The Partition Plan

And its consequences

Today is the anniversary of the Partition Plan for Palestine, which was proposed by the UN after Transjordan had already been allocated to the Arabs. It gave a slightly larger area to the Jews, in anticipation of the millions of refugees from Europe, but most of that land was deserts and swamps.

Jews celebrated, even though it was much less than they hoped for and would be difficult to defend, and formally accepted partition.

Arabs mostly rejected any form of partition; the General Secretary of the Arab League warned that there would be a war of elimination, and the Mufti said that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but "would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated."

Accordingly, the Arabs launched a war, which they ended up losing, causing many Arab lives to be lost and hundreds of thousands to flee. Had they won, the deaths on the side of the Jews would doubtless have been far greater, especially since the Jews had nowhere to which to flee.

Today, Palestinians have been encouraged by their leadership and others to believe that they had a right to violently resist partition. They further believe that they should not be responsible for the consequences of their decisions. Accordingly, they believe that their losses in the 1948 war are entirely the fault of the Jews, and Israel is obligated to make up for the terrible crimes that it committed with the Naqba. This means, among other things, that the descendants of the Palestinian refugees should all be allowed to return.

The Jewish perspective is that if you declare a war and you lose, then there are consequences, just as the Jews suffered immensely from their failed revolt against the Romans. And if it's a war in which you intend to annihilate the other side, this is all the more true. Israel has nothing to atone for.

At various stages Israel was open to a Palestinian State alongside it, including all the way from 1947 through after the '67 war, and again for several years in the 1990s. And there are still many people in Israel who would still be open to it - IF it could be relied upon to be a safe and secure solution.

But what has become increasingly clear is that most Palestinians want "justice," and "justice" in their minds means that they get to undo the results of the 1948 conflict (which they started). This is the core of the conflict and one of the reasons why it is so difficult and perhaps impossible to solve.