Quote:
Originally posted by tambourine-man
Look, plain and simple. The root of the problem is that in 1947, the UN (under severe political pressure from the United States which bordered on illegal) passed an "agreement" which offered the Jews 55% of Palestine, even though they only owned 7% of it. In my opinion, the US was attempting to make the best effort they could in what was a dire, dire decade. The Palestinians refused to accept these decisions on the grounds that:
a) It was illegally imposed because of pressure from the US
b) It gave the Israelis the better part of the land
c) It would be used as a basis for further expansion
|
BULLSHIT...Britain is to blame, plan and simple...not the US...nice try,
---quote---
In 1917, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued the Baltour Declaration, which promised British support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine providing that "nothing shall he done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" - a reference to the Arabs, who then were 92 percent of the population. The declaration was interpreted by key Zionist leaders as support for a sovereign Jewish state.
In the wake of the Balfour Declaration, and during the British mandate, Jewish immigration increased. So, in proportion did sporadic strife between Arabs and Jews. Immigration nevertheless continued and in the 1930s - with the rise of Adolf Hitler - and after World War II, Jewish immigration increased still further. As British efforts to control it generated widespread disapproval in the West and stimulated underground warfare by militant Zionist units against British forces, Britain eventually placed the problem in the hands of the United Nations, which in 1947 voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab States.
Fighting then flared up in Palestine. Six months later, when Britain withdrew and formation of the State of Israel was proclaimed, the Arabs went to war against the newly declared nation. As Jewish forces were victorious - and as stories spread that some 250 Arab civilians had been massacred in a village called Deir Yassin - thousands of Palestinians fled, among the first of today's 3.4 million refugees and exiles. Eventually the United Nations negotiated a truce, but fighting became endemic and war broke out again in 1956, 1967, and 1973. The 1967 war triggered underground warfare by Palestinian militants, whose attacks were primarily aimed at Israel, but also included strikes in Europe and hijackings on international air routes.