From: perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman)
Subject: Re: Hamas
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 19:15:39 GMT

In article <1gk9ntINNhi8@manuel.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:
>In article 13903@colorado.edu, perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman) writes:
>>In article <1ghva1INN9k0@manuel.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:
>  
>>>Let me spell it out.  A number of times recently you have made
>>>statements equivalent to "the partition was fair because the
>>>Jewish part had a Jewish majority".  I don't believe that is 
>>>a reasonable indicator of fairness, and I proved that by applying
>>>the same indicator successfully to a partition which is obviously
>>>unfair.  Reductio ad absurdum.  If you want to keep the theorem
>>>you have to upgrade the proof.  That's it.
>
>>International relations is not a field that can be determined by
>>mathematics; you and I both know that.  While if you speak in terms of
>>land value, what you're saying may be true (though I disagree, since the
>>Negev - most of which was allocated to Israel - could not have been
>>counted as valuable agriculturally then)
>
>That's taken into account.  It was more than compensated for by 
>having almost all the coastal fringe.  Also, the mountainous areas 
>of low fertility went mostly into the Arab part.

Actually, I'm not sure about the 'almost all' part - certainly Israel
was to have essentially all of the coastal fringe from just north of
Haifa south through Ashdod; however, the "Gaza strip" portion went
significantly further north than Khan Yunis (speaking of the allocated
borders of the proposed Arab state).

>>                                         , you also need to take into
>>account that within a decade, the situation would most probably have
>>been reversed, due to large scale Jewish immigration  - not only new
>>arrivals, but also those who finally could get in after not having been
>>able to for years.  Think about it for a few minutes and you might
>>change your mind.
>
>Of course I am aware of this argument.  It was the argument used as
>justification for the unequal division at the time.  The problem
>is, why were the Palestinian Arabs obliged to accept the Zionist
>value system?  The purposeful gathering of Jews from other places
>might have been a cornerstone of Zionist thinking (regarded as
>"good" almost by definition) but I don't know why anyone else
>must regard it so, a priori.

A priori, perhaps not.  But considering that both British policy during
the war did just about everything to prevent Jews escaping the shoah to
enter mandatory Palestine, and also that Arab policy was even more
dead-set against such immigration (from what I know) it would be crass
at the least not to expect that to be something that the Jewish
population wanted very badly.  I don't think that to accept the
partition forced acceptance of the Zionist value system.


-- 
"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> 
  Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder