Talk:State of Palestine

This article was nominated for deletion on November 17, 2007. The result of the discussion was redirect to Proposals for a Palestinian state.

More history

More information is needed on the the implementation of the plans to divide the area after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The links to the other article did not help and multiple (if not merged) articles should be coming into here. More information on the lack of a state for whatever reason pre Jews is needed. Paris 1919 might be a good place to pull from but the overall lack of info on Wikipedia and consolidating the decentralized info might be a good project for someone with more knowledge of the subject. The lack of online sources is acceptable under guidelines but some assistance in navigating the topic would help many readers. It could also trim down the disputes on multiple pages.Cptnono (talk) 12:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

This article is about the State of Palestine that was declared in 1988. The General Assembly recognized the unilateral declaration of independence of that entity as being in-line with resolution 181 (II). That resolution terminated the LoN mandate. Palestine's membership applications to the United Nations subsidiary organs subsequently stated that the declaration was a direct consequence of the General Assembly resolution that created a Jewish and Arab state in 1947 and provided for the application of the principles of state succession to treaties, debts, and etc. See UNESCO 131 EX/43.[1] harlan (talk) 16:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

an apparent error

footnote 1 contains the following sentence: 'The United Nations and most countries do not accept Israel's claim over the whole of Jerusalem (see Kellerman 1993, p. 140) and maintain their embassies to Israel in other cities." However there is no "Kellerman" to be found in the biblio or in the references either. Can someone please fix it? Stellarkid (talk) 21:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

done. nableezy - 21:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

1988...

... a lot of States did not yet exist (Slovakia, Slowenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Aserbaidshan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tadjikistan and United Yemen)... even if you would identify Russia with Soviet Union, Czech republic with Czechoslovakia and Serbia with Yugoslavia... on the other hand a few states who recognized Palestine do no longer exist today (East Germany, for example). This should be mentioned in the list and in the map. --Roksanna (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You would need to cite a published source that discusses the recognition practice of the successor or continuation states. For example the Russian Federation claims it is a "continuation state" that still exercises the rights and fulfills the treaty obligations of the former USSR. See Embassy of the State of Palestine in the Russian Federation [2]. harlan (talk) 03:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Missing Footnote Reference

The following is listed in the Footnotes section, but the link has been removed and an "Error 404 Page Not Found" shows up instead thus this link should be removed.

---

There is mention of Jerusalem's final status awaits future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (see "Negotiating Jerusalem", University of Maryland).

---

Rather than being attacked for removing it, I'll just recommend that it be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wbenton (talk • contribs) 08:15, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It is still available from the Web Archive: [3] harlan (talk) 11:36, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

In support of StellarKid and to correct the article

Entry: ""...and only the Jewish state materialized, adopting the name Israel, on approximately three quarters of Mandate Palestine's territory.[12][13][14]...." (with 3 footnotes no less!)

This is completely WRONG. 'Mandate Palestine' included JORDAN.

Google Images 'Mandate Palestine'

http://images.google.com/images?rlz=1T4EGLC_enUS336US336&q=mandate%20palestine&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

Arabs got that 77% as Jordan, and the remaining 23% was divided among the rest of the of the Arabs and Jews roughly 13:10 for the Jews.

Meaning, the Arabs got 87% of Mandate Palestine. The Pink and red areas: http://www.agsconsulting.com/articles/isr47prt.jpg

And Half of the Jews 13% was the throw-in/thought-useless Negev desert. The bottom half of the light blue area above.

2/3 of all the land that became Israel was state land (including the 50% Negev) Under the Ottomans; called 'miri'/belonging to the Emir, not to any Arab.

In any Case, even in 'lesser Palestine' Jews did NOT get 3/4. They got about 55%. The remaining percents to get to 70+% was won in the 1948 WAR, the Arabs started, not ceded/designated by the Partition. (Res 181)

Even before that war, in 1947, the area designated Israel had a Healthy Jewish Majority; 540,000 to 390,000.

I know this place has been biased by PCism, Liberalism, and Arabism, but Numbers are NOT Fudgeable gentleman. Then again this IS Wikipedia and this is a politcal issue on which wiki has gone to hell.

Further documentation/illustration gladly provided on request to abu_afak@yahoo.com

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.225.227 (talk) 09:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Removal of Bovis, Wolffe, Kamrava cites

Bovis does not say the Jewish leadership accepted the UN partition plan on page 40 of his book and neither Wolffe nor Kamrava say that only a Jewish state emerged. These were discussed previously as examples of WP:Synth claims that were made in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia. harlan (talk) 19:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

You are not acting in good faith. I've explained that the following pages of Bovis complete the discussion of the plan, yet you don't even bother reading ahead. I even changed the cited pages from p.40, to 37-47, just so people like you, being too lazy to read ahead, wouldn't get too confused. I've reverting your changes, which are, frankly, POV BS. It is a well known fact that the Arabs rejected the plan, and the Jews accepted it, and no amount of your revisionism can change those facts. Say what you will about how fair or unfair the plan is, that's what happened. okedem (talk) 20:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I've added more sources, just because it's so easy. I'm gonna stop now, or the text is going to become unreadable, with all those little numbers there. okedem (talk) 20:23, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I've forgotten your special brand of denialism and revisionism, trying to claim an Arab state was created, when it is absolutely rudimentary common knowledge that no such thing happened. To humor you, see, for instance, Bovis, p. 89; Soetendorp (The dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations: theory, history and cases) p. 138; Khalidi's "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood" p. XVII. Basically, any history book with sufficient detail. okedem (talk) 20:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest you concentrate on content and stop making personal remarks. You are using the neutral voice of the encyclopedia to endorse your positions. I did not remove the viewpoint that the Jewish leadership accepted partition and that the Arabs reject it, I attributed it to an author who holds that opinion, Avi Plascov. I added an opposing viewpoint from Simha Flapan that you've removed without explanation. All significant points of view are supposed to be represented in this article, and they need to be attributed to their authors. You removed several citations that hold opposing points of view about the acceptance of the partition plan and the notion that only a Jewish state emerged. harlan (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry harlan. Ignoring your distortion of reality has become impossible.

It's not "just" Plascov's viewpoint, or Bovis's, or any of the other sources'; it's the absolute majority viewpoint, found in a great multitude of history books and various other sources, contemporary and otherwise. It is so well known and obvious that people like Flapan, wanting to sound all important, make a big deal about calling it a "myth", but failing miserably to support this rhetoric with facts (his claim was that although the Jewish leaders accepted the plan - there's no argument about this - their actions thereafter were against it; sadly, he ignored the fact that partition was DOA, following immediate Arab rejection, meaning the Jews' actions were taken knowing there could be no partition, and had to act accordingly). The "no it wasn't" viewpoint is absolute fringe, rejected by all mainstream historians. It can be mentioned in the article about these people (Flapan etc.), and maybe in the one about the partition plan, but has no place in other articles. okedem (talk) 06:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Okedem, I am not removing your claims, simply attributing them as the views held by the authors cited in the text. You are placing references to Wolffe and Kamrava after a statement that cannot be found in either of those sources and you are removing opposing viewpoints. Wikipedia policy says that articles should describe all significant views in accordance with their prominence, and fairly weight the authority accorded each view in the relevant scholarly community with the aim of providing neutral, encyclopedic coverage about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties.

You apparently want to cite the fact that Bovis said the Arab leaders rejected a partition plan, but not the fact that in the same passage (on page 40) he said the Jewish leadership rejected that same plan. You also fail to mention that on page 26, Bovis claimed that the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan accepted a partition proposal.

Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Wahlid Kahlidi, and Shlomo Ben Ami say that Ben Gurion, Chaim Weizmann, Yigal Allon, & etc. had started planning for the conquest of the whole country in 1937 and used partition proposals as a tactical stepping stone. If you wish to claim that Flapan, et al represent a fringe theory, then Wikipedia policy requires that you document that with reliable sources which report on the level of acceptance within the relevant academic community. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories, Reporting on the levels of acceptance. Flapan, Morris, Shlaim, and a host of others say that the Emir Abdullah and the Jewish Agency had an agreement to partition the country between themselves and that they confided that fact to officials in the US and UK.

When Simha Flapan was writing his book, he was lecturing at Harvard. The research for his book was sponsored by grants from the Ford Foundation and the American Middle East Peace Research Institute. He acknowledged the contributions of a list of research assistants from Harvard's Center for International Affairs (CFIA) and its Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). That list included historians and political scientists who went-on to serve as Governing Faculty of the Oxford University post-graduate schools (Eugene Rogan), and members of the Board of Governors of the Middle East Forum (Joshua Landes). His book contained hundreds of citations to official US and Israeli archival documents that had just been been declassified. These days, the contents of many of those documents can be verified in the online collections of the US State Department Foreign Relations of the United States series. Flapan's book is considered essential reading. It has been cited in textbooks and favorably reviewed in Foreign Affairs Magazine, the Journal of Contemporary History, Alpayim, History and Memory, Publishers Weekly, and the Library Journal to name just a few. harlan (talk) 05:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, if you're not gonna bother reading the sources, or what I write, why do you insist on posting more comments?

1. As I have clearly shown, beyond any doubt, the point about Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection can be found in a great multitude of sources. Basically any history book. I'm not going to bother citing more and more people repeating the same point; you're free to go to Google books and search for it yourself.
2. We're discussing the 1947 UN partition plan. In p.40 Bovis discusses the Morrison-Grady plan, rejected by both sides. There he mentions that the Arabs rejected partition on principle.
3. Again, diversionary tactics from you - "Emir Abdullah of Transjordan accepted a partition proposal." - yes, "a" partition plan (reportedly accepted, but didn't say so publicly) . The 1937 Peel plan, not the 1947 UN plan we're discussing.
4. The people you're citing are the "new historians", notable for saying the opposite of mainstream historians. Even your claim here isn't that the Jews didn't accept, but that they, perhaps, also had other plans. Shlaim is a good example of how to misquote or quote out of context, by the way. Flappan wasn't a nobody, but his claims weren't really accepted.

That's quite enough. I'm not going to argue with you when you don't read the sources, don't understand them, or intentionally misrepresent them. okedem (talk) 17:32, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

No it is not "quite enough". It falls way short of complying with the relevant sanctions. You came to this article making WP:Battle-style comments about "making Jews look bad". Then you started making edits that are intended to make it appear that Wikipedia endorses one particular viewpoint. You removed sourced content that represents a significant body of opposing viewpoints, and now you are attempting to carry-on a filibuster rather than simply comply with the relevant ARBCOM sanctions that have been brought to your attention.

The "New Historians" cite documentary evidence about the 1947 Jewish Agency modis vivendi agreement with Abdullah. Much of that material is found in the Foreign Relations of the United States and it is third-party verifiable. You can't delete Simha Flapan's views by simply making the disputed assertion that he and other leading historians represent a fringe viewpoint, or that their views aren't accepted. Notwithstanding the fact that Flapan has been dead for thirty years, Google Scholar indicates that he is still cited in more academic sources than some of the works you are using in this article. The "New Historians" and "Critical Sociologists" are definitely mainstream scholars. Their views are reflected in most standard Middle East Studies textbooks. harlan (talk) 20:59, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

And of course, again, you fail to acknowledges your very false claims above, regarding Bovis, etc.

And seriously, if anyone here is filibustering, it's certainly not me. Have you looked at the length of your comments lately? Do you realize how many irrelevant sources you cite? (Obviously not). The "Jews accepted, Arabs rejected" is the mainstream view, as I have shown. The very fact that the people who (partly) disagree are known as one group ("new historians") seems to indicate their out-of-mainstream position. About Abdallah etc, you might do well to read Karsh's paper on the topic, explaining the weakness (and downright non-existence) of evidence of this claim. okedem (talk) 07:46, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

As I have said before, there is no need for a lengthy discussion of this issue in this article, but if Okedem insists on placing the "Jews accepted, Arabs rejected" narrative here as an uncontested POV, we are obliged to present the other POV. The New Historians are not putting forward an "out-of-mainstream position". Their scholarship is based on recently declassified documents that were unavailable to earlier historians and represent a significant POV with an ever growing number of adherents. Per NPOV, we are obliged to represent all significant viewpoints on a given issue. Though I'd prefer in this case that we avoid this subject altogether in this article and leave extended discussions to other articles such as the partition plan article itself. Tiamut^talk 08:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

As I've explained before, if you mention the partition plan, you have to mention the reactions to it; to just mention it, and then say "only the Jewish state materialized" clearly implies to the reader that it was because of the Jews, whereas the reality is vastly different.

The New Historians are not, despite popular claims, basing their work on anything new, nor do they have any meaningfully new interpretations. Their work mostly involves taking quotes out of context (e.g. Shlaim) to "prove" provocative claims.

We need to mention all significant viewpoint on a subject in the article about the subject, not in every article where is it mentioned. In those, we need only mention the prevailing point of view. In this matter, the contested point is actually only a small part of the issue - basically no one contests the fact that the Arabs overwhelmingly rejected the plan, from the Arab Higher Committee in Palestine, to the Arab League; naturally, one might find individual Arabs who agreed to partition in principle, or even to the 1947 plan, but those were a very small minority. Now, no one contests the fact that the Jewish leadership's response to the plan was a strong 'yes'. The new historians claim the Jews publicly accepted, but privately had other plans. Their main thesis is that even had the Arabs accepted the plan, the Jews wouldn't have let it come to fruition. However, that is basically crystal-balling; no one knows for sure what would have happened had the Arabs accepted the plan, and all of the Jews' actions after the plan's acceptance in the UN were taken in light of Arab rejection, and so are irrelevant to the discussion. okedem (talk) 14:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Okedem Flapan said it was a myth that Jewish leaders accepted the plan and a myth that Arabs rejected the plan and prepared for war. That is the statement that you deleted. Jordan was an Arab state and Abdullah was an Arab Leader with plenty of Palestinian citizens. The notion that no Arab state emerged is a POV not shared by President Truman. He viewed Israel and Jordan as twin emergent states and sided with Abdullah on the need for Israel to offer territorial concessions during the Lausanne conference. The US did not oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, just the establishment of a Mufti-led regime.

Tiamat is correct, but the answer is to link to the subsection of the main article partition plan, where the material on various reactions to the partition plan is located, and briefly summarize that material here in this article. In any case Wikipedia describes positions, but it does not endorse them.

• If Daniel Pipes and Efraim Karsh are publishing articles that are critical of the New Historians, then they obviously believe that their works are notable. Mainstream historians, like L. Carl Brown, criticized Karsh and others who claimed that the new historians' "point of departure was political and moralistic rather than academic." According to Brown, "One would have thought that orthodoxy and heterodoxy share politicizing and moralizing about equally." See State of Grace? Rethinking Israel's Founding Myths in Foreign Affairs [4]

• The fact is that the textbook divisions of Routledge, Cambridge University, and MacMillan-Palgrave offer a number of products by Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, Benny Morris, and etc. (which cite Simha Flapan's "Myths and Realities"). That is a clear indication of the acceptance of their views by mainstream groups and academics outside Israel that are independent of their theories.

• Elie Podeh has written articles that appeared in the Journal History and Memory, and a book length treatment of "The Arab-Israeli conflict in Israeli history textbooks, 1948-2000" [5] which illustrated that views of the New Historians and Critical Sociologists had been incorporated in Israeli textbooks.

• Ethan Bonner has worked as the Jerusalem corespondent for the Boston Globe, Reuters, and the New York Times. He also served as the Education Editor for the New York Times. He wrote about the adoption of textbooks containing the views of the New Historians and said that Israel's State archives contain clear evidence of double deals, schemes to transfer Arabs out of the country and rebuffed gestures of peace by the Arab states. Bonner said Morris book was a first-class work of history, bringing together the latest scholarship and that there is no question that Shlaim presented compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history. See Israel: The Revised Edition [6] harlan (talk) 15:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

• The official historians at the State Department have published collections of declassified files which include memos from Secretary George Marshall and Undersecretaries Rusk, and Lovett regarding their conversations with Shertok, Epstein, and Rabbi Weiss prior to the termination of the Mandate. Those conversations outlined a modus vivendi agreement with Abdullah and the contacts that had occurred between the Haganah and British-led Arab Legion officials to partition Palestine between them. There are also cables from Transjordan and Saudi Arabia, prior to Dier Yassin, which said they told the other members of the Arab League they considered partition to be an internal civil matter, and that the League should avoid taking any action the Security Council might consider aggression. Those cables and memos are cited and analyzed by Flapan, Rogan, Morris, Uri Bar-Joseph, & etc. but Karsh does not mention or explain them. harlan (talk) 15:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

It's hard to discuss anything with you, when you make clearly false claims, and then refuse to acknowledge them. It's okay to make a mistake, to misinterpret something, but when it's shown that you're wrong, you do need to accept that.

I never said the new historians aren't notable. Sure they are; that's why we have articles about them. Some of their claims (mostly rehashed from what "old" historians said - they actually bring very little new to the table, claiming to shatter myths, but just repeating well known things) are quite accepted. However, the claims regarding partition are not mainstream by a long shot, and, as I said, are irrelevant to our point. Perhaps the Jews planned to take over the entire land, but we'll never know what would have happened, because the Arabs rejected the idea of partition in general, and the 1947 plan in particular. The question isn't what they thought amongst themselves, but what they declared, and what they did. Abdallah may have supported partition at some time, but he came out against the 1947 plan, along with all other Arab leaders. I don't care what he felt deep down, but what he actually said - "NO". Like everyone else, he rejected it. So the Palestinians can try to console themselves for their colossal mistake but telling themselves that even had they accepted it wouldn't have helped, but this is what we call "unknowable", and is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

And I say again - Shlaim basically quotes things out of context, to ascribe the wrong meaning to them, sometimes one entirely opposite to the actual meaning.

I have shown a very large variety of sources, using the simple and factual "Jews accepted, Arabs rejected" description of events. This is purely factual - a plan passed in the UN, the Jews said "Yes", the Arabs said "No". That's "accepted", and "rejected".

Oh, and I find it highly amusing that you basically adopt the view of the Israeli far-right - "There's no need for a Palestinian state - Jordan is the Palestinian state"... okedem (talk) 17:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) If you'd stop deleting sourced material, and then spouting off your unpublished views as the sole justification, you would not have to discuss anything with me.

I don't adopt the views of the Israeli far right. The partition plan was developed when the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods system, and the General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs were still being implemented. The UNSCOP majority report included a plan for economic union and revenue redistribution because the partition plan gave most of the revenue producing land to the Jewish State. UNSCOP said the proposed Arab State would not be economically viable unless the Jewish State returned a portion of the revenues from its Arab-owned lands. There was no back-up plan in place when the Economic Union and Economic Commission failed to materialize. That is why the US and the UN Mediator recommended a union which included all of the Arab portions of the former mandate, including Transjordan.

The article explains that some of the leaders of Central Palestine declared Abdullah the King of Arab Palestine, and that they subsequently formed a joint Kingdom and union with Transjordan. That union was legally recognized by other states. In 1988 the parties concerned chose to dissolve the union and planned for possible confederation. Palestine is a party to several free trade agreements, and globalization has rendered political union with other states unnecessary. harlan (talk) 18:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Enough with the evasion tactics. Every time one of your false claims is called out, you jump to another topic, never acknowledging error, never conceding a point, always throwing more and more irrelevant points. The interpretation that an Arab state was created is your interpretation, and is OR. The rest of the world is aware of the fact that the partition plan called for an independent Arab state in Cisjordan, separate from Transjordan, and no such thing was ever created. This point is extremely trivial and well known. What you're trying to do is advance your personal fringe interpretation of events, making a mockery of Wikipedia, and destroying whatever little credibility we have left. As everyone acknowledges, no Palestinian State exists, and none has ever existed (see, for example, Fayyad's plans to establish a state in two years). Again I'm not going to bother citing the great multitude of sources for this; you can go to google books and search for yourself (just a few: "Israel and Palestine: Peace Plans and Proposals from Oslo to Disengagement" by Galia Golan; "Jews and Muslims in the Arab world: haunted by pasts real and imagined" by Jacob Lassner, Selwyn Ilan Troen; "The Palestine Yearbook of International Law 1989" by Anis F. Kassim). Whatever legal arrangement existed in the West Bank after 1948-9, it's painfully clear it was not a state. The most "state-like" entity was the All-Palestine Government, which, at most, had limited jurisdiction in the Gaza Strip alone. okedem (talk) 06:56, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

By the way, Harlan's historical revisionism (with respect to the basic fact that the Arabs rejected the 1947 UN partition plan, while the Jews accepted it) has already generated hundreds of thousands of bytes of tiresome tedious discussions on Talk:United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine... AnonMoos (talk) 07:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I had no doubt I wasn't the only one enjoying these trips into the parallel universe. okedem (talk) 07:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

We could fill a stadium. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 10:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi guys when you get tired of assuming bad faith, and making personal attacks here and elsewhere, I hope you can find time to discuss the evidence which establishes your contentions that the sources I'm citing are actually out-of-the-mainstream and fringe theories. I'm not trying to fill a stadium, I'm trying to add these viewpoints to those that are in the section about the partition plan:

• "Simha Flapan said it was a myth that Zionists accepted the UN partition and planned for peace, and it was also a myth that Arabs rejected partition and launched a war. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, by Simha Flapan, Pantheon, 1988, ISBN 0-679-72098-7, Myth One pages 13-54, Myth Two pages 55-80.
• James Crawford said Israel was created by the use of force, without the consent of any previous sovereign and without complying with the partition plan. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, and Stefan Talmon, eds., The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) 108
• According to Clea Bunch, President Truman viewed Israel and Jordan as twin emergent states. Clea Lutz Bunch, "Balancing Acts: Jordan and the United States during the Johnson Administration," Canadian Journal of History 41.3 (2006)

Wikipedia:ARBPIA actually says that editors are not supposed to engage in sustained editorial conflict or unbridled criticism across different forums. harlan (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Simha Flapan said. Good for him. Unfortunately, we're not discussing the Jews' plans, but their actual response - 'Yes' or 'No'. They said 'Yes'. The Arabs, despite whatever claims you make, said 'No', both to partition in general, and to the 1947 plan.

Crawford - inane. Obviously it wasn't in full agreement with the plan (e.g. the different borders), but the plan became defunct when the Arabs rejected it, and launched a war (with the secretary of the Arab League saying their invading armies will commit a massacre like those of Genghis Khan). The Jews had to act accordingly to get a state; they clearly couldn't still go with a plan that called for two choke-points in their country, with an "economic union" with people who state their desire to slaughter them.

Truman - okay, so he saw it that way. And? How is that relevant to anything? Of course both Israel and Jordan emerged. But the Arab state, the independent Arab state in Palestine, outlined in the partition plan, was never created. okedem (talk) 14:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with okedem. With all due respect to Flapan's interpretation of the parties' motives (which I have may doubts are in the "mainstream"), their actual responses are a matter of public record. I'm pretty sure you're aware of this. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 15:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The article includes numerous inaccuracies, and I supplied sources for my correction. Deleting them is not in line with Wikipedia's policy. Furthermore, the infobox brings data about the Palestinian Authority, not about the State of Palestine, so it should be presented as such. 109.64.46.100 (talk) 09:47, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

James Crawford's "Creation of States" 2nd Edition includes a reprint of an essay that originally appeared in 1999 as "Chapter 5 Israel (1948-1949) and Palestine (1998-1999): Two Studies in the Creation of States, Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, and Stefan Talmon, eds., The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) page 95-124

In the 2004 Wall case, the interested state parties raised a jurisdictional objection regarding the OPT. They claimed that the case was really a dispute between two states. They tried to make a case for inadmissibility on the ground that Israel had not consented to have the dispute settled by the Court. Crawford said that, although the premise had been cited against the Court answering the request, properly understood it supported the court doing so. See item "(5) This is a dispute between two States: the principle of consent" under the heading "B. Specific arguments related to the OPT: the case for admissibility" on pages 37-38 of Crawford's oral argument.[7].

The article cites a comment from a book review, written by Robert McCorquodale, not James Crawford. Here is the snipped part:James Crawford is also of the view that Palestine (like Taiwan) is not a state, but that the right of self-determination applies to its people.<ref name=EJIL18>{{cite journal|title=James Crawford. The Creation of States in International Law. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2nd edition, 2006 . Pp. 70. £80 , € 116.58 (hb).ISBN 0198260028|url=http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/18/4/776.pdfjournal=European Journal of International Law|date=2007|page=777}}</ref>

harlan (talk) 06:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Prof. Crawford says explicitly that Israel is a state and Palestine is not. He also says explicitly that the British Mandate for Palestine was not a state. Crawford pleaded for the Palestinian side before ICJ and said: "The people of

Palestine have an unfulfilled right to self-determination". The book review that you refer to says explicitly that Crawford determined that Palestine and Taiwan are not states, but the Palestinians and Taiwanese have the right for self determination. In his articles (to which you offer reference) Crawford says statehood and right of self-determination are not the same thing (he even says that realization of self-determination does not have to be in the form of a state, and there is no guarantee that the Palestinian choose this way to realize their right). Crawford pleaded against the West Bank barrier, and he was very clear about the basis of his claims. He says Israel cannot build facts on the ground that compromise the Palestinian possibility to realize their self determination's right in the future (read pp. 34-35 of the minutes you linked to). Israel claims that the barrier was build to protect Israeli citizens. Crawford reject this claim, saying the barrier is meant (in his opinion) to unilaterally determine Israel's borders, but he is quite clear about the non-existence of a state called Palestine. 109.67.5.74 (talk) 08:30, 10 May 2010 (UTC)