From: perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (perlman eric)
Subject: Re: Exploding Historical Myths
Summary: Goldfield needs to have his exploded.
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 21:18:27 GMT

In article <s4hjrINNc4t@agate.berkeley.edu> steve@work.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.161206.16025@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> bc744@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark Ira Kaufman) writes:
>#>   Another manner in which you toss aside historical fact is that 
>#>the Palestinians had an opportunity to have their own state in the
>#>region.  And they turned it down!  The United Nations Partition Plan
>
>The above statement is equally preposterous on two grounds.
>First, on the narrow ground that Palestinians in Gaza did indeed
>try to set up their own state at that time; that state was not
>permitted to survive.

Of course, Israel did *not* have control of Gaza, nor had they even come
close to such, on May 15, 1948;  ironically, it was Egypt, not Israel,
which wiped out the "state" referred to above.

> Second, on the broader ground discussed
>in talk.politics.mideast many times: what Palestinians turned
>down was the partition of their homeland, not least because of
>the totally in equitable way in which the partion was to be
>made. Indigenous Palestinians constituted approximately
>two-thirds of the population; they lived in virtually all parts
>of the country. More than half (54%) of Palestine was to be
>allocated for a "Jewish" state, when only one-third of the
>inhabitants of Palestine were Jewish (indigenous and immigrant
>Jews taken together) and these lived in only a few parts of the
>country, mostly in the large cities. Therefore to state that
>Palestinians turned down an opportunity to have their own
>state is a historical distortion of monstrous proportions.

Unfortunately, what you have stated above is the only distortion.
First, Jews were a considerable majority in the area partitioned to be a
Jewish state (approx. 60%).  Second, while a bit more than half of
mandatory Palestine was allocated for the Jewish state (why do you put
it in quotes, by the way?  Ashamed of your roots, which you so
consistently deny and deform on this net?), let's remember that about a
third of this area was the arid Negev desert.  Third, Palestinians were
never *asked* by their leaders what their opinions were!  Hajj Amin
al-Husseini had begun murdering and using seditious means to eliminate
and discredit his adversaries as far back as the 1930s.  Fourth, while
many Jews did live in large cities, there was a large non-urban
population which had turned swamps into farming communities already.
Face it.  The Palestinians had a chance for self-determination in 1948,
and they lost it then.  And the ones that took it away were their own
"leaders", and other Arab countries.

The rest was SG's usual, utterly baseless, unsupported accusations of
Israeli apartheid, and I've deleted them, as they have been refuted on
this net many times.
 

-- 
"How sad to see/A model of decorum and tranquillity/become like any other sport
A battleground for rival ideologies to slug it out with glee." -Tim Rice,"Chess"
     Eric S. Perlman  <perlman@qso.colorado.edu> or <eric@lyra.Colorado.EDU> 
  Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:10897 soc.culture.iranian:3476