Palestine

From Hobson's Choice

Region of the Levant. From 1512 to 1917, with interruptions, a part of the Ottoman Empire. Between 1920 and 1947, a League of Nations Mandate under UK control. During this time, the population was predominantly Arab, with some Kurds, Circassians, Turks, and Mizrahim. During the 1880's, the region claimed by Zionists as the future site of a B'nei Yisrael (Jewish) national state, provoking active resentment and hostility from the resident Arab population.

As a result of the European Shoah, the hitherto unlikely Zionist project was realized. The major powers of the USA and the USSR agreed to pressure the United Nations General Assembly to pass a resolution dividing Palestine into Arab and B'nei Yisrael states.^[1] This plan was rejected by Arab leaders since it was a unilateral expropriation of territory from Palestinian Arabs to Israeli settlers, with no serious consideration for the Arab natives. The British authorities controlling Palestine also rejected the partition plan as unworkable. On 14 May 1948 the Jewish Agency declared independence. The next day, the UK terminated the mandate. In the war that followed, the new state of Israel captured 80% of the land area of the Palestinian Mandate, creating an immense refugee crisis. This was repeated in the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israeli forces captured the remainder of the former mandate and occupied it.

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