The Arabs NEVER rejected peace in 1948
They repeatedly offered a 1 State solution with equal citizenship to all
Zionist leaders opted to create #Israel, inc. by ethnic cleansing
Palestinians only rejected the partition of their homeland & losing 51% of it to a Jewish minority🧵
2\ Jordan's king met twice with Golda Meir in 1947/48.
Each time, he offered to give Jews in Palestine full autonomy under his rule with full equal rights, but Meir rejected.
Even then, he instructed his troops not to attack the parts of mandate Palestine designated for Jews.
3\ The head of the Arab Liberation Army met with Zionist leaders & offered them full equality & citizenship under his rule.
Josh Palmon from the Jewish Agency attested that "I'm sure Jews would've done good business under him." Zionist leaders rejected!
4\ A week after the war started, the Arab League's Secretary-General told Israel's newspaper the Jerusalem Post (then Palestine post):
"Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine & let them be as Jewish as they like"
5\ The official Palestinian position in 1946/7 was the repatriation of recent migrants (about 1/3 of the Jewish population) & rejection of the UN partitioning their homeland & losing 51% of it.
Could Arabs have softened the Palestinian position? Possibly. But we'll never know!
6\ 11 years before the Nakba, David Ben-Gurion explained to his son that partition was just a way to capture all of Palestine:
"The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land is...a powerful boost to our historical endeavours to liberate the entire country"
7\ In 1937, Ben-Gurion ordered Haganah officers to prepare the "Avnir Plan" for the military conquest of ALL of Palestine!
The plan was modified 3 times until "Plan Dalet" in 1948 aimed at maximum conquest & expulsion of the Palestinians according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe
8\ Some Arab leaders in 1948 made populist inflammatory propaganda, which may have spread fear among the public
But #Israeli historian Prof. Yoav Gelber says their "goal was not & couldn't be pushing Jews into the [sea]," rather "mobilizing domestic support for lame politicians"
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2 weeks ago, I was asked to explain to the UN the Nakba's impact on Palestinians today, so I told my family's experience of the Nakba's dispossession & displacement 3 times.
The last being the siege that's forcing young Palestinians to choose between displacement or slow death!
2\ The 1st Nakba my grandfather lived through was when he had just bought a farm with all his savings in Hamama.
He refused to leave when #Israel was founded, so 167 days later, the IDF depopulated & looted his village, then razed it to the ground. He became a refugee in Gaza!
3\ 19 years after the IDF forced my grandfather out of his ancestral village, he experienced a 2nd Nakba in 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza & he was kicked out again, to Egypt. A penniless refugee for the 2nd time.
He returned to Gaza in 1994 with the Oslo accords.
EVERYTHING #Israel accuses Palestinians of doing (often falsely), it had openly done way worse to establish & maintain the Israeli state:
e.g. blowing up cafes & buses; human shields; celebrating civilians' death; glorifying terrorists; hiding weapons in civilian areas...Quick🧵
2\ Terrorism was a tactic Zionist militias openly used to establish #Israel
Blowing up cafes, buses & crowded markets was 1 of their favorite strategies. This list only shows Irgun terrorist bombings in 1937-39👇
Irgun became part of the IDF & their leader Shamir became PM!
3\ Even 3 decades after #Israel was founded, the Israeli Defense Ministry continued to use terrorism for combat
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (later Prime Minister) used to blow up cars, bikes & booby-trapped donkeys in crowded civilian areas in Lebanon ONLY to sow chaos & fear!
#Israel (NOT Egypt) militarily closes our air, water & land spaces; FULLY controls our financial system with extreme restrictions, the entry/exit of goods & foreigners, & access to the West Bank; regularly bombs us; & is the occupying power! 🧵
2\ The Egyptian borders are actually open to passenger movement, but subject to restrictions imposed by ISRAEL in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access.
The agreement gives Israel oversight & ability to blacklist people from leaving/entering!
3\ Foreigners (e.g. tourists, investors...) can only cross into Gaza through Israel, & the IDF does NOT allow any of those in except some few Int. NGO workers & diplomats; hence the siege!
Egypt is allowed, per the 2005 AMA agreement, to let in extremely limited exceptions.
Quick🧵Debunking #Israel's "Human Shields" lie used as a blanket excuse to justify killing ANY Palestinian civilians:
e.g. IDF officials admit they 100% knew children & women would die in their strikes. They went for it anyways & called them "collateral damage" & "human shields"
2\ Amnesty found ZERO evidence of Palestinian combatants forcefully taking civilians as human shields or preventing them from evacuating targeted areas
The #Israeli org Breaking the Silence interviewed 100s of IDF soldiers, but never encountered evidence of those "human shields"
3\ #Israel's own courts, however, found evidence of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields at gun point
IDF calls it the "neighbor procedure"
Amnesty, HRW, BTselem... all found evidence of Israel taking Palestinian human shields since the occupation began in 1967
3 days before the UK 2019 elex, Israeli mainstream media published a "major bombshell" that Hamas ran a propaganda op to support the Labour leader Corbyn
The 100% made up story was deleted from its original source shortly after the elex..
2\ ~A week before the UK 2019 elex, a young Gazan, Walid, got a call from an #Israeli Lt. Colonel who "used to hold a senior position in the IDF"
He asked Walid in Arabic why he was an admin on the "We Support Jeremy Corbyn" FB page with 72K followers & used a threatening tone..
3\ Walid explained that he was invited to simply write about his daily life in Gaza & that he had no relations to the Labour party or Hamas.
Days & Israeli media & propagandists widely circulated the lie that "Hamas officials" were running an "influential" page to support Labour
Quick🧵debunking the #Israeli myth of the 5 Arab armies' unprovoked aggression to annihilate Israel:
Arab regimes were forced in ONLY after Israel committed the Deir Yassin Massacre. The Arab armies goals were to stop the flood of refugees to their states, secure their borders..
2\ Jordan's king, who had the strongest of the 5 armies, met with Zionist leaders regularly & had promised to endorse Jewish statehood & partition
After Deir Yassin, he proposed a Jewish canton in an expanded Jordan. His troops refrained from attacking Israel's own territories👇
3\ Egypt's king went to war to prevent a flood of refugees; protect his borders; gain territory in South Palestine & prevent Jordan's king from claiming leadership of the Arabs.
His army were told they were "merely a punitive expedition against the Zionist gangs" NOT liberation