I would like to examine here the much talked about Israeli myth that the Palestinian tragedy was a result of their rejection of UN resolution 181 for the Partition of Palestine. In other words what would have happened had the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted the UN Partition Plan of resolution 181. Would Israel then implement it in good faith ?
To keep Israel's image unblemished in the eyes of the world and to dismiss the contention that Israel was born in sin, Zionist apologists blame all the tragedies that befell the Palestinians on their rejection of the UN Partition Plan as embodied in resolution 181 of Nov. 29/1947. Such theme would cloak Israel with important needed morality , justify Israel's atrocities, massacres, and the uprooting of the Palestinians in the war of 1947-1948 in order to take over their lands. In retrospect then, the Zionists claim that if the Palestinians accepted the UN Partition Plan as the Zionist leadership did, non of the miseries of the 1947-1948 would have taken place, no wars, no victims, no refugees, no land expropriations and the two peoples would have enjoyed the peaceful coexistence for the last sixty years!
At the risk of intruding into the realm of speculations, let me explore the possibilities that could have evolved had the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted the UN resolution in its entirety, assuming of course that the Zionists accepted it also in good faith. To minimize the speculative approach one has to understand that when the UN Partition was adopted on Nov.29/1947, all the Jewish ownership of land did not exceed 7% of Palestine while the Jewish population ( with all the illegal massive Jewish immigration ) was inferior to that of the Palestinians in the ratio of one to two ( records of the UN Commission on Palestine, JNF records, the Israeli custodian of absentee properties established 1950, and the new historians ). Add to this status quo the fact that the UN Partition plan ( resolution 181) which divided Palestine in the ratio of 55% Jewish and 45% Arab, prohibited any forced transfer of any inhabitant from either sector to the other. This means that the lands in the Jewish State would have been owned by Arabs while the majority of its inhabitants would have been Arabs too. Calling this type of state a Jewish one would have become a practice in theatrics. How and where would Israel settle hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees waiting in European camps ( In 1948, almost 300,000 Jews were waiting in Vienna at the instructions of the world Zionist Organization) to immigrate to the newly born Jewish state once declared?.
To justify the creation of a Jewish state many Zionist apologists claim that the demographic ratio was not in favor of the Arabs in the Jewish sector of the UN Partition, but it was in the ratio of 55% Jewish and 45% Palestinians. Assuming for the sake of argument that this ratio was true, it was also true that the Arab birth rate was much higher than the Jewish birth rate. Simple calculations would bring the Arab population to a much higher ratio in less than a generation. Nowadays the Arab population in Israel proper is close to a million from a number of 150,000 that were left behind since the 1947-1948 war. This shows that an increase of the Arab population multiplied almost eight folds in the period of the last fifty years.
If those refugees of around 850,000 were not forced to leave since everybody would have accepted the UN Partition, as we premised above, then the number who would have remained in Israel proper would be almost a million ( 150,000 + 850,000 evicted refugees). Therefore multiplying this number by eight, as the above ratio, would have brought the Palestinian population to 8 million which would be more than twice the entire Jewish population of today. This means that keeping the Jewish character of Israel until today would have become a farce.
If however, the early Zionist plans were unveiled prior to the establishment of the state of Israel and if what had taken place on the ground were objectively compared to these plans, one would have to come to the inescapable conclusion that most of Israeli premeditated plans were to violate Resolution 181 in favor of acquiring as much land as possible while eviciting the indigenous Palestinians out of the same lands. Let's keep in mind here that the UN Partition Plan divided Palestine in the ratio of roughly 55% to the Jewish state and 45% to the Arab state, even though the Arabs owned more than 90% of the lands and represented 2/3 majority of the population I also would like to point out here that the UN Partition prohibited the forced transfer of any inhabitant from any sector to the other. Assuming then that Israel was genuine and honest about accepting the UN Partition, the long sought objective of establishing a Jewish State would become a practice in futility, since anyway you divide it, Palestine had a majority of Arab population. It would be very hard to believe that a Jewish state would be named as such if the majority of the inhabitants in that sector were non-Jewish.
Notwithstanding the above, let us assume that a democratic Jewish state was established. In this case the Arab majority would vote Arab representatives into the Jewish Parliament and an Arab for the Prime minister, after all no one can deny that in a free democratic society the majority rule. Aside from the name, the Jewish state would be in effect an Arab government with the majority of its inhabitants being also Arabs. Since the UN Partition stipulates very clearly that no one from either sector would be dispossessed from his land, except for the common welfare, there would be no place for new Jewish immigration as most of the lands were under the Arab ownership and control. Therefore the UN Partition if implemented honestly, would make the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine nearly an impossible Jewish dream. To cling persistently to the actual establishment of a viable Jewish state, two preconditions had to be fulfilled; the expropriation of land from the indigenous Arabs and somehow devise a system under which the Arab majority would become a minority. Since it would be ludicrous, if not insane, to expect anybody volunteering to give up his land and property away and exchange that for a status of becoming a miserable refugee, somebody else has to do the job.
In order for the Zionist leadership, then, to establish the Jewish state in a land whose majority of people and land being Arab, it has to use force to evict the Arabs and take over their lands and properties as there was no other way indeed as many Jewish sources confirm.
Simha Flapan, Benny Morris , Ilan Pappe, Professor N. Neuberger, Tom Segev and Norman Finkelstein are few of the Israeli historians who confirm such view, and that the uprooting of the Palestinians was the implementations of a premeditated plans with the Zionist leadership. These plans go back to 1919 when the Zionist leadership confirmed to the King Crane Commission that their objective was a complete dispossession of the Palestinians. Such position was echoed more than once by Ben-Gurion himself when he favored the transfer of Palestinians out in order to create a viable Jewish state. Ben-Gurion's declaration was documented by the Jewish historian Benny Morris ( The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem). Mr. Yoram Ben Porath " JNF" and a Zionist leader exposes this further when he on July 14/1972 (Yediot Aaronoth) stated that there is no such a thing as Zionism, as colonization by the Jewish state, without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands! Haim Weizman in his book ( Exile and Return, page 117) confirms similar view when he stated that Israel should be as Jewish as England is English! Joseph Weitz Deputy chairman of the JNF (1951-1973) stated as early as 1940 :
'Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no place in the country for both peoples together...With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being independent people in this country. The only solution is Eretz Israel, at least the west part of Eretz Israel, without Arabs...and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain, and the transfer must aim at Iraq, Syria and even Tran-Jordan. For this purpose money will be found, much money; and only with this transfer could the country absorb millions of our brothers. There is no other alternative...One should investigate now the neighboring countries in order to determine their capacity to absorb the Arabs of Eretz Israel'"
It's no wonder therefore, that plans like Nachsen, Misparayim, Galilee, Dalet and others were prepared before the war to cleanse the Arabs from the entire Jewish sector. It was no wonder that massacres and uprooting took place in Dir Yassin, Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, W. Jerusalem and hundreds others to make sure that the Jewish state becomes indeed very Jewish! Mr. Rabin in his memoirs has also confirmed how he participated in the eviction of almost 60,000 unprotected Arab civilians in Lud and Ramleh after surrendering to the Zionist forces. He ordered that they start walking toward the East, women children, and old people! We all have read history of wars which established an undeniable fact that most occupiers take over the control of the country with their military presence, but how many would evict the indigenous people and replace them with people if their own? In Palestine the Zionists could not create a Jewish stat when the majority of the people were not Jewish, as stated by the Israeli historian Benny Morris "anyway you divide it you would have a fifth column", he stated in an interview with the associated press ( Dec. 16/97 with Dan Perry). In other words the UN Partition could not be implemented in good faith, because if it was there would be no Israel to-day. Israel had to expel the Palestinians because it has to make room for the new Jewish immigrants and also it would be impossible to create a Jewish state if the majority of the UN assigned Jewish sector were Arabs who were the majority or will become the majority in less than a generation. The UN Partition then could only be implemented on the map only and not on the ground UNLESS the Zionists evict the Palestinians out, which they did.
Again if the Zionist claim is true, that the eviction took place because of the Palestinian rejection to the UN Partition, why would Israel practice similar evictions when the war was over and everybody was settled? Can Israel history deny the expulsion of the inhabitants of Ikrit in Western Galilee and the village of Rama in 1949? Can Israel deny that on Nov. 5/ 1949 they evicted by force, the inhabitants of Kfar Anan from their homes and were forced to cross the borders into the West Bank? How about the forced evictions of 700 inhabitants from Kfar Yusuf on Feb. 28, 1951 long after the 1948 war, who were loaded on trucks and dumped on the Jordanian borders. Should we thank the Israelis for supplying the transportation? Actually in February of 1951 alone the inhabitants of more than 13 villages were transported out of their homes and dumped across the Jordanian borders! Do all these forced evictions lend any credibility to the Israeli claim that it was not within the Zionist plans to evict the Palestinians?
A further proof of Zionist immoral history in Palestine is the Israeli practices in the West Bank. The expropriation of lands, the evictions, the demolitions, and the military cruel rule do not point to the illegal and immoral behavior of the Zionists alone, but it confirms the evil practices of the past. Using the same logic now; are we to be evicted further because we are rejecting now the further partitioning of whatever is left of our homes and lands? Are we to be "punished" again by further evictions for rejecting to be evicted?
At the time of the UN resolution the Palestinians were not in a position to even express their views regarding the UN Partition because it was under British rule ( who left Palestine officially on May 14/ 1948 just 24 hours before Israel declared its statehood). Officially then , the Palestinians did not reject or accept as such decision was in the hands of the Arab league. Among themselves and unofficially, it was normal for the Palestinians as much as for any people on this earth to reject the UN Partition, which allots the best part of their lands to foreign intruders, but what is not normal is to "punish" them so severely for such normal attitude, by disinheriting them and turning them into tragic refugees. To claim that Israel should not accept them back, in conformity with so many UN resolutions including the UN Partition, because they might pose as a fifth column is an exercise in theatrics, because thos Arabs who stayed did not become a fifth or a fourth column for that matter. The hard core fact that Israel was born in sin, as it has robbed the indigenous Palestinians of their homes and properties and then claimed to the world in a very obvious chutzpah, that it was the Palestinian fault. It's like the convicted thief who does not stop stealing but resents being called a thief, while objecting for the home owner to reject or resist his robbery. It should behoove Israel and its allies to realize that success in fooling the world would not bring it any closer to any real peace, as the proof lies in the non-peaceful status quo. Finally it is normal for any people to leave their homes and properties in times of calamities such as earthquakes, floods and wars, but it was also normal for the same people to return to their homes once the calamity was over, but not in Israel's case as such a move would compromise Israel's racist intentions of creating an exclusive Jewish State.
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