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laura joakimson's avatar

I'm waiting for the next installment in this series. Thank you for your clear writing style. I want to know the hardest part--how do these disparate perspectives reconcile. 🌱🌿

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Sandy Tatham's avatar

"Palestine should have remained a single territorial unit, led by the Arab majority." I guess that sounds logical but you haven't yet factored in that "wars have consequences", especially when the other side started the war and lost. Wars are very costly in terms of human life and physical material. My New Zealand grandfather died fighting to liberate the Holy Land, and he is buried in the British Military Cemetery near Jerusalem. I'm speaking on his behalf, and on behalf of all the other ANZACS who didn't return to their families.

You also haven't yet mentioned the San Remo Conference of 1920, which incorporated the Balfour Agreement, or the high representation of Jewish men fighting in WWI, and the other Jewish support which earned the indigenous Jews the right to reconstitute their ancestral homeland, should the Allied Powers be fortunate enough to win the war. You also haven't mentioned that the Hejazi Arabs (not the Arabs of Palestine who fought with the Ottoman Turks or stayed neutral, but the ones from Arabia) were granted self-determination in 99% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East land. Those countries today are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, some with huge oil and gas resources. Israel is tiny and has few natural resources.

It's great that one-fifth of Israeli citizens today are Arabs who have equal rights with Jews. Their families made a good choice to accept life in the newly independent state of Israel. But those Arabs who were living in Palestine in 1948, a large number who had only arrived as "economic migrants" after 1920 when the British and Jewish people created economic opportunities, should have been encouraged to move to one of the Arab countries, or elsewhere, if they didn't accept the Jewish state of Israel then, or they still don't accept it.

Compare the situation in Israel with the enforced population exchange of 1.5 million Greeks and Turks to create the new state of Turkiye in 1924. Compare Israel with the 16+ South Asians who moved countries to create the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1947. And please don't forget the 800,000 Jews who were exiled from, or were persecuted and had to flee their multi-generational homes in the Arab lands after the creation of the Jewish state leaving behind huge wealth in property and businesses.

I appreciate your work in educating people, and I'm looking forward to your next essay. I travel in Muslim-majority countries and I was close by in Dahab Sinai on October 7, and during the 2021 Gaza War, so I have considerable experience of Middle East thinking.

PS: I love your daily briefings on the Israeli Citizens Spokespersons' channel.

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