History of Modern Palestine

August 2005

Page 2

I am now on page 2 of this story. After trying different approaches, I can only come to the conclusion: I lack data, knowledge. I don't know this second part of the story and I feel helpless. I'm afraid of writing nonsense. Readers have sent me many maps, which I reproduce, randomly. But I need help to continue, with texts, historical and not hysterical data. We are here to try to understand, not to condemn. In the middle of all this, we imagine a bunch of protagonists. The Jew, squeezed in "Exodus," arriving to this land of last chance, with a number tattooed on his arm, having barely escaped from an extermination camp, having lost all his family members. Not far away, the Palestinian resident, who doesn't know what is coming at him and into what horror he will end up, half a century later. Next to him, Arab nations with their Mollahs, their Imams, their obsessive beliefs of another age. Among the Jews, other Mollahs, other Imams, arriving with similar beliefs, just as rigid and unrealistic: "The Greater Israel," "rebuilding the temple," etc...

The warlike revenge of a people who has bowed their heads for centuries (remember Moshe Dayan, the one-eyed, the winner of the Six-Day War). A herd pulled out of its ghettos, even often passively led to the ovens, except for desperate uprisings like that of the Treblinka camp and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

They flee, these Jews. But how can we understand them. A million Russian Jews would have arrived in Israel, I believe, since the fall of the wall. But look at the rise of Nazi parties, in ... Russia, even. Yes, there are skinheads even in the former USSR. They massacre the Arab, the Jew, right in the streets of Moscow. Look at Stalin letting the Polish Jews be massacred in Warsaw, without doing a thing.

Look at the UN, "this thing!", said de Gaulle, creating the problem, then leaving the protagonists to sort it out. Because there it is, the problem. The world created, after the war, a dilemma as big as a mountain, in a tiny territory, and "the world" doesn't want to take responsibility. "The world" watches all this on TV, eating fries and popcorn.

Why don't they get along?
They are almost of the same blood. In a street, you would confuse them...

We are all responsible for these killings, for all the killings, for all these despair, because we don't think, we don't move. But turning on the television, listening to politicians, is that called thinking? I admit I haven't found anything in it, and you?

Help me:

These maps need to be commented on, made to speak. I produce them, randomly, in a disorderly way, as they have arrived to me.

First, here are maps extracted from a file published by the newspaper Le Point:

1947

UN partition plan.

In green, the Jewish state

In brown, the Arab state

After the horror of the Holocaust, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine between a Jewish State and an Arab State. Jerusalem becomes an international zone. This plan is rejected by the Arab states.

Point1

1949

1948-1949 War

In green, Israel

In brown: Arab territories

The Arab countries attack Israel in 1948, just after its declaration of independence. Israel wins the war and expels 800,000 Palestinians.

Point2

1967

Six-Day War

In green, Israel

Brown-green stripes: occupied territories.

Point3

2000

Camp David

(July 2000) then

Taba

(January 2001).

Israel considers returning the majority of the West Bank to the Palestinians. The agreements fail on East Jerusalem and the return of refugees.

In March, Prince Saud Abdulah proposes the recognition of the State of Israel by Arab countries in exchange for a withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 (Six-Day War).

Point4