Talk:United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine

Fairness

Wiki says:

"...it gave the majority of the land (56%) to the Jews, who at that stage legally owned only 7% of it, and remained a minority of the population.[87] Mehran Kamrava also notes the disproportionate allocation under the plan, and adds that the area under Jewish control contained 45 percent of the Palestinian population. The proposed Arab state was only given 45% of the land, much of which was unfit for agriculture. Jaffa, though geographically separated, was to be part of the Arab state.[87] Eugene Bovis says that the Jewish leadership had rejected an earlier partition proposal because they felt it didn't allocate enough territory to the proposed Jewish state.[88]"

- - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.225.227 (talk) 21:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

But Half of Israel was/is the Negev Desert. How can Palestinians complain about cultivability! and 2/3 of what became Israel was State Land. The above quotation the usual MISLEADING red hering "7%"

"...Once again Philip Mattar was featured, repeating some of the same falsehoods he had uttered in the previous segment:

""""The Jews were being offered 55% of Palestine when in fact they had owned only 7% of the country. Four-hundred-fifty thousand Palestinians were going to end up within the Jewish state, and they did not see any reason why they should go along with that kind of inequality, that kind of injustice."""

Mattar's clear, and false, implication is that if Jews owned only some small percentage of the land, then Arabs must have owned the rest, in this case more than 93% of the country.

- But this is nonsense – in Mandate Palestine the Arabs owned little more land than did the Jews. Indeed, going back to Ottoman times, most of the country was state-owned land, not under any individual ownership. Thus, under the Ottoman code one of the main land categories was miri, meaning land belonging to the Emir. During the Mandate, the British carried out detailed land surveys, marking off who owned what, and according to figures in the British Survey of Palestine (republished and endorsed by Mattar's Institute for Palestine Studies), at least 65% of the country was state land, and probably much more than that...

- http://blogspot.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=28&x_article=291 - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.66.225.227 (talk) 21:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Decisions refer to UN resolutions

Judge Elias said that it was clear that the recommendations contained in General Assembly resolutions regarding the matters mentioned in Article 18(2) become binding decisions once they are adopted by two-thirds of the members, and that other important decisions are decided by a simple majority according to article 18(3). Judge Hersh Lauterpacht makes the very same argument in the opinion he wrote for the Jewish Agency regarding this resolution that is cited in article. Both men said the decision was binding on the UN organization as a whole.

The UN Charter does not mention resolutions. It mentions decisions and recommendations. Hersh Lauterpacht said this resolution was a decision, a determination, a proclamation, and that the General Assembly was "entitled to decree the contested legal issues involved in partition" without asking for an Opinion of the International Court of Justice.

A lawyer by profession, Tzipi Livni received her law degree from Bar-Ilan University. She also describes the resolution as a decree and decision:

"True, there is a national conflict between us, whose just resolution is to give expression to the national aspirations of each of the nations in its own state. This is exactly the principle determined 60 years ago, after years of bloodshed between the residents of this country - the principle of two states for two peoples: one - a Jewish state, as decreed by the UN resolution, and the other - an Arab state.

The decision to establish the State of Israel alongside an Arab state was meant to provide a response to the past conflict; it is not what created the present conflict. The decision did not determine who was more in the right, but rather what would lead to a life of peace between the peoples. [1]

There are more than enough published sources that explain the use of the term decision. harlan (talk) 03:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Whatever -- it was largely a "decision" to propose a potential possible agreement to the two sides. Since one of the sides rejected the agreement (in fact vehemently spurning and scorning it with abundant vituperative contumely), the great majority of the provisions of the proposed agreement never came into force. Anything else would raise the spectre of "double dipping", "taking two bites at the apple", "having your cake and eating it too", or whatever else you want to call it. AnonMoos (talk) 03:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't "vituperative contumely" redundant? Is there any contumely that is not vituperative? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.231.243.155 (talk) 22:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's not really a good thing, but sometimes I rhetorically pile on semi-redundant thesaurus quasi-synonyms in a sarcastic manner when people seem to me to be somewhat perversely denying the obvious (in another discussion, I once used the phrase "marital matrimonial nuptial conjugal connubial hymeneal epithalamial symbolism" )... AnonMoos (talk) 04:30, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Was bold

It was really a standing embarrassment that 1948 Arab–Israeli War had a clearer overall summary of the main issues and events of the partition plan in less than a tenth of the space which this article takes up, so I applied some radical surgery to the lead section at the top (moving some extended material less directly relevant to a quick understanding of the main issues down to other sections below in the article). AnonMoos (talk) 16:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Removed from Lede for discussion - NPOV

The article cites a number of opposing viewpoints from reliable sources which say that this statement is a myth perpetuated by Zionists. It doesn't belong in the lede. Please attribute it as an opinion and cite your sources in the future.

The proposed plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, through the Jewish Agency. However, the plan was rejected by leaders of the Arab community (the Palestine Arab Higher Committee etc.), who were supported in their rejection by the states of the Arab League.

harlan (talk) 04:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I can support some of it from sources. Now you are not questioning that the Jews accepted and the Arabs did not, are you? Because there are infinite number of sources for that. Just so we understand. You are questioning the Jewish Agency , the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League?

• "More forthrightly the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine on February 6, 1948, stated that "any attempt by the Jews or any other power or group of powers to establish a Jewish state in Arab territory is an act of oppression, which will be resisted in self-defense by force." Also on page 393 of this same source:"The Zionists, somewhat reluctantly, accepted the majority plan." If I recall aright, the Arabs walked out.

REF: The MIddle East in World Affairs, George Lenczowski, Cornell University Press ,1962 page 396. quoting from Larry L Leonard "The United Nations and Palestine' International Conciliation Oct, 1949 Stellarkid (talk) 05:19, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

"Just as the Palestinian Arab leaders had rejected the Peel Commisions similar proposal ten years before, their political leadership, the Arab Higher Committee, rejected these proposals for an Arab and a Jewish State. The Jewish Agency, however, accepted the UNSCOP proposals subject to further discussions on the actual boundary lines, even though the new plan would keep a quarter of the Jews of Palestine outside the area of Jewish statehood. " pg 149 Martin Gilbert's Israel Stellarkid (talk) 05:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Stellarkid, if there are an infinite number of sources, then you should have no trouble attributing the opinion to one of them. Here is an example of opposing viewpoints from the article:

Mehran Kamrava says Israeli sources often cite Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection of the U.N. partition plan as an example of the Zionists' desire for peaceful diplomacy and the Arabs' determination to wage war on the Jews. But he notes that more recent documentary analysis and interpretation of events leading up to and following the creation of the state of Israel fundamentally challenged many of the "myths" of what had actually happened in 1947 and 1948."[77] Simha Flapan wrote that it was a myth that Zionists accepted the UN partition and planned for peace, and that it was also a myth that Arabs rejected partition and launched a war.[78]

harlan (talk) 06:37, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, Harlan, you were unclear as to just what you considered a myth. And in fact, I did put up a quote from George Lenczowski saying just that. page 393 "The Zionists, somewhat reluctantly, accepted the majority plan." This is not an Israeli source but a college text. But since you challenged me, here are a few more you can see for yourself. No myth. Just the facts. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine by Sami Hadawi Pg 77-Internation history of the twentieth century and beyond. Antony Best pg 120-The Israel-Palestine conflict: one hundred years of war -- James Gelvin page 128-- As for the Zionists planning for peace, I seriously doubt anyone believed that. They were not fools after all. btw, will you now revert your removal? If you do, I will add these sources tomorrow. Stellarkid (talk) 07:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. I'm not going to revert the removal, because Wikipedia neither endorses nor rejects a particular point of view. This statement shouldn't have been presented in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia writer. It can go in the article, of course, but needs to be presented as an opinion of one of the persons or groups who subscribe to the view. harlan (talk) 09:17, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I restored the information. Since it appears in the article it is appropriate to summarize it in the lead. See WP:LEAD. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 09:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The article also contains the views of Kamrava and Flapan mentioned above. You cannot intentionally use the neutral voice of the encyclopedia to reject a viewpoint, while characterizing your edit as summarizing the article's contents per WP:LEAD. harlan (talk) 10:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Assuming your two sources are not FRINGE (haven't had the time to inspect them thoroughly, although it seems Kamraya isn't specifically saying what you think he's specifically saying), feel free to add them to the lead rather than remove information you don't like. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 10:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

NMMNG is right-on. It doesn't say what Harlan says it says and should be removed as introducing an element of doubt that is not appropriate, in fact just wrong. He states "the Zionists, who quickly accepted it, but was rejected by the outraged Palestinians." (pg 79) and "The Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection of the UN Partition Plan became the subject of great historical controversy, often cited by subsequent Israelis sources as an example of the Zionists' desire for peaceful diplomacy and the Arabs' determination to wage war on the Jews." (pg 81) All he is calling a myth is the one that Arabs were determined to wage war (which Lenczowski above puts the lie to: "the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine on February 6, 1948, stated that "any attempt by the Jews or any other power or group of powers to establish a Jewish state in Arab territory is an act of oppression, which will be resisted in self-defense by force") and that the Zionists "desired peaceful diplomacy". Most historians agree that the Zionists were realists and well aware that they had best ready themselves for war. This is the classic Straw man argument, first by Kamrava, and a further step removed when presented here by you. [2]Stellarkid (talk) 16:00, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

We've already discussed this issue before. The article contains a section which explains that many sources, including Ben Gurion, Flapan, Morris, Khalidi, Ben Ami, say the Jewish leadership's acceptance was merely pragmatic and part of a tactical plan to take control of the entire territory. I've restored the Ben Gurion material and added Morris, Ben Ami, and Kalidis analysis.

Kamrava introduces the element of doubt himself by quoting Flapan and saying that between December 1947 and May of 1948 the state of Palestine was extinguished, and a new country, the state of Israel, was created in its place. The UN Plan for the Future Government of Palestine didn't call for Palestine to be extinguished, or for Israel to take its place. harlan (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Arab 1947 rejection

Wikiproject Alternate History logo. Unfortunately, this article discusses history as it actually happened in the real world.

Harlan, it was established at extreme length through many tiresome toilsome troublesome tedious monotonous discussions in the talk page archives for this article that your grounds for your claim that the Arabs somehow supposedly did not reject the UN partition plan simply don't amount to much -- and do not come remotely close to overturning the established consensus of mainstream history accepted by reputable scholars in the field. Not even you dare to deny the clear and plain fact that all Arab and Muslim states in the United Nations in 1947 voted against UNGA 181 on November 29th, 1947 -- something which actually destroys most of your argument before you even start making it. What you have left is a random collection of unimpressive dribs and drabs of things which might speculatively hypothetically have been significant in some science-fictional alternative historical timeline of the Bring the Jubilee type -- but which in actual factual history as it unfolded in the real world which we live in, does not do anything at all to change the fact that in 1947 the Arabs in their official public pronouncements (released by Arab governments, or by the Arab league, or by recognized representative Palestine Arab political structures such as the Arab Higher Committee) uniformly and unanimously REJECTED the UN-proposed partition plan. No furtive sub-rosa covert tactical accommodations between Israel and Abdullah of Transjordan, or private statements by members of the Nashashibi family (consistently on the losing side of internecine political power struggles during the whole 30 years of the British mandate) can do anything to change in the slightest degree this basic reality of Arab official public rejection of the plan.

Therefore any revisions to the introductory section of this article which have the effect of turning historical fact into historical nonsense will simply be reverted on sight until you can come up with something a lot better than anything you've come up with so far -- and your personal abstract hypothetical metaphysical legal-philosophical introspective meditative speculations on primary source documents are not very relevant, no matter how much you increase their word count. AnonMoos (talk) 11:44, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be worth mentioning:

• Partition was recommended because the Jewish leaders wouldn't accept any other kind of solution, such as a binational one.
• The Jewish leaders wanted partition, but they had no intention of abiding by the proposed territorial allocations. Formally, then, they accepted the plan, but, informally, they didn't (note that most of the fighting in the Arab-Israeli War happened outside the area proposed for a Jewish state).
• Non-mainstream Jewish groups such as the Revisionists were against partition; they wanted a Jewish state in the whole of Palestine.

    ←   ZScarpia   12:02, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

And why did the Jews reject a binational state? In significant part because the treatment of minorities in the surrounding Arab states, and the history of the preceding thirty years of intercommunal relations within the British mandate, persuaded them that they would not receive any kind of tender treatment (not to mention basic rights) if they ever found themselves in the power of Arabs. The Jews remembered very well that the first thing that Iraq did after receiving its "independence" in 1932 was to celebrate by massacring Christians. In the context of 1945-1947, it really would be quite grotesquely bizarre to either expect or demand that Jews would trustingly put themselves into the hands of pro-Nazi war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini (which is what a "binational" state would amount to at that point).

And the whole point about the Jabotinskyites was that the mainstream Palmach-Laborite leadership of the Yishuv was able to restrain them after they went too far (see Altalena incident). Ability to restrain extremists has a lot to do with why Jews got a state there 60 years ago, while Arabs still haven't... AnonMoos (talk) 13:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Formally, the UN Journal says the representative of the Jewish Agency found the exclusion of Western Jerusalem from the Jewish State unacceptable, but he said he would recommend acceptance of the plan (to Vaad Leumi), subject to that and other territorial and constitutional reservations. Israel never adopted a constitution which guarantees equal rights, as required by the Chapter of the resolution on Religious and Minority Rights, and they never accepted the borders for Jerusalem.

I've added a section on the continuing relevance of the resolution. I've never seen anything in Anonmoos posts that will make it off the talk page. He is issuing no edit orders as usual. Perhaps it would be worth mentioning that Anonmoos has never discussed my edits at the Wikipedia Fringe Theory Noticeboard. I'd be happy to discuss his there if he ever publishes the sources. harlan (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan -- your points on the continuing relevance of the resolution (if they actually have any real current legal force, something which is by no means obvious) would mainly further establish the legal legitimacy of Israel, since Israel would seem to have by far the best claim to be the legal successor of the British mandate of Palestine (as discussed at Talk:All-Palestine_Government#Israel_would_seem_to_have_a_much_better_claim_to_be_the_legal_successor_of_the_British_Palestine_mandate_than_anything_on_the_Arab_side). And it's rather pointless of you to loosely toss around semi-random epithets, when you are the king of "original synthesis", continually coming up with new and innovative personal theories to try to explain away certain basic facts of the consensus view of history accepted by mainstream reputable scholars (such as that in 1947 the Arabs REJECTED UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the subject of this article). AnonMoos (talk) 13:49, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos on a number of occasions you have raised the off-topic issue of "the legitimacy of Israel" in articles about the territory allocated for an Arab state in Palestine, and claimed that "Israel would seem to have by far the best claim to be the legal successor of the British mandate of Palestine." But you have never cited any published sources that can be included in the articles. One of the published authorities cited in Whiteman's Digest of Internatioal Law regarding the legal status and disposition of the Palestine Mandate was "Volume V of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, 1956, D.P. O'Connell author, Hersh Lauterpacht editor, The Law of State Succession". Lauterpacht was a legal advisor to the Jewish Agency during the Mandate [3] and advised the People's Council of the Jewish Provisional Government on issues involved in establishing the State of Israel and on the UN Partition Plan. [4] Whiteman cited O'Connell's analysis of the law of state succession in connection with concessions and a case brought by Arab depositors after the termination of the mandate for accounts payable at the Allenby Square Bank in Palestine. In addition, the "Succession of States" cites Palestine in a number of other examples on the law of succession. On pages 10-11 O'Connell explains that Israel denied that it was a successor to any previous government. O'Connell writes that Israel came into existence by its own act and that resolution 181 contained provisions regulating the change of sovereignty which were never implemented. "A conference was held at Tel Aviv in July 1949 between Israel and Great Britain for the purpose of settling disputed questions arising from the change of sove­reignty. There was not, it was alleged, an organized substitution of one State for another to which rules of international law would apply. Israel came into existence by its own act and exercised sovereignty without having, it transferred from any predecessor." On page 178 O'Connell said that "Article 28 of the Mandate and the UN resolution of 29 November 1947 provided that the successor government that followed the mandatory administration should honor the treaties and financial obligations incurred by the mandatory during the period of the mandate. However at a conference convened in Tel Aviv on 4 July 1949 Israel said that it regarded itself in no sense a successor of the Palestine administration." harlan (talk) 00:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

You're right -- I don't have any sources for this particular point. I merely checked off some of the criteria mentioned at Succession of states with respect to both Israel and the various shifting entities on the Arab side (i.e. the "All-Palestine Government" -- which was not a government, existed only on a tiny fraction of Palestine, and lasted only ten years before even Nasser grew tired of it and unilaterally abolished it -- the Transjordanian annexation of the West Bank, recognized by very few other countries, etc. etc.) and drew my own conclusions. The point of the exercise was not to formulate any inventive personal theories of my own, but rather to simply come up with a pointed skeptical question exposing some of the weaknesses of your baroque hyper-elaborated spinning of abstract metaphysical hypothetical speculative personal theories. For my method of using simple skeptical questions to cut through elaborate nonsense, refer back to my remarks of "12:25, 19 April 2010"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:00, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Who says the AHC was the Palestinian leadership? Sandra Berliant Kadosh analyzed United States policy toward the West Bank in 1948, based largely on the Foreign Relations Documents of the United States. She noted that the US government believed that the most satisfactory solution regarding the disposition of the greater part of Arab Palestine would be incorporation in Transjordan and that the State Department approved the Principle underlying the Jericho resolutions. Kadosh said that the Jericho delegates claimed to represent 90 percent of the population, and that they ridiculed the AHC Gaza government. They asserted that it represented only its eighty-odd members. See United States Policy toward the West Bank in 1948, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 1984), pp. 231-252.

The United States refused to recognize the AHC government because it was setup without consulting the wishes of the Palestinian people. This article already says: harlan (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

During an Arab League Political Committee meeting in February 1948, the Mufti, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni asked for control of all affairs in Palestine. The Political Committee rejected all of his proposals on the basis that the Arab Higher Committee did not represent the Palestinian people. The Leagues' affairs were handled through its own Palestine Council, not through the Mufti or the AHC.

The Arab Higher Committee was not a real "government", and I don't know of anybody who has ever seriously argued that it was a real government. However, the most directly-involved external parties (i.e. Britain, the United Nations, and the Arab League) treated it as a channel of communications which was at least somewhat useful for the purpose of conveying whether the Palestinian Arab leadership wished to accept or reject the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. If the Husseini faction was not truly representative of Palestinian Arab public opinion, then something needed to be done about that in 1947 or 1948 (hell, things might have turned out a whole lot better all around if the British had just refrained from appointing him Mufti of Jerusalem way back in 1917 1921!), because it's extremely pointless and useless for us to try to imaginatively construct hypothetical speculative retroactive opinion polls here in 2010. In any case, denigrating the Arab Higher Committee does very little to provide any evidence for your so-far unsupported claims, because what you really would need to find is public open pronouncements between November 1947 and May 1948 accepting UN General Assembly resolution 181 of November 29, 1947 issued by a Palestinian Arab representative body of comparable recognized status to the Arab Higher Committee. Good luck looking for it, because all indications are that it doesn't exist! (And low-voiced private mutterings by members of the Nashashibi family don't count.) AnonMoos (talk) 18:49, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Take an arbitrary break

Another Strawman, and fringe theory, by Harlan. If you think the AHC did not represent the Palestinians, I suggest you go edit the Arab Higher Committee article with the appropriate RS. Stellarkid (talk) 16:08, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Stellarkid, Anonmoos is citing a reference to the Arab resistance in a Britannica article by Ian J. Bickerton. This partition plan article currently cites "A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,(4th Edition), Ian J. Bickerton, and Carla L. Klausner, Prentice Hall, 2001, ISBN 0-13-090303-5, page 88, which says that few Palestinians joined the Arab Liberation Army because they suspected that the other Arab States did not plan on an independent Palestinian state. Bickerton says for that reason many Palestinians favored partition and indicated a willingness to live alongside a Jewish state. It also cites Chaim Weizmann and the Egyptian UN representative who both stated that the neighboring Arab States had no legal standing to represent or interfere in Palestinian affairs.

This article currently sites the material from "Politics in Palestine: Arab factionalism and social disintegration, 1939-1948", By Issa Khalaf, University of New York Press, 1991,ISBN 0-7914-0708-X, page 290, which says the Arab League did not think the AHC represented the Palestinian people and Secretary Lovett's memo from the FRUS which says the AHC government had been setup without consulting the wishes of the Palestinian people. Sandra Berliant also cited that assessment - 'Foreign relations of the United States, 1948. The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V, Part 2, page 1448 [5]

The State of Palestine article cites Sandra Berliant Kadosh's article from the Journal of Jewish Social Studies which says the AHC Gaza government only represented its eighty odd members. The All-Palestine government article is based upon an account by Avi Shlaim, which said it had no popular support, and that it was just a feeble attempt to counter King Abdullah.

John Baggot Glubb, the commander of the Arab Legion, wrote in "A Soldier With The Arabs", Harper New York, 1957, pages 63-66 that British Foreign Secretary Bevin had given the green light for the Arab Legion to occupy the territory allocated to the Arab state. The Prime Minister of Transjordan explained that Abdullah had received hundreds of petitions from Palestinian notables requesting protection upon the withdrawal of the British forces. Eugene Rogan says that those petitions, from nearly every town and village in Palestine, are preserved in "The Hashemite Documents: The Papers of Abdullah bin al-Husayn, volume V: Palestine 1948 (Amman 1995)". see Chapter 5, Jordan and 1948, in "The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948", By Eugene L. Rogan, and Avi Shlaim, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Avi Plascov says that Abdullah contacted the Nashashibi opposition, local mayors, mukhars, those opposed to the Husaynis, and opposition members of the AHC. Plascov said that the Palestinian Congresses were conducted in accordance with prevailing Arab custom. He also said that contrary to the widely held belief outside Jordan the representatives did reflect the feelings of a large segment of the population. See "The Palestinian Refugees In Jordan 1948-1957, Routledge, 1981, ISBN 0-7146-3120-5, pages 11-16

Joseph Massad said that the United States had formally recognized the annexation, except for Jerusalem. See Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001),ISBN 0-231-12323-X, page 229 and in 1978 the State Department Historian published a memorandum in which the US stated that the union of Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the will of the people, and that the US accepted the fact that Jordanian sovereignty had been extended to the new area. See Foreign relations of the United States, 1950. The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V (1950), Page 921

If you want to challenge those sources at the Fringe Theory Noticeboard be my guest. harlan (talk) 18:00, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Your method of argument seems to be throw out as much stuff as you can and hope that some of it sticks. Much of the above has zero to do with the issue under consideration. Eg, whether the United States accepted or did not accept Jordanian sovereignty, whether or not there were letters documenting that "Palestinian notables" had written letters asking for protection etc. As I said this theory belongs first and foremost at the Arab Higher Committee article. It is not for us to argue that the Palestinian Arabs did in fact accept this partition. That is revisionist history, and not a case appropriate to be made at this article. It is certainly true that the Palestinian Arabs would have liked to have had control of the area but they were not in a position to maintain it militarily against the greater force of Jordan and/or the Arab League. Was there a contingent that argued for it? I don't know, maybe. However, Best says (p. 120)

"The Arabs, who had earlier decided to boycott the UNSCOP inquiry, rejected both proposals. These decisions ultimately deprived the Palestinians [Arabs] of an opportunity to make their case and to influence the debate, as well as the subsequent vote, in the UN General Assembly.... Added to the fact that the Palestinian Arabs held on to their rejectionist position and that neighbouring Arab countries vowed to destroy any Jewish state...." - my bolds

Stellarkid (talk) 19:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Stellarkid, you brought up the topic of keeping related articles in {{sync}}. I am summarizing information contained in this article or articles that are linked to it that isn't reflected in the lede. For example the lede contains an unsourced statement that says "During their withdrawal, the British refused to hand over territory or authority to any successor." Baggot Glub said that Bevin okayed the use of the Arab Legion to take control of the territory set aside for the Arab State. The Arab Legion had been routinely employed for law enforcement inside Palestine during the mandate.

The lede also contains the unsourced statement "five Arab armies crossed into the former Mandate as the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.", but does not mention that Israeli militias had crossed into the territory of the Arab state during the transition period. Glubb, Rogan, Morris, Khalidi, and a host of others have published accounts based upon the UN Security Council records, the documents in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, and the Israeli State archives which indicate that the neighboring Arab states were coming to the aid of Palestinians on account of atrocities and ethnic cleansing operations that were being carried out by the Israeli militias. harlan (talk) 07:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, the boundaries between the British Mandate of Palestine and the surrounding Arab states were international boundaries. Whatever the proposed partition line between the proposed Jewish state under UNGA 181 and the proposed Arab state under UNGA 181 was in 1948, it was not remotely comparable in status to an accepted established international boundary. And the boundaries of the Jewish state under UNGA 181 and the boundaries of the Arab state under UNGA 181 were militarily completely undefendable (partly intentionally so), so if the Jews had not crossed over, then it's probable that they would have been "thrown into the sea" in relatively short order. And finally, it's really pathetically absurd to expect or demand that the Jews of 1948 should treat the UNGA 181 partition lines as sacrosanct, when the Arabs of 1948 were loudly claiming that those same lines had no legal force whatsoever, and were making a parading public show of rejecting UNGA 181 with lofty contempt. AnonMoos (talk) 12:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, if Bickerton felt that such sentiments were truly significant, then he certainly didn't say so in his Encyclopedia Britannica article section. In any case, as I previously said on 24 August 2009 in the talk archives: "Scattered and isolated pockets of moderate sentiment strewn here and there across the landscape cannot sign a treaty or treaty-like agreement -- it takes someone with recognized authority or an official position to sign an agreement, and everybody in 1947-1948 on the Arab side who had recognized authority or official positions unanimously REFUSED to sign UNGA 181." -- AnonMoos (talk) 19:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:55, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos and NMMNG, Ian Bickerton, Wahlid Khalidi, and Rashid Kahlidi are contributors to Encyclopedia Britannica, they are not its editors. This article already contains material from reliable sources which explain that within hours of Israel's admission to the UN, the Arab states and Israel did sign the Lausanne Protocol. It established the partition map from the November 29, 1947 UN resolution as the basis for negotiations. Ahmad Shuqayri, who went on to become head of the PLO, was a member of the Syrian delegation to the Lausanne Conference. harlan (talk) 09:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see your point about the Lusanne conference. That the Arabs agreed to use the partition plan as a basis for negotiations after they lost the war? From the time partition was first proposed in the 1930s, and up until it was obvious they won't be beating Israel militarily, the Arabs completely rejected partition of any kind, including the Partition Plan. This is a fact. Which I'm pretty damn sure you're well aware of. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 12:55, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, we went over Lausanne in the talk page archives. First of all, even if the Arabs had agreed to UNGA 181 in 1949 (which they didn't), that would have done very little to modify the fact that they rejected it when it was actually on the table (in 1947 and early 1948). A lot of things had happened between 1947 and 1949. In any case, as far as I can tell, at Lausanne all aspects of UNGA 181 except the map were disregarded, while the map of UNGA 181 was merely treated as the non-binding starting point for negotiations -- and the parties at Lausanne would have been free to re-draw the map in any way that they chose if they had been able to agree on a final settlement treaty. Of course, the parties at Lausanne didn't come to a final settlement agreement because the Arabs refused to recognize the existence or sovereignty of Israel in any manner whatsoever (except as de facto belligerents whom they refused to directly negotiate with). AnonMoos (talk) 12:58, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Latest round of personal accusations

AnonMoos this conversation needs to move on to resolution. Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Maintain Wikipedia policy say "The policies that apply to articles apply also (if not to the same extent) to talk pages, including Wikipedia's verification, neutral point of view and no original research policies." The article explains that according to Chaim Weizmann, the neighboring Arab states have no legal standing to either represent or to interfere in the affairs of Palestine under the terms of the LoN mandate. The General Assembly has recognized the 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine as being in-line with resolution 181(II) and that it was made in the exercise of an inalienable right. The ICJ affirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to determine their own political status without any outside interference; the right to their territory; and to their State as envisioned in this and other resolutions. That information needs to be summarized in the lede.

You've posted a number of unsourced and unverifiable theories about "second bites of the apple", "the law of the jungle", "dishonest historical Arab propaganda tactics", and completely irrelevant stereotypes about Arabs living in "Egypt and Mashreq countries" that violate Wikipedia's verification, neutral point of view and no original research policies:

• The Arabs rejected UNGA 181, and refused to sign off on the proposed agreement, yet they are supposed to benefit from all its provisions?

• Israel would seem to have a much better claim to be the legal successor of the British Palestine mandate than anything on the Arab side

• Recent_additions harlan (talk) 09:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, none of this would have arisen or ever occurred in the first place if you you would simply STOP TRYING TO CHANGE HISTORY and stop trying to pretend that something which the CONSENSUS OF ALL MAINSTREAM REPUTABLE SCHOLARS IN THE FIELD says happened (the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947) somehow supposedly hypothetically abstractly metaphysically theoretically did not happen.

I'm really not impressed by the substance of your complaints (such as it is), either -- in response to your web of innovative personal theories, and extended original synthesis of introspective speculations, from time to time I ask some simple basic pointed skeptical questions to try to clear through the fog of endless verbiage and rhetoric to get to the heart of the matter, and I certainly criticize your method and style of argument and debate where appropriate. But what I DON'T do, which YOU seem to do fairly often, is resort to sleazy slurs and smears and irrelevant personal attacks, which have no relationship to the issue under discussion, and no relationship to anything which has been previously been said in the discussion. In your remarks directly above, your use of the word "stereotypes" is an attempt to conduct a vicious personal attack on me similar to your past vicious personal attacks on me, but this time using a veiled dog-whistle codeword. It has no absolutely no relationship to the topic of discussion, or anything I said previously, but would appear to spring solely from your desire to sleazily smear and slur me, when you've run out of any ability to substantively reply to the points I've raised.

In any case, it's a little unfortunate for you if some of the pithy colloquial expressions which I use grate on your ears -- but these expressions provide a welcome break from the abstract metaphysical pseudo-philosophico-legal verbiage which you're so font of, and they're often quite relevant to revealing the basic issues being discussed with respect to improving articles. For example, the expressions "double-dipping", "taking two bites at the apple", and "having your cake and eating it too" make no pretensions to being high-falutin' pseudo-legal terminology, but they expose an essential weakness or absurdity in material which you have added to the article (or tried to add to the article) in the past -- namely, that in 1947-48 the Arabs rejected the proposed United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine agreement, and they complied with none of the obligations which would have been binding on them if this UNGA 181 agreement had come into force (such as borders freely open to trade, respecting Jewish holy sites, etc.), yet according to you they are somehow supposedly still entitled to the benefit of all the provisions of the proposed agreement which would have benefited them (if, counterfactually, they had signed off on it)!!! I'm not versed enough in the legal doctrine of "estoppel" etc. to be able to phrase this in correct legal terminology, but dressing it up in legal terminology really wouldn't add anything of substance in exposing the absurdity of what you've been trying to put in the article.

And "law of the jungle withdrawal" is my pithy little expression for something which you've continually evaded and avoided confronting in any manner whatsoever in the past, because it comes close to being a fatal flaw for many of your pet little personal theories -- namely that the British conspicuously refrained from handing over authority or territory to any party when they withdrew in May 1948, and instead made a deliberate decision to let the Jews and Arabs fight for it.

Similarly, over on Talk:All-Palestine Government, I asked a basic simple pointed skeptical question to try to break through your endless floods of abstract rhetorical verbiage, and get to the heart of the matter with respect to some of the material which you were adding or proposing to add to that article. I simply asked you whether you could come up with one meaningful substantive non-speculative non-hypothetical reason why any Arab "legal entity" has a better claim to be the legal successor of the British Mandate of Palestine than Israel does -- since according to most accepted standard criteria governing legal successor-state relationships, Israel would appear to have by far the better claim. Your complete inability to come up with any meaningful relevant cogent substantive answer to most of my simple skeptical questions shows that my simple skeptical questions are serving a purpose with respect to clarifying issues in discussing improvements to the article (and keeping junk off the article!). AnonMoos (talk) 12:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Latest round of dubious additions

Harlan, a lot of water flowed under the bridge between 1937 and 1947, so material about Ben Gurion's attitudes towards a speculative hypothetical idea of partition in 1937 would not appear to have much direct relevance to the actual concrete partition plan in 1947, unless you can present a source which shows there is some real susbtantive relevance -- especially since Ben Gurion was almost certainly influenced by the Peel Plan being the latest thing in the news. AnonMoos (talk) 12:34, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Anonmoos As usual you deleted citations to authorities on the subject, who say there is substantive relevance, and then ask me to present you some such sources. You've introduced a number of flagrantly argumentative statements into the lede and into the article, and this material presents an opposing viewpoint. I'm not going to engage you in a debate (here) over the existence of an "authorized version" of history. So, you can drop the arm waving personal attacks which claim that I'm "rewriting history", along with the claims that this is "beat-up-on-the-Jews material".[6] I'm citing material written by Cambridge and Oxford-trained Zionists with PhDs in History. They are not only discussing a letter that Ben Gurion himself selected for publication, they are discussing his views on partition in the mid-to-late 1940s. It is unlikely that he was talking about the Peel plan, since he and the Zionist Executive had rejected that proposal. In any event Ben Ami reports that he repeated the same remarks in 1946-1947.

• Wahlid Kahlidi wrote "As early as March 1946 Haganah had told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "If you accept the Zionist solution but are unable or unwilling to enforce it, please do not interfere, and we ourselves will secure its implementation." page 10-11 "Plan Dalet Revisited," Journal of Palestine Studies 69 (Fall 1988): 3-70 Plan Dalet Revisited

• Wahlid Kahlidi wrote that partition was simply the first step in Ben Gurion's plan for Palestine. According to Kahlidi, the official Hagganah history says that in the summer of 1937, ten years before the UN Partition plan David Ben Gurion directed the Haganah Commander of Tel Aviv, Elimelech Avnir, to draw up a plan to take over the country after the British withdrawal. See Walid Khalidi, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 5-21, page 7 Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution

• Benny Morris said that both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. See "Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999", by Benny Morris, Knopf, 1999, ISBN: 0679421203, page 138 [7]

• Morris cited a letter that Ben Gurion wrote to his son Amos in 1937 which said that he was in favor of partition because he didn't envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. He said "What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish." He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit the Zionists to settle in the rest of the country and complete the historic task of redeeming the entire land with or without the consent of the Arabs. See Letters to Paula and the Children, David Ben-Gurion, translated by Aubry Hodes, University of Pittsburg Press, 1971, page 153.

• Schlomo Ben Ami writes that 1937 was the same year that the "Field Battalions" under Yitzhak Sadeh wrote the "Avner Plan", which anticipated and laid the groundwork for what would become in 1948, Plan D. It envisioned going far beyond any boundaries contained in the existing partition proposals and planned the conquest of the Galilee, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. See Scars of war, wounds of peace: the Israeli-Arab tragedy, By Shlomo Ben-Ami, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006, ISBN: 019518158, page 17

• Yossi Katz wrote an entire book which said that, after the Jewish Executive rejected the Peel Plan, they staffed hundreds of people to develop a plan of their own. He says the groundwork on the Jewish Agency's 1937 Partition Plan was not an isolated episode. It had long term implications and significant effects on the proposal, advanced by the very same Jewish leaders, to Partition Palestine in the 1940s and on the initial steps taken after the establishment of the State of Israel. See the last chapter "Postscrpt or Prelude?" in "Partner to Partition: The Jewish Agency's Partition Plan in the Mandate Era", Yossi Katz, Routledge, 1998, ISBN-10: 0714644013, pages 177-194

• Shlomo Ben-Ami's material is very relevant to the discussion about "Zionist acceptance of the Partition plan" From See Scars of war, wounds of peace: the Israeli-Arab tragedy, By Shlomo Ben-Ami, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006, ISBN: 019518158, page 34:

"The endorsement of partition along the lines of Resolution 181 by Ben-Gurion was essentially a tactical move. 'Does anybody really think that the original meaning of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and indeed, that of the millenarian yearning of the Jewish people, was not that of establishing a Jewish state in the whole of Eretz-Israel?' he had asked rhetorically in a speech to the People's Council on 22 May 1947. His acceptance: of the principle of partition, he explained a week later, was an attempt to gain time until the Jews were strong enough to fight the Arab majority."

"A week later he pledged to Mapai's Central Committee that the borders of Jewish independence as defined by Resolution 181 were by no means final. It was then that Yigal Allon said ...'the borders of partition cannot be for us the final borders ... the partition plan is a compromise plan that is unjust to the Jews. ... We are entitled to decide our borders according to our defence needs.'"

"The paradox of the winter of 1947 was that the Jews, who accepted Resolution 181 - the Jewish public acclaimed its endorsement by the UN with genuine outbursts of jubilation - were ready and well deployed to face a war should this be the outcome, and the Arabs. who rejected the Resolution out of hand and made no secret of their intention to subvert it, were not at all prepared for war. Ben-Gurion, who upon his appointment as the 'defence minister' of the Jewish Agency in 1946 made it clear that the time had now arrived for 'a showdown of force, a Jewish military showdown, had been for some time meticulously preparing for a war he was convinced, at least ever since the Arab Revolt, was inevitable." harlan (talk) 15:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

So like we've been saying, the Jews accepted it and the Arabs rejected it. Consensus at last. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 15:50, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

There exists also this famous quote from Ben Gurion: "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine " source. While the Zionists went on record to accept the partition, they were intent on breaking it. It's therefore a tad misleading to say the Jews (Zionists to be exact) accepted it. --Dailycare (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That looks like an excellent source. A Reliable Source par-excellence. Thanks for showing us where you get your info. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 15:55, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

NMMNG, It is like we've been saying, it was a myth that the Jews accepted the plan. Ben Ami says they were planning on expanding the borders by force in May of 1947. That was six months before their proposal was adopted, and a year before the partition was supposed to go into effect. There are a range of views on Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection. harlan (talk) 16:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should re-read your own sources. Allow me to quote an example: "The paradox of the winter of 1947 was that the Jews, who accepted Resolution 181 - the Jewish public acclaimed its endorsement by the UN with genuine outbursts of jubilation...". No More Mr Nice Guy (talk)

(outdent) It is much more likely that I'll summarize all of the material including the stuff in your ellipses.

That would be great. Please make sure you actually summarize and not just quote extensively POVs you like in order to give the reader a certain impression. This article is full of that sort of thing. I'll fix it when I have a bit of time. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

---

Harlan, the Jewish Agency (the recognized organization of the Yishuv leadership) did formally offer its acceptance of UNGA 181 (provisionally, conditioned on the Arabs also accepting the plan, of course -- the Jews never offered to be bound by UNGA 181 unilaterally or unconditionally, regardless of whether the Arabs also signed off on the proposed agreement, as you sometimes seem to imply). So any statement to the contrary is either a mistake or an outright lie. And feel free to accuse Ben Gurion of bad faith based on his reactions to the concrete actual formal UNGA 181 proposal in 1947 -- if you can find solid reliable sourced information which leads to such a conclusion. What you CAN'T legitimately do is accuse Ben Gurion of bad faith in 1947 based on his reactions in 1937 to the Peel Plan, since the 1937 Peel Plan was a very speculative hypothetical plan which differed in MANY, MANY ways from the concrete UNGA 181 proposal in 1947, and a lot of things had happened between 1937 and 1947 (to put it mildly). It would really be best to leave 1937 completely out of it, unless you can find a very specific reputable source which states exactly why 1937 should be considered relevant to 1947... AnonMoos (talk) 20:16, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos I'd suggest you cleanup this talk page and take it down a notch. You asked for sources that show a substantial connection between 1937 and 1947, and I've supplied them. It certainly would NOT be best to leave them out. Please read WP:NOEDIT and WP:TEDIOUS "There is no rule on Wikipedia that someone has to get permission from you before they put cited information in an article. Such a rule would clearly contradict Wikipedia:Be bold. There is guidance from ArbCom that removal of statements that are pertinent, sourced reliably, and written in a neutral style constitutes disruption. Instead of removing cited work, you should be questioning uncited information. harlan (talk) 21:10, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Whatever -- any attempt to present reactions to the Peel Plan in 1937 as somehow supposedly being reactions to the very different UNGA 181 plan in 1947 is simply not factually accurate, and I see very little reason for such historical conflation or historical confusion between the situation in 1937 (which was kind of a low point in a number of ways for the project of building a Jewish homeland) vs. the very different historical situation in 1947, unless it's to try to demonize the Jewish leadership of the Yishuv. In fact, I see little reason to include any lengthy references to 1937 in this article at all -- such material should go into articles which directly discuss the events of 1937 (which this article doesn't). Maybe it's really time for you to "take it down a notch" here, since hundreds of kilobytes of often somewhat redundant repetitive discussions here and in the talk page archives for this article have been generated solely by your attempts to deny basic facts of history -- such as that the recognized Jewish leadership in the Palestine Mandate formally offered to accept the proposed agreement in UNGA 181, while the recognized Arab leadership in the Palestine Mandate rejected UNGA 181 (supported in this by the Arab states). This monotonous persistence in historical revisionism is the very definition of "tedium". (It's remarkable how many times you accuse others of violating Wikipedia policies which you yourself are in violation of -- look up "projection".) AnonMoos (talk) 04:40, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I fully agree with the above. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 09:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It's true that the Jewish leadership formally offered to accept, but it is also true that they did not sincerely plan to honour the plan. Not all the sources presented relate to 1937. --Dailycare (talk) 20:44, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If Harlan wants to add such material to the article, then it's his responsibility to make sure that the 1937 material is properly subordinated, de-emphasized, and backgrounded in relation to the 1947 material, as is suitable to the subject matter of this article. I really don't know that it's our duty to try to clean up text written by Harlan in which 1937 and 1947 references are confusingly intertwined and intermingled... AnonMoos (talk) 11:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

How about this: "The plan was rejected by Arabs but tactically accepted by Jewish leaders, who still desired to extend their influence to all of Palestine" in the lead, with a bitmore from this source ((Scars of war, wounds of peace: the Israeli-Arab tragedy, By Shlomo Ben-Ami, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006, ISBN: 019518158, page 34)) in the "Reactions to the Plan" section? --Dailycare (talk) 16:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

No, that's putting someone's claim in the encyclopedia's neutral voice. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 16:45, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Dailycare -- that material could very well go into the body of the article (with slight rephrasing), but in the top section of the article it would seem to place undue emphasis on questioning the motives and honesty of one side only. It kind of implies that the acceptance was merely a complete transparent fraud and sham pretence -- but I really don't think that it was commonly treated that way either by Jews in Palestine or by external parties at the time. The acceptance was "tactical" in a way, but it also demonstrated the reality that the Jews were willing to jump through a number of semi-arbitrary hoops and make various efforts to try to gain a certain degree of international approval, in order to both gain statehood and have that statehood be internationally recognized. The Arabs basically refused to jump through one single hoop. AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

NMMNG (BTW, why not become a "nice guy" again? I don't get your username), it isn't just "someone's claim". Concerning the motives of the Jewish side, they intended to undo the partition (as in fact they did). How about simply saying that the Arabs refused and the Jews "tactically accepted", without further explanation, in the lead? Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 19:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The Jewish leadership in Palestine in 1947 intended to do whatever it took for the Jewish people to thrive and flourish in Palestine, ideally within a separate sovereign state which would receive international recognition. It's somewhat nonsensical to say that they "undid" the November 19th 1947 partition plan, because the partition plan was never "done" in the first place (i.e. never implemented on the ground). As for the Hagana/Palmach crossing over the theoretical 1947 partition lines in 1948, please look up and read my previous comments of "12:47, 19 April 2010" above. It's certainly true that in 1947 some prominent Jews were hoping in private that the partition plan would fail and not be implemented (because it did not meet their aspirations and/or because the partition plan borders were not militarily defensible against hostile Arab armies). However, anything which appears to create the impression that the Jews in 1947 had long-held deep-laid long-term far-reaching Machiavellian aggressive expansionistic plans, or only agreed to accept the partition proposal for the purpose of maliciously sabotaging it later on, would seem to be greatly simplifying a rather complex situation in a rather problematic way. There was only one way for the Jews' good faith in accepting partition to be truly tested -- for the Arabs to also accept partition, so that subsequent events as they unfolded would have shown who was acting in good faith or in bad faith. However, since that didn't actually happen in real life, scenarios about what might have happened remain rather speculative and counterfactually hypothetical, and should not necessarily be given great prominence in this article. AnonMoos (talk) 21:55, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos, are you now writing from sources or your interpretations of them? The source says that the acceptance was a "tactical move". --Dailycare (talk) 19:39, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but a tactical move is not the same thing as a dishonest move, and some of your preferred wording seemed to go a little bit beyond mere tacticality. Why don't we pretty much stick to basic facts in the summary in the lead section at the top of the article, and then delve into more complicated questions of motivations for the actions of the various sides down below in the main body of the article? AnonMoos (talk) 22:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Well the source says "tactically", so if we say "tactically" then I don't frankly see an issue. My preferred wording for the lead is now simply to say: "The plan was rejected by Arab leaders, but tactically accepted by the Jewish side" and then deal with the details lower down. --Dailycare (talk) 14:06, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't dispute at all that the acceptance was in part tactical -- but any use of sweeping broad categorical blanket terms which greatly oversimplify a complex situation should probably be avoided, unless some explanation of the relevant nuances and complexities immediately follows. There were certainly some Jewish Yishuv leaders who were not enthusiastic about the specifics of the 1947 UN partition plan at all, and only agreed with the idea of the Jewish Agency offering a formal acceptance of the plan because they knew ahead of time that the Arabs would refuse it -- for some such individuals, their support for formal acceptance of the plan was rather consciously cynical, since they thought it would put the Arabs in the wrong diplomatically or in terms of world opinion ("See, we Jews are willing to compromise; it's those Arabs who are not willing to compromise!") without committing the Jews to any concrete territorial boundaries (since the partition plan would be rejected by the Arabs and so never come into force). However, it would still be greatly oversimplistic and inaccurate to say that all Jews or Jewish leaders were insincere in support of partition, or were unwilling to support any real compromise. Therefore adding a word to the lead section of the article at the top which would appear to question the motives of one side only, without adding a corresponding explanation of the overall complexities and nuances of the situation in the same place in the article, seems to me to be rather undesirable. AnonMoos (talk) 00:45, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I strongly object to saying the plan was "tactically accepted". That would give UNDUE weight to a claim that so far we have one source for. The body of the article can say "so and so says that the Jews tactically accepted..." etc. But stating it as fact in the lead will just not fly. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 01:00, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

What's your suggestion? You describe how the situation shouldn't be oversimplified, but I'm sure you agree that simply saying that the arabs refused and the jews accepted would be precisely oversimplification. NMMNG, we do have many sources, we're just choosing to use the one we're now discussing. --Dailycare (talk) 20:31, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There's always more to be said and additional context that could be supplied, but not everything can be included in the brief summary in the lead section at the top of the article -- and saying that the Arabs rejected the 1947 partition plan in all their relevant formal public pronouncements in late 1947 and early 1948, while the Jews accepted the 1947 partition plan in all their relevant formal public pronouncements in late 1947 and early 1948, is factually correct, and does not misleadingly leave out details that are necessary to understand the unfolding of the most important events at a basic level. It also does not call into question by implication the motives or honesty of one side only (as adding the word "tactical" without any further qualification or explanation would). AnonMoos (talk) 21:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There's obviously no consensus to change the text and/or add "tactical". Thank you. Next issue. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 11:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Of course it is "someone's claim". You got it from a book. There are other books that say other things. It's a speculative interpretation of motives. You want to the encyclopedia to declare it as fact. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me, but you restored a point of view that was recited in the voice of the encyclopedia, then claimed it is an undisputed fact. You invited me to add to the article if it needed it[8], and then deleted those viewpoints. Every statement in my material was properly attributed to an author right in the text of the article. [9] and [10]

Then we had our good faith discussion which provided proof that each of the authors said the events of 1937 were part of an on-going plan with direct connections to the events of 1947. You subsequently made a lot of edits to the background section and didn't mention any of these authors or their viewpoints. So Dailycare and I naturally want to know what gives? harlan (talk) 21:08, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

You mean the discussion where your own source said the Jews accepted partition and went out to dance in the streets? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 22:53, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I mentioned the material that I'm going to include and that is part of my post. harlan (talk) 01:13, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Utilizing reliable sources for contentious or disputed assertions

AnonMoos it isn't your job to remove material sourced to mainstream authors in the text of the article, or to engage in repeated personal attacks here on the talk page.

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. Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, Simha Flapan, Sandra Berliant Kadosh, Musa S. Braizat, and John Baggot Glubb cite evidence in US, UK, Israeli, and Jordanian archives regarding the agreement between the Emir Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to partition the country between themselves. If you and NMMNG wish to claim that those are fringe theories, 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.

Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Arbitration cases and Wikipedia:ARBPIA both say that prolonged edit wars are not a valid means of achieving consensus and 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.

I'll be happy to provide you with references from the New York Times, Foreign Affairs Magazine, the London Review of Books, Journal of Contemporary History, Alpayim, History and Memory, Publishers Weekly, and the Library Journal which say that those views are contained in standard textbooks and held by many mainstream scholars in the fields of history, sociology, political science, & etc. harlan (talk) 03:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's exactly the problem: you want to use this article as a springboard to attach your theories about the evil conniving Jews' long-held secret plans of conquest -- theories which can only be supported by blurring and confusing the distinctions between 1937 and 1947. This article is not about 1937, and 1937 is only relevant to this article as background material, unless you can present very specific evidence about substantive continuity between 1937 and 1947 with respect to this particular area. Futhermore, it takes some unmitigated gall to attempt to lecture others about "fringe theories", when you've already generated hundreds of kilobytes of somewhat redundant and repetitive (not to mention tiresome toilsome troublesome tedious and monotonous) discussions on this talk page and its archives, by means of your claim that (contrary to the established consensus of mainstream history accepted by reputable scholars in the field) the Arabs somehow supposedly did not reject the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 -- an assertion which is a crystal-clear example of a "Fringe theory" if there ever was one! AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos, I am not trying to prevent you from including sourced material in the article, but I am going to demand that you stop using the talk page as a forum for making comments that assume bad faith on my part. You have constantly resorted to no edit orders, personal attacks, offensive cultural stereotypes, and filibusters in order to flaunt the general sanctions that apply to everyone. I've always said that some Arab leaders rejected partition and some did not. There are plenty of mainstream historians and declassified documents that say Abdullah and his followers did accept the principle of partition, and that they had a modus vivendi agreement with the Jewish Agency to partition the country between themselves. It is a relevant fact that the international status of Transjordan and Palestine were unresolved, and that Abdullah ended up governing 4/5ths of the former mandated territory. harlan (talk) 08:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Whatever, Harlan -- Abdullah of Transjordan did not formally publicly sign the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (the actual topic of this article, remember??), and did not issue open public statements urging the Arab Higher Committee etc. to formally publicly sign the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, so whatever else he did was really irrelevant to the (implausible) claims that the Arabs somehow accepted the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. As has been repetitively monotonously discussed in the talk page archives here, sub-rosa furtive covert under-the-table tactical accommodations between the Yishuv leadership and Abdullah of Transjordan are not the same thing as open public Arab agreement to the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and can never be equivalent to Arab signatures on the plan. AnonMoos (talk) 16:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

You are right about King Abdullah I of Jordan. You just forgot to say he was NOT an Arab-Palestinian leader, but the King of then-Transjordan and descent from a Hijazi royal family. You also forgot to mention that his plans regarding the partition of Palestine were totally and aggressively rejected by the Palestinian leadership as well as any other Arab country. 109.66.21.139 (talk) 09:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I notice you aren't citing any published sources and you forgot to mention that Tranjordan was the largest part of the mandate. The Palestinians certainly preferred Abdullah to Ben Gurion in any case. Besides, Abdullah had plenty of Arab Palestinian supporters. In "United States Policy toward the West Bank in 1948",[11] Sandra Berliant Kadosh says the Jericho Conference was attended by several thousand Palestinians, including the mayors of Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah. They were all Nashashibis who rejected the rule of the Husseini clan. The written statement of Jordan to the ICJ [12] said that the Jericho resolution was "the culmination of requests made by the Palestinian Arabs through conferences attended by the elected Mayors of major West Bank towns and villages (Hebron, Ramallah, Al-Beereh, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and Anabta), as well as leading religious clerics (Muslims and Christians alike), and a multiplicity of notables, tribal leaders, activists, college presidents, the Chief Shariaa Judge, and the Mufti of Jerusalem Saed-Ideen Al-Alami."

General John Baggot Glubb's book "A Soldier Among the Arabs" explains that British Foreign Secretary Bevin green lighted the occupation of the territory of the proposed Arab State by the Arab Legion, after the Prime Minister of Transjordan explained that Abdullah had received hundreds of petitions from Palestinian notables requesting protection upon the withdrawal of the British forces. Historian Eugene Rogan says that those petitions, from nearly every town and village in Palestine, are preserved in "The Hashemite Documents: The Papers of Abdullah bin al-Husayn, volume V: Palestine 1948 (Amman 1995)". see Chapter 5, Jordan and 1948, in "The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948", By Eugene L. Rogan, and Avi Shlaim, Cambridge University Press, 2001. harlan (talk) 10:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Wait a minute, wasn't it you who said that Palestine and Transjordan were two separate states? Now you say it was one mandate? 109.66.21.139 (talk) 11:33, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

There was only one Mandate and there were two states established in it. In 1925 an Arbitrator appointed by the Council of the League of Nations ruled that some of the mandates contained more than one State:

The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties. France has received a single mandate from the Council of the League of Nations, but in the countries subject to that mandate, one can distinguish two distinct States: Syria and the Lebanon, each State possessing its own constitution and a nationality clearly different from the other. See Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) pp 650-652 harlan (talk) 11:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

(semi-break): alleged "sources"

Harlan, I'm afraid that most of the time I really don't pay much attention anymore to bibliographic lists provided by you, since it's become abundantly and redundantly clear by this point that you can manipulate "sources" to support any conclusion that you want. You could use sources to "prove" that up is down, that the sky is a delicately tinted blend of chartreuse and magenta, or that 2+2=5, if you believed those things. (I can even provide a proper "reference" for this last assertion: "Two and two make five"<ref>1984 by George Orwell (1949), New American Library edition, ISBN 0-451-51800-4, p. 228.</ref>!) Instead, I judge your additions by basic logic and plausibility, whether they are directly relevant to the subject matter of the article, and whether or not they contradict the accepted mainstream consensus of historical events as accepted by reputable scholars.

Furthermore, it borders on the grotesquely bizarre to treat the words of "Glubb Pasha" as some kind of alleged reliable source beyond all reproach, considering that soldiers under the command of "Glubb Pasha" played a role in the Kfar Etzion massacre, and "Glubb Pasha" never bothered to offer any explanation of his role in the matter, and seemed to have the attitude that it was beneath the high dignity of such a lofty and exalted personage such as "Glubb Pasha" to offer any explanations to mere lowly Jews (not to mention that later in life "Glubb Pasha" indulged in historical revisionism and seemed to deny that the Kfar Etzion massacre had ever occurred). AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos I was very serious when I said this needs to move to resolution. The fact that you have always dismissed the sources that I've provided is going to figure very prominently in the dispute resolution process. It is abundantly clear that you are fighting a loosing battle to filibuster the inclusion of opposing viewpoints which have been published by a LOT of reliable sources. Nobody has to "manipulate" the historians, they speak for themselves.

Glubb's account of the fighting at Kfar Etzion appears on page 77-78 of his book, so your claim that he never bothered to offer an explanation is hyperbole. In any case, his account of the meeting with Bevin was confirmed by other sources. Benny Morris, Amitzur Ilan, Avraham Sela, and Eugene Rogan have all cited the declassified minutes of a 22 March 1948 Cabinet meeting in which Bevin himself presented the details of the plan for the Arab Legion to occupy the territory of the proposed Arab state. harlan (talk) 23:09, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Wilkerson,^{(WP:CIVIL     ←   ZScarpia   03:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC))} the fact that King Abdullah's Arab Legion planned to conquer parts of the expired-Mandate of Palestine is nothing new. Golda Meir wrote something of this kind in Her biography ("My Life" published in English, Hebrew and Yiddish in the late 1970s). She didn't say something explicit, but from her account on her meeting with Abdullah I shortly before the Mandate expired, it can be easily inferred. The question remains - what does it has to do with the article in question? It is a habbit of yours to bring information as if it were a new discovery and claim it changes the whole picture. It is similar to the claim that the Mandate was a state based on some far fetched interpretations to which most mainstream non-politically- alligned scholars object. Transjordan, just like any other Arab regime at the time, never endorsed the partition plan. He did, however, had plans of his own. For example, he suggested in His meeting with Golda Meir (according to her biography), to annex the whole expired-Mandate territory and grant Jews autonomy under his government. When Meir said it was out of the question, he said he would have to join the war. When she asked him why, he said he had to allign with the other Arab leaders. In 1949 when the "Green Line" was discussed, Abdullah I was quite flexible and responsive to Israeli demands (see, for exaple, Moshe Braver's researches about Israel's borders), but avoided anything that could be interpreted as recognition in the newly established state. To sum it all up - you tell us nothing new, and it is all quite irrelevant to this article. 192.115.29.15 (talk) 09:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Harlan -- since the majority of turbulence and instability in the article, and the majority of contention here on the talk page, is generated by you denying the basic facts of history as accepted by the mainstream consensus of reputable scholars in the field (such as that the Arabs -- in formal public statements issued by Arab governments and the recognized representative institutions of the Arabs of the British mandate of Palestine -- REJECTED the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 or early 1948, while the formal public statements issued by the recognized representative institutions of the Jews of the British mandate of Palestine ACCEPTED the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 or early 1948), the main "resolution" would appear to be for you to stop denying simple basic accepted historical facts. It's like the old "Don't do that then" joke -- a man goes to a doctor and says "Doc, whenever I hold my hands over my head and vigorously jump up and down, I get terrible shooting pains all down my left side". The Doctor's reply: "DON'T DO THAT THEN!". If you choose to go to any form of arbitration or mediation or third-party opinion or whatever, your historical revisionism will be one of the main issues examined... AnonMoos (talk) 16:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos most articles about UN resolutions are little more than stubs. You got bold and imported an introduction from an article about the 1948 War. You've constantly resorted to uncivil behavior and invectives in the ensuing discussions, and you are certainly pushing a POV in the lede which does not summarize the contents of the article. The article says that according to Simha Flapan and others it is a myth that Jewish leaders accepted partition and that it is a myth that the Arabs rejected it and planned for war. If you claim that is not a mainstream viewpoint, all you have to do is abide by ARBCOM sanctions and utilize reliable sources to support your contentious or disputed assertion.

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., and they all cite Simha Flapan's "Myths and Realities". That is a clear indication of the acceptance of that view by mainstream groups and academics outside Israel that are independent of their theories.

Your long drawn-out discussions here on the talk page are totally unnecessary. Articles have to providing neutral, encyclopedic coverage about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties. harlan (talk) 17:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, don't tell me that something is "unnecessary" when it's the best way I know how to keep you from changing historical fact to historical nonsense on this article. If you can tell me a better way to keep you from changing historical fact to historical nonsense on the article, then I'm listening intently. And I didn't really literally "import" a section from the First Arab-Israeli War article into the lead section of this article (though I was inspired by the concise and factual summary of the partition plan aftermath in the First Arab-Israeli War article to cut through the Gordian knot of rhetorical verbiage left behind in the lead section by some of your past revisions in order to get back to a statement of the basic relevant facts). And also, the fact that you seem to manipulate sources (whether with conscious intent or not, I don't claim to know) in order to try to overturn certain basic facts of history accepted by the mainstream consensus of reputable scholars in the field (such as that the Arabs -- in formal public statements issued by Arab governments and the recognized representative institutions of the Arabs of the British mandate of Palestine -- REJECTED the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 or early 1948, while the formal public statements issued by the recognized representative institutions of the Jews of the British mandate of Palestine ACCEPTED the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 or early 1948) is exactly why I'm not excessively overawed by your piling on of bibliographic citations in other contexts. If I thought that you made a sincere diligent effort to never go beyond what your sources say, and never indulged in tendentious and highly-selective "cherry-picking", then things would be rather different here... AnonMoos (talk) 00:05, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

AnonMoos the simple fact is that I'm not trying to remove your hasbara, I'm insisting that the opposing views be summarized in the lede and that the hasbara be attributed as an opinion of the authors. You can keep throwing tantrums, but I am not going to revert war with you. I'm going to take this through dispute resolution. You already had an RfC, and now its being discussed at I/P Coll. You've been asked to support your "fringe theory" claim, but you are acting out and posting off-topic links about Sami Al-Arian instead. harlan (talk) 02:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Hasbara? How about this telegram from 9 JAN 1948? [13] "Arab Higher Committee is determined persist in rejection partition and in refusal recognize UNO resolution this respect and anything deriving therefrom." 109.64.27.155 (talk) 09:04, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Dude, I haven't added anything about Sami al-Arian to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Current Article Issues for well over a week now. I added a <references/> tag to the end of the page, and that displayed a footnote previously present in someone else's past remarks, as well as the footnote I recently added. It's not a good idea to mess with other people's comments (beyond certain minimal technical thread indentation adjustments and minor formatting fixes), especially if you have rather little idea of what's actually going one... AnonMoos (talk) 09:32, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I know whats going on. I simply removed your unnecessary ref tags so your Britannica cite stayed within your own post and the extraneous Sami al-Arian crap would not hover at the end of an off-topic thread. You pitched a fit on my talk page. NMMNG did the same thing when he reformatted ref tags on the Resolution 242 talk page BTW, and it isn't considered a big deal. harlan (talk) 17:47, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

You went beyond normal Wikipedia etiquette in altering other people's comments (as I already very clearly explained above), and you didn't really know what was going on or what you were doing, and the end result was somewhat unfortunate. If you want to transform a presentation of opposing views into a highly-personal conflict between two individuals, then going beyond normal Wikipedia etiquette in altering other people's comments is certainly one good way to do it! AnonMoos (talk) 09:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Exceptions

I'm not going to try to move the passsage right now, but the nature of the two "exceptions" (i.e. one group who did whatever Comrade Stalin said was good, and Abdullah of Transjordan, who wasn't willing to issue any public statements clearly in favor of the plan, and was only in favor of the plan in private to the degree that it would enable him to annex territory) is such that they might be more suitably discussed in the body of the article, instead of in the lead section up at the top... AnonMoos (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Arab reaction

"John Wolffe says that while Zionists have attributed Palestinian rejection of the plan to intransigence, others have argued that it was rejected because it was unfair: it gave the majority of the land (56 percent) to the Jews, who at that stage legally owned only 7 percent of it, and remained a minority of the population."

This quote is not balanced. It gives the impression that the Arab inhabitants owned the other 93% which is false. (Note above: Fairness). Chesdovi (talk) 11:11, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Wolfee is talking about a permanent division of all the available land in the Mandated State between the majority group and a minority group. The Mandate secured the rights and position of the majority non-Jewish communities to a corresponding majority of the public lands of the State. Article 80 of the UN Charter also secured those rights and interests. In the early days of the Mandate era Zionists were disappointed to learn that very little of the State-owned lands were available for Jewish settlement. That was because Arab cultivators had already settled them or had acquired pre-existing rights to cultivate them. See State lands and rural development in mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948, By Warwick P. N. Tyler, pages 21-26 [14] Ben Gurion himself testified that Jews only held title to about 6 percent of the land and that they were effectively prevented from acquiring much more by the 1939 White Paper policies. Those policies were reflected in by the 1940 Land Transfer Ordinance.

The quote very accurately describes the arguments of many commentators that the division was not equitable. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, the members of the Arab League were prepared to acquiesce to a partition, e.g. [15] But, they rejected the division proposed by the General Assembly. harlan (talk) 18:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, that's somewhat ridiculous, considering that in 1937 the Arabs had almost unanimously rejected the Peel plan (much less favorable to the Jews), while in 1947 official Arab spokesmen were not willing to openly go on the public record in favor of territorial compromise. AnonMoos (talk) 21:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Chesdovi -- The quote is kind of simplistic, in that a very significant percentage of the claimed Jewish 56% was actually agriculturally-worthless desert land in the Negev, and since the Arabs made it very clear in their public pronouncements in 1947 and early 1948 that they were unalterably opposed to allowing Jews to exercise national sovereignty over any territory whatsoever, and would regard such an occurrence as an intolerable insult to the sacred rights of the Arab nation which could only be wiped away with blood (something that sure sounds like "intransigence" to me, or technically abstract absolutist maximalism). However, this does not mean that the quote should be automatically removed from the article (as long as it's somewhat contextualized and not given undue prominence). AnonMoos (talk) 21:47, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The quote is fine, all I am asking is for context. The Jews may have owned 7%, but it should be stated that Jewish land purchase had been severly curtailed during the Ottoman period and under the British. Additionally, it must be made clear that the other 93% was not 1) All owned by the Arabs in the country, 2) Vast swaths were made up of "state lands", and owned by the governing entity or were ownerless. Chesdovi (talk) 22:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Switched Votes?

In contrast to other publications, the Wikipedia article identifies three states as having switched their votes from no to yes.

Is the article claiming that these three states actually voted no and then yes? Or is it a change that happened internally during the weeks leading up to the vote?

If the later, these are hardly the only countries that "switched".

In fact, the decision to highlight countries representing the minimum number of changes necessary to reverse the outcome would seem to be POV based, as opposed to being based on some objective criterion.Jsolinsky (talk) 18:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

"During their withdrawal, the British refused to hand over territory or authority to any successor."

When authority was formally handed over to a successor state, then the departing British governor and incoming leaders of the new independent state would gather together around a flagpole, and the Union Jack would be ceremonially lowered to the sound of bagpipe music, and then the flag of the new independent state would be ceremonially raised. There were no British-Israeli flagpole ceremonies on May 14th-15th 1948, and any suggestion that there were any British-Israeli flagpole ceremonies is in fact historically quite ludicrous and absurd... AnonMoos (talk) 03:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

From page 13 of the Introduction of Britain, Palestine and Empire:The Mandate Years by Rory Miller:

From November 1947 until the final British withdrawal and abandonment of Palestine on 15 May 1948, High Commissioner Cunningham did his best to achieve some order and harmony in the face of the increasingly violent conflict between Arabs and Jews on the ground, and the seething resentment of British officials in both Palestine and London over the turn of events.

Despite instructions from London for him to leave Palestine well before the May withdrawal deadline, Cunningham insisted on remaining in his post until the final day of British rule. But despite his best efforts the end of the Mandate was mired in ‘shame and humiliation’ as one long-serving diplomat put it, and the withdrawal from Palestine was, by all accounts, a low point in the annals of British imperial retreat. As David Vital, one of the most authoritative historians of the Mandate era has summed up:

There was no ceremonial lowering and raising of flags in May 1948, no bands playing national anthems, no dignitaries exchanging salutes and pious messages of hope and amity, no be-medalled and tiaraed representatives of the British royal family present. Palestine, a political unit unknown before the British arrived, was simply evacuated and, upon evacuation, dissolved.

If you pay a fee, you can see a nice photo of Cunningham leaving Palestine on 14 May 1948 on this site.

    ←   ZScarpia   04:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

AnonMoos, it looks to me as though you've broken the 1RR restriction on the article. If you agree, please revert yourself. Of three edits made in the preceding twenty-four hours, two made reversions.     ←   ZScarpia   05:25, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

What does "revert yourself" mean, now that you've extensively re-edited the text in question? Do you want me to undo your edits? Anyway, the edits of User:Xchange and User:NickCT were extremely unconstructive and unproductive... AnonMoos (talk) 05:55, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I expect you to undo the last edit you made (and leave it undone for a reasonable length of time). Note that, if another editor gets here first, they may not give you the opportunity to do it (perhaps it wasn't a good idea to be rude about Xchange and NickCT's editing).     ←   ZScarpia   06:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

However, that edit didn't violate any revert rule, since the text in question wasn't involved in any of the earlier edits. (I think the earlier phrasing is clearer than what you changed it to.) And it's the case that Xchange and NickCT's edits completely failed to improve the article in any manner whatsoever (other than possibly Xchange pointing out that the withdrawal wasn't completed on May 30). Adding a "cite" tag could have been constructive, but simply deleting highly relevant and factually true statements was unconstructive. AnonMoos (talk) 07:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Our understanding of the 1RR rule is obviously different. I have no problem with with the last text change you made (the earlier changes, which had the article state that the British withdrawal began on the 15 May 1948, were factually wrong, though), but I believe that you should have waited longer to make it.     ←   ZScarpia   12:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)