‘Palestine’ was freed – in 1948
The people who support the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are correct. But they are 77 years too late.
Palestine was freed in 1948.
From British rule.
From 1920, when England took control (from the once-powerful Ottoman Empire) over the land along the Mediterranean Sea then known as Palestine – along with Transjordan, on the other side of the Jordan River, and nearby Iraq – as part of the victorious, colonial, Allied side in the fighting then known as the Great World War, England administered the territory under terms of the League of Nations’ British Mandate. According to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Europe’s colonial governments had divided up, established, and to various degrees, taken control over, Arab countries whose borders were formed in much of the Middle East.
The 1920 post-war Conference of San Remo created two mandates: one, over Palestine, was given to Great Britain, and the other, over Syria, went to France., separating the area now occupied by Israel and Jordan from that of Syria.
“Mandated territories were to be governed on behalf of the League, until such time as they could become independent,” according to a Library of Congress description of the covenant that established the military-political relationship.
As for the country then known as Transjordan … in April 1921, the British decided that Emir (after 1946, King) Abdullah of the Hashemite dynasty would take over as monarch, and recognized its partial independence in 1923; full independence was finally achieved after World War II.
That left Palestine …
The Jews and Arabs who lived then under British rule yearned to be free of, and separate from, each other – and free of Britain. And both yearned to have all the land to themselves.
The Brits did not rule Palestine with a velvet glove; arrests of both sides were frequent, martial law was occasional; the Jews and Arabs fought the Brits, and each other.
Britain eventually left it to the Jews and Arabs to slug it out between themselves to determine who would henceforth govern the divided land. In 1939, Britain issued the White Paper, which sought to limit Jewish emigration and land purchases for the next five years, after which Palestine would become an independent state with an Arab majority.
The chronology and results eventually changed.
A series of high-level British commissions culminated, in 1947, in the recommendation, approved by the UN General Assembly, that the Holy Land be partitioned into two states, one Jewish and one Arab; .the former would get 55 percent of the non-contiguous territory; the latter, 44 percent; Jerusalem would remain under international rule.
Neither side was satisfied, but the Jewish community of the yishuv, represented by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, reluctantly acquiesced (acknowledging what Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann described as “a distinction between the present realities and the messianic hope”) — although the small amount of territory allotted to the Jews would leave them in a militarily precarious position, and was far less than the biblical borders that some zealous Zionists envisioned.
There was a precedent: During the era of the Second Temple, the 20th-Century Jews followed in the philosophical footsteps of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who, when the Romans were about to sack Jerusalem, told general Vespasian, “Give us Yavneh and its sages.” Yavneh, in central Israel, became the new home of the Sanhedrin and of Jewish scholarship — which guaranteed Jewish continuity in the Promised Land. Better a half a loaf than none.
The Arabs, most of them Muslim, on the other hand, were not open to territorial concessions. “When Muslims are willing to compromise in all aspects of their life,” the missionislam.com website states, “we lose the favor of Allah, emit an image of weakness to our enemies, and lose dignity in the sight of our Creator. In Islam, there is absolutely no room for compromise.”
This uncomfortable situation, enforced by 100,000 British troops, held until England, succumbing to growing international pressure and the difficulty of administering a hopelessly divided land, announced that it would withdraw on May 14, 1948.
Prime Minister (nee Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency) David-Ben Gurion then declared the independence of Medinat Yisroel (the State of Israel); the Arabs who lived outside its borders, including Transjordan, joined the Arabs inside Israel in attacking the Jews in order to establish an Arab state.
Ben-Gurion, in a 1937 letter to his son Amos wrote, “We do not want to and we do not have to expel Arabs and take their place … there is enough room for us and for the Arabs in the land of Israel.”
And another olive branch expanded 11 years later, when Ben-Gurion told Golda Meir, “I want you to immediately go to Haifa and see to it that the Arabs who remain in Haifa are treated appropriately. I also want you to try and persuade the Arabs who are already on the beach to return home. You have to get it into their heads that they have nothing to fear.”
Olive branch declined, Israel’s Arabs fled, some taking up arms against the Jews.
Bottom line: The British were gone; Palestine was free; and Israel’s War of Independence was under way. It ended in a ceasefire. According to the 1949 armistice— reached with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — Israel controlled 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine. The Arabs ended up with less territory than they would have had if they had agreed to partition.
When the heavily Arab West Bank came under Jordanian control in 1949, Abdullah annexed the territory, establishing a de facto half-Palestinian/half-Jordanian state. But the West Bank did not officially become part of Jordan, leaving its legal status in limbo.
Came the Six-Day War. Israel won, gaining the West Bank, the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Many West Bank Arabs fled to Jordan; the majority of the country now consider themselves Palestinian, leading many right-wing Zionists to consider Jordan a Palestinian state.
Hashemite Jordan has made peace with Israel.
Not so the Palestinians, or their supporters abroad.
Since October 7, the calls in the West to rule Israel/”Palestine” “by any means” have become more vocal.
The current battles predate October 7. By far.
The roots of the current conflict go back a few millennia.
G-d told Abraham, in the biblical account known as The Covenant Between the Pieces (Gen. 15) that the Patriarch’s descendants, who would grow into the Jewish people, would, after a period of tempering servitude in Egypt, go back to the Promised Land.
The land was known then as Canaan; G-d assured Abraham that their future was there:
To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
And G-d, in a later encounter with Moses, speaking of the Jewish people’s future in Canaan (Deut. 11:24), outlined what the borders of the Holy Land would be:
Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea.
The people who shout “From the river to the sea” on behalf of the people they consider the territory’s rightful inhabitants are correct.
But they have the wrong people in mind. It’s the Jews.
- And they are correct in citing “the river.”
But they have the wrong river in mind (assuming they know their Middle East geography). It’s the Euphrates.
- And they are correct in advocating for a Palestinian state.
But they have the wrong territory for a Palestinian state in mind. It’s already there: Jordan.
- And those who demand the rightful inhabitants’ right to return are correct.
But, again, those people are the Jews.
- And they are correct in demanding that the land be free.
But they have the wrong power in mind from whom the land should be free. That was the Canaanites.
- And they are 3,400 years too late.