Sean Lee takes a hard look at a conversation many people are talking about, between Matthew Yglesias and Jeffrey Goldberg, in which the two bloggers lament that the Arabs did not accept 1947 Partition, that was their big mistake and the root of the problem. This is a highly-dubious train of thought. 1, you can't really say that the Israelis accepted Partition; they wanted the whole pie, and lo they have got it (see Joel Suarez, below). 2, This kind of thinking is indulgent and idle. You can't reverse history, you must deal with it. 3, Most important, Arab public opinion was completely opposed to Zionism. It would be like urging Jews to accept the presidency of Charles Lindbergh.
That is the core issue here: the political principle of self-determination. Lee quotes from the King-Crane commission of 1919 (emphasis his)
In his address of July 4, 1918, President Wilson laid down the following principle as one of the four great “ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting”; “The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery.” If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine-nearly nine tenths of the whole-are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the people’s rights, though it kept within the forms of law
It is to be noted also that the feeling against the Zionist program is not confined to Palestine, but shared very generally by the people throughout Syria as our conferences clearly showed.
Arab opinion was not much different 30 years later. And all the Arab members of the United Nations voted against Partition. They got rolled. You could say that the world's big mistake was not respecting Arab opinion. Even Richard Cohen has said that the creation of Israel was a "mistake."
The question is how to deal with all these errors now. And the main response I had to the Goldberg-Yglesias conversation is that This issue cannot be decided by two empowered Jews sitting around talking. There must be Palestinians represented fairly, or we're going to have no end of violence. Goldberg-Yglesias's complacency about the '48 mistake caused me to imagine two Anglo American sitting around after the Indian wars and saying, Their big mistake was that they didn't all act like Squanto. But the big difference between the two situations, realistically speaking, is that the Native Americans were a defeated people. The Palestinians are not a defeated people. They recapitulate some of the Jewish experience: they have an active educated Diaspora and an active national life even inside their ghettoes. And they are supported by a huge swath of the Middle East that is strategically vital to the U.S. That's a problem!
The outcome of all this may be that Arabs accept the existence of a Jewish state. What do I know? But the only way to get there is to engage them and respect Woodrow Wilson's principles of self-determination that we have rubbished again and again. And hey, while you are invoking '47 Partition, let's invoke the General Assembly's other resolution of that era, 194, the Right of Return. Partition created a Jewish state. It exists. The refugees have never been allowed to return. Talk about a festering, living grievance...
Joel Suarez, a PhD candidate at Georgetown, added the following:
In a recent argument with Center for American Progress fellow Matthew Yglesias, Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg identifies the culprits of the Arab-Israeli conflict:
Well, it seems to me Goldberg is either embarrassingly ignorant or wildly dishonest (though I’m open to the possibility that he is both). Goldberg serves up the Leon Uris version of history, ignoring nearly three decades of scholarship based on Israeli archives (not nationalist mythology). Goldberg might conveniently ignore what we now know, but Yglesias hardly shows he’s familiar with the history by accepting Goldberg’s fantastically simple (and thoroughly incorrect) understanding of the partition proposal of 1947.
Some basic facts about the partition plan and Palestine are in order. First, in 1947 Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population of mandate Palestine while Jews owned less than seven percent of the land. What exactly did UN 181 propose? Despite Palestine’s overwhelmingly Arab population, UN 181 allocated 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state while Arabs were granted only about 43 percent of the land for a Palestinian state (Jerusalem would be under international administration, a corpus separatum). The areas allocated to Israel contained the best land, including virtually all the coastal and interior plains, while Arabs were given the least valuable land. Moreover, including native Bedouins, Arabs constituted roughly half of the population of the land allocated for the Jewish state. Given these facts, how could anyone expect any native population to willingly dispossess themselves of more than half of their land to mostly recent immigrants?
A few words should also be said about Goldberg’s claim of Jewish acceptance of UN 181. Thanks to the opening of Israeli archives and access to David Ben-Gurion’s diaries and personal papers, we now know that the Yishuv’s leadership understood UN 181 to be merely the first step in a long process of conquering all of Palestine (the Revisionist Zionists had even more grandiose plans). Thanks to Avi Shlaim’s meticulous scholarship, we now know that before the vote on UN 181 the Yishuv's leadership made a tacit agreement with King Abdullah of Transjordan to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state by dividing Palestine between them. Lastly, when it came down to the 1947-1948 war, of the five regular Arab armies, Lebanon never crossed into mandate Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan never crossed into the territory allocated to Israel, while Syria made only minor incursions into Jewish-allocated territory. The only army that conducted a serious invasion of Israel was that of Egypt, but the most intense fighting came from Israeli offensives against Transjordan in its successful attempts to acquire more territory. The fact is that Israel was allocated 55 percent of mandate Palestine under UN 181 and ended up taking nearly 80 percent of the land, drove out more than half of the native population, and, according to staunchly Zionist and resolutely anti-Palestinian historian Benny Morris, committed the overwhelming majority of atrocities during the fighting of 1947-1949.
It seems to me Jeffrey Goldberg should read some of the real scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Dose Corporal Goldberg speak for all fellow Israelis?
Slightly OT, but if you (the collective ‘you’) haven’t had a chance to read Lawrence of Cyberia’s latest post, she is performing her usual bang up job on the history of Palestine, in this case further dispelling the myth that Zionists ‘inherited’ a virtual wasteland in Palestine. She links to records of the 1945-46 survey of Palestine carried out by British Mandate authorities which found that Palestinians were primarily responsible for a vibrant agricultural industry.
link to lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com
If Lawrence of Cyberia’s presents that report historically launching from 1945-46, she better not. She is only making a great disservice to the Palestinian cause…
Please realize, any possibly shortchanged studies, no matter how noble the intent, will likewise muddle our impressions and eventually shortchange the Palestinian cause…
Please present a leak-proof arguments on Palestinian history that no ‘air’ would dare to cross…this is a very sensitive cause for them…Remember they are suffering in every day of delay of their cause…
Thanks, Phil. This is a really important topic. The way it is generally presented is that the Jews were willing to share, and the Arabs wanted total control. This is absolutely untrue. I don’t have time to provide the sources right now, but the position of the Palestinian leadership (shared by some Palestinian Jews, such as Magnes and others), at least since the mid-30s was to share the land, in the context of single state with equal rights for all citizens. The Arabs supported UNSCOP’s Minority Report (federation), and presented a federative solution to the General Assembly – which the Secretary General refused to discuss! Probably under pressure from the US and the USSR.
It is therefore wrong to present the partition issue of sharing vs. throwing into the sea. The Arabs supported a plan of true sharing, while the Jewish Agency insisted on a plan that would give Jews dominance in at least a part of Palestine.
Gee, I thought billions of heavily armed Arabian armies savagely attacked the fledgling Jewish state chiclet, armed with a few pebbles; yet the little guy stood stalwart against the wide-world of eternal
anti-semitism. All alone in the world , the tiny chicklet prevailed, a role model for us all. That’s what I was taught, growing up in the USA. The handful of Greek Spartans at the pass had nothing on young Israel, barely out of the womb. Massadah uber alles!
“You could say that the world’s big mistake was not respecting Arab opinion. Even Richard Cohen has said that the creation of Israel was a “mistake.”"
I was really laughing at this reaction – has anyone in the UN known by that time what trouble would it make? But someone in our hearts has known it to happen many many centuries before… This is why I too believe this seemingly unending trouble will happen… so what new?
I would add that the issue of “unlimited Jewish immigration” (which the Zionists demanded and the Arabs rejected) was a crucial one, with the Jewish Agency exploiting the conditions of Jews in the DP camps. In fact, the partition plan included a provision for resettling Jews in the DP camps as quickly as possible, in various cuntries – a provision that the JA’s representative Abba Hillel Silver actually opposed!
Words cannot express how vital you are to this debate, Shmuel.
Shmuel is indispensable.
I don’t think that’s quite correct, Shmuel. I’m fairly certain that the Arab Palestinian leadership rejected the UNSCOP Minority Report as well as the Majority Report. And Magnes’ vision of a binational state had no serious support among Arabs.
From this source:
link to pi.library.yorku.ca
“Nor did the minority report have a chance either. Since it clearly rejected the idea of a Jewish homeland and provided for no resolution of the Jewish refugee problem, neither the Jews nor the United States could be expected to live with that solution. Further, before the United Nations, the Arabs had consistently and publicly demanded a unitary state and opposed a federal solution”
Peter,
I’m not sure that recognition of the idea of a Jewish homeland was a sine qua non for a just solution in Palestine at the time, but a federation would not have rejected that idea. With regard to the Jewish refugee problem, there was no reason to presume that the solution lay in Palestine – a fact that even the Majority Report recognised, and the only part of the UN Partition Plan rejected by the Jewish Agency. See Abba Hillel Silver’s response, at: link to tinyurl.com
I don’t know how the Palestinian leadership responded to the UNSCOP Minority Report, but the proposal of the Arab representatives to the UN was characterised by Herschel Johnson as “a mere resurrection of the proposal for a federal Palestine, which had been recommended by a minority of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine.”
The Arab proposal was:
See: link to nytimes.com
‘The Arabs supported a plan of true sharing,’ – this news gave me ‘breather’, my muscles loosened…I felt joy…
‘while the Jewish Agency insisted on a plan that would give Jews dominance in at least a part of Palestine. ‘ – my chest and muscles tightened again! dismayed…
But anyway such a good and comforting fact, I hope the situation and thinking among the Jews loosen further. Thanks for the news Shmuel…
‘a plan that would give Jews dominance in at least a part of Palestine. ‘ – I think this contention as justifyable, is manageable – where both sides could find win-win situation.
After I read all the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine Press Release (1947): there are some points I realized:
1.) Israel is for the Jews alone.
2. Palestinians Arabs have no more right to occupy any land within Israel.
3.) They must reside in Jordan wherein which formerly part of Israel historically and during the Balfour Declaration and was later treacherously appropriated by the British for the Arabs .
4) the Arabs proposal in 1947 which deprived of the Jews of their national identity and rights for self determination was in effect callous to the intent of the Balfour Declaration, and equal to ‘unequal treatment they undergo under the present Jews government’ except that they more autonomous in many political and economic aspects. Now on these basis they have no right to accuse the Israelis – racist, apartheid, and illegitimate!
5) And in the objective of immediately re-establishing the Jewish State, the Jews have sacrifices historically crucial sites of heritage such as the Old City of Jerusalem (the heritage of Israel from God) to the International Trustee (a representative of ‘Gentile nations’) – what a historic and symbolic sacrifice!
6) Israel has even agreed on the second sacrifice – two independent sates (two state solution) – one for them and one for the Arabs (another shameful demand) – thanks to British domination and teachery
It was written in the King James Bible that the LORD retract or remove the monarchial authority from a wicked king. I am afraid it is not America but the Britsih Kingdom that will sooner fall to the Islamic domination- as it becomes a Muslim state! In the past it was the British that trampled the Muslim people, now the Muslims will trample the British people… Is it not now fair?
By the way, are not the British cursed by the death or Tyndale? Just like the Jews cursed by the human sacrifice of Jesus the Christ?
There is deep irony in the fact that the original Zionist vision of Israel was located on the coastal plain, the prime agricultural land, ignoring the hill regions of “Judea and Samaria” which the religious Zionists now claim (correctly) as the ancestral heartland.
For all that the Zionists talked of “return” to the homeland of the Jews, they actually settled in the homeland of the Phoenicians and Philistines.
Very good observation. The whole of any history involving words is to trace the way the same words keep being used, but the meanings keep changing. “Homeland” “Ancestral” are wonderful words, are they not?
I’d add that the most deeply orthodox Jews were (and are) subject to an injunction to do nothing to bring about the return of the Jewish people to Palestine, NOT EVEN TO PRAY FOR IT, for it was G-d’s job to accomplish this return in H-s own time and for H-s own reasons. [Using orthodox spelling of the N-me.] Some (Neturei Karta comes to mind) still hold fast to this teaching, but in Israel, people claiming to be orthodox are the most gung-ho at returning to the land.
Pablemont,
The theology of Jewish return to Palestine is a little more complicated than that, and orthodoxy (a rather relative concept) is no guarantee of authenticity (another relative concept) – a questionable value in and of itself.
pabelmont- “Not even to pray for it”?! Sounds suspicious. Three times a day Jews pray, “Sound the great horn for our liberation and raise the banner to gather our exiles, and gather us together from the four corners of the earth. Blessed art thou God, who gathers the rejected of his nation, Israel.”
WJ,
I’m sure one could play some theological games with the numerous prayers for return to Zion, in order to support pabelmont’s assertion, although traditional Jewish prayer, by nature, concerns divine intervention rather than human action. Besides, there has been a constant current in Jewish thought, at least since the Middle Ages, calling for physical return to Zion – albeit as an act of faith intended to elicit a divine response, rather than an attempt to seize sovereignty and create a polity. These calls were generally not heeded, even by those who supported them in theory, for a variety of practical, personal and further theological reasons.
On the whole, I find the Neturei Karta argument about what “real Jews” are supposed to believe about Zionism, historically revisionist, theologically narrow-minded and, above all, unconvincing. Furthermore, I feel a little uncomfortable with the NK contribution to the movement for Palestinian rights. They may be on the “right” side, but for all the wrong reasons. I have no problem demonstrating alongside them, but I see little point in citing their arguments.
I guess it should not be surprising that Yglesias blames the Palestinians for their own plight. This is the position that says the Palestinians should have accepted defeat as soon as the zionist started stealing their land and entered into negotiations to keep as much as they could. The fact that this expectation is based on a belief in human nature that doesn’t exist in any other population on earth is irrelevant to these guys.
Also we should keep in mind that Matt was a supporter of the aggression against Iraq, he is a pragmatic progressive and came out in opposition after this war turned into a debacle. He often writes pretty good stuff and many of us would tend to identify with him but we should realize that he is cut from that mold that gave us the humanitarian warriors.
I hope everyone clicks through to read Sean Lee’s article, and the exchange with Matt Yglesias in the comments. Sean Lee really describes with wonderful clarity the issue of how Palestinians might be expected to react to what Zionism requires of them.
Thanks, Diane. The article and exchange is definitely worth a read.
I’ve always said that in the US the idea of a “balanced” debate on Israel is Michael Lerner v Dore Gold, moderated by Wolf Blitzer.
In this case, it’s Jeffrey Goldberg v Matt Yglesias, but it’s the same principle: the acceptable limits of mainstream discourse are the limits of left- and right- Zionism. The idea that there might be a large chunk of the world out there that isn’t Zionist at all, and doesn’t see the Middle East through the distorting lens of Zionism, just doesn’t get a look-in.
(Wilson).
Reading the invaluable “The Sorrows of Empire” by Chalmers Johnson, one wonders where the USA went wrong, as it surely did, being today devoted precisely to interfering in all the world’s affairs either by economic tricks (such as NAFTA, WTO, IMF, WB) or by out and out warfare.
It is also written in the ancient scriptures – ‘the greater is thy wisdom, the great is thy sorrow…’ This is the sorrow of the western rulers that learns ancient history and views the world with a Christian perspective…(no much issue for that) but worst when they intervene in another man’s destiny…true justice is not only for the strangers but for own’s children as well…
I would propose to that the critical mistake was not the so called Arab rejection of partition but was for the US to reject the unanimous recommendations of the “Joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry” on the future of Palestine in 1946.
This was a British and American committee whose main objective was: “To examine political, economic and social conditions in Palestine as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement therein and the well-being of the peoples now living therein.”
When read today, the prescience, sophistication and enlightenment of the commission are breathtaking. One can only imagine how much more stable the Mideast would be, and how much additional human suffering would have been avoided, had President Truman not caved in to Zionist pressure and embrace partition.
From the Report:
“In order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of the following principles should be made:
“…That Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine. That Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state. That the form of government ultimately to be established, shall, under international guarantees, fully protect and preserve the interests in the Holy Land of Christendom and of the Moslem and Jewish faiths…’
“We, therefore, emphatically declare that Palestine is a Holy Land, sacred-to Christian, to Jew and to Moslem alike; and because it is a Holy Land, Palestine is not, and can never become, a land which any race or religion can justly claim as its very own.”
“We further, in the same emphatic way, affirm that the fact that it is the Holy Land, sets Palestine completely apart from other lands, and dedicates it to the precepts and practices of the Brotherhood of Man, not those of narrow nationalism. ”
“Yet Palestine is not, and never can be, a purely Jewish land. It lies at the crossroads of the Arab world. Its Arab population, descended from long-time inhabitants of the area, rightly look upon Palestine as their homeland..;
“It is therefore neither just nor practicable that Palestine should become either an Arab State, in which an Arab majority would control the destiny of a Jewish minority, or a Jewish State, in which a Jewish majority would control that of an Arab minority. In neither case would minority guarantees afford adequate protection for the subordinated group.”
Now I ask you, if the Arabs rejected partition because that favored this vision of Palestine, can you blame them???
The report can be found at link to avalon.law.yale.edu
Would also recommend you read “President Harry S. Truman and US Support for Israeli Statehood” found at link to mideastweb.org
Excellent point, Howard.
After the creation of Jordan from the Balfour defined territory of Israel, the Arabs in the name of Palestinians have no more moral basis to to vision in whatever manner for Palestine within Israel!
I think there is no more basis for discussion over Israel on territorial matters! They have to agree whether for two state or never…(personally with these historical documents now, I do not agree anymore with the two-state solution It must be relocation of all Arabs (except Israeli-Arabs ) to Jordan. One sacrifice is enough!
Let all now clear the table!
“We further, in the same emphatic way, affirm that the fact that it is the Holy Land, sets Palestine completely apart from other lands, and dedicates it to the precepts and practices of the Brotherhood of Man, not those of narrow nationalism. ”
What nationalism do you refer to…for what nation? These are Jewish lands. The Jews must allow all nations to visit all the holy sites for humanity sake…but definitely these are now state properties of Israel.
Now I understand why the Turks and the Arabs find no basis to unite though they are all muslims…two antagonistic bloods run in their veins! One is allergic to the other!
Oh, this presentations of Yale Law School are beautifully poetic and melodious to the legal ears…but cannot even dent the historical facts….sometimes truth are ‘much more’ stranger than fiction!
Read the original UN documents!
If you put all these Yale people exactly in the place of the Israeli Jewish officialdom, under all the historical circumstances, and cultural mindsets…tomorrow, they will be crawling over the Palestinian antifadists!…
I can help Jeffrey Goldberg, as far as the source of the map is concerned. I agree with Sean Lee, there must be quite a bit dishonesty mixed into his “ignorance. I honestly doubt he doesn’t know it. Why doesn’t he write: he uses that bit of Palestinian Propaganda all over the web.
This is the nationalist part of the tale I find most amazing. Actually there were no (“generally speaking”) Palestinians in 1946, or at the time of the “most egregious map”, and if there were any they were Jewish. …
This map is ridiculous, not only because the term “Palestinian” in 1946 referred, generally speaking, to the Jews who lived in Palestine, not the Arabs, but because there was no Palestine in 1946 (nor was there an Israel.)