A Shrinking Palestine
By: Not Even Past
Tags: Middle East, Palestine, Not Even Past

How the land of Palestine has been shrinking for a century

What constitutes the land of Palestine has continually changed over the past century. The ongoing Israel/Palestinian conflict is constantly on a slow burn and every so often flares up to a level that again captures the attention of the international media and has potential geopolitical consequences for the entire Middle East region. Recent news regarding calls for annexation has worried the international community and met with vocal opposition. This represents another threat of change a land that has not known stability for over one hundred years.

For centuries before 1920 this area of the world had been a province to great empires, from the Romans to the Ottomans. After the First World War and the defeat of the Ottomans by the Allied powers Palestine was handed over to the next in line of imperial rulers, the British Empire. In 1920 the recently established League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations, gave the United Kingdom a Mandate over Palestine. Over the next century what will be known as Palestine will alter and shrink as the power dynamics of the 20th century Middle East play out, continually shifting territorial control in the Holy Land.

If one looks at the Holy Land on a modern day map they will see the state of Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1920 all of this was Palestine under the British Mandate. From 1920 to 1948 this Palestine heaved with the political aspirations of both Jews and Arabs. The Zionist project had many Jews immigrating to their ancient homeland with the dream of establishing an independent Jewish state. The Arabs of this land, freed from the Ottoman Empire and in the wake of the post WWI fervour of colonised peoples yearning for self-governance, had national ambitions of their own — the creation of a Palestinian state. The Jews and Arabs who clashed over their opposing political objectives were united only in their desire to see the British leave the land. The British would have to deal with Arab revolts and Zionist terrorism until they gave up their Mandate in 1948 handing the Palestinian problem over to the newly created United Nations.

In the aftermath of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust there was a great influx of Jewish refugees into Palestine. The question of the creation of the Jewish state reached such a level that the British handed the issue over to the young United Nations, which developed a Partition Plan that would split Palestine into Jewish and Arab regions that together would make up each groups own state. The Jewish leadership in Palestine, believing this to be their best shot at receiving a recognised homeland agreed. The Arab leadership, believing this to be too great a concession on land they claimed as already theirs, declined. The United Nations voted 33 for, 13 against, with 10 abstentions in December 1947. With the passing of the Partition Plan a civil war broke out in Palestine as the Jews and Palestinian Arabs fought to gain what territory they could in the last days of the Mandate overseen by the increasingly weary British, who were gearing up to end their Mandate and leave Palestine on 15 May, 1948. This date was also to be the day that the Jews of Palestine would declare their independent state. However the Arab nations of the Middle East, violently opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in their midst, threatened war the same day if the Jews of Palestine declared their independence. From December, 1947 to May, 1948 the land of Palestine on a map may have territorially looked the same as all its time under the British Mandate, but in reality the spheres of Jewish and Palestinian Arab control were constantly shifting as each sought to gain what land they could before the end of the Mandate. In 1948 the borders of Palestine where forever to be altered when the state of Israel was declared on 15 May and the Arab nations surrounding the nascent state went to war.

The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 saw the five Arab nations of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon invade the new sate of Israel. In what seemed to be a victory of biblical proportions, echoing the struggle of David and Goliath, Israel managed to defend itself and even gain extra territory than was awarded it in the UN Partition Plan. This seeming miracle was aided by the successful importation of arms into the state and the inability of the multiple Arab armies to militarily cooperate. By the time of the armistice in March 1949, the areas that constitute the modern state of Israel and the Palestinian Territories had taken shape. The Arab Legion of Transjordan, the most effective fighting force in the region at the time, had managed to gain and hold the territory known as the West Bank, including Jerusalem, whilst the Egyptian army held the small pocket of land known as the Gaza Strip. Israel had won for itself approximately 78% of historical Palestine, with the remaining 22%.- the West Bank and Gaza Strip — falling under Jordanian and Egyptian administration respectively until 1967.

1967 saw control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip change again with the Six Day War, which set the territorial status quo that the historic land of Palestine knows today. The West Bank under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control fell into the hands of the Israel after a brief war that pushed the Arab nations out of this region and left Israel in complete control over historic Palestine.

From 1920 the land of Palestine as a national entity had changed from encompassing all of the Holy Land to consisting of only 22% — the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Political control of historical Palestine had shifted from the British from 1920–1948, to shared control by the new state of Israel, Jordan and Egypt from 1949–1967, and then entirely to Israel from 1967 until the present day. The establishment of Israel and the territory conquered in 1948–1949 shrunk what could ever be the state of Palestine down to what we now know as the Palestinian Territories. These territories remain occupied by Israel as statehood eludes the Palestinian Arabs. Since 1967 attempts have been made to change the territorial and political status-quo. In 1973 an invasion led by Egypt and Syria that attempted to reclaim Arab control over the Holy Land ended in failure; resistance by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories though consistent over the decades has flared up in moments of great rebellion such as the First and Second Intifadas. Some moments of political agreement have emerged since 1967 that have attempted to give the Palestinians a state but none have so far achieved that goal in full. The 1949 armistice lines that created the territorial entities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain the best hopes for the future borders of an independent Palestinian state. However, over the decades of Israeli occupation of these territories there has been a push by right-wing and religious elements within Israeli society to expand into the West Bank, an area they call Judea and Samaria, by establishing Israeli settlements. These settlements are considered illegal under international law and their existence severely reduces the practical ability to create a contiguous Palestinian state. Calls for annexation by some in Israel have haunted the Palestinians and aroused ire in the Arab nations of the Middle East. The annexation of these Israeli settlements could at the most sound the death knell for a Palestinian state that has never existed, and at the least again shrink a Palestine that has been shrinking for a century.