Mr. Fusion says:

#62, Lyin’ Mike,

As usual, you have no idea what you are talking about. If you do, your concept of history is wrong. Palestine refers to an area, Palestinian refers to someone who’s heritage is from Palestine.

After WWII and the Holocaust, many surviving Jews tried to go to Israel. The British didn’t allow them to, hoping to keep the peace. Finally, the United Nations, in their post WWII wisdom, decided to give the displaced Jews a piece of Palestinian for their own state. Only they didn’t ask the native Arabs if they minded.

On the day the partition was to take place, the British decided to pull out. They had been the only police force in the area at the time. The British knew in advance there would be fighting but took few steps to prevent it. Why they left on the eve of partition instead of after things had settled down is open to conjecture. My own take is they were miffed the Americans pushed the independent Israel on the British plus the fact is that Britain was broke and could not afford to remain.

As expected, the Jews thought the land was their due. They had suffered so much under the Germans and the Holocaust. Their scriptures told them that they would return someday to Palestine. Those emigrating to Israel were mostly European Jews.

The native Arab population were already set and didn’t want to be displaced from the land they had resided on for centuries. It might have been a hard life at times, but it was their life, their olive and orange groves, their huts, and their dirt. As had their parents before them, and their parents before them … .

Many of the Jews had been WWII veterans, especially from the US and Canada. Used Mustangs, Typhoons, and Thunderbolt fighter-bombers were cheap and easy to come by, as were most of the small arms and ammunition. Especially when the State of Israel had been promised and backed by the UN (read US). The Arabs were mostly armed with older Turkish weapons from WWI.

When the partition started each side made land grabs. The Jews were far better armed even though quite outnumbered. They also had many more trained soldiers and a stronger will to fight. They were better organized and far more willing to die for their people than were the local Arabs for their land.

I also don’t think the Americans would have allowed the Jews to lose. There were too many American soldiers who had seen the concentration camps in person. Newsreels shocked most Americans. The guilt felt was by many Americans that they had ignored the plight of the European Jews prior to WWII justified their assistance. President Truman was not about to let that happen again.

*

In my opinion, if the British had remained for a couple of years after partitioning in order for the two sides to set up civil administrations, there would not have been nearly the amount of fighting. That didn’t happen so now we have the two sides as oppressor and oppressed instead of respectful neighbors.