The UN Partition Plan Was a Catastrophically Bad Idea
Imagine if, in the aftermath of Israel’s genocide – and due to chronic persecution of Palestinians by Israelis – nearly a dozen UN member nations, but not the USA, decided to plant a Palestinian state in … greater Dearborn, Michigan.
Well, that’s sorta similar to what happened in 1947, when the UN Special Committee on Palestine, consisting of 11 countries – but no Arab nations – recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.
Context is crucial here. The Holocaust had ended just two years earlier. Public sympathy for Jewish victims of Nazi Germany – including my aunts, uncles, and cousins in Poland, France, and Germany – was justifiably soaring. Commitments among nations to accept Jewish displaced persons had fallen short of the need. And Jews, like Muslims and Christians, had an ancient connection to Palestine.
Had Palestine been “a land without people for a people without a land,” as many Zionists claimed, the UN Partition Plan would have been perfect.
But it wasn’t. Far from it.
Let’s examine some important statistics. In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians were living in Palestine. Clearly, Palestine wasn’t “a land without people.” The population included countless members of Palestinian families that had lived on that land for centuries.
Around 31% of Palestine’s inhabitants were Jews. And keep this fact in mind: Three decades earlier, in 1914, only 8% of Palestine’s inhabitants identified as members of the Jewish faith. A high percentage of Jews were fairly recent arrivals in Palestine.
Now, let’s talk about land. At the end of 1947, Jewish land ownership amounted to less than 7% of Palestine. But under the UN Partition Plan – which had no Arab representation in its formulation – Jews were given 56% of the land. Arabs were granted just 44% of their homeland.
A Zionist may say, “Oh, but Arabs were given more fertile land. That’s true, but Arabs also OWNED dramatically more fertile land in Palestine. It was their land! Plus, Jews were given sole access to the Sea of Galilee: an important water source.
Any way you slice it, the UN Partition Plan was an awful deal for the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, who were now being told a “Jewish State” was about to be plopped onto what had largely been Arab land. Had the tables been turned, there’s no doubt in my mind Zionists would have rejected such an arrangement.
The UN Partition Plan also didn’t carry the force of law. The Plan was nonbinding (repeat: NONBINDING). It was nothing more than a recommendation.
If a Zionist says none of that matters because of the 1917 “Balfour Declaration,” you may want to point out that its author, Arthur Balfour – an apparent antisemite who aimed to reduce Britain’s Jewish population – didn’t own Palestine. It wasn’t his (or the British government’s) to give away. Also, Balfour’s famous letter to Walter Rothschild (below) didn’t refer specifically to a “Jewish state” and explicitly said, “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” How did that work out?
After all that, if you hear, “Well, G-d promised Israel to the Jews,” my fatigue-induced response might be, “Oh, f**k – try bringing that argument into a modern court of law.”
Before the rise of Zionism, Jews had lived side-by-side in relative peace with Arabs for centuries in Palestine. Life was by no means perfect, but it was far less tumultuous than in Europe.
Zionism changed all that.
Put yourself in Palestinian shoes. In the early 20th century, Palestinians knew about European settler colonialism and what it brought: displacement, loss of property, a change in cultural character – and racial discrimination. A significant share of Jewish settlements in Palestine refused to hire Arabs and only employed Jewish workers (a.k.a. “Hebrew labor”), which heightened concerns.
From Ottoman and British rule, Zionism created fear of more foreign domination in Palestine. Of course, that’s precisely what ultimately happened. After Palestinians rejected the UN Partition Plan (again, understandably so) and Zionists unilaterally declared the establishment of the State of Israel, war broke out. Zionists – mostly of European origin – didn’t merely stop at Partition Plan boundaries.
While literally wiping more than 500 Palestinian villages and towns off the map, Zionists grabbed nearly 80% of Mandatory Palestine: far exceeding the 56% proposed for a Jewish state. In the process, Zionists ethnically cleansed more than 700,000 Palestinians in what came to be known as the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic). After that, Zionists engaged in the endless occupation of Palestine, created a brutal apartheid system in the West Bank, and committed genocide in Gaza.
Palestinians didn’t invade and occupy European nations, strip Jews of basic human rights, or oversee Nazi concentration camps. But Palestinians ended up paying an enormous price for the Holocaust.
And contrary to Zionist claims, a “Jewish State” with exclusive rights for Jews in Palestine hasn’t ensured Jewish safety. Quite the opposite. Since the end of World War II, more Jews have died violently in Israel than in any other nation. It’s fair to say Israel is one of the least safe places on earth for Jews.
But Israeli oppression doesn’t just make Jews in Israel less safe. ADL data has shown when Israel kills large numbers of Palestinians, including lots of children (atrocities referred to by some Zionists as “mowing the lawn”), global antisemitic incidents spike.
Perhaps you’ve heard the tired Zionist claim that Palestinians who “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” have repeatedly rejected “generous” Israeli peace offers. Here’s the reality: Israel has never, ever offered the essential right of return for Palestinian refugees: a blatant violation of international law. Nor have they offered compensation for Palestinian property confiscated by Zionists. Or reparations for the death, destruction, and trauma Zionists have caused over more than three-fourths of a century due to their obsession with maximizing the size and Jewish purity of a “Jewish State.” What’s more, Israel has never offered a truly sovereign Palestinian state.
Until Zionists leave their state of denial and acknowledge all this, we’ll never see Mideast peace.
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LOL bro if you want MidEast peace, you can start by stopping the attempts to rewrite history to make Arab colonizers "indigenous natives." Hundreds of thousands of Arabs immigrated to Palestine in the 20th century alone, and they rejected partition because like most colonizers they wanted all of the land for themselves and themselves alone. Your historical rewrite "forgot" to mention the Peel Commission Plan, which would have given the indigenous Jews far less land than the Arabs, but the Arabs STILL rejected it because they wanted the whole thing.
If you want peace, lose this "we're victims of foreign colonizers and the evil Jews stole our homeland" BS. It's perpetuating hatreds and spreading lies.
That's a stupid analogy. Dearborn, Michigan is not the ancient ancestral home of the Palestinian people. I thought you were supposed to be a Jew? Don't you know the first thing about Jewish history?