One of the founding myths of Zionism's 'return and redemption' was of 'a land without people for a people without land.'
Only part of that statement was right. The Jews may have been a people without a land, but Palestine was not a land without people. So the Jewish state was founded on a fiction. It ignored the existence of Palestine's local Arabs.
How was it possible for one country to serve two people? Therein lay the problem that continues to haunts us today.
The only solution was partition and the creation of two states. That is what the Peel Commission's Report recommended in 1937, as it foreshadowed the British withdrawal from Palestine as a mandatory power.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 17, 2004 08:31 PM | TrackBackHow come that one can deny the existence of 3500 years of jews in the territories where Israel was founded just after the United Nations relevant resolution in 1947!... This kind of subjective comments can only serve the peace ennemies...
Posted by: Vedat Mercek on November 18, 2004 02:57 AMVedat,
Zionism's conception of 'return and redemption' and 'a land without people for a people without land' was European based.
The person who I had in mind was Theodore Herzl and his text The Jewish State written around 1896. In that text Herzl argued that:
"...the essence of the Jewish problem was not individual but national. He declared that the Jews could gain acceptance in the world only if they ceased being a national anomaly. The Jews are one people, he said, and their plight could be transformed into a positive force by the establishment of a Jewish state with the consent of the great powers. He saw the Jewish question as an international political question to be dealt with in the arena of international politics."
But you are right. In the Ottomon Empire there was a Jewish community (yishuv) in Palestine. This rose from 6 percent of Palestine's population in 1880 to 10 percent by 1914. The numbers are insignificant since 90% was Arab.