# 86 – 60 Years

November 30, 2007

When I try to ‘start somewhere’, I usually go back to this date, exactly 60 years ago. So many refer to Resolutions 242 and 338, and Israel’s non-adherence. How many recall the first UN resolution, on this date in 1947, # 181, which declared a 2-state solution for the area. Let’s be fair, if ‘legality’ is mentioned.

I actually understand the Arab neighbours’ opposition to the 1947 decision, but not for the same reasons. They just hated those new neighbours of theirs. Hate thy neighbour, therefore kill him. My ‘understanding’ is due to the fact that it was strategically not workable. Had the Jews not been as desperate as they reasonably were, they would also have been against the plan.

Have you ever looked at the map of the area? Really looked at it. It is unworkable.

First of all, the real partition was, as I have mentioned so often, the almost 80% of Palestine given in 1922 to the Saudi Arabians (the Hashemites, now the Jordanian royal family). Once that bit was gone, any further partition had no chance of success with 1 side and it’s supporters not willing to accept the Jewish State.

60 years.

Did you know that, on the very night of the UN vote, months before the State was declared, a Jewish bus was attacked and several passengers killed? A few days later, a repeat.

1% of the then-Jewish population died during the Independence War. 1%.

60 years.

The silly thing is that we are almost back to square 1, arguing over that sliver of land. The difference is that there is a thriving Israel. On paper, the Jews received 54% of the land, but on the ground, that included a lot of ‘beautiful desert and swampland. And Palestine? Several steps backwards, even from 1947. And Israel gets blamed for it. It’s a joke!

By the way, another ‘joke’ is that the partition plan called for ‘the creation of emphatically democratic Arab and Jewish states’. The new governments were to constituted via the ballot box in elections based on proportional representation (with women pointedly guaranteed the right note only to vote, but to be elected).

There was no discrimination of any kind to be made between the inhabitants on the grounds of race, religion, language or sex. Well, he proudly stated, Israel’s elections are open to peoples of all races, they speak all languages, the women have more power than the men like to admit, and religion?

Well, we may open our arms to Jews; make it easier for them to enter Israel than any other (although that’s based more on ‘people’ rather than religion). But the fact is that Moslems, Christians, Druse and Jews alike can vote in this masochistically-democratic country.

Just see how busy the non-kosher stores are, and those which open on the Sabbath, whether kosher or not.

I know, that’s an oxymoron, but we’re in Israel.

Stephen