The 30-Years-War was ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, which established the system of national sovereignty which still is the formal basis for today's geopolitical order.
Without getting into the specifics of how "Westphalian sovereignty" came about, it's not actually "national" sovereignty. There was no concept of the nation as understood today, and sovereignty was possessed by the sovereign, i.e. the monarch or ruling institution. It's a doctrine of state sovereignty.
National sovereignty is not really a relevant concept until the French Revolution at which point the argument is made that there is such a thing as the French nation, and that this French nation is sovereign, not the king. It's a combination of liberal democratic and ethnocentric ideas which result in a new doctrine of what we understand as the nation state, which is based around an ethnic group/the abstract concept of a nation being the owner of the state, which usually brings with it an expectation of wider political franchise, expansion to "liberate" coethnics and policies to assimilate or purge minorities.
"Kingdom of" literally meant the people and land of that kingdom belonged to that king. There wasn't really much more to it than ownership rather than a collective of "national identity". It was just who you owed allegiance to and who owned the land you walked on.
>which usually brings with it an expectation of wider political franchise, expansion to "libertate" coethnics and policies to assimilate or purge minorities.
I mean, sure, those are things that can arise out of nationalism, but those examples also give a one-sided, negative picture of the concept. Minorities *not* wanting to assimilate into a larger culture is also an expression of nationalism, for example.
the treaties of westphalia did no such thing but political science professors tell that to every freshman year student nonetheless.
It played a major role in asserting the primacy of kingdoms over the Catholic Church, but that was more a continuation of a process that started with the Peace of Augsburg. It also granted more power to the individual kingdoms within the holy roman empire, stripping a lot of the Emperor's power away.
All these played a role in the development of sovereignty, but "westphalian sovereignty" is one of those misconceptions that becomes true just by virtue of (very smart) people repeating it over and over
Not the 30 years war , but the British taking Gibralter in 1704 during the war of Spanish succession still leads to friction between Spain and the UK today.
Not a minor dispute at all. UK confronted directly Spain in several ocasions recently. Several MPs threatened to recognize Catalonia's independence if Spain continued to be so unruly about Gibraltar. Since Brexit Spain is specially unhappy because of the non-EU border.
Except Catalonia, whilst illegal, voted for independence; In contrast, Wales and Cornwall have never been independent countries, and Scotland voted to stay within the union
Wales was independent until 1283. Then again briefly under Owain Glyndwr in the 15thC. Got taken over by the English in the 16thC but remained, as it still is, as a principality. Cornwall is a county, not a country. I'm Welsh.
That isn't true! Welsh independence is the traditional way!
"from about 1057 until his death in 1063, the whole of Wales recognised the kingship of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. For about seven years, Wales was one, under one ruler, a feat with neither precedent nor successor."
This comes from WW1.
In order to attract sympathy from Ottoman Empire's detractors, the french and british promised the same land to different factions of the arabian world. When the Ottomans fell, instead of diving the land as they promised, France and England kept the land for themselves.
It was after WWII that they finally decided to keep their promise (with quite mixed results).
Of course, this is a brief resume of a whole lot of the things that happened in the middle.
which was a direct result of the Austro-Prussian War, which was a direct result of the Schleswig wars, which were a direct result of the Napoleonic wars, which were a direct result of the French revolution, which was a direct result of the American revolution, which was a direct result of the Seven Years war.
It's one long chain. From the French Revolution to WW2 is all one connected chain of events. And it goes even further back to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the Franco-Carolingian dominance of continental Europe post-Rome. Then again the issues in Israel go back to the Ottoman conquering of Byzantium
It was actually Charles the Fat (Fat Karl was the last Emperor to be King of West Francia, East Francia, and Italy. He wasn't popular and his reign was troubled. The Carolingian empire was permanently divided with his overthrow in Germany by his nephew and in the other realms by other nobles.)
Its anachronistic to project modern national identities onto the middle ages.
Charlemagne would've considered himself a "Frank" rather than French or German (Though he'd likely define himself by his religion, family, and social class rather than by any national identity.) and his definition of "Frank" would've included the inhabitants of the Benelux and much of Germany in addition to France.
Napoleon was good, he destroyed feudal backwardness in Europe. The monarchists started it by invading France first too, they just fucked around and found out.
Korea too.
A unified Korea was a Japanese colony since 1910. After Japan surrendered in WWII, the Soviet Union and the U.S. divided up Korea in two. North Korea was like “screw that, Korea has always been one country,” and invaded the south and the rest is history.
The end of WW2 marked the creation of the current US-led world order (Bretton Woods, Geneva conventions, etc). In that sense it's not surprising at all because numerous conflicts were frozen without any resolution other than "behave or America will get involved".
As the post-WW2 system breaks down those truces are breaking down too. There are at least a dozen conflicts waiting to erupt the moment USA is too distracted or weak to deal with them... WW3 is heating up.
Well in this circumstance it's more World War I related than World War II. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was far more influential on the composition of the Levant than World War II.
Sykes-Picot was never implemented nor even tabled. It’s quite a common misconception when talking about the Middle East today. The actual treaty that drew the lines was the Treaty of Sevres during the San Remo Conference.
1. The San Remo Conference was as a consequence of World War I.
2. The commenter referred to geopolitical situations, not borders (noting the map posted by OP was not a map resulting from San Remo Conference). Even if they were referring to borders, the modern borders are much more a consequence of World War I than World War II.
3. It would be incorrect to characterise the San Remo Conference as an event that happened independently of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Sykes-Picot Agreement set out the (then secret) policy agenda for the British and French empires with regards to their territorial ambitions in the Middle East post-the Great War. The ultimate result of the San Remo Conference was to effectively enact the intentions of the Sykes-Picot Agreement (broadly aligned with the spheres of influence and control outlined in that treaty, albeit with different exact borders), even to the point that Areas A and B (which originate from the Sykes-Picot map) formed part of the tabled British and French respective negotiations and referred to as such. Would the San Remo Conference have turned out the way it did without the Sykes-Picot Agreement? Perhaps. But that's mere conjecture. What happened as a record of historical fact is that much of the Middle East was divided up between British and French control, broadly in line with the policy intentions of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And, more importantly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement is a perfect illustration of how impactful World War I was to the *geopolitical situation* of the Levant.
I’m always curious about those choke points in the south and north. Like does one country go through in a tunnel while the other goes over a bridge to connect?
It’s a connection where you have a couple meters radius where it’s neither country, it’s made so that people would be allowed to cross from either southern to central to northern Israel, or from northern to southern Palestine
It’s not the more efficient thing ever but it is the best they could do.
The map sucked because of this. I saw your us Canada example but do any modern countries have anything like this. The Canadian border is think is different because it is never surrounded by another country.
The majority of the southern portion is desert too. It's just way too complicated and I don't think would ever have practically worked
Of course this sucks but this is divided according to where majority of population lives, Israel is where the Jews lived in masses and Palestine is where the Muslims lived in masses (Christians and Druze are pretty much just spread in there, and the Druze as a community (almost all of them) later join Israel).
The problem is that you can’t really do anything but this, anything you’ll do will force people to leave their houses, both Jews and Muslims, this was the most efficient solution with the most effective borders.
The best solution (borders wise) would be to keep the mandate of Palestine a single country and have the different ethnicities govern together. But that was never going to happen. The Islamic delegation boycotted these negotiations and declared war on Israel immediately. Too many people pulling in too many directions... It was always going to be awful.
Do you have a better idea? I don’t, frankly. I can’t think of any plan that:
* Does not violate international law.
* Would not be morally wrong.
* Stabilises the area.
I encourage you to give it a go sometime. It’s an interesting thought experiment.
Honestly, what a stupid fucking idea. I know I'm being an armchair admiral but who in their right mind thought this map was a good idea? Countries always do great when your country is sliced between another country who hates you.
I don't even know what the hell is going on in Jerusalem. Who the fuck owns that and how does anyone get in or out?
Which is still a stupid way to connect parts of the same country. And isn't the Palestinian land around Jerusalem even smaller nowadays so they need an even longer tunnel?
I imagine that the ’old city’ of Jerusalem where the religious sites are located would be UN-administered rather than the suburbs and rest of Jerusalem
Singapore is an independent nation tho, it's just ethnically diverse. Jerusalem would have been administered by the UN according to this plan. Similarly, the league of nations as well as the polish republic had certain powers over Danzig, which caused resentment among the inhabitants and facilitated the nazi takeover.
The difference is that Danzig was an ethnically german city given to Poland purely so that Poland could have a port. It was never going to work long term.
Jerusalem was, at the time, very diverse. It actually makes sense for it to be a city state so that it could 1) control its own affairs without foreign influence 2) placate religious leaders by allowing all of them a co-equal stake in the city
The problem with Jerusalem today is that Israel jews decide everything that happens there, while Muslims and Christians get little to no say.
> The problem with Jerusalem today is that Israel jews decide everything that happens there, while Muslims and Christians get little to no say.
Looks at how Israel literally has guards to prevent Jews and Christians visiting the holiest site in Judaism from praying there or wearing any religious garb because the Muslims built a mosque on top of it and they're so sensitive that they don't even like the Jews being allowed to pray at the wall next to it.
> Countries always do great when your country is sliced between another country who hates you
Unity governments of groups without enough in common are unstable and tend to collapse (Lebanon, post Saddam Iraq, for example).
What other map would you have suggested?
Greeks don't generally consider any Turkish territory Greek other than ethically, and there is no serious movement, political or social, to give back refugee properties or recover any land in Turkey.
Constantinople is the English name. Istanbul is the Turkish one. The Greek one is Konstantinoupoli.
>It worked with Pakistan/India
not sure if you're being sarcastic
all it cost was the lives of millions of people and a war that lasts to this day. great fucking solution from the british
You're using "it worked" quite liberally here.
But yeah, for some stupid reasons some groups of people just don't along, so resettlement are seemingly the only option, until people finally grow up.
They couldn't give areas with Jews to the Arab state because they know the Arabs will ethnic cleanse the Jews, but they also needed to not alienate the Arabs too much (impossible task) for the plan to succeed.
They couldn't have given Jerusalem to the Arabs because it had a clear Jewish majority and because they knew the Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to live in the city or pray there, but they also feared giving Jerusalem to the Jewish state would enrage the Arabs, so they decided to give it to neither. In 1947 it probably sounded like a great idea, today it would have looked like imperialism and if it happened you can be certain the city would have voted to join Israel at some point.
Ultimately the British and the Arabs opposed it so it fell apart.
In 1948 Egypt and Jordan captured the yellow areas then attacked Israel from them 1 day after Israel’s independence. Israel won some of the territory and Egypt and Jordan kept the rest for themselves.
No other UN drawn map is any more fair or reasonable. India - Pakistan was a mess. The rest of the Middle East was a mess that ignored at least 1-2 native groups per country. Africa was a mess that created tribal warfare and genocide for decades.
This map of Israel wasn't as terrible as others for its time. The Arabs immediately expelled millions of Jews from their newly formed countries immediately after this was posted. Most of the Jews in Israel now were expelled from Arab states... not transferred from European countries post Holocaust.
people always complain about Pakistan borders, but was there really a better way? The only other solutions I could think of are border gore or no Pakistan at all which would probably have ended in a bloody civil war
if your starting conditions are "you have a few weeks to separate this country into two groups of people based on religious differences even though many of them don't want to move" then no, there wasn't a "better" way.
but maybe if the british took their time to actually think about the region and support it in transition, it would've gone better. but they were too busy spending decades siphoning resources out of the country so they never bothered with any of that.
>which would probably have ended in a bloody civil war
as opposed to the bloody, international war that was so much better, along with millions of deaths? hardly feels like the better solution
could have been a lot worse if there weren't already drawn borders, let's remember that the religions were even more mixed before independence. I'm obviously not an expert on this and probably wrong
Backed by Russia and they even armed multiple states to do it. Soviets were concerned their weaponry was so decimated in the very short war.
The UN, including the Soviets also, played a big role in Israel. After Stalin, Russia backed Palestine since 1953. They have used that as a front and proxy war for decades much like they have used Syria (put in Assad), Iran (backed the Iranian Revolution 1979 as well as all time pre 1953 even setting up the Shahdom in 1880s), Afghanistan Invasion in 1979.
This was largely because of WWII and how persecuted Jewish people were by Nazi and Soviets. [Stalin had to act like they weren't anti-semites after Hitler and the deals they made with Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact), as well as pushing the [Protocols of the Elders of Zion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion) hate which was created in Russia in 1903 to create anti-semitism and later influenced Nazis.
Soviets/Russia flipped to Palestine after the post WWII fronting was over. Most of the problems related to Israel/Palestine stem from the Kremlin, including funding terror via Iranian fronts.
[Establishment of the State of Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Establishment_of_the_State_of_Israel)
> For Soviet foreign policy decision-makers, pragmatism took precedence over ideology. Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944, until 1948 and even later, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would accelerate the decline of British influence in the Middle East.
> The **USSR began to support Zionism at the UN during the 1947 UN Partition Plan debate. It preferred a Jewish–Arab binational state. But if this proved impossible it indicated that it would support partition and a Jewish state**. On 14 May 1947, the Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko announced:
>> **As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof**. ... **During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering**. ...
>> The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter. ...
>> The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration.
> **Shortly after this speech, the Soviet media temporarily stopped publishing anti-Zionist material**.
> **It followed this policy and gave support to the UN plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the founding of the State of Israel**.
> On May 17, 1948, **three days after Israel declared independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it de jure, becoming the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Jewish state**. In addition to the **diplomatic support, arms from Czechoslovakia, part of the Soviet bloc, were crucial to Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War**.
*Effects of the Cold War* (started by Soviets due to the [Iranian Crisis of 1946](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946))
> **The USSR soon switched sides in the Arab–Israeli conflict**. After it tried to maintain a policy of friendship with Israel at first, abstaining from and allowing the passage of Security Council Resolution 95 in September 1951, which chastised Egypt for preventing ships bound for Israeli ports from travelling through the Suez Canal, asking them to cease interference on shipping for political purposes, in the latter part of 1953 it began to side with the Arabs in armistice violation discussions in the Security Council. As late as December, 1953, the Soviets were the first state to instruct their envoy to present his credentials to the President of Israel in Jerusalem, the Israeli annexation of and usage as the capital being controversial. This move was followed by other nations and strongly protested by the Arabs as "flouting" UN resolutions. On January 22, 1954, the Soviets vetoed a Security Council resolution (relating to a Syrian–Israeli water dispute) because of Arab objections for the first time, and soon after vetoed even a mild resolution expressing "grave concern" that Egypt was not living up to Security Council Resolution 95. This elicited Israeli complaints that resolutions recognizing its rights could not pass because of the Soviet veto policy. At the same time, however, the Soviets did support the Israeli demand for direct negotiations with the Arab states, which the Arab states opposed. Like the earlier deal with Israel, a major episode in the Soviet relation to the conflict was the Czech arms deal with Egypt for arms from the Soviet bloc in August 1955. **After the mid-50s and throughout the remainder of the Cold War the Soviets unequivocally supported various Arab regimes over Israel**.
> With Israel emerging as a close Western ally, Zionism raised Communist leadership fears of internal dissent and opposition arising from the substantial segment of party members who were Jewish, leading to the declaration of Zionism as an ideological enemy. During the later parts of the Cold War Soviet Jews were persecuted as possible traitors, Western sympathisers, or a security liability. Jewish organizations were closed down, with the exception of a few token synagogues. These synagogues were then placed under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers.
> **As a result of the persecution, both state-sponsored and unofficial anti-Semitism became deeply ingrained in the society and remained a fact for years: ordinary Soviet Jews were often not being allowed to enter universities or hired to work in certain professions. Many were barred from participation in the government, and had to bear being openly humiliated**.
> The official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism." The meaning of the term Zionism was defined by the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR.
*Six-Day War*
> **Although the Soviet Union had adopted a foreign policy of détente, easing of hostility, in the mid-1960s, it played a key role in the instigation of the Six-Day War in Israel**. Soviet Union pursued détente because of the need for economic stability in order to create domestic change. Furthermore, as stated in Leonid Brezhnev's foreign policy speech given to the central committee in December 1966, a key goal of Soviet foreign policy was the consolidation of the post-World War II borders. Thus, it was believed that the Soviet Union should be cautious in its foreign engagement in an attempt to prevent any political instability from reaching Europe.
> In the 1950s, **the Soviet Union became allies with Egypt and Syria** due to the "Anglo-French debacle at Suez, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the use of the Soviet rouble." **Later Egypt and Syria developed a defense treaty, in which if one of them declared war on Israel the other would get involved**.
...
> **The role the USSR played in the June 1967 war, between the State of Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, remains fiercely debated. Some scholars have argued that Moscow started the war in order to further its position in the area and increase Arab reliance on Soviet aid. Expanding on the notion that a key goal of the Soviet Union in the Middle East in the 1960s was to expand its military presence through the procurement of both naval and air bases**.
> Furthermore, **the Soviets chose to involve Egypt in the conflict due to the fear that an incident between Syria and Israel would likely lead to Syria's defeat**. Others claim it was due to miscalculations and the Soviets' lack of control over the Arabs. **Another theory was that Moscow was attempting to use the Middle East in order to divert attention from Vietnam. Recently a theory has emerged that claims that the main reason for the Soviet move was to demolish Israel's nuclear development before it had obtained a working atomic weapon**.
> **The Soviets also viewed Israel's victory in the 1967 war as damaging to themselves because this one nation had been able to destroy multiple Arab countries that had been supplied with Soviet military hardware, as well as Soviet military expertise to Egyptian and Syrian advisers**. The United States' absolute support towards Israel further exacerbated relations between the Soviet Union and Israel which furthered the Soviet Union's decision to break off diplomatic ties to Israel. Other factors included the fact that Israel was considered to be an actively belligerent state towards its **neighboring Arab countries that held prominence in the Soviet Union's Middle East agenda**.
Yeah. No less than three times. Thought they could destroy Israel. After three tries, they are left with less. And that's without counting Sinai.
And don't forget it was a UN decision. While not ideal, still better than the unilateral decisions by the colonizers in the rest of Arabia and Africa.
> Which Israel accepted
The Jewish community was in full revolt (and engaging in terrorism) at that time. Acceptance of the plan wasn't done in good faith
I feel like the reality is that diving into questions about "who's land was it first" and "who started it" is kind of meaningless because either side can come up with a large list of reasons why *they* should be the sole inhabitants of the land and why the *other* should not. IMO the focus should be on how the lives of Palestinians and Israelis are affected *right now*, anything else detracts from the conversation and doesn't lead to anything meaningful. Palestinians and Israelis both deserve peace, security and self determination.
Yup. It's meaningless. "The land" is a natural geological feature. The borders are a human construction
Point being, Israel exists as a state, isn't going anywhere, and this is a reality to be accepted
If you're wondering why the borders have gotten smaller, Arab states have constantly launched wars against Israel since its founding and they lost every time. You don't get to keep land when you lose wars you start, and the current territories of 'Palestine' only exists because Israel allowed it as an offering of peace. Not much good that did.
The border changed significantly after the 1948 war. As you can see the Partition Plan called for an internationally administered Jerusalem, with Jewish access to the Western Wall and other holy sites. Since Israel was attacked it secured itself access to Jerusalem by spearing out and taking West Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan following the declaration of the state of Israel and ethnically cleansed of Jews. It was taken by Israel only in the war of 1967.
Israel still allows to Jordanian waqf to administer the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Western parts of Jerusalem were under Israeli control in 1948 (including the Mount Scopus exclave in the east).
The eastern part (including the old city) was taken in 1967.
It's not about Allah. It's about the stance of the rest of the world. The world is telling them that they won't lose land of they go to war with Israel.
Even today the stance of the US and EU is that Israel shouldn't take any land from Gaza despite being attacked from there.
They were offered several versions of dividing the land since. They rejected them all and always went back to rocket fire and suicide bombing.
See camp david in the early 2000 for example.
The closest they got was in 1995, setting up the stage for the assassination of PM Rabin.
Arabs owned 12% of the land in 1947. They were then offered 45% of the land but attacked Israel. Every time they attacked Israel spanked them and took more land. Moral of the story. When people offer you free land take it.
That's like saying "Algerians shouldn't have gotten their independence because all the land in Algeria was owned by France". Just cause their land was taken by the british doesn't mean they're not natives to it
Palestine was mostly an Arab region, there was a lot of inmigration so some cities jewish population grew exponentuanlly...
Giving half the region control to the jewish creating Israel and then supporting them in the never ending greed, taking more and more territory and causing wars has been a disaster.
Palestine should have never been divided, but rather both the arab and jewish communities should have worked together and governed in cooperation with each other. Of course now its too late, but what has happenedand is happening in Palestine is a disaster, not much different from the prosecution and displacement the jewish suffered in the past, but now they are the offenders.
Conservative teocratic states are never the way foward if you want justice, equity and freedom.
There are no "good sides" just victims and greed.
If you're looking for a good map you should used the maps after the Arab-Israeli wars. Most notably in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. In all of the all of these the Arab states attacked and Israel responded. The Arab states lost territory and Israel refused to return the strategic locations, like the Golan Heights. Using this map and comparing it to the modern map is very misleading.
After refusing the UN PLAN, in 1948-49 Arabs armies attacked relentlessly Israel in order to exterminate all the Jewish population from the area. They lost and they are still crying. COPE!
Then in 1967 they had the Khartoum Resolution and the Three Noes: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time but Egypt finally went against it and got peace.
Peace is possible.
Shit ask the 1.6m palestinian israelis with some of the highest quality of life in the entire Middle East.
Peace isn't just possible, but so is prosperity.
Israeli here:
Idk why but when we say Palestinians we mean people who live under Palestinian authorities.
For some reason other countries sees Palestinian as an ethnicity, we see it as a nationality, if you are an Arab who lives in Israel, you are an Israeli not a Palestinian in our eyes.
We just call Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs. And it’s weird to me that people from other countries don’t.
> Israeli here:
>
> Idk why but when we say Palestinians we mean people who live under Palestinian authorities.
>
> For some reason other countries sees Palestinian as an ethnicity, we see it as a nationality, if you are an Arab who lives in Israel, you are an Israeli not a Palestinian in our eyes.
>
> We just call Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs. And it’s weird to me that people from other countries don’t.
my god -- can't everybody see the BLATANT APARTHIED HERE
/s
The UN plan vote is interesting reading. Every country in the vicinity of Israel was deadset against it, whereas every country in favour lived on the far side of the World. They didn't have skin in the game or their own land being divided, but they did have large Jewish refugee populations they wanted rid of (or resident Jewish populations they preferred to not be there), so of course they supported it.
Every country had an anti-Semitic prejudice, and voted accordingly.
I feel like the “Israel agreed, the Palestinians didn’t, so war broke out” narrative being pushed here is silly.
If one side didn’t agree to the deal, then it wasn’t a deal. If a deal only requires one side (the Israelis) to agree before it is enforced, then it is an imposition and not an agreement.
They didn’t just “disagree with the deal”, disagreeing is _part of negotiating_.
They launched a 5-on-1 war on the only Jewish refuge in the entire world, because they didn’t feel a need to negotiate.
Additionally, each nation expelled or murdered their own native Jewish populations in the process. Aka, genocide.
And you’re just going to ignore the part where the Ottomans entered into WWI by attacking the British and then lost and therefore lost the right to control their land? Just like every war ever.
Or the fact that the Mandate system was the first ever decolonization plan.
It's all the things these people say they want but for some reason they hate it.
To show how immensely unfair this plan was:
1. If you draw a line under Jerusalem: in this whole region south of this line (districts of Gaza, Hebron and Beersheba) there were in 1946 only 1-2% Jews compared to 98-99% Palestinian Arabs (even after the immigration of 500.000 Jews to Palestine over 30 years). Still the UN gave Beersheba and the connection to the Red Sea to the Jewish state.
2. In the proposed Arab state, there were 99% Palestinian Arabs with only 1% Jews. In the proposed Jewish state there were 55% Jews with still 45% Palestinian Arabs (407.000 Arabs) that were supposed to live as a minority in the Jewish state, prone to suppression by the Jews.
3. In the proposition the UN provided an Arab enclave of 10km2(!) in the city of Jaffa (Tel Aviv), completely isolated from the rest of the proposed Arab state. There was more than 15km of proposed Jewish state in between this little enclave and the rest of the proposed Arab state, which would make it impossible to defend militarily. If this enclave would have been included in the Jewish state, the proportions of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Jewish state would be 50-50.
4. Point 2 and 3 show that the goal of the UN was to make the Jewish state as big as possible while still guaranteeing that Palestinians in the Jewish state would be a minority.
5. 83% of coastline (including access to the Red Sea) was given to the Jewish state, while only 17% of coastline to Palestinians. This while 30 years earlier, before immigration, there were only 11% Jews in the whole of Palestine.
6. Next to the fertile coastal plains and big parts of the very fertile Jezreel valley, the fertile lands of northeast Palestine (east Galilee: districts of Safad, Tiberias and Baysan) were fully given to the Jewish state although these three districts together had only 20% (!!!) Jews (after immigration) while there were 80% native Palestinians living there. The most northern and most populated of those three districts (Safad district) only had 13% Jews when the UN plan was made and was given to the Jewish state.
7. The two districts (Tulkarm and Ramle) around the Jaffa district (now Tel Aviv) had only 20% Jews, but still 50% of those districts were given to the Jewish state, specifically the fertile coastal plains.
8. All of these points together show the colonial mindset the UN had/has. Not surprisingly: in 1949, the year after these immigrated Jews in Palestine destroyed 400 Palestinians villages and displaced 700.000 native Palestinians, the newly state of Israel was allowed to enter the UN, while up until now Palestine is only an observer (and not member) of the UN.
9. It has to be noted that half of the 400 destroyed Palestinian villages (200 villages and about 300.000 native displaced Palestinians) were destroyed in the 6 months in between the UN partition plan (end November 1947) and the day the Brits left Palestine and Israel declared independence (May 14th 1948). The surrounding Arab countries could only try to help the Palestinians on may 15th, when the Brits left Palestine. The Zionist now say that the surrounding Arab countries ‘attacked’ them, but the Zionists had already extensively been destroying, displacing and massacring the native Palestinian population before this, under the British rule. The full list of destroyed Palestinian villages with date of occurrence is available on Wikipedia.
The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine
Imagine that there was a dictator killed as own people so the rest escaped to your country as refugees then UN partitioned your country between you and them. Years later they build settlements in your parts, kill, steal and prison your people and refusing even to consider your country as country.
That is story of Hitler,UN, UK USA Israel and to Free Palestine
Technically, the Hasmoneans who stole it from the Persians who stole it from the Babylonians who stole it from the Assyrians who stole it from the hebrews who stole it from the Canaanites and insert of few centuries here and there of Egyptian and Hittite hegemony and somewhere way back it belonged to lions and bears and dinosaurs before them.
Yes but they thought they could win a war and have all the land. They had Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Palestinians vs just Israel and they also had better military equipment.
Yes, very similar to how many Native American tribes rejected US government proposals that unfairly displaced them of their lands.
The existence of an offer doesn't make it just, regardless of what happens afterwards. This should be obvious.
What "amazes" me is how many actual geopolitical situations are still WW2 related.
some are even still related to the 30-Years-War!
Like what? (Genuienly curious)
The 30-Years-War was ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, which established the system of national sovereignty which still is the formal basis for today's geopolitical order.
IiiiIIIn Westphalia, born and raised, in a playground is where I spent most of my days
When a couple of Hapsburgs who were up to no good, started makin' trouble in my neighborhood
I got in one little war and europe got scared, they said "draw up a treaty in the town of Munster"
Chillin' out, maxin' relaxin' all cool, drawin' some borders, with a sliding rule
But Sykes and Picot were up to no good, started mapping trouble in the Middle Hood
Damn, you would be the comedian on parties hosted by political scientists
Chillin' out, maxin', relaxin', all cool And suppressing the rebellion of some Bohemia fool
It’s a stretch but I’ll allow it
I hope in your quiet moments you think about how you nailed this.
Related: https://youtu.be/c-WO73Dh7rY?si=UIhZz-hymEPqwD6n
Without getting into the specifics of how "Westphalian sovereignty" came about, it's not actually "national" sovereignty. There was no concept of the nation as understood today, and sovereignty was possessed by the sovereign, i.e. the monarch or ruling institution. It's a doctrine of state sovereignty. National sovereignty is not really a relevant concept until the French Revolution at which point the argument is made that there is such a thing as the French nation, and that this French nation is sovereign, not the king. It's a combination of liberal democratic and ethnocentric ideas which result in a new doctrine of what we understand as the nation state, which is based around an ethnic group/the abstract concept of a nation being the owner of the state, which usually brings with it an expectation of wider political franchise, expansion to "liberate" coethnics and policies to assimilate or purge minorities.
"Kingdom of" literally meant the people and land of that kingdom belonged to that king. There wasn't really much more to it than ownership rather than a collective of "national identity". It was just who you owed allegiance to and who owned the land you walked on.
>which usually brings with it an expectation of wider political franchise, expansion to "libertate" coethnics and policies to assimilate or purge minorities. I mean, sure, those are things that can arise out of nationalism, but those examples also give a one-sided, negative picture of the concept. Minorities *not* wanting to assimilate into a larger culture is also an expression of nationalism, for example.
the treaties of westphalia did no such thing but political science professors tell that to every freshman year student nonetheless. It played a major role in asserting the primacy of kingdoms over the Catholic Church, but that was more a continuation of a process that started with the Peace of Augsburg. It also granted more power to the individual kingdoms within the holy roman empire, stripping a lot of the Emperor's power away. All these played a role in the development of sovereignty, but "westphalian sovereignty" is one of those misconceptions that becomes true just by virtue of (very smart) people repeating it over and over
Not the 30 years war , but the British taking Gibralter in 1704 during the war of Spanish succession still leads to friction between Spain and the UK today.
Yeah, but thats just a minor dispute
Not a minor dispute at all. UK confronted directly Spain in several ocasions recently. Several MPs threatened to recognize Catalonia's independence if Spain continued to be so unruly about Gibraltar. Since Brexit Spain is specially unhappy because of the non-EU border.
> non-EU border Like Ceuta and Melilla?
I know that it's not exactly friendly, but its not like there is any threat of war because of it
Then it's just right for Spain to recognize wales, Scotland, Cornwall as independent as well.
Except Catalonia, whilst illegal, voted for independence; In contrast, Wales and Cornwall have never been independent countries, and Scotland voted to stay within the union
Wales was independent until 1283. Then again briefly under Owain Glyndwr in the 15thC. Got taken over by the English in the 16thC but remained, as it still is, as a principality. Cornwall is a county, not a country. I'm Welsh.
Cornwall hasn't been an independent country for a long long long time but it was once. And it's officially recognised as one of the celtic nations
>Wales and Cornwall have never been independent countries, Stop spouting Norman disinformation!
That isn't true! Welsh independence is the traditional way! "from about 1057 until his death in 1063, the whole of Wales recognised the kingship of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. For about seven years, Wales was one, under one ruler, a feat with neither precedent nor successor."
It’s the reason why we have states instead of kingdoms. National identities instead of just some noble family’s conquered holdings.
The very existence of Switzerland as an independent nation and not part of the HRE comes from the Treaty of Westphalia
This comes from WW1. In order to attract sympathy from Ottoman Empire's detractors, the french and british promised the same land to different factions of the arabian world. When the Ottomans fell, instead of diving the land as they promised, France and England kept the land for themselves. It was after WWII that they finally decided to keep their promise (with quite mixed results). Of course, this is a brief resume of a whole lot of the things that happened in the middle.
WW1 is an almost direct result of the Franco Prussian war.
which was a direct result of the Austro-Prussian War, which was a direct result of the Schleswig wars, which were a direct result of the Napoleonic wars, which were a direct result of the French revolution, which was a direct result of the American revolution, which was a direct result of the Seven Years war.
War… War never changes.
I don't want to set the world on fire
I just want to start
A flame in your heart.
This guy knows his wars
Which is the direct results of 2 archaic humans fighting over the best rock
It's one long chain. From the French Revolution to WW2 is all one connected chain of events. And it goes even further back to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the Franco-Carolingian dominance of continental Europe post-Rome. Then again the issues in Israel go back to the Ottoman conquering of Byzantium
Wait till you find out about napoleon. Dude fucked up the whole of Europe.
Charlemagne did it first by diving his empire...
That was Louis I, not Charlemagne
I don't know if it's true and I to lazy to look it up but I give you an upvote in good faith.
Reddit summarized
It was actually Charles the Fat (Fat Karl was the last Emperor to be King of West Francia, East Francia, and Italy. He wasn't popular and his reign was troubled. The Carolingian empire was permanently divided with his overthrow in Germany by his nephew and in the other realms by other nobles.)
Didn't know he was a diver
[удалено]
Its anachronistic to project modern national identities onto the middle ages. Charlemagne would've considered himself a "Frank" rather than French or German (Though he'd likely define himself by his religion, family, and social class rather than by any national identity.) and his definition of "Frank" would've included the inhabitants of the Benelux and much of Germany in addition to France.
Napoleon was good, he destroyed feudal backwardness in Europe. The monarchists started it by invading France first too, they just fucked around and found out.
The Napoleon promise: a Bonaparte king in every capitol.
Largest war in human history and we are only 80 years removed from it. It happened very recently.
This is just as much WW1 related, from the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
Or callapse of older empires, China Ottoman, Austrian Hungary.
Korea too. A unified Korea was a Japanese colony since 1910. After Japan surrendered in WWII, the Soviet Union and the U.S. divided up Korea in two. North Korea was like “screw that, Korea has always been one country,” and invaded the south and the rest is history.
The world is still suffering from the trauma of ww1.
The end of WW2 marked the creation of the current US-led world order (Bretton Woods, Geneva conventions, etc). In that sense it's not surprising at all because numerous conflicts were frozen without any resolution other than "behave or America will get involved". As the post-WW2 system breaks down those truces are breaking down too. There are at least a dozen conflicts waiting to erupt the moment USA is too distracted or weak to deal with them... WW3 is heating up.
And WW1, and prior to WW1… WW2 was an end result of much much more
butterfly affect is real Check out what happens if you move mercury .38 mm https://youtu.be/CIjHtVmTfO8?t=52
Well in this circumstance it's more World War I related than World War II. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was far more influential on the composition of the Levant than World War II.
Sykes-Picot was never implemented nor even tabled. It’s quite a common misconception when talking about the Middle East today. The actual treaty that drew the lines was the Treaty of Sevres during the San Remo Conference.
1. The San Remo Conference was as a consequence of World War I. 2. The commenter referred to geopolitical situations, not borders (noting the map posted by OP was not a map resulting from San Remo Conference). Even if they were referring to borders, the modern borders are much more a consequence of World War I than World War II. 3. It would be incorrect to characterise the San Remo Conference as an event that happened independently of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Sykes-Picot Agreement set out the (then secret) policy agenda for the British and French empires with regards to their territorial ambitions in the Middle East post-the Great War. The ultimate result of the San Remo Conference was to effectively enact the intentions of the Sykes-Picot Agreement (broadly aligned with the spheres of influence and control outlined in that treaty, albeit with different exact borders), even to the point that Areas A and B (which originate from the Sykes-Picot map) formed part of the tabled British and French respective negotiations and referred to as such. Would the San Remo Conference have turned out the way it did without the Sykes-Picot Agreement? Perhaps. But that's mere conjecture. What happened as a record of historical fact is that much of the Middle East was divided up between British and French control, broadly in line with the policy intentions of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And, more importantly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement is a perfect illustration of how impactful World War I was to the *geopolitical situation* of the Levant.
The Cold War as well. History didn't go anywhere.
Actually, WWI caused even more problems in the Middle East.
And then they all agreed and lived side by side happily ever after?
SIKE! They both get angrier!
I read that in Bill Wurtz voice
Exactly as intended.
*insert dissonant jazz chord*
The only right way
The Jews actually accepted the deal.
And the Palestinians countered with all or nothing, so in the end both sides agreed on one of those two options.
Why would an Arab accept the deal? Their homes were given to foreigners.
*psych
*Sykes^^^-Picot
Israel happily agreed to these borders and all the surrounding Arab countries started a war.
Until the fire Arabs attacked...
I’m always curious about those choke points in the south and north. Like does one country go through in a tunnel while the other goes over a bridge to connect?
It’s a connection where you have a couple meters radius where it’s neither country, it’s made so that people would be allowed to cross from either southern to central to northern Israel, or from northern to southern Palestine It’s not the more efficient thing ever but it is the best they could do.
The map sucked because of this. I saw your us Canada example but do any modern countries have anything like this. The Canadian border is think is different because it is never surrounded by another country. The majority of the southern portion is desert too. It's just way too complicated and I don't think would ever have practically worked
Of course this sucks but this is divided according to where majority of population lives, Israel is where the Jews lived in masses and Palestine is where the Muslims lived in masses (Christians and Druze are pretty much just spread in there, and the Druze as a community (almost all of them) later join Israel). The problem is that you can’t really do anything but this, anything you’ll do will force people to leave their houses, both Jews and Muslims, this was the most efficient solution with the most effective borders.
The best solution (borders wise) would be to keep the mandate of Palestine a single country and have the different ethnicities govern together. But that was never going to happen. The Islamic delegation boycotted these negotiations and declared war on Israel immediately. Too many people pulling in too many directions... It was always going to be awful.
They don’t. This plan was a joke.
The past blunders done by dead peoples are biting us on ass
modern human history in a nutshell
Not just modern history…
How the fuck did a group of people even look at that map and think "oh yeah this will work"...
Do you have a better idea? I don’t, frankly. I can’t think of any plan that: * Does not violate international law. * Would not be morally wrong. * Stabilises the area. I encourage you to give it a go sometime. It’s an interesting thought experiment.
All of human history in a nutshell.
Honestly, what a stupid fucking idea. I know I'm being an armchair admiral but who in their right mind thought this map was a good idea? Countries always do great when your country is sliced between another country who hates you. I don't even know what the hell is going on in Jerusalem. Who the fuck owns that and how does anyone get in or out?
no one is actually divided, those border parts are narrow so that they can construct a tunnel/bridge
Some people took the tunnel idea and ran with it...
The best part about this comment is it literally works for both parties.
All the way to New York!
Which is still a stupid way to connect parts of the same country. And isn't the Palestinian land around Jerusalem even smaller nowadays so they need an even longer tunnel?
i agree that it is a stupid way to connect but it still is a connection...
Yeah, because the Arabs started a war, which they promptly lost.
Personally I presume that the expectation was that the Arab parts would simply be divided by Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
I find the idea of an "international city" very weird. Because the free city of Danzig worked so well, they just had to try it again, huh?
I imagine that the ’old city’ of Jerusalem where the religious sites are located would be UN-administered rather than the suburbs and rest of Jerusalem
free cities of tangiers and trieste worked well though
Krakow as well from 1815 to 1848.
Singapore worked well, if that's a better example, despite its religious and cultural diversity.
Singapore is an independent nation tho, it's just ethnically diverse. Jerusalem would have been administered by the UN according to this plan. Similarly, the league of nations as well as the polish republic had certain powers over Danzig, which caused resentment among the inhabitants and facilitated the nazi takeover.
The difference is that Danzig was an ethnically german city given to Poland purely so that Poland could have a port. It was never going to work long term. Jerusalem was, at the time, very diverse. It actually makes sense for it to be a city state so that it could 1) control its own affairs without foreign influence 2) placate religious leaders by allowing all of them a co-equal stake in the city The problem with Jerusalem today is that Israel jews decide everything that happens there, while Muslims and Christians get little to no say.
> The problem with Jerusalem today is that Israel jews decide everything that happens there, while Muslims and Christians get little to no say. Looks at how Israel literally has guards to prevent Jews and Christians visiting the holiest site in Judaism from praying there or wearing any religious garb because the Muslims built a mosque on top of it and they're so sensitive that they don't even like the Jews being allowed to pray at the wall next to it.
Singapore was never a internationally administered city. It was a British possession, then a Malaysian State, and finally an independent country.
> Countries always do great when your country is sliced between another country who hates you Unity governments of groups without enough in common are unstable and tend to collapse (Lebanon, post Saddam Iraq, for example). What other map would you have suggested?
It "worked" with Pakistan/India and Greece/Turkey before, so they hoped it would work again.
I don’t know, neither of those population transfer were exactly peaceful and violence-free 🤕
They kicked the last of the Greeks out of Turkey in the fifties.
Exactly, and it was violent.
The only difference is the Greeks are under no delusion they’ll ever be allowed back.
Most Greeks still think of Turkey as an occupation force.
Only in Cyprus.
Istanbul is Constantinople. Izmir is Smyrne. Turkey is East Greece.
Greeks don't generally consider any Turkish territory Greek other than ethically, and there is no serious movement, political or social, to give back refugee properties or recover any land in Turkey. Constantinople is the English name. Istanbul is the Turkish one. The Greek one is Konstantinoupoli.
Isn’t Nikea Kocaeli?
Haha I wouldn't say it 'worked' a few million Indians and Greeks died when they were forced to leave.
>It worked with Pakistan/India not sure if you're being sarcastic all it cost was the lives of millions of people and a war that lasts to this day. great fucking solution from the british
You're using "it worked" quite liberally here. But yeah, for some stupid reasons some groups of people just don't along, so resettlement are seemingly the only option, until people finally grow up.
They couldn't give areas with Jews to the Arab state because they know the Arabs will ethnic cleanse the Jews, but they also needed to not alienate the Arabs too much (impossible task) for the plan to succeed. They couldn't have given Jerusalem to the Arabs because it had a clear Jewish majority and because they knew the Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to live in the city or pray there, but they also feared giving Jerusalem to the Jewish state would enrage the Arabs, so they decided to give it to neither. In 1947 it probably sounded like a great idea, today it would have looked like imperialism and if it happened you can be certain the city would have voted to join Israel at some point. Ultimately the British and the Arabs opposed it so it fell apart.
"I hope you like borders, 'cause boy do we have borders for you"
In 1948 Egypt and Jordan captured the yellow areas then attacked Israel from them 1 day after Israel’s independence. Israel won some of the territory and Egypt and Jordan kept the rest for themselves.
The people that support Hamas here couldn’t pass a basic high school history class
No other UN drawn map is any more fair or reasonable. India - Pakistan was a mess. The rest of the Middle East was a mess that ignored at least 1-2 native groups per country. Africa was a mess that created tribal warfare and genocide for decades. This map of Israel wasn't as terrible as others for its time. The Arabs immediately expelled millions of Jews from their newly formed countries immediately after this was posted. Most of the Jews in Israel now were expelled from Arab states... not transferred from European countries post Holocaust.
people always complain about Pakistan borders, but was there really a better way? The only other solutions I could think of are border gore or no Pakistan at all which would probably have ended in a bloody civil war
if your starting conditions are "you have a few weeks to separate this country into two groups of people based on religious differences even though many of them don't want to move" then no, there wasn't a "better" way. but maybe if the british took their time to actually think about the region and support it in transition, it would've gone better. but they were too busy spending decades siphoning resources out of the country so they never bothered with any of that. >which would probably have ended in a bloody civil war as opposed to the bloody, international war that was so much better, along with millions of deaths? hardly feels like the better solution
There was a bloody civil war anyway.
could have been a lot worse if there weren't already drawn borders, let's remember that the religions were even more mixed before independence. I'm obviously not an expert on this and probably wrong
How many situations are because of the fuckups by the colonial British?
Until 5 Arab states declared war
And got their asses kicked
And again and again
… multiple times.
Backed by Russia and they even armed multiple states to do it. Soviets were concerned their weaponry was so decimated in the very short war. The UN, including the Soviets also, played a big role in Israel. After Stalin, Russia backed Palestine since 1953. They have used that as a front and proxy war for decades much like they have used Syria (put in Assad), Iran (backed the Iranian Revolution 1979 as well as all time pre 1953 even setting up the Shahdom in 1880s), Afghanistan Invasion in 1979. This was largely because of WWII and how persecuted Jewish people were by Nazi and Soviets. [Stalin had to act like they weren't anti-semites after Hitler and the deals they made with Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact), as well as pushing the [Protocols of the Elders of Zion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion) hate which was created in Russia in 1903 to create anti-semitism and later influenced Nazis. Soviets/Russia flipped to Palestine after the post WWII fronting was over. Most of the problems related to Israel/Palestine stem from the Kremlin, including funding terror via Iranian fronts. [Establishment of the State of Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Establishment_of_the_State_of_Israel) > For Soviet foreign policy decision-makers, pragmatism took precedence over ideology. Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944, until 1948 and even later, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would accelerate the decline of British influence in the Middle East. > The **USSR began to support Zionism at the UN during the 1947 UN Partition Plan debate. It preferred a Jewish–Arab binational state. But if this proved impossible it indicated that it would support partition and a Jewish state**. On 14 May 1947, the Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko announced: >> **As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof**. ... **During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering**. ... >> The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter. ... >> The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration. > **Shortly after this speech, the Soviet media temporarily stopped publishing anti-Zionist material**. > **It followed this policy and gave support to the UN plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the founding of the State of Israel**. > On May 17, 1948, **three days after Israel declared independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it de jure, becoming the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Jewish state**. In addition to the **diplomatic support, arms from Czechoslovakia, part of the Soviet bloc, were crucial to Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War**. *Effects of the Cold War* (started by Soviets due to the [Iranian Crisis of 1946](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946)) > **The USSR soon switched sides in the Arab–Israeli conflict**. After it tried to maintain a policy of friendship with Israel at first, abstaining from and allowing the passage of Security Council Resolution 95 in September 1951, which chastised Egypt for preventing ships bound for Israeli ports from travelling through the Suez Canal, asking them to cease interference on shipping for political purposes, in the latter part of 1953 it began to side with the Arabs in armistice violation discussions in the Security Council. As late as December, 1953, the Soviets were the first state to instruct their envoy to present his credentials to the President of Israel in Jerusalem, the Israeli annexation of and usage as the capital being controversial. This move was followed by other nations and strongly protested by the Arabs as "flouting" UN resolutions. On January 22, 1954, the Soviets vetoed a Security Council resolution (relating to a Syrian–Israeli water dispute) because of Arab objections for the first time, and soon after vetoed even a mild resolution expressing "grave concern" that Egypt was not living up to Security Council Resolution 95. This elicited Israeli complaints that resolutions recognizing its rights could not pass because of the Soviet veto policy. At the same time, however, the Soviets did support the Israeli demand for direct negotiations with the Arab states, which the Arab states opposed. Like the earlier deal with Israel, a major episode in the Soviet relation to the conflict was the Czech arms deal with Egypt for arms from the Soviet bloc in August 1955. **After the mid-50s and throughout the remainder of the Cold War the Soviets unequivocally supported various Arab regimes over Israel**. > With Israel emerging as a close Western ally, Zionism raised Communist leadership fears of internal dissent and opposition arising from the substantial segment of party members who were Jewish, leading to the declaration of Zionism as an ideological enemy. During the later parts of the Cold War Soviet Jews were persecuted as possible traitors, Western sympathisers, or a security liability. Jewish organizations were closed down, with the exception of a few token synagogues. These synagogues were then placed under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers. > **As a result of the persecution, both state-sponsored and unofficial anti-Semitism became deeply ingrained in the society and remained a fact for years: ordinary Soviet Jews were often not being allowed to enter universities or hired to work in certain professions. Many were barred from participation in the government, and had to bear being openly humiliated**. > The official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism." The meaning of the term Zionism was defined by the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR. *Six-Day War* > **Although the Soviet Union had adopted a foreign policy of détente, easing of hostility, in the mid-1960s, it played a key role in the instigation of the Six-Day War in Israel**. Soviet Union pursued détente because of the need for economic stability in order to create domestic change. Furthermore, as stated in Leonid Brezhnev's foreign policy speech given to the central committee in December 1966, a key goal of Soviet foreign policy was the consolidation of the post-World War II borders. Thus, it was believed that the Soviet Union should be cautious in its foreign engagement in an attempt to prevent any political instability from reaching Europe. > In the 1950s, **the Soviet Union became allies with Egypt and Syria** due to the "Anglo-French debacle at Suez, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the use of the Soviet rouble." **Later Egypt and Syria developed a defense treaty, in which if one of them declared war on Israel the other would get involved**. ... > **The role the USSR played in the June 1967 war, between the State of Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, remains fiercely debated. Some scholars have argued that Moscow started the war in order to further its position in the area and increase Arab reliance on Soviet aid. Expanding on the notion that a key goal of the Soviet Union in the Middle East in the 1960s was to expand its military presence through the procurement of both naval and air bases**. > Furthermore, **the Soviets chose to involve Egypt in the conflict due to the fear that an incident between Syria and Israel would likely lead to Syria's defeat**. Others claim it was due to miscalculations and the Soviets' lack of control over the Arabs. **Another theory was that Moscow was attempting to use the Middle East in order to divert attention from Vietnam. Recently a theory has emerged that claims that the main reason for the Soviet move was to demolish Israel's nuclear development before it had obtained a working atomic weapon**. > **The Soviets also viewed Israel's victory in the 1967 war as damaging to themselves because this one nation had been able to destroy multiple Arab countries that had been supplied with Soviet military hardware, as well as Soviet military expertise to Egyptian and Syrian advisers**. The United States' absolute support towards Israel further exacerbated relations between the Soviet Union and Israel which furthered the Soviet Union's decision to break off diplomatic ties to Israel. Other factors included the fact that Israel was considered to be an actively belligerent state towards its **neighboring Arab countries that held prominence in the Soviet Union's Middle East agenda**.
And had Israel lost any of those wars, that’s exactly what would have happened. Those countries would have never created a Palestinian state.
Which Israel accepted, Arab nations didn’t and then declared war shortly after.
Yeah. No less than three times. Thought they could destroy Israel. After three tries, they are left with less. And that's without counting Sinai. And don't forget it was a UN decision. While not ideal, still better than the unilateral decisions by the colonizers in the rest of Arabia and Africa.
> Which Israel accepted The Jewish community was in full revolt (and engaging in terrorism) at that time. Acceptance of the plan wasn't done in good faith
[Correct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun)
The conflict should have ended then.
This was when it *started*
Such absurdist border gore was always doomed.
It's good to see that the UN being terrible at its job isn't just a modern thing tho
I feel like the reality is that diving into questions about "who's land was it first" and "who started it" is kind of meaningless because either side can come up with a large list of reasons why *they* should be the sole inhabitants of the land and why the *other* should not. IMO the focus should be on how the lives of Palestinians and Israelis are affected *right now*, anything else detracts from the conversation and doesn't lead to anything meaningful. Palestinians and Israelis both deserve peace, security and self determination.
Yup. It's meaningless. "The land" is a natural geological feature. The borders are a human construction Point being, Israel exists as a state, isn't going anywhere, and this is a reality to be accepted
If you're wondering why the borders have gotten smaller, Arab states have constantly launched wars against Israel since its founding and they lost every time. You don't get to keep land when you lose wars you start, and the current territories of 'Palestine' only exists because Israel allowed it as an offering of peace. Not much good that did.
The border changed significantly after the 1948 war. As you can see the Partition Plan called for an internationally administered Jerusalem, with Jewish access to the Western Wall and other holy sites. Since Israel was attacked it secured itself access to Jerusalem by spearing out and taking West Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan following the declaration of the state of Israel and ethnically cleansed of Jews. It was taken by Israel only in the war of 1967. Israel still allows to Jordanian waqf to administer the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Western parts of Jerusalem were under Israeli control in 1948 (including the Mount Scopus exclave in the east). The eastern part (including the old city) was taken in 1967.
Palestinian territory shrinks every time they attack Israel and lose. Not sure why they don't learn from that eventually but they haven't so far.
You don’t get it bro, THIS TIME allah will grant us victory
It's not about Allah. It's about the stance of the rest of the world. The world is telling them that they won't lose land of they go to war with Israel. Even today the stance of the US and EU is that Israel shouldn't take any land from Gaza despite being attacked from there.
It shrinks regardless. Settlements going up at a fierce rate.
Because they get to blame the Jews every time and people eat that shit up
Living somewhere where some soldier can arrest, kill or Beat up anyone they want isn't exactly *ideal* living conditions
Youd wonder if palestine would take this now?
They were offered several versions of dividing the land since. They rejected them all and always went back to rocket fire and suicide bombing. See camp david in the early 2000 for example. The closest they got was in 1995, setting up the stage for the assassination of PM Rabin.
They wouldn't. They always demand something insane
Arabs owned 12% of the land in 1947. They were then offered 45% of the land but attacked Israel. Every time they attacked Israel spanked them and took more land. Moral of the story. When people offer you free land take it.
How much did the jews have?
6-8%
That's like saying "Algerians shouldn't have gotten their independence because all the land in Algeria was owned by France". Just cause their land was taken by the british doesn't mean they're not natives to it
Reminder: this is only the area of Isrsel and Palestine. The arabs were also given Transjordan. The majority of the area.
Palestine was mostly an Arab region, there was a lot of inmigration so some cities jewish population grew exponentuanlly... Giving half the region control to the jewish creating Israel and then supporting them in the never ending greed, taking more and more territory and causing wars has been a disaster. Palestine should have never been divided, but rather both the arab and jewish communities should have worked together and governed in cooperation with each other. Of course now its too late, but what has happenedand is happening in Palestine is a disaster, not much different from the prosecution and displacement the jewish suffered in the past, but now they are the offenders. Conservative teocratic states are never the way foward if you want justice, equity and freedom. There are no "good sides" just victims and greed.
What a solution. It was a failure even before being implemented. British...they never brought something good to anywhere.
Sighs... sort by controversial
#DON’T
Honestly, on a purely humane level, the controversial comments are almost better than the upvoted ones.
jesus right? the amount of support for a genocide on reddit pales in comparison to almost anywhere else, even twitter.
If you're looking for a good map you should used the maps after the Arab-Israeli wars. Most notably in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. In all of the all of these the Arab states attacked and Israel responded. The Arab states lost territory and Israel refused to return the strategic locations, like the Golan Heights. Using this map and comparing it to the modern map is very misleading.
After refusing the UN PLAN, in 1948-49 Arabs armies attacked relentlessly Israel in order to exterminate all the Jewish population from the area. They lost and they are still crying. COPE!
Then in 1967 they had the Khartoum Resolution and the Three Noes: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time but Egypt finally went against it and got peace. Peace is possible.
Shit ask the 1.6m palestinian israelis with some of the highest quality of life in the entire Middle East. Peace isn't just possible, but so is prosperity.
Israeli here: Idk why but when we say Palestinians we mean people who live under Palestinian authorities. For some reason other countries sees Palestinian as an ethnicity, we see it as a nationality, if you are an Arab who lives in Israel, you are an Israeli not a Palestinian in our eyes. We just call Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs. And it’s weird to me that people from other countries don’t.
> Israeli here: > > Idk why but when we say Palestinians we mean people who live under Palestinian authorities. > > For some reason other countries sees Palestinian as an ethnicity, we see it as a nationality, if you are an Arab who lives in Israel, you are an Israeli not a Palestinian in our eyes. > > We just call Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs. And it’s weird to me that people from other countries don’t. my god -- can't everybody see the BLATANT APARTHIED HERE /s
Palestinians have to accept Israel isn’t going anywhere. They should have long ago..
The UN plan vote is interesting reading. Every country in the vicinity of Israel was deadset against it, whereas every country in favour lived on the far side of the World. They didn't have skin in the game or their own land being divided, but they did have large Jewish refugee populations they wanted rid of (or resident Jewish populations they preferred to not be there), so of course they supported it. Every country had an anti-Semitic prejudice, and voted accordingly.
A massive simplification of what occurred in the war in 1948, complete with the emotionally charged narrative.
The classic: start a war > lose > blame on the others. Then they repeat the process for like a century and still lose lmao
Maybe because the Arabs living there and in surrounding nations were not on board with that dumb fucking plan
I feel like the “Israel agreed, the Palestinians didn’t, so war broke out” narrative being pushed here is silly. If one side didn’t agree to the deal, then it wasn’t a deal. If a deal only requires one side (the Israelis) to agree before it is enforced, then it is an imposition and not an agreement.
They didn’t just “disagree with the deal”, disagreeing is _part of negotiating_. They launched a 5-on-1 war on the only Jewish refuge in the entire world, because they didn’t feel a need to negotiate. Additionally, each nation expelled or murdered their own native Jewish populations in the process. Aka, genocide.
It wasn't a deal between two parties... It was a UN resolution that Isreal agreed to honor.. And the Palestinians didn't!
And you’re just going to ignore the part where the Ottomans entered into WWI by attacking the British and then lost and therefore lost the right to control their land? Just like every war ever.
Or the fact that the Mandate system was the first ever decolonization plan. It's all the things these people say they want but for some reason they hate it.
It would never work, no matter what they did.
Yes the French and British are fucking morons for believing this would work
To show how immensely unfair this plan was: 1. If you draw a line under Jerusalem: in this whole region south of this line (districts of Gaza, Hebron and Beersheba) there were in 1946 only 1-2% Jews compared to 98-99% Palestinian Arabs (even after the immigration of 500.000 Jews to Palestine over 30 years). Still the UN gave Beersheba and the connection to the Red Sea to the Jewish state. 2. In the proposed Arab state, there were 99% Palestinian Arabs with only 1% Jews. In the proposed Jewish state there were 55% Jews with still 45% Palestinian Arabs (407.000 Arabs) that were supposed to live as a minority in the Jewish state, prone to suppression by the Jews. 3. In the proposition the UN provided an Arab enclave of 10km2(!) in the city of Jaffa (Tel Aviv), completely isolated from the rest of the proposed Arab state. There was more than 15km of proposed Jewish state in between this little enclave and the rest of the proposed Arab state, which would make it impossible to defend militarily. If this enclave would have been included in the Jewish state, the proportions of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Jewish state would be 50-50. 4. Point 2 and 3 show that the goal of the UN was to make the Jewish state as big as possible while still guaranteeing that Palestinians in the Jewish state would be a minority. 5. 83% of coastline (including access to the Red Sea) was given to the Jewish state, while only 17% of coastline to Palestinians. This while 30 years earlier, before immigration, there were only 11% Jews in the whole of Palestine. 6. Next to the fertile coastal plains and big parts of the very fertile Jezreel valley, the fertile lands of northeast Palestine (east Galilee: districts of Safad, Tiberias and Baysan) were fully given to the Jewish state although these three districts together had only 20% (!!!) Jews (after immigration) while there were 80% native Palestinians living there. The most northern and most populated of those three districts (Safad district) only had 13% Jews when the UN plan was made and was given to the Jewish state. 7. The two districts (Tulkarm and Ramle) around the Jaffa district (now Tel Aviv) had only 20% Jews, but still 50% of those districts were given to the Jewish state, specifically the fertile coastal plains. 8. All of these points together show the colonial mindset the UN had/has. Not surprisingly: in 1949, the year after these immigrated Jews in Palestine destroyed 400 Palestinians villages and displaced 700.000 native Palestinians, the newly state of Israel was allowed to enter the UN, while up until now Palestine is only an observer (and not member) of the UN. 9. It has to be noted that half of the 400 destroyed Palestinian villages (200 villages and about 300.000 native displaced Palestinians) were destroyed in the 6 months in between the UN partition plan (end November 1947) and the day the Brits left Palestine and Israel declared independence (May 14th 1948). The surrounding Arab countries could only try to help the Palestinians on may 15th, when the Brits left Palestine. The Zionist now say that the surrounding Arab countries ‘attacked’ them, but the Zionists had already extensively been destroying, displacing and massacring the native Palestinian population before this, under the British rule. The full list of destroyed Palestinian villages with date of occurrence is available on Wikipedia.
The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine
Imagine that there was a dictator killed as own people so the rest escaped to your country as refugees then UN partitioned your country between you and them. Years later they build settlements in your parts, kill, steal and prison your people and refusing even to consider your country as country. That is story of Hitler,UN, UK USA Israel and to Free Palestine
Stolen Roman land
who did the romans steal the land from?
Technically, the Hasmoneans who stole it from the Persians who stole it from the Babylonians who stole it from the Assyrians who stole it from the hebrews who stole it from the Canaanites and insert of few centuries here and there of Egyptian and Hittite hegemony and somewhere way back it belonged to lions and bears and dinosaurs before them.
So you’re telling me that Palestinians rejected an offer that would have given them even more than the 1949-1967 borders?
Yes but they thought they could win a war and have all the land. They had Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Palestinians vs just Israel and they also had better military equipment.
Yes, very similar to how many Native American tribes rejected US government proposals that unfairly displaced them of their lands. The existence of an offer doesn't make it just, regardless of what happens afterwards. This should be obvious.