Demographics of Mandatory Palestine
I think it is important to understand Palestinian claims against Israel. It is precisely the imagining of the perspective of one's adversary that I believe is so critical in order to get beyond violence as a means for "solving" our disputes.
Recently I've been reading, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark Tessler.
The chart above is from his book. The source of the data is the Jewish National Fund. In 1923 Jews made up 11.1% of the population of Mandatory Palestine. In 1945 it was 30.6%.
While the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine offered Arabs living in Palestine a much better arrangement than any plan on the table now, one can at least imagine, given how recent the arrivals were of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the hesitation among Palestinian Arabs to accept it.
Comments
1 comment postedDear Mr Gluskin,
i can good understand, You happy leaving in Amerika, allways having many food, large cars, large house, everybody thinking, You are a human beying like everybody, not something special creature, like a jew. But there are some jews not only in America, for example in Russia too. Still 20 years ago there were a lot of Jews in Russia, now much less, many went to Israel. Is it painthfull for You, You would like, in Eretz Isroel will be more Arabs? The russian jews need live in povetry, need be second grade people, just for Your arab good friend has majority in Palestine? Your are for sure happy, many Jews in Poland, Hungary, Chezh, Romania, Germany, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukriaine, Belorus has been killed during WWII, so that there were not so many jews were availible to come to Eretz Isroel after the war, are not You? You are happy, Comerade Stalin did not let the SU jews go away to Eretz Isroel before WWII, so that they build the majority there, but let them go to the GULAG and wanted send everybody to Siberia?
I have a proposal to you - come to Moscow, go through the streets, and ask the people love you, becuase You are jewish. Same in Warsaw, Budapest, Kiev or Berlin. I am sure, soon You will be happy, Your child and and Your are allways able to moove to Israel all time You want. So, may be more love for Isroel as jewish state, and jewish state forever, for all jews, not just prosperity living in North Amerika?
With the best wishes from Moscow
Alexander
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