9 ms·

Arabs rejected getting <50% of the land (and being evicted at gunpoint from the rest) when they were ~2/3rds of the population in 1948. 1948 was 75 years ago, t

Arabs rejected getting <50% of the land (and being evicted at gunpoint from the rest) when they were ~2/3rds of the population in 1948. 1948 was 75 years ago, things have changed since then.

rayiner 3y ago
Arabs got the vast majority of the land, which became Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt. The reason Arabs supported the British against the Ottomans was because they wanted to create a unified Arab nation: https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestine-syria-arabia/arab-revolt https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestin.... And Arabs got the overwhelming majority of the territory they wanted (notwithstanding the many minority groups they had conquered in the Levant), with the exception of what became Israel. Put differently, you could say that Arabs got 0% of Israel, and that’s technically true. But it’s not an accurate description of what they got in comparison to what they actually wanted.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > Arabs got the vast majority of the land I was (obviously) referring to their share of the population of Mandatory Palestine specifically.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Mandatory Palestine was an artificial creation of the British, which existed less than 30 years. For the 400 years before that, it was part of a single Ottoman province along with what is now Syria and Jordan (except for Jerusalem which was split off into a separate distinct in 1872). Talking about “how much of Mandatory Palestine the Arabs got” is contrived, when it was just a part of a much larger Arab territory under the Ottomans, and was planned to be part of a much larger Arab territory after the Ottomans.
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      Yes, what really mattered to the ordinary people on the ground wasn't the borders on a map; it was "my family has lived in this house and farmed this land for generations, but now men with guns say the house belongs to them and we have to leave."
      - JamesBarney 3y ago
        You think a forced expulsion from their homes is what drove the 1948 war?
        anonair 3y ago
        Is it not though? The expulsion started immediately after UN partition recommendation of Nov 1947, the Arab-Israeli war started in May 1948, that is only 6 months later
        rayiner 3y ago
        The war started the day after the UN resolution, in November 20 1947. The war wasn’t caused by the expulsion of Arabs. The Arab states refusing to recognize the creation of a Jewish state caused the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war > The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,[19] a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which divided the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states, and an international Jerusalem (UN Resolution 181). Partition was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders and the Arab states.
        Georgelemental 3y ago
        Yes, exactly, Arabs rejected a partition plan that would expel them from their homes.
        3y ago
- tdeck 3y ago
  This argument completely ignores both the cultural distinctions between the different areas of the former Ottoman empire, and the fact that a person's home is not interchangeable with any other place. Nobody would expect a Polish person in 1939 to say "well, we Slavs have the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia so I guess it's fine that German settlers took my farm at gunpoint and forced me to leave". The implicit assumption is that any place with a majority of "Arabs" would ethnically cleanse all the Jews or become an Islamic theocracy, so we must view everything through the lens of competing ethno-states. It's important to challenge this assumption. Ethno-states are inherently violent because every population is a mixture of different ethnicities, and an ethno-state needs to maintain a majority of a certain population. If the "wrong" group's population grows in an ethno-state, it becomes a "demographic problem" that the government needs to "solve". This is why carving up the world into such states is never a lasting solution for peace. Aside: "Arab" and "Jew" are not mutually exclusive. You can be an Arab Jew in the same way you can be a Hispanic Jew - Arab is a distinction based on one's mother language not one's religion. This is why the Arab League includes countries in north Africa where most people aren't descended from ancestral Arabians. The history of and literature of Judeo-Arabic is an interesting rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Most of the world is competing ethnostates, including most if not all Arab states. (I’m certainly glad my parent’s generation secured our ethnostate, at great cost.) Whether there is a better way is an open question. But anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate for that experiment. It’s never ended well.
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      > Anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate I'm sure Hamas feels the same way! I'm not going to say whether one or two-state solution is best, that's for Palestinians and Israelis to decide, but something's gotta give.
      - 3y ago

Arabs rejected getting <50% of the land (and being evicted at gunpoint from the rest) when they were ~2/3rds of the population in 1948. 1948 was 75 years ago, things have changed since then.

rayiner 3y ago

Arabs got the vast majority of the land, which became Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt. The reason Arabs supported the British against the Ottomans was because they wanted to create a unified Arab nation: https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestine-syria-arabia/arab-revolt https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestin.... And Arabs got the overwhelming majority of the territory they wanted (notwithstanding the many minority groups they had conquered in the Levant), with the exception of what became Israel. Put differently, you could say that Arabs got 0% of Israel, and that’s technically true. But it’s not an accurate description of what they got in comparison to what they actually wanted.

Georgelemental 3y ago
> Arabs got the vast majority of the land I was (obviously) referring to their share of the population of Mandatory Palestine specifically.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Mandatory Palestine was an artificial creation of the British, which existed less than 30 years. For the 400 years before that, it was part of a single Ottoman province along with what is now Syria and Jordan (except for Jerusalem which was split off into a separate distinct in 1872). Talking about “how much of Mandatory Palestine the Arabs got” is contrived, when it was just a part of a much larger Arab territory under the Ottomans, and was planned to be part of a much larger Arab territory after the Ottomans.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Yes, what really mattered to the ordinary people on the ground wasn't the borders on a map; it was "my family has lived in this house and farmed this land for generations, but now men with guns say the house belongs to them and we have to leave."
    - JamesBarney 3y ago
      You think a forced expulsion from their homes is what drove the 1948 war?
      - anonair 3y ago
        Is it not though? The expulsion started immediately after UN partition recommendation of Nov 1947, the Arab-Israeli war started in May 1948, that is only 6 months later
        rayiner 3y ago
        The war started the day after the UN resolution, in November 20 1947. The war wasn’t caused by the expulsion of Arabs. The Arab states refusing to recognize the creation of a Jewish state caused the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war > The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,[19] a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which divided the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states, and an international Jerusalem (UN Resolution 181). Partition was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders and the Arab states.
        Georgelemental 3y ago
        Yes, exactly, Arabs rejected a partition plan that would expel them from their homes.
        3y ago
tdeck 3y ago
This argument completely ignores both the cultural distinctions between the different areas of the former Ottoman empire, and the fact that a person's home is not interchangeable with any other place. Nobody would expect a Polish person in 1939 to say "well, we Slavs have the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia so I guess it's fine that German settlers took my farm at gunpoint and forced me to leave". The implicit assumption is that any place with a majority of "Arabs" would ethnically cleanse all the Jews or become an Islamic theocracy, so we must view everything through the lens of competing ethno-states. It's important to challenge this assumption. Ethno-states are inherently violent because every population is a mixture of different ethnicities, and an ethno-state needs to maintain a majority of a certain population. If the "wrong" group's population grows in an ethno-state, it becomes a "demographic problem" that the government needs to "solve". This is why carving up the world into such states is never a lasting solution for peace. Aside: "Arab" and "Jew" are not mutually exclusive. You can be an Arab Jew in the same way you can be a Hispanic Jew - Arab is a distinction based on one's mother language not one's religion. This is why the Arab League includes countries in north Africa where most people aren't descended from ancestral Arabians. The history of and literature of Judeo-Arabic is an interesting rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews
- rayiner 3y ago
  Most of the world is competing ethnostates, including most if not all Arab states. (I’m certainly glad my parent’s generation secured our ethnostate, at great cost.) Whether there is a better way is an open question. But anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate for that experiment. It’s never ended well.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    > Anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate I'm sure Hamas feels the same way! I'm not going to say whether one or two-state solution is best, that's for Palestinians and Israelis to decide, but something's gotta give.
    - 3y ago