate for the business.
In short, the military position was intensely dangerous for Israel, and losing a war would have been catastrophic - the closest thing to a Palestinian political leader was a Nazi supporter who had known about and approved of the holocaust, incited the Farhud and recruited for the SS, and other Arab leaders had made their genocidal intent clear.
I would suggest you read Shlaim and see what you think for yourself. I think he makes a good case that the "Official Narrative" has no leg to stand on. Many of the attempts to criticise his well-documented points come from an "Israel? That evil and devious? I'm a Jew? How could I accept that?" position. He's not the only historian I read on this - the early facts-on-the-ground point came from somewhere else, I forget where.
Please don't assume I am unfamiliar with the New Historians. There are problems with the official narrative, but they frequently overreach into downright revisionism.