Read other letters about this article

• Thursday, January 8, 2009 11:39 AM

  @JonathanInTelAviv

  JonathanInTelAviv: "Israel... has been negotiating lately with the Palestinian Authority"

  When Israel finally stops their settlement expansion I'll start to take them seriously with respect to peace negotiations.

  JonathanInTelAviv: "Oh, and the future Israelis accepted the UN Partition Plan of 1947, while the Palestinians didn't."

  Gotta love the Blame Game - or not. As Israeli historian Tom Segev explained in his excellent book "One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate" about that Partition Plan:

  "[I]n rejecting the partition plan the Arabs... made a tactical error. There were Jews who opposed partition as well... The Zionist movement accepted the partition plan, in a wise tactical step. Even then all the players understood that geographically and demographically the U.N.'s partition plan could not be implemented. The border between the two states was long and contorted, impossible to defend; the Jewish state would include more than half a million Arabs, slightly more than the number of Jews then living within the proposed boundaries... No one believed in the U.N.'s map; everyone knew there would be war."

  A map of that UN Partition Plan of 1947 is here:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/israel_and_palestinians/key_maps/6.stm

  —Publicola Read Publicola's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel