What Did You Really Think Would Happen With Israel?

Hey...

What did you really expect to happen to Israel when you set aside a small piece of territory for them in a region whose people and beliefs are- for the most part- not accomodating? And then you make this small sliver of land a national state?

Some people legalize the formation of Israel by saying that because the British Empire took the land through conquest and therefore owned it by right-of-conquest (Imperial law...screw all of you also Indians and Aborigines) that they could do whatever they wanted with it. Of course, colonies are normally frowned upon in our world today...except that one- an officially-sanctioned colony that Britain, instead of controlling directly, just pumped a bunch of disenfranchised Jews into. Fair? Not fair?

But think about it. Even if you considered that fair an legal, what did they expect to happen overtime when these people began to multiply? That they were going to be content with this sliver of land called a nation. That they would eventually just stand on each others heads. People grow and expand. But...Israel's not expansionist, of course. All those instances and reports of Israeli armed civilians backed up or supported by the military forcefully removing Palestinians from their land and settling Jews into it...they were acting in self-defense. The rapid rate of expansion and settlement didn't smack of a planned, organized push beyond formal borders.

Does anyone remember what happened with American colonists bordering Indian territory? Often, they would raid into the others land on the smallest pretexts, if any. If, for some reason, there was a considerable forceful reaction from the Indians, they would then call the government and the govenrment, by right of defense, would then step in and take military action against the offending Indians. In such a way, the push west was always seen as an incidental side-effect to self-defense. American's, as well, were not happy with the even larger sliver of land they had gained through conquest.

So now what do you have in Israel. You have tented cities sprouting up in Isreal's urban centers and protests of Israeli's putting pressure on their government to provide housing for them and to lower the cost of housing- because economies never seek to exploit their people.

Is it not an obvious prediction that these people- especially when given an army and backed by the world's strongest super-power- would take on an increasingly expansionist nature? Shouldn't this ideological/existential contradiction been noted by the British or did they even care?

 

The mandate was not ownership and did not create a colony.

 

I was just speaking figuratively with that.

 

OH..

Have you read much from the Avalon Project at Yale? It contains the documents.

The Palestine Mandate.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp

 

They became a legal country and nation sixty five years and no matter how much moaning and bitc*ing is done they will remain one so, those who dwell in the past like this are just wasting time that could be better spent moving forward with reality rather than living in the fantasy that they believe was the past.

 

I would expect the Israelis to dominate their backwards neighbors, in might, in freedoms, in every way that we measure "good"...

Next?

 

I was thinking I should have left that part out because I feared people would get hung up on the Israel-formation thing and not talk about the more concerning Israeli land push. Can't edit now, but any comments on that...

I bet Indians and Aborigines agree with you also. The definition of "legal" tends to differ between people.

 

I kind of re-read that and wondered...if it was not ownership, than why did they have the right to move Jews into the territory?

 

'Owned' in the sense they controlled as the mandate was a mandate to control. And, they actually attempted to curb Jewish immigration.

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I bet they do as they sold and traded or made concessions for much of the land they controlled and called theirs.

 

So...the British Empire controlled the land. And then decided how that land should be used when it passed the land to whom it wished?

What gave it the right, besides themselves?

I'd call that more of a pressured sale, to say the least...

 

See the Mandate document above.. I linked it for you. Then read the Sykes Picot Agreement.

 

League of Nations and the United Nations. Please conduct some rudimentary research prior to asking questions the bulk of us know the answer to already as it=sort of slows discussion down.

Which one? There are many deals with many tribes and then there are no deals in some places and other places no tribes existed to trade with so please be specific.

*** Sorry but I edited my post to read "I bet they do as they sold and traded or made concessions for much of the land they controlled and called theirs. " Apologies.

 

You can read the actual documents without commentary at the Avalon Project.. Yale.



You see the tiny dots? Those too are Israeli settlements.

 

Thank you for this. Never read it before.

Reads like a land-grant with stipulations. To be fair, as DrewBedson pointed out, it still seems to me that Britain seemed to actually try and honor the terms of the Mandate when the Jewish immigration begin to rub-raw with the local non-Jewish communities, but then the Zionists went insurgent on them and the British threw it down and ran.

Still...seems that the Principle Allied Powers, if not Britain, considered themselves the ultimate authority of the land, providing the terms of existence and being the force of final appeal- so to speak.

And to Drew, I apologize. The British did not stuff Jews into the region, they did try to control them...but they were uncontrollable at that point, or likely not worth the effort. I don't want to get hung up with that issue here, I was more into the land-push thing on Israel's part. I do see that they didn't intend for the Jewish population to be so high...but ultimately they would legitimize the state anyway, even in light of that rather violent history.

 

By 1948 the European Zionists owned 6% of the land.. and the 500 British peacekeepers had been killed..

 

"Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and

Whereas by the afore-mentioned Article 22 (paragraph 8, it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations;

ARTICLE 1.

The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.
ART. 5.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power. "

Uh huh. Your point is?

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How much did individual Palestinians own Margot?

 

I suppose I can substitute BE for United Nations in general. I knew about the violent Jewish reaction to Britain, and even about Israel's not really mentioned infighting among it's own not long after that time. In the end, you still have someone declaring what to do with a piece of land gained though conquest. The biggest nag of mine is the people who decided this...none of them were from the Middle East, I believe. But they were advised about it by some of the rulers who expressed their disappoval. At first I believed that they allowed to settle the area because of their religion. This would be governments giving people land based on a religious claim to ownership. But it doesn't seem to be that way since they seemed to stipulate limited immigration. They also didn't make a state of the region, just a "Mandate" of which they seemed to be the overriding authority while giving the locals a measure of autonomy in their own affairs. A weird set-up. It almost sounds like a protectorate of some sort. Not really a state, but not really self-governing.

Gah...I've gotten wrapped up in the thing I didn't want to get wrapped up in.

I guess you are saying that the Western Push of the US was more by mutual agreement than force?

Techinically, I suppose. I'll leave it there because it's kinda offtopic.

 

Very little, but they had farmed the land since the first century.. Who do you think maintained the Roman stone terraces?

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Jewish refugees were turned away from the US, the UK, Cuba and elsewhere.. Palestine became their only option.

 

Gotcha. I knew that one. The pictures that show the progression of ownership from the Mandate to Israel-proper is famous, lol.

I didn't know it was just 500 peacekeepers. That explains why they weren't able to match the resistance. Just speculation, but it kind of makes me wonder if they killed the peacekeepers (and, whom I guess were there to enforce the Mandate's terms) than there was no effective enforcement of the terms after that point then, huh?

Well, I've taken enough of a whipping frm you on not knowing particular's so I'll have to abandon that part of the argument. Still, what do you think of the Israeli push, if you want to answer?

 

NP, just go with it and learn or teach.

Yes and no. Britatin didn't want it to begin with and only wanted to keep the Turks away.

They wanted the least problematic way out of it is what they wished. Same with the UN. They saw Jews who needed a home and were serious about the idea of giving them a homeland and then, immigration legal and illegal began in earnest and the hot potato was handed over to the UN they saw nothing but a lot of people from two separate ethnic bases and simply divided the land according to quality of land and size of population. Who owned what and when mattered nothing to them.

Which push and with the backing of which tribe as the tribes were always warring against each other so some viewed the white man as the way to beat their foes as they frequently hated their fellow aboriginals more than the Euros.

No, it's a good sideline.

 

I think it is disgraceful. They were persecuted refugees who got the upper hand and proceeded to abuse the Palestinians. They even murdered Count Bernadotte in the street.. and he had saved some 30,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

 

I drink at the same bar a lot but don't own it and don't own the place I work at. A new guy could get hired tomorrow and when I go to 'my' bar to drink the blues away my seat could be taken by a new customer.

Uh huh. And coincidentally, a good one as they had many historical ties to the land there.

 

After 2000 years?

You forget that Greeks, Syrians, Canaanites, Egyptians and Arabs were living in Palestine long before the birth of Christ. Jewish history is not the only history of the region.

 

Strange, they didn't have the upper hand when the Muslims began murdering them in '29.

And was against the establishment of a Jewish state.

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Oh, you have a time limit on this? I suppose it is less than sixty five years.

And if they were there at the time, they were offered their own nation as well.

 

Yeah, I knew that one too. France was cetainly no friend of theirs. But it doesn't add up. The amount of European Jews favorable to Zionism would have surely been far more than the limitations on immigration into the region would tolerate, unless those limitations or attempts at limitation were made after they had begun moving in.

But the intention seems to have been creating a permanent settlement for Jews. The Mandate seems contradictory in that sense. Allowing only a limited amount of Jews into the area from the start seems to be meaningless political gesture if they had limited immigration in mind as it would mean most Jews would still be stuck in Europe, anyway, but, I suppose, given visiting privileges or something of the like. Without immigration in mind, they weren't just being settled, that area would basically have been the formation of a pro-Jewish settlement. It doesn't seem to be likely that they didn't perceive a strain on the local population from that kind of immigration.

Well...I'll try and solve my own questions on that one.