Thread by @joshruebner

🧵 75 years ago today, the United Nations recommended partitioning #Palestine against the wishes of its majority indigenous Palestinian population for the benefit of a minority settler-colonial movement. This injustice violated Palestinians' right to self-determination. 1/

Even Dr. Ralph Bunche, who wrote the partition plan, was "not all satisfied with my scheme" but believed it was a "reasonable and workable compromise." But was it really reasonable, workable, or just?

Source: Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, pp. 149-150. 2/

The UN recommended giving the Zionist movement 55% of #Palestine, including most of its most fertile land, even though the Jewish population of the country was only 33% of the total and the Zionist movement had only colonized less than 7% of the land. 3/

This map shows that Palestinians owned a majority or plurality of land in all sub-districts of #Palestine when partition was recommended (except Beersheba, which was majority state land). Jewish people did NOT own even a plurality of the land in ANY sub-district. 4/

In addition, in the "Jewish State" initally recommended by the UN, the population distribution was 498,000 Jewish people & 497,000 Palestinian people. In other words, the UN recommended creating a rump Palestinian state and a second binational state w/ a tiny Jewish majority. 5/

Even the US, which eventually supported the partition plan, thought the initial version was so unfair toward the Palestinian people that it succeeded in making it a little more advantageous to them by taking Jaffa out of the Jewish State & making other changes in the Galilee. 6/

But let's leave aside the impracticalities of partitioning #Palestine & talk about its unjustness. What right did the UN have to recommend dividing a country against the wishes of its majority indigenous population to benefit a minority settler-colonial movement? 7/

The UN was set up during WWII to enshrine the ideals of freedom, democracy, and self-determination as the cornerstone of international relations. #Palestine was the first major test of whether the UN would uphold these principles. It failed miserably. 8/

Not only was the UN's plan to partition #Palestine unfeasible and unjust. It also served as a virtual green light for the Zionist movement's premeditated campaign of ethnic cleansing, formally approved by Zionist leaders in March 1948 and implemented the following month. 9/

By 1949, Israel had taken 78% of #Palestine by force, driven from their homes or caused to flee at least 750,000 Palestinians (roughly 3/4 of the Palestinian population previously living on land now under Israeli rule), and refused to let Palestinian refugees return home. 10/

Israel also destroyed between 400-500 Palestinian villages, towns, and cities, and often took Palestinians' homes (without compensation) for Jewish people. Palestinians refer to this ethnic cleansing, dispossession, and refugeedom as the #Nakba, or "catastrophe" in English. 11/

However, the #Nakba is not just a historical event. It is an ongoing, daily system of extremely violent and brutal settler-colonial, apartheid domination that Israel continues to inflict upon the Palestinian people. This is a clear-cut example of oppressor versus oppressed. 12/

The UN bears a large degree of responsibility for enabling the ongoing #Nakba by recommending the unjust partition of #Palestine 75 years ago & by failing to hold Israel accountable as it continues to oppress the Palestinian people and deny them self-determination. 13/

Today is #PalestineDay, the International Day of Solidarity w/ the Palestinian People. 75 years ago, partitioning Palestine was unfeasible and unjust. The same holds true today. END/