Editor,
This coming Nov. 29 marks the 66th anniversary of the UN resolution to partition west Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish. A few historical facts are worth recalling:
1. At the end of WWI, Palestine consisted of today’s Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
2. Britain obtained a mandate from the League of Nations (the UN of its day) to administer Palestine “until such time as [its inhabitants] are able to stand alone.”
3. Britain immediately severed some 75 percent of Palestine east of the Jordan River, and created there a new Arab state, the emirate of Transjordan, today known as the kingdom of Jordan. According to many historians and diplomats, that was, and continues to be, the Arab state as mandated by the League of Nations.
4. The UN partition plan of Nov. 29, 1947 to create yet another Arab state in west Palestine was rejected by the Arabs, who have waged war after war to “drown this resolution in rivers of blood,” which are in fact the exact words of Jamal Husseini, head of the Arab delegation at that UN session of Nov. 29, 1947. That Arab delegation did not include any Arabs from west Palestine: they had no voice in the rejection of their own state.
5. In the first war the Arabs waged in 1948, Jordan conquered and annexed to itself the West Bank, and Egypt conquered the Gaza strip, thus making good on Husseini’s promise — the proposed Arab state in west Palestine was drowned by the Arabs themselves.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Shlomo Karni
UNM Professor Emeritus
