The New York Times ran an interesting, but not particularly illuminating debate about recognizing Palestine and the ultimate partition of the historic Land of Israel (a.k.a. historical Palestine) into a Jewish State and an Arab State. Much ink is being spilled about Sweden’s recognizing Palestine, while the only relevant question to end the conflict is if Palestine will finally recognize Israel.
Time for quick historical review: the majority of the Zionist movement which led to the State of Israel accepted (as do the majority of Israelis today), the partition of then Palestine (i.e., historical Land of Israel) for peace —- in 1937 (when it would have saved millions of lives from the Holocaust), 1947, and has been the official policy of the State of Israel for the past twenty years, including the current coalition government. Partition was rejected by the Palestinian and pan-Arab leadership of the time (as it is by many today) which, of course, led to the 1948 war (see Benny Morris’s definitive history of 1948 and all that followed. In fact, those moderate Palestinian factions that supported the partition plans (e.g., Nashashibi clan and followers) were violently suppressed by maximalists (e.g., Husseini clan and followers) who wanted to liquidate the Jewish national home in Palestine.
A couple of years ago, as I was working on issues related to financing cultural heritage site preservation in Israel, then Cabinet Secretary, Zvika Hauser suggested I visit Independence Hall on Rothschild Street in Tel-Aviv. The site was to undergo a long-needed restoration and I got to read much of the correspondence in the exhibits relating to that time of May 1948 when the creation of the Jewish State was nearly aborted.
To my surprise, I learned that declaring the State of Israel was hardly a slam-dunk for David Ben-Gurion. He barely won a 6-4 vote for independence after a nearly 12 hour debate on May 12, 1948 since some members of the national committee opposed the U.N. partition plan since it accepted concessions to Jewish claims on the whole Land of Israel (see Caroline Glick’s argument in the New York Times for the closest ideological parallel and reflecting the current politics of the Jewish Home party) in exchange for a new State of Israel. Only the votes of two members of the Marxist-Zionist Mapam party who promoted coexistence with Arabs (Mapam’s closest ideological contemporary is now the Meretz party) won the day for Ben-Gurion and enabled him to declare the State a few days later. Upon learning of this prolonged debate over the Israeli declaration of independence, Chaim Weizman, soon to become first President of the State of Israel quipped, “What are they waiting for, the idiots.”
Israel’s founders (other than the most extreme right wing) never anticipated rejecting recognition of Palestine (as the Arab State of the partition plan). This is reflected in the debates you can read at Independence Hall concerning what to call the Jewish State. “Palestina”, was considered inappropriate, since it had become the term used by the Romans for Judaea after the second Jewish Revolt and its suppression in 135 AD under Hadrian to erase the Jews from the Land of Israel and disperse its population. Judaea, however, was rejected as the name for the new Jewish State since most of the historical province of Judaea was allocated to the area marked for the Palestinian Arab State.
A geographically correct naming was proposed to divide the two states by simply calling them “Western Palestine” (the Jewish State) and “Eastern Palestine” (which in Hebrew would have been Western Eretz Yisrael and Eastern Eretz Yisrael”). That would enable Palestinians to have their name and the Jews (or “people of Israel”) to have their proper name. However, the debate shifted against using the term “Palestine” in English or Arabic for the Jewish State since it would not take into account the national feelings of the Palestinians.
“Palestine,” the Jewish National Council members argued, should be reserved for what they assumed would be the name of the new Arab State. Immediately before the declaration of Israel’s independence, the Zionist officials wrote in their formal minutes: “It is likely that the Arab state that will be established in the Land of Israel will be called Palestine in the future, which could cause confusion (if the new Jewish State would be called Western Palestine).” Palestine was recognized by the Jewish State-in-the making even before it was declared as the State of Israel. The failure of any mutual generosity by the Arab national movement then led directly to the lost opportunity for Palestinian Statehood in 1948 as intended by the U. N. resolution of 1947.
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