Thread by @tomaspueyo

Who has a fair claim on the region of Israel and Palestine?

It's time to go deep to understand:
• History
• Geography
• Religion
• Legal claims
• Morality
• And more:

Who was there 1st? The Canaanites, about 3k years ago (1200 BC), ancestors of both Jews and Arabs

Israeli culture appears around 1100 BC

There's debate on whether King David's Israel was ever centralized. If it was, it was probably around ~900-1000 BC or so

What's clearer is that the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were there ~850 BC, so about 3k years ago

Assyrians and then Babylonians would conquer the area, sending some Jews to Babylon in exile. How many is debated. Many stayed. They were freed by Persians around 550 BC and went back

Israel was fully independent for 500y before these invasions. But after that, the region would belong to empires for millenia
Assyrians
Babylonians
Achaemenids
Egyptians
Macedonians
Romans
Byzantines
Rashidun
Abbasid
Umayyads
Fatimid
Seljuk
Ayyubid
Crusaders
Mamluks
Ottomans
UK..

A Jewish kingdom was semi-independent during the Seleucid–Roman periods, 2k years ago

Arabs appear in the region in ~650, and ruled early on for centuries (Rashidun, Abbasid, Umayyads, Fatimid...), until ~1100 AC

(original source: )

They were replaced by Muslim, non-Arab empires: Seljuks, Mamluks*, Ottomans, which ruled for 500-800 years, except for ~200y of Crusaders

The region was never independent for 2000 years

At the end of the 1800s, ideas of nationalism are en vogue, and antisemitism is rampant in Europe. Jews start planning for a new country—Israel. They start buying land and emigrating to the Ottoman region of Palestine (present-day Israel & Palestine)

Then comes WWI
The Allies want to beat the Ottomans
The UK:
• Recruits local Arabs to revolt against the Ottomans
• Recruits local Jews to help in the fight (Balfour Declaration)
• Splits the Ottoman Empire with other allies. The Palestine region was allocated to the UK

Except of course these promises are not compatible.

The promise to the Arab king Hussein was to create a kingdom in the Arabian Peninsula. Depending on who you ask, this includes or not Palestine

Instead, what prevails is the split between Allies ("Sykes-Picot"). Now the UK controls the Levant, which it wants to protect the Suez Canal, key for trade with India

Local Jews want the Balfour Declaration to be upheld
Local Arabs want the promise to Arabs to be upheld

Fun fact: local population has been declining for thousands of years. By the end of the 1800s, it's lower than in Roman times!

Jewish immigration, & sanitation reverses that

Jews & Arabs clash
The UK recognize the quagmire & plan to get out
They propose a plan: North for Jews, south & east for Arabs. They keep the center coast & Jerusalem

This map broadly recognizes Jewish settlements

Jews are ~OK with that (a country!)
Arabs are not
Stalemate

Then starts WWII
Nothing much happens in the Levant
Something else relevant to this pbm happens elsewhere: the Holocaust
Pictures speak louder than words

It's the end of WWII
The region is a quagmire
The UK is decolonizing
It wants out
It drops the hot potato on the UN
Which drafts a new plan: another 2-state solution

This plan is similar to the previous one, except it gives a part of the north (Galilee) to the Arabs, and part of the Negev desert to Israelis. Why? It corresponds again to Jewish settlements

The UN votes yes with 2/3 majority

But this plan gives 56% of the land to 33% of the population (Jews). Most of it is desert (Negev), but Arabs see this increase in Jewish land as encroachment. They say no again (red below)

The day the Brits leave, Israel declares its independence
The day after, all the surrounding Arab countries attack Israel

Somehow, Israel prevails
It takes some of the land that was allocated to Arabs by the UN plan that they didn't accept

When Arabs refer to 1947 borders, they mean those before this 1948 war, conceded by the UN resolution
(Which they voted against)

During this war, 750,000 local Arab-Muslims (Palestinians) are traumatically displaced, expelled, or flee from the Jewish area. This is the Nakba ("disaster")

They can't come back after the war

Egypt takes the Gaza Strip
Jordan takes the West Bank
They can create a Palestinian country in these areas
They keep them for themselves

Arabs are not happy with the situation
They plan another attack
This is 1967
Israel preempts it, shoots down the airforces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in 1 day, and pushes back all 3 countries, taking over the Sinai, West Bank, and Golan heights

Another catastrophe for Arabs

300k Palestinians flee the West Bank
100k flee the Golan Heights

Egypt & Syria attack again in 1973 (Yom Kippur)
Initially they win, Israel eventually prevails

A few years later, Israel gives the Sinai back to Egypt and they sign a peace treaty

With Jordan in 1994

Over the last few decades, Israel continues its international efforts & normalizes relationships across the world, incl Morocco, Sudan, UAE, Qatar in the Abraham Accords

So who deserves the land?
Who was there 1st? Israel
More recently? Israel today
As far as I could find, Israel has been the only independent country in the region, ever

What about the last 1000 years? Israel, UK, Ottomans, Mamluks
No Arab rule for many centuries

What about population displacement?
Jews 1st
Then Christians
More recently Arabs
1M of them

What about religions?
Muslims have been ruling for nearly 1100 of the last 1400 years
But religions have just been replacing each other. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Jews

What about morality?
Jews suffered the Holocaust
They have no other safe place to go
But 1M Arabs have been displaced
They’ve been consistently losing ground for 1 century
Both suck

Arabs had many opportunities to get a state in Palestine: UK proposal, UN resolution, several proposals thereafter… They said no (or other Arab countries kept the land for themselves)

But who can blame them? Would you accept deals that are always worse than the previous one?

So who deserves the land?
It depends
Who do *you* want?
Because there’s good enough arguments on both sides
The truth is everybody is biased and tilts the arguments in their favor

What’s an objective approach to deciding this?
The Montevideo Convention defines statehood
• a permanent population
• a defined territory
• government
• capacity to enter into relations with the other states

Other traditional arguments:
• Self-determination
• International recognition
The truth is most countries recognise both. Those who don’t are allies or one side or the other. They’re biased

Israel mostly fulfils these rules
Palestine (West Bank?) does too
They both have a legitimate claim on the land
They both deserve statehood
They should recognize each other

The question becomes: *how* do we make this happen? There are lots of hurdles
Settlements
Recognizing each other
The right to return
Security
And +
I’ll be writing more about this
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I’ll post an article with many more details this in the coming days.
Subscribe to my newsletter to get it It’s free.

And please tell me what I got wrong. I must have missed things

This is an important topic, nobody gets it perfect, but I'm tryingunchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/subscribe

I also posted a deep dive on the geopolitics of Israel


Next is the geopolitics of Palestineunchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/will-israel-…

One factor I missed, commented by many: After centuries living in Muslim countries, about 900k Jews left them between 1948 and 1970. Some pulled by the new land, some pushed by their countries

This is now a post:

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/who-can-clai…