Comment by danbruc

Comment by danbruc 2 days ago

6 replies

The first two do not count, Israel did not even exist. They had nothing to offer, they wanted to take some of the land from the Arabs for their own state. They owned less than ten percent of Mandatory Palestin that they had purchased from Arabs and the United Nations decided to give them more than half of the land - admittedly including a lot of desert - for their own state. None of the Arab nations and obviously not the Palestinians agreed to that. Ben-Gurion took the offer and established the state of Israel, not because he considered it fair - he said he would be mad if he was a Palestinian - and not because he was satisfied, he saw it as a step to eventually take over all of Mandatory Palestin.

I can not say much about number three but your quote says that it did not get very far, so I am not sure why this is on a list of rejected offers if there was not even an offer, only considerations.

The way Camp David is described also does not match reality. They failed to agree on several points and therefore there was never an offer that could be rejected. One point of contention was the right to return for the Palestinians expelled by the Israelis. You can not say one side blocked it, the Palestinians wanted more than what Israelis offered, they could have accepted less or the Israelis could have offered more.

Number five, the realignment plan, that was a proper offer, but the characterization in your quote is still misleading. Israel unilaterally proposed to withdraw from most of the Westbank and permanently annex six percent of it containing the major settlements. There was also some other stuff including some land swaps included. I am not sure if the reason for the failure are welk known, you find claims about rejections, claims about just not accepting, that story about not being allowed to look at the map before agreeing, ... And given that it was an unilateral offer, I am not sure that it addressed all points deemed relevant by the Palestinians, for example what happens to the refugees. I would love if someone could provide additional insights.

NeutralCrane 20 hours ago

> The first two do not count, Israel did not even exist. They had nothing to offer, they wanted to take some of the land from the Arabs for their own state.

The Palestinian state also didn’t exist. Palestine was under British rule at the time, and prior to that they were ruled by the Ottomans, and prior to that they were ruled by Arab Caliphates and Christian crusaders, and before that the Romans.

That’s what makes the anti-Israel movement hypocritical. There have always Jews in Palestine, and in fact they predate the Arabs by centuries. And a Palestinian state would be just as much a modern creation as Israel is. The only way to legitimize a Palestinian state and delegitimize an Israeli one is a completely arbitrary set of rules. A two state solution is the only one that makes any sense of any kind.

  • danbruc 18 hours ago

    The Palestinian state also didn’t exist.

    Sure but even though I myself used the term state in my comment, I do not think that states are what matters. What matters are the people living in the region, it is their right to decide what should and should not happen, whether they are formally organized as a state or not. At the time of the Balfour Declaration the Jews were a five to ten percent minority in Mandatory Palestine. In the end it should have been the decision of the people living there - state or not - whether they want to accommodate the Jews that desired to settle there and even more so should it have been their decision whether they want the land split into two states.

    The Israelis illegitimately took have of the land from the Palestinians with force and then occupied the other half when they resisted. Similar things happend all throughout history and they can not be undone. The people of Israel will not be forced back to where they came from just as we will not send all Americans back to Europa, Africa, and Asia to give the land back to the native Americans.

    But the Palestinians deserve better than the status quo, they are the ones that were treated unjust. Israel should go out of its way to make good on past wrongs, if it does not hurt them, they are not doing enough. Israel now has a right to exist, they do not have to accept existential threats, but they owe the Palestinians a lot.

mr_toad a day ago

> They owned less than ten percent of Mandatory Palestin that they had purchased from Arabs

If relations between the two sides hadn’t deteriorated to the point of civil war then the split would never have been proposed in their first place. Left alone the Jews living in the mandate probably would have continued living there as a minority like they were in many Arab states.

The Palestinians fear of Zionism has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • aguaviva 8 hours ago

    The Palestinians fear of Zionism has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Nothing mystic or prophetic at all about it.

    Palestine is in the situation it is in due to the calculated policies of the various colonial powers and their "post-colonial" successors -- perhaps better described as "modern great power chauvinist states".

    And due to its own mistakes of course (as with any society, especial). But these are generally overshadowed by interventions (far) beyond its control, emanating from these aforementioned interventionist powers. One can dissect the various aspects and subaspects of this dynamic, but that's the long and short of the situation.

    In any case, "prophecy" as such has nothing to do with the current status quo.

reddozen a day ago

> The way Camp David is described also does not match reality. They failed to agree on several points and therefore there was never an offer that could be rejected.

You mean Arafat's refusal for to even define infinite "right of return" or participate in any way with the Summit? While every historian (including his Arafat's wife he told to hide in Paris) said he was preparing for the second intifada?

Also its widely known that the Summit was the closest they have ever gotten outside Taba. Its a hilarious statement to think there was no "offer".

  • danbruc 19 hours ago

    I did not say there were no offers but that there was no agreement. Both sides made offers but none was accepted by the other side. To stick with the right to return issue, the Palestinians demanded a wider right to return than Israel was willing to accept, Israel offered a more restricted right to return than the Palestinians were willing to accept. But such a failure to agree can not be easily blamed on only one party, each party could have moved their offers closer to the other side. Only if one party is obviously unreasonable in their demands or refuses to even negotiate, then you might be able to put the blame on one side.

    And let me add a note on the language. At least I but probably also others easily fall into a pattern of saying that Israel makes offers and that the Palestinians reject offers and have demands. This certainly reflects the power imbalance but it also has different connotations - making offers sounds much more positive than having demands and rejecting offers. I guess it would be better to talk about proposals and accepting or not accepting them. Both sides have made proposals and they have not been accepted by the other party sounds much more balanced than saying Israel made offers that got rejected by the Palestinians while Israel dismissed demands made by the Palestinians.