A Short History of Palestine from 1947

 In early 1947, the British government announced it would be handing over the disaster it had created in Palestine to the United Nations and ending its colonial project there. On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

UN proposal for a two state Palestine

At the time, the Jews in Palestine constituted less than one third of the population and owned less than six percent of the total land area. Under the UN partition plan, they were allocated 55 percent of the land, encompassing many of the main cities with Palestinian Arab majorities and the important coastline from Haifa to Jaffa. The Arab state would be deprived of key agricultural lands and seaports which led the Palestinians to reject the proposal, especially since they had never been asked. Zionists were ecstatic. It was not as much as they wanted but they knew they could and would add to it with their armed militia groups, (Irgun headed by Menachim Begin, Lehi aka Stern, and Haganah).

From the moment the UN passed the two state resolution, the Zionists swung into action. The terrorist groups fused to constitute a 40,000 strong, armed and battle seasoned militia (Haganah) from fighting in WWII and training in Poland. The Palestinians had no armed forces to speak of and fled before the terror inflicted by the Zionist’s ethnic cleansing. From December 1947 to May 15^th 1948, half the Palestinian refugees had already been driven from their homes.

On May 15^th, the last British soldier left Palestine and the state of Israel was declared. Other Arab nations, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel in defense of the Palestinians. The Arab-Israeli War lasted about a year. Between December 1947 and March 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

The armistice lines established in 1949 left Israel controlling a total of 67 per cent of the territory of Palestine.  Egypt and Jordan administered the remaining territorial portions allotted for the Arab State in the Partition Resolution.  

Palestine after the UN Armastice agreement in 1949

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. It is illegal for Israeli Palestinians to observe Nakba.

 United Nations dispatched a mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden. His plan included specific territorial adjustments in the borders, return of all Palestinian Arab refugees, and some limitations on Jewish immigration.   He reported that the Arab refugees (later estimated at 726,000) had “fled or were expelled from the area under Jewish occupation”.  On 17 September 1948, Bernadotte was assassinated by the Stern gang.

In December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the entitlement of the refugees to return. However, Israel prohibited Palestinians from returning to their homes and refuses to recognize them as refugees.

In December 1949, the General Assembly established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) to assist the Palestinian refugees who had been displaced and deprived of their homes and means of livelihood.  Until 1967 the world treated the Palestine issue mainly as a refugee problem. By making it specific to Palestinians, donors can control it without it affecting other refugee programs (as they have done since October 17^th by cutting funding).

In the war of June 1967, Israel expanded and occupied the rest of the Arab territory of Mandated Palestine, including Jerusalem.  It also took control of and occupied the Golan Heights of neighbouring Syria and the Sinai of Egypt. The 1967 war brought the second great Palestinian exodus. Half-a-million Palestinian people were uprooted and fled.

To be continued