Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

As some scholars have pointed out, if Zionists had asked for half of the United States—or even just a tenth of it—to set up their own sovereign state, would the US have graciously agreed? Very unlikely! As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe noted: “without the application of extreme pressure, there is no reason in the world why a native population would ever volunteer to partition its homeland with a settler population.”

The same goes for Palestinian Arabs in 1947, who balked at giving over half of their land (along with all of their homes and fields) to Israel even though Jews only formed approximately 33% of the population (versus the roughly 66% that were Arab or Druze). From their perspective, they saw the partition plan as a massive theft of their land and the forceful expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their homes.

Lastly, Israel’s early leaders made it abundantly clear that they had no intention of respecting any partition plan. David Ben-Gurion wrote that partition would be a "boost to our historic effort to redeem the country in its entirety" and, according to MK Uri Avnery, made it clear in several secret meetings "that the [1947] partition borders were unacceptable and must be rectified at the first opportunity.” Chaim Weizmann said that the partition plan was a stepping stone to expanding into all of Palestine. As such, even if the Palestinian Arabs had accepted the 1947 partition, we’d likely still be in a similar situation today.