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 +
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And please tell me what I got wrong. I must have missed things
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
Never bet against the US:
Ppl think its biggest strength is its institutions, the dollar, entrepreneurship... But one of its biggest assets is its geography 🧵
1. Size
The US is the 4th largest country. It spans an entire continent, reaches two oceans, and is big enough to be a geographic heavyweight in the world
2. The Mississippi Basin
It's the 4th largest drainage basin in the world and occupies 40% of the contiguous 48 US states, touching 32 of the US’s 50 states. 11 US states directly take their name from it.
Climate caused the US Civil War, because: 1. Slavery was the main cause of the war 2. Different crops were the main cause of slavery 3. Climate caused different crops in the North vs South
This is terribly important to understand the US today and how to heal it
🧵
1. Slavery was the main cause of the war: the Abolitionist North & the Slavery South were competing to expand westward to increase their political influence
But the North grew & expanded faster, to a point where it could force abolition on the South, which then seceded
In 1790, the Free & Slave states had the same population, and there were many more Slave States (8 vs 5), so Slave States controlled the Senate.
By the eve of the war in 1860, the North had 50% more population and 4 more states, giving them control of both the House & Senate
Moscow is one of the weirdest capitals:
• Biggest European city
• Extremely cold
• Little farmland
• To Russia's extreme west
• Not on a coast or main river
How did it create the biggest country on Earth?
It involves horse archers, human harvesting & tiny animals 🧵
The first shocking fact is that Russia is so far north it's at the edge of arable land. How can you create a capital with so little food? Why not in the middle of the most fertile area on Earth?
This far north is extremely cold
Moscow is the 3rd coldest capital in the world and by far the biggest: with 20M ppl, its metro population is 8x bigger than the 2nd biggest cold capital, Stockholm!
This map tells you how a seemingly innocent difference, like wheat vs rice eating, can have dramatic political, economic, and cultural ramifications:
🧵
The areas that harvest wheat vs rice are different. Why?
Because of climate
Rice needs heat and lots of water. Ideally, flooding the fields to also kill weeds. Rice dies with frost.
Wheat resists it well, prefers cooler temperatures, but dies when it's flooded
Did you know the West's trade deficits to China are not recent, but started 2000 years ago? This is the story of how silk, porcelain, tea, opium, and silver have determined the history of the world 🧵
The Romans already complained about deficits to China! Mainly because of silk
Back then the Chinese already preferred manufacturing and selling products than consuming foreign products. Chronicler Solinus ~200 AD: The Chinese "prefer only to sell their products, but do not like to buy our goods."
Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria