[tambourine-man]

Admittedly I left out Balfour as I see it as having little relevance to the current situation. My mistake. The Balfour Devclaration (and others before it) were a series of shitty attempts to ease the tension within the Arab population, after breaking free of Ottoman rule. I say shitty as they turned out to be worth less than the paper they were written on.

As you'll know, Arab tensions grew with over 500 Jews killed between (I think) 1936 and 1939, during which, the Peel Commission originally suggested the idea of partition - the Zionists accepted but understandably, the Arabs did not. The 1939 White paper restricting Jewish immigration did not exactly help matters - although it went some way to easing Arab fears, there are still those who will site the 1939 paper as Anti-semite or Holocaust supporting. Again, I suspect that it was a genuine attempt to intervene in what was (and is) an impossible mission.

After the British turned over control to the UN, the 1947 Partition was made under Rsolution 181. If you don't believe that this was made under duress from the US, then fine - I won't push you. But please let's not get into a 'who's the biggest asshole country' debate - it'll be neck and neck. As I said, I don't blame the US for it's actions - I reckon theirs was a genuine attempt, but as illegal and as ham-fisted as any other attempt - including those made by the UK (infact, the blame-game really goes nowhere - I thought the thrust of my argument was more about the fact that I cannot easily criticise a nation (if not a 'state') of people who are under occupation based on a flimsy religious claim and the 'word of God').

My point still remains that if the US/UK were told by Russia (or the UN) that 55% of its land (the better part of the land) had to be given away to a group of people in diaspora, and that it would lead to an independant state, AND that the current population of the US/UK had no real say in this matter..... you'd fight to your last breath - and rightly so.