The Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern: ʾEreṣ Yīsraʾel, Tiberian: ʾEreṣ Yīsrāʾēl) is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible,
with specific mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel
47. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the settled land is referred as "from Dan to Beersheba",
and three times it is referred as "from the entrance of Hamath unto the
brook of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:65, 1 Chronicles 13:5 and 2 Chronicles 7:8).
Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied. It holds that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Joshua and the later Prophets. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to Abram's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abram for his descendants. Abram's name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This belief is not shared by most adherents of replacement theology (or supersessionism), who hold the view that the Old Testament prophecies were superseded by the coming of Jesus, a view often repudiated by Christian Zionists as a theological error. Evangelical Zionists variously claim that Israel has title to the land by divine right, or by a theological, historical and moral grounding of attachment to the land unique to Jews (James Parkes). The idea that ancient religious texts can be warrant or divine right for a modern claim has often been challenged, and Israeli courts have rejected land claims based on religious motivations.
During the League of Nations mandate period (1920–1948) the term "Eretz Yisrael" or the "Land of Israel" was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine. Official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word "Palestine" פלשתינה (Palestina) followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael", א״י Aleph-Yod.
The term "Land of Israel" is a direct translation of the Hebrew phrase ארץ ישראל (Eretz Yisrael), which occasionally occurs in the Bible, and is first mentioned in the Tanakh in 1 Samuel 13:19, following the Exodus, when the Israelite tribes were already in the Land of Canaan. The words are used sparsely in the Bible: King David is ordered to gather 'strangers to the land of Israel' (hag-gêrîm 'ăšer, bə'ereṣ yiśrā'êl) for building purposes (1 Chronicles 22:2), and the same phrasing is used in reference to King Solomon's census of all of the 'strangers in the Land of Israel' (2 Chronicles 2:17). Ezekiel, though generally preferring the phrase 'soil of Israel' ('admat yiśrā'êl), employs eretz Israel twice, respectively at Ezekiel 40:2 and Ezekiel 47:18.
According to Martin Noth,
the term is not an "authentic and original name for this land", but
instead serves as "a somewhat flexible description of the area which the
Israelite tribes had their settlements". According to Anita Shapira,
the term "Eretz Yisrael" was a holy term, vague as far as the exact
boundaries of the territories are concerned but clearly defining
ownership. The sanctity of the land (kedushat ha-aretz) developed rich associations in rabbinical thought,
where it assumes a highly symbolic and mythological status infused with
promise, though always connected to a geographical location. Nur Masalha
argues that the biblical boundaries are "entirely fictitious", and bore
simply religious connotations in Diaspora Judaism, with the term only
coming into ascendency with the rise of Zionism.
The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the "Promised Land",
each with a different purpose. Neither of the terms "Promised Land"
(Ha'Aretz HaMuvtahat) or "Land of Israel" are used in these passages: Genesis 15:13–21, Genesis 17:8 and Ezekiel 47:13–20 use the term "the land" (ha'aretz), as does Deuteronomy 1:8 in which it is promised explicitly to "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... and to their descendants after them," whilst Numbers 34:1–15 describes the "Land of Canaan" (Eretz Kna'an) which is allocated to nine and half of the twelve Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The expression "Land of Israel" is first used in a later book, 1 Samuel 13:19. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the twelve tribes and the "strangers in (their) midst", can claim inheritance. The name "Israel" first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarchJacob (Genesis 32:28). Deriving from the name "Israel", other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the "Children of Israel" or "Israelite".
The term 'Land of Israel' (γῆ Ἰσραήλ) occurs in one episode in the New Testament (Matthew 2:20–21), where, according to Shlomo Sand, it bears the unusual sense of 'the area surrounding Jerusalem'. The section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus.
Interpretations of the borders of the Promised Land, based on scriptural verses
Genesis 15
Genesis 15:18–21 describes what are known as "Borders of the Land" (Gevulot Ha-aretz), which in Jewish tradition defines the extent of the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples then living there.
More precise geographical borders are given in Exodus 23:31, which describes borders as marked by the Red Sea (see debate below), the "Sea of the Philistines" i.e., the Mediterranean, and the "River", the Euphrates), the traditional furthest extent of the Kingdom of David.
Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river or stream, as opposed to a wadi.
Exodus 23
A slightly more detailed definition is given in Exodus 23:31,
which describes the borders as "from the sea of reeds (Red Sea) to the
Sea of the Philistines (Mediterranean sea) and from the desert to the Euphrates River", though the Hebrew text of the Bible uses the name, "the River", to refer to the Euphrates.
Only the "Red Sea" (Exodus 23:31) and the Euphrates
are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the full
land promised to the Israelites. The "Red Sea" corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, as reflected in the Septuagint
translation. Although the English name "Red Sea" is derived from this
name ("Erythraean" derives from the Greek for red), the term denoted all
the waters surrounding Arabia—including the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf,
not merely the sea lying to the west of Arabia bearing this name in
modern English. Thus, the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the
borders described. Modern maps depicting the region take a reticent view
and often leave the southern and eastern borders vaguely defined. The
borders of the land to be conquered given in Numbers have a precisely
defined eastern border which included the Arabah and Jordan.
Numbers 34:1–15 describes the land allocated to the Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh received land east of the Jordan as explained in Numbers 34:14–15. Numbers 34:1–13
provides a detailed description of the borders of the land to be
conquered west of the Jordan for the remaining tribes. The region is
called "the Land of Canaan" (Eretz Kna'an) in Numbers 34:2
and the borders are known in Jewish tradition as the "borders for those
coming out of Egypt". These borders are again mentioned in Deuteronomy 1:6–8, 11:24 and Joshua 1:4.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Canaan was the son of Ham who with his descendants had seized the land from the descendants of Shem according to the Book of Jubilees. Jewish tradition thus refers to the region as Canaan during the period between the Flood and the Israelite settlement. Eliezer Schweid sees Canaan as a geographical name, and Israel the spiritual name of the land. He writes: The
uniqueness of the Land of Israel is thus "geo-theological" and not
merely climatic. This is the land which faces the entrance of the
spiritual world, that sphere of existence that lies beyond the physical
world known to us through our senses. This is the key to the land's
unique status with regard to prophecy and prayer, and also with regard
to the commandments. Thus, the renaming of this landmarks a change in religious status, the origin of the Holy Land concept. Numbers 34:1–13
uses the term Canaan strictly for the land west of the Jordan, but Land
of Israel is used in Jewish tradition to denote the entire land of the
Israelites. The English expression "Promised Land" can denote either the land promised to Abraham in Genesis or the land of Canaan, although the latter meaning is more common.
The border with Egypt is given as the Nachal Mitzrayim (Brook of Egypt) in Numbers, as well as in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Jewish tradition (as expressed in the commentaries of Rashi and Yehuda Halevi, as well as the Aramaic Targums) understand this as referring to the Nile; more precisely the Pelusian branch of the Nile Delta according to Halevi—a view supported by Egyptian and Assyrian texts. Saadia Gaon identified it as the "Wadi of El-Arish", referring to the biblical Sukkot near Faiyum. Kaftor Vaferech
placed it in the same region, which approximates the location of the
former Pelusian branch of the Nile. 19th century Bible commentaries
understood the identification as a reference to the Wadi of the coastal locality called El-Arish.
Easton's, however, notes a local tradition that the course of the river
had changed and there was once a branch of the Nile where today there
is a wadi. Biblical minimalists have suggested that the Besor is intended.
Deuteronomy 19
Deuteronomy 19:8
indicates a certain fluidity of the borders of the promised land when
it refers to the possibility that God would "enlarge your borders." This
expansion of territory means that Israel would receive "all the land he
promised to give to your fathers", which implies that the settlement
actually fell short of what was promised. According to Jacob Milgrom, Deuteronomy refers to a more utopian map of the promised land, whose eastern border is the wilderness rather than the Jordan.
Paul R. Williamson notes that a "close examination of the
relevant promissory texts" supports a "wider interpretation of the
promised land" in which it is not "restricted absolutely to one
geographical locale". He argues that "the map of the promised land was
never seen permanently fixed, but was subject to at least some degree of
expansion and redefinition."
2 Samuel 24
On David's instructions, Joab undertakes a census of Israel and Judah, travelling in an anti-clockwise direction from Gad to Gilead to Dan, then west to Sidon and Tyre, south to the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites, to southern Judah and then returning to Jerusalem. Biblical commentator Alexander Kirkpatrick
notes that the cities of Tyre and Sidon were "never occupied by the
Israelites, and we must suppose either that the region traversed by the
enumerators is defined as reaching up to though not including [them], or
that these cities were actually visited in order to take a census of
Israelites resident in them."
Ezekiel 47
Ezekiel 47:13–20 provides a definition of borders of land in which the twelve tribes of Israel
will live during the final redemption, at the end of days. The borders
of the land described by the text in Ezekiel include the northern border
of modern Lebanon, eastwards (the way of Hethlon) to Zedad and Hazar-enan in modern Syria; south by southwest to the area of Busra on the Syrian border (area of Hauran in Ezekiel); follows the Jordan River between the West Bank and the land of Gilead to Tamar (Ein Gedi) on the western shore of the Dead Sea; From Tamar to Meribah Kadesh (Kadesh Barnea), then along the Brook of Egypt
(see debate below) to the Mediterranean Sea. The territory defined by
these borders is divided into twelve strips, one for each of the twelve
tribes.
Hence, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47 define different but similar borders which include the whole of contemporary Lebanon, both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Israel, except for the South Negev and Eilat. Small parts of Syria are also included.
The common biblical phrase used to refer to the territories actually
settled by the Israelites (as opposed to military conquests) is "from Dan to Beersheba" (or its variant "from Beersheba to Dan"), which occurs many times in the Bible.
Division of tribes
The 12 tribes of Israel are divided in 1 Kings 11. In the chapter, King Solomon's sins lead to Israelites forfeiting 10 of the 12 tribes:
30 and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. 31 Then he said to Jeroboam,
"Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of
Israel, says: 'See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand
and give you ten tribes. 32 But for the sake of my servant David
and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of
Israel, he will have one tribe. 33 I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Molek
the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in obedience to me, nor
done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my decrees and laws as David,
Solomon's father, did.34 "'But I will not take the whole kingdom
out of Solomon's hand; I have made him ruler all the days of his life
for the sake of David my servant, whom I chose and who obeyed my
commands and decrees. 35 I will take the kingdom from his son's hands and give you ten tribes. 36
I will give one tribe to his son so that David my servant may always
have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my
Name.
According to Jewish religious law (halakha), some laws only apply to Jews living in the Land of Israel and some areas in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (which are thought to be part of biblical Israel). These include agricultural laws such as the Shmita (Sabbatical year); tithing laws such as the Maaser Rishon (Levite Tithe), Maaser sheni, and Maaser ani (poor tithe); charitable practices during farming, such as pe'ah; and laws regarding taxation. One popular source lists 26 of the 613 mitzvot as contingent upon the Land of Israel. According to Menachem Lorberbaum,
the consecrated borders of the Land of Israel understood by returning
exiles differed from both the biblical and pre-exilic borders.
Many of the religious laws which applied in ancient times are
applied in the modern State of Israel; others have not been revived,
since the State of Israel does not adhere to traditional Jewish law. However, certain parts of the current territory of the State of Israel, such as the Arabah,
are considered by some religious authorities to be outside the Land of
Israel for purposes of Jewish law. According to these authorities, the
religious laws do not apply there.
According to some Jewish religious authorities,
every Jew has an obligation to dwell in the Land of Israel and may not
leave except for specifically permitted reasons (e.g., to get married).
There are also many laws dealing with how to treat the land. The
laws apply to all Jews, and the giving of the land itself in the
covenant, applies to all Jews, including converts.
Inheritance of the promise
Traditional religious Jewish interpretation, and that of most
Christian commentators, define Abraham's descendants only as Abraham's
seed through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Johann Friedrich Karl Keil is less clear, as he states that the covenant is through Isaac, but also notes that Ishmael's descendants, generally the Arabs, have held much of that land through time.
Modern Jewish debates on the Land of Israel
The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, which is referred to in official Israeli discourse as Judea and Samaria, from the names of the two historical Israelite and Judean kingdoms.
These debates frequently invoke religious principles, despite the
little weight these principles typically carry in Israeli secular
politics.
Ideas about the need for Jewish control of the land of Israel have been propounded by figures such as Yitzhak Ginsburg, who has written about the historical entitlement that Jews have to the whole Land of Israel.
Ginsburgh's ideas about the need for Jewish control over the land has
some popularity within contemporary West Bank settlements. However, there are also strong backlashes from the Jewish community regarding these ideas.
The Satmar
Hasidic community in particular denounces any geographic or political
establishment of Israel, deeming this establishment as directly
interfering with God's plan for Jewish redemption. Joel Teitelbaum
was a foremost figure in this denouncement, calling the Land and State
of Israel a vehicle for idol worship, as well as a smokescreen for
Satan's workings.
Christian beliefs
Inheritance of the promise
During the early 5th century, Saint Augustine of Hippo argued in his City of God that the earthly or "carnal" kingdom of Israel achieved its peak during the reigns of David and his son Solomon.
He goes on to say however, that this possession was conditional:
"...the Hebrew nation should remain in the same land by the succession
of posterity in an unshaken state even to the end of this mortal age, if
it obeyed the laws of the Lord its God."
He goes on to say that the failure of the Hebrew nation to adhere to this condition resulted in its revocation and the making of a second covenant and cites Jeremiah 31:31–32:
"Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make for the house
of Israel, and for the house of Judah, a new testament: not according to
the testament that I settled for their fathers in the day when I laid
hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they
continued not in my testament, and I regarded them not, says the Lord."
Augustine concludes that this other promise, revealed in the New
Testament, was about to be fulfilled through the incarnation of Christ:
"I will give my laws in their mind, and will write them upon their
hearts, and I will see to them; and I will be to them a God, and they
shall be to me a people". Notwithstanding this doctrine stated by
Augustine and also by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (Ch. 11), the phenomenon of Christian Zionism is widely noted today, especially among evangelical Protestants. Other Protestant groups and churches reject Christian Zionism on various grounds.
History
Jewish religious tradition does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.
Nonetheless, during two millennia of exile and with a continuous yet
small Jewish presence in the land, a strong sense of bondedness exists
throughout this tradition, expressed in terms of people-hood; from the
very beginning, this concept was identified with that ancestral biblical
land or, to use the traditional religious and modern Hebrew term, Eretz Yisrael.
Religiously and culturally the area was seen broadly as a land of
destiny, and always with hope for some form of redemption and return. It
was later seen as a national home and refuge, intimately related to
that traditional sense of people-hood, and meant to show continuity that
this land was always seen as central to Jewish life, in theory if not
in practice.
Having already used another religious term of great importance, Zion (Jerusalem), to coin the name of their movement, being associated with the return to Zion. The term was considered appropriate for the secular Jewish political movement of Zionism
to adopt at the turn of the 20th century; it was used to refer to their
proposed national homeland in the area then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. As originally stated, "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by law."
British Mandate
The Biblical concept of Eretz Israel, and its re-establishment as a state in the modern era, was a basic tenet of the original Zionist
program. This program however, saw little success until the British
commitment to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people" in the Balfour Declaration. Chaim Weizmann, as leader of the Zionist delegation, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
presented a Zionist Statement on 3 February. Among other things, he
presented a plan for development together with a map of the proposed
homeland. The statement noted the Jewish historical connection with "Palestine".
It also declared the Zionists' proposed borders and resources
"essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country"
including "the control of its rivers and their headwaters". These
borders included present day Israel and the occupied territories, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon "in the vicinity south of Sidon".
In 1920, the Jewish members of the first High Commissioner's advisory council objected to the Hebrew transliteration of the word "Palestine" פלשתינה (Palestina) on the ground that the traditional name was ארץ ישראל (Eretz Yisrael),
but the Arab members would not agree to this designation, which in
their view, had political significance. The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, himself a Zionist, decided that the Hebrew transliteration should be used, followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael," א״י Aleph-Yod:
He was aware that there was no other name in the Hebrew
language for this land except 'Eretz-Israel'. At the same time he
thought that if 'Eretz-Israel' only were used, it might not be regarded
by the outside world as a correct rendering of the word 'Palestine', and
in the case of passports or certificates of nationality, it might
perhaps give rise to difficulties, so it was decided to print
'Palestine' in Hebrew letters and to add after it the letters 'Aleph'
'Yod', which constitute a recognised abbreviation of the Hebrew name.
His Excellency still thought that this was a good compromise. Dr. Salem
wanted to omit 'Aleph' 'Yod' and Mr. Yellin wanted to omit 'Palestine'.
The right solution would be to retain both." —Minutes of the meeting on November 9, 1920.
The compromise was later noted as among Arab grievances before the League's Permanent Mandate Commission. During the Mandate, the name Eretz Yisrael (abbreviated א״י Aleph-Yod), was part of the official name for the territory, when written in Hebrew.
These official names for Palestine were minted on the Mandate coins and
early stamps (pictured) in English, Hebrew "(פלשתינה (א״י" (Palestina E"Y)
and Arabic ("فلسطين"). Consequently, in 20th-century political usage,
the term "Land of Israel" usually denotes only those parts of the land
which came under the British mandate.
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II))
recommending "to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for
Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption
and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine,
of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union." The Resolution contained a
plan to partition Palestine into "Independent Arab and Jewish States
and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem."
Israeli period
On 14 May 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation, in which it declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."
When Israel was founded in 1948, the majority Israeli Labor Party leadership, which governed for three decades after independence, accepted the partition of Mandatory Palestine
into independent Jewish and Arab states as a pragmatic solution to the
political and demographic issues of the territory, with the description
"Land of Israel" applying to the territory of the State of Israel within the Green Line. The then opposition revisionists, who evolved into today's Likud party, however, regarded the rightful Land of Israel as Eretz Yisrael Ha-Shlema (literally, the whole Land of Israel), which came to be referred to as Greater Israel. Joel Greenberg, writing in The New York Times, relates subsequent events this way:
The seed was sown in 1977, when Menachem Begin
of Likud brought his party to power for the first time in a stunning
election victory over Labor. A decade before, in the 1967 war, Israeli
troops had in effect undone the partition accepted in 1948 by
overrunning the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ever since, Mr. Begin had
preached undying loyalty to what he called Judea and Samaria (the West
Bank lands) and promoted Jewish settlement there. But he did not annex
the West Bank and Gaza to Israel after he took office, reflecting a
recognition that absorbing the Palestinians could turn Israel it into a
binational state instead of a Jewish one.
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1977 elections and the Oslo Accords,
the term Eretz Israel became increasingly associated with right-wing
expansionist groups who sought to conform the borders of the State of
Israel with the biblical Eretz Yisrael.
As of 2022, according to the Israeli demographer Arnon Soffer,
Palestinians constitute the majority of the population of Eretz Israel,
51.16% as opposed to Jews who, depending on definitions, make up
between 46-47%.
Modern usage
Usage in Israeli politics
Early government usage of the term, following Israel's establishment,
continued the historical link and possible Zionist intentions. In
1951–2 David Ben-Gurion
wrote "Only now, after seventy years of pioneer striving, have we
reached the beginning of independence in a part of our small country."
Soon afterwards he wrote "It has already been said that when the State
was established it held only six percent of the Jewish people remaining
alive after the Nazi cataclysm. It must now be said that it has been
established in only a portion of the Land of Israel. Even those who are
dubious as to the restoration of the historical frontiers, as fixed and
crystallised and given from the beginning of time, will hardly deny the
anomaly of the boundaries of the new State."
The 1955 Israeli government year-book said, "It is called the 'State of
Israel' because it is part of the Land of Israel and not merely a
Jewish State. The creation of the new State by no means derogates from
the scope of historical Eretz Israel".
Herut and Gush Emunim
were among the first Israeli political parties basing their land
policies on the Biblical narrative discussed above. They attracted
attention following the capture of additional territory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
They argue that the West Bank should be annexed permanently to Israel
for both ideological and religious reasons. This position is in conflict
with the basic "land for peace" settlement formula included in UN242. The Likud party, in the platform it maintained until prior to the 2013 elections, had proclaimed its support for maintaining Jewish settlement communities in the West Bank and Gaza, as the territory is considered part of the historical land of Israel. In her 2009 bid for Prime Minister, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni
used the expression, noting, "we need to give up parts of the Land of
Israel", in exchange for peace with the Palestinians and to maintain
Israel as a Jewish state; this drew a clear distinction with the
position of her Likud rival and winner, Benjamin Netanyahu. However, soon after winning the 2009 elections, Netanyahu delivered an address[66] at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University that was broadcast live in Israel and across parts of the Arab world, on the topic of the Middle East peace process. He endorsed for the first time the notion of a Palestinian state
alongside Israel, while asserting the right to a sovereign state in
Israel arises from the land being "the homeland of the Jewish people".
The Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace,
signed in 1993, led to the establishment of an agreed border between
the two nations, and subsequently the state of Israel has no territorial
claims in the parts of the historic Land of Israel lying east of the
Jordan river.
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day, Hebrew: יום העלייה) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
Palestinian viewpoints
According to Palestinian historian Nur Masalha, Eretz Israel
was a religious concept which was turned by Zionists into a political
doctrine in order to emphasize an exclusive Jewish right of possession
regardless of the Arab presence.
Masalha wrote that the Zionist movement has not given up on an
expansive definition of the territory, including Jordan and more, even
though political pragmatism has engendered a focus on the region west of
the Jordan River.
There were several proposals for a Jewish state in the course of Jewish history between the destruction of ancient Israel and the founding of the modern State of Israel.
While some of those have come into existence, others were never
implemented. The Jewish national homeland usually refers to the State of
Israel or the Land of Israel, depending on political and religious beliefs. Jews and their supporters, as well as their detractors and anti-Semites have put forth plans for Jewish states.
In 1820, in a precursor to modern Zionism, Mordecai Manuel Noah tried to found a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River, to be called "Ararat" after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark.
He erected a monument at the island which read "Ararat, a City of
Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri,
5586 (September, 1825) and in the Fiftieth Year of American
Independence." In his Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews,
Noah proclaimed his faith that the Jews would return and rebuild their
ancient homeland. Noah called on America to take the lead in this
endeavor. Some have speculated whether Noah's utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later.
The idea was brought to the World Zionist Organization's Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 in Basel.
There, a fierce debate ensued. The African land was described as an
"ante-chamber to the Holy Land", but other groups felt that accepting
the offer would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine in Ottoman Syria, particularly the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem.
Before the vote on the matter, the Russian delegation stormed out in
opposition. In the end, the motion to consider the plan passed by 295
to 177 votes.
The next year, a three-man delegation was sent to inspect the
plateau. Its high elevation gave it a temperate climate, making it
suitable for European settlement. However, the observers found a
dangerous land filled with lions and other creatures. Moreover, it was
populated by a large number of Maasai people, who did not seem at all amenable to an influx of people coming from Europe.
After receiving this report, Congress decided in 1905 to politely
decline the British offer. Some Jews, who viewed this as a mistake,
formed the Jewish Territorial Organization with the aim of establishing a Jewish state anywhere.
On March 28, 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet
of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of
the working Jews." The decree meant that there was "a possibility of
establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the
territory of the named region".
On August 20, 1930, the General Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) accepted the decree "On formation of the Birobidzhan
national region in the structure of the Far Eastern Territory". The
State Planning Committee considered the Birobidzhan national region as a
separate economic unit. In 1932, the first scheduled figures of the
region development were considered and authorized.
On May 7, 1934, the Presidium accepted the decree on its
transformation in the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian
Republic. In 1938, with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory, the
Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.
According to Joseph Stalin's national policy, each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew,
would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts
would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.
Initially, there had been proposals to create a Jewish Soviet Republic in Crimea or in part of Ukraine, however these were rejected because of fears of antagonizing non-Jews in those regions.
Another important goal of the Birobidzhan project was to increase
settlement in the remote Soviet Far East, especially along the
vulnerable border with China. In 1928, there was virtually no settlement in the area, while Jews had deep roots in the western half of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia proper.
The geography and climate of Birobidzhan were harsh, the landscape largely swampland, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch. Some have even claimed that Stalin was also motivated by anti-Semitism in selecting Birobidzhan; that he wanted to keep the Jews as far away from the centers of power as possible.
The Birobidzhan experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s,
during Stalin's first campaign of purges. Jewish leaders were arrested
and executed, and Yiddish schools were shut down. Shortly after this, World War II brought to an abrupt end concerted efforts to bring Jews east.
There was a slight revival in the Birobidzhan idea after the war as a potential home for Jewish refugees.
During that time, the Jewish population of the region peaked at almost
one-third of the total. But efforts in this direction ended, with the doctors' plot,
the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, and Stalin's second wave
of purges shortly before his death. Again the Jewish leadership was
arrested and efforts were made to stamp out Yiddish culture—even the Judaica
collection in the local library was burned. In the ensuing years, the
idea of an autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union was all but
forgotten.
Some scholars, such as Louis Rapoport, Jonathan Brent and
Vladimir Naumov, assert that Stalin had devised a plan to deport all of
the Jews of the Soviet Union to Birobidzhan much as he had internally
deported other national minorities such as the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans,
forcing them to move thousands of miles from their homes. The doctors'
plot may have been the first element of this plan. If so, the plan was
aborted by Stalin's death on March 5, 1953.
Despite the little evidence to suggest that the Japanese had ever contemplated a Jewish state or a Jewish autonomous region, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz published a book called The Fugu Plan in 1979. In this partly fictionalized book, Tokayer & Swartz gave the name the Fugu Plan or Fugu Plot (河豚計画, Fugu keikaku) to memoranda written in the 1930s Imperial Japan proposing settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied
Europe in Japanese territories. Tokayer and Swartz claim that the plan,
which was viewed by its proponents as risky but potentially rewarding
for Japan, was named after the Japanese word for puffer-fish, a delicacy
that can be fatally poisonous if incorrectly prepared.
Tokayer and Swartz base their claim on statements made by Captain Koreshige Inuzuka.
They alleged that such a plan was first discussed in 1934 and then
solidified in 1938, supported by notables such as Inuzuka, Ishiguro
Shiro and Norihiro Yasue; however, the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941 and other events prevented its full implementation. The memorandums were not called The Fugu Plan.
Ben-Ami Shillony, a professor at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, confirms that the statements upon which Tokayer and
Swartz based their claim were taken out of context and that the
translation with which they worked was flawed. Shillony's view is
further supported by Kiyoko Inuzuka.
In 'The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders', he questioned
whether the Japanese ever contemplated establishing a Jewish state or a
Jewish autonomous region.
The Madagascar plan was a suggested policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.
The evacuation of European Jewry to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept. Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, Lord Moyne, German scholar Paul de Lagarde and the British, French, and Polish governments had all contemplated the idea. Nazi Germany seized upon it, and in May 1940, in his Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, Heinrich Himmler
declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely
extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews
to Africa or some other colony."
Although some discussion of this plan had been brought forward from 1938 by other well-known Nazi ideologues, such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, and Joachim von Ribbentrop,
it was not until June 1940 that the plan was actually set in motion.
As victory in France was imminent, it was clear that all French colonies
would soon come under German control, and the Madagascar Plan could be
realized. It was also felt that a potential peace treaty with Great
Britain would put the British navy at Germany's disposal for use in the
evacuation.
Jewish self-governing territory within Italian East Africa
The Italian government during the Fascist
period proposed offering to resolve the "Jewish problem" in Europe and
in Palestine by resettling Jews into a Jewish self-governing territory
within the northwest territory of Italian East Africa that would place them among the Beta Israel
Jewish community already living in Italian East Africa. Jews from
Europe and Palestine would be resettled to the north-west Ethiopian
districts of Gojjam and Begemder, along with the Beta Israel community..The proposed Jewish self-governing territory was to be within the Italian Empire.
The Fascist regime at the time showed racialist attitudes towards the
Beta Israel Jews of Ethiopia since they are racially black and the
Fascist regime deemed whites to be superior to blacks; and racial laws
enacted in Italy also applied to the Beta Israel Jews in Italian East
Africa that forbade intimate relationships between blacks and whites.
Mussolini's plan was never implemented.
Other attempts of Jewish self-governance throughout history
The list below contains both historical moments of Jewish self-governance as well as other proposals for Jewish self-governance.
Ancient times
Adiabene – an ancient kingdom in Mesopotamia with its capital at Arbil was ruled by Jewish converts during the first century.
Mahoza – During the beginning of the sixth century Mar-Zutra II formed a politically independent state where he ruled from Mahoza, today in central Iraq, for about 7 years.
In 1902, Zionist Max Bodenheimer proposed the idea of the League of East European States, which would entail the establishment of a buffer state (Pufferstaat) within the Jewish Pale of Settlement of Russia, composed of the former Polish provinces annexed by Russia.
In the early 20th century Cyprus and El Arish on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and its environs were proposed as a site for Jewish settlement by Herzl.
Several proposals for a Jewish "republic" under Arab or Transjordanian suzerainty were put forward by the Hashemite kings of Hejaz and emirs of Transjordan; the closest these proposals came to fruition was the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, which proved to be impossible to implement subsequent to the division of the Levant into League of Nations Mandates.
British Guiana – in March 1940, British Guiana (now Guyana)
was proposed as a Jewish homeland. However, the British Government
decided that "the problem is at present too problematical to admit of
the adoption of a definite policy and must be left for the decision of
some future Government in years to come".
Following
the creation of the State of Israel, the goal of establishing a Jewish
state was achieved. However, since then, there have been some proposals
for a second Jewish state, in addition to Israel:
State of Judea – many Israeli settlers in the West Bank
have mulled declaring independence as the State of Judea should Israel
ever withdraw from the West Bank. In January 1989, several hundred
activists met and announced their intention to create such a state in
the event of Israeli withdrawal.
During the Mandatory period, numerous plans of partition of Palestine were proposed but without the agreement of all parties. In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine
was voted for. The leaders of the Jewish Agency for Palestine accepted
parts of the plan, while Arab leaders refused it. This triggered the 1947–1949 Palestine war and led, in 1948, to the establishment of the state of Israel on a part of Mandate Palestine as the Mandate came to an end. The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian occupation, and the West Bank was ruled by Jordan, before both territories were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Since then there have been proposals to establish a Palestinian state.
In 1969, for example, the PLO proposed the establishment of a binational
state over the whole of the former British Mandate territory. This
proposal was rejected by Israel, as it would have amounted to the
disbanding of the state of Israel. The basis of the current proposals is
for a two-state solution on either a portion of or the entirety of the Palestinian territories—the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have been occupied by Israel since 1967.
Background
Ottoman era
At the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the victorious European states divided many of its component regions into newly created states under League of Nations mandates according to deals that had been struck with other interested parties. In the Middle East, Syria
(including the Ottoman autonomous Christian Lebanon and the surrounding
areas that became the Republic of Lebanon) came under French control,
while Mesopotamia and Palestine were allotted to the British.
Most of these states achieved independence during the following
three decades without great difficulty, though in some regimes, the
colonial legacy continued through the granting of exclusive rights to
market/manufacture oil and maintain troops to defend it. However, the case of Palestine remained problematic.
Arab nationalism was on the rise after World War II, possibly following the example of European nationalism. Pan-Arabist beliefs called for the creation of a single, secular state for all Arabs.
In 1917 the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration which declared British support for the creation in Palestine of a "national home for the Jewish people".
The declaration was enthusiastically received by many Jews worldwide,
but was opposed by Palestinian and Arab leaders, who later claimed that
the objective was a breach of promises made to the Sharif of Mecca in 1915, in exchange for Arab help fighting the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Many different proposals have been made and continue to be made
to resolve the dilemma of the competing objectives, including an Arab
state, with or without a significant Jewish population, a Jewish state,
with or without a significant Arab population, a single bi-national state,
with or without some degree of cantonization, two states, one
bi-national and one Arab, with or without some form of federation, and
two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with or without some form of
federation.
At the same times, many Arab leaders maintained that Palestine
should join a larger Arab state covering the imprecise region of the Levant. These hopes were expressed in the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, which was signed by soon-to-be Iraqi ruler Faisal I and the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. Despite this, the promise of a Pan-Arab state including Palestine were dashed as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan declared independence from their European rulers, while western Palestine festered in the developing Arab-Jewish conflict.
In light of these developments, Arabs began calling for both
their own state in the British Mandate of Palestine and an end to the
British support of the Jewish homeland's creation and to Jewish immigration.
The movement gained steam through the 1920s and 1930s as Jewish
immigration picked up. Under pressure from the arising nationalist
movement, the British enforced the White Papers, a series of laws
greatly restricting Jewish immigration and the sale of lands to Jews.
The laws, passed in 1922, 1930, and 1939, varied in severity, but all attempted to find a balance between British sympathies with the Jews and the Arabs.
In the early years of World War I, negotiations took place between the British High Commissioner in Egypt Henry McMahon and Sharif of MeccaHusayn bin Ali
for an alliance of sorts between the Allies and the Arabs in the Near
East against the Ottomans. On 24 October 1915, McMahon sent to Hussein a
note which the Arabs came to regard as their "Declaration of
Independence". In McMahon's letter, part of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence,
McMahon declared Britain's willingness to recognise the independence of
the Arabs, both in the Levant and the Hejaz, subject to certain
exemptions. It stated on behalf of the Government of Great Britain that:
The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria
lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo
cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits
demanded.
With the above modification, and without prejudice of our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept those limits.
As for those regions lying within those frontiers wherein Great Britain
is free to act without detriment to the interest of her ally, France, I
am empowered in the name of the Government of Great Britain to give the
following assurances and make the following reply to your letter:
Subject to the above modifications, Great Britain is prepared to
recognize and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions
within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca.
The exemptions from Arab control of certain areas set out in the
McMahon note were to seriously complicate the problems of peace in the
Near East. At the time, the Arab portions of the Ottoman Empire were
divided into administrative units called vilayets and sanjaks. Palestine was divided into the sanjuks of Acre and Nablus, both of which were a part of the vilayet of Beirut, and an independent sanjak
of Jerusalem. The areas exempted from Arab control by the McMahon note
included "Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs,
Hama, and Aleppo." Between 1916 and 1920, the British government
interpreted these commitments as including Palestine in the Arab area.
However, in the Churchill White Paper they argued instead that "Damascus" meant the vilayet
and not the city of Damascus, and accordingly virtually all of
Palestine was excluded from Arab control. The British entered into the
secret Sykes–Picot Agreement on 16 May 1916 and the commitment of the Balfour Declaration, for example, on that understanding.
The Arabs, however, insisted at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war that "Damascus" meant the city of Damascus – which left Palestine in their hands. However, in 1915, these problems of interpretation did not occur to Hussein, who agreed to the British wording.
Despite Arab objections based in part on the Arab interpretation
of the McMahon correspondence noted above, Britain was given the League of NationsMandate for Palestine. The Mandate was administered as two territories: Palestine and Transjordan,
with the Jordan River being the boundary between them. The boundaries
under the Mandate also did not follow those sought by the Jewish
community, which sought the inclusion of the east bank of the Jordan
into the Palestinian territory, to which the objective of the Mandate
for a homeland for the Jewish people
would apply. It was made clear from before the commencement of the
Mandate, and a clause to that effect was inserted in the Mandate, that
the objective set out in the Mandate would not apply to Transjordan
following the passing of the Transjordan memorandum.
Transjordan was destined for early independence. The objective of the
Mandate was to apply only to territory west of the Jordan, which was
commonly referred to as Palestine by the British administration, and as Eretz Israel by the Hebrew-speaking Jewish population.
During the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine the British government formed the Peel Commission,
which recommended the formation of a Jewish and an Arab state. It
called for a small Jewish state in the Galilee and maritime strip, a
British enclave stretching from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and an Arab state covering the rest.
The Commission recommended the creation of a small Jewish state in a
region less than 1/5 of the total area of Palestine. The Arab area was
to be joined to Transjordan.
The Arab population in the Jewish areas was to be removed, by force if
necessary, and vice versa, although this would mean the movement of far
more Arabs than Jews. The Zionist Congress rejected the proposal, while
allowing the leadership to continue negotiating with the British.
The Arab leadership rejected the proposal outright. It all came to
nothing, as the British government shelved the proposal altogether by
the middle of 1938.
In February 1939, the St. James Conference
convened in London, but the Arab delegation refused to formally meet
with its Jewish counterpart or to recognize them. The Conference ended
on March 17, 1939, without making any progress. On May 17, 1939, the
British government issued the White Paper of 1939,
in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate was abandoned in favor of
Jews and Arabs sharing one government and put strict quotas on further
Jewish immigration. Because of impending World War II and the opposition from all sides, the plan was dropped.
World War II (1939–1945) gave a boost to the Jewish nationalism, as the Holocaust reaffirmed their call for a Jewish homeland. At the same time, many Arab leaders had even supported Nazi Germany,
a fact which could not play well with the British. As a result, Britain
pooled its energy into winning over Arab opinions by abandoning the
Balfour Declaration and the terms of the League of Nations mandate which
had been entrusted to it in order to create a "Jewish National Home".
Britain did this by issuing the 1939 white paper which officially
allowed a further 75,000 Jews to move over five years (10,000 a year
plus an additional 25,000) which was to be followed by Arab majority
independence. The British would later claim that that quota had already
been fulfilled by those who had entered without its approval.
The Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee (1945)
The framers of the Arab League sought to include the Palestinian Arabs within the framework of the League from its inception. An annex to the League Pact declared:
Even though Palestine was not able to control her own
destiny, it was on the basis of the recognition of her independence that
the Covenant of the League of Nations determined a system of government
for her. Her existence and her independence among the nations can,
therefore, no more be questioned de jure than the independence of
any of the other Arab States... Therefore, the States signatory to the
Pact of the Arab League consider that in view of Palestine's special
circumstances, the Council of the League should designate an Arab
delegate from Palestine to participate in its work until this country
enjoys actual independence.
In November 1945, the Arab League reconstituted the Arab Higher Committee comprising twelve members
as the supreme executive body of Palestinian Arabs in the territory of
the British Mandate of Palestine. The committee was dominated by the Palestine Arab Party
and was immediately recognised by Arab League countries. The Mandate
government recognised the new Committee two months later. The
Constitution of the League of Arab States says the existence and
independence of Palestine cannot be questioned de jure even though the outward signs of this independence have remained veiled as a result of force majeure.
In 1946, Jewish leaders – including Nahum Goldmann, Rabbi Abba Silver, Moshe Shertok, and David Ben-Gurion – proposed a union between Arab Palestine and Transjordan.
Also in 1946, leaders of the Zionist movement in the U.S. sought the
postponement of a determination of the application by Transjordan for
United Nations membership until the status of Mandate Palestine as a
whole was determined. However, at its final session the League of Nations recognized the independence of Transjordan, with the agreement of Britain.
In April 1947, during the activity of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, the Arab Higher Committee articulated its demands in the solution for the Question of Palestine:
A complete cessation of the Jewish migration to Palestine.
A total halt to the sale of land to Jews
Cancelation of the British Mandate in Palestine and the Balfour Declaration.
Recognition of the right of Arabs to their land and recognition of
the independence of Palestine as a sovereign state, like all other Arab
states, with a promise to provide minority rights to the Jews according
to the rules of Democracy.
1947 UN Partition Plan
In 1947, the United Nations created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
(UNSCOP) to find an immediate solution to the Palestine question, which
the British had handed over to the UN. The report indicated that the
Arab state would be forced to call for financial assistance "from
international institutions in the way of loans for expansion of
education, public health and other vital social services of a
non-self-supporting nature." A technical note from the Secretariat
explained that without some redistribution of customs from the Jewish
state, Arab Palestine would not be economically viable. The committee
was satisfied that the proposed Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem
would be viable. The majority of the members of UNSCOP proposed certain recommendations for the UN General Assembly which on 29 November 1947 adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Partition Plan,
based substantially on those proposals as Resolution 181(II). PART I:
Future constitution and government of Palestine: A. Clause 3. provided
as follows:- Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special
International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in part III of
this plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the
evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed
but in any case not later than 1 October 1948. The resolution noted Britain's planned termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish,
with the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area being under special international
protection, administered by the United Nations. The resolution included a
highly detailed description of the recommended boundaries for each
proposed state.
The resolution also contained a plan for an economic union between the
proposed states, and a plan for the protection of religious and minority
rights. The resolution sought to address the conflicting objectives and
claims to the Mandate territory of two competing nationalist movements,
Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and Arab nationalism, as well as to resolve the plight of Jews displaced as a result of the Holocaust.
The resolution called for the withdrawal of British forces and
termination of the Mandate by 1 August 1948, and establishment of the
new independent states by 1 October 1948.
In the October 1947 Arab League conference in Aley, the Arab states rejected the option of establishing an interim Palestinian Arab government and the Lebanese prime minister Riad Al Solh in particular told Hajj Amin al-Husseini that if a Palestinian Arab government will be established, he couldn't be part of it. Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam wanted the Arab League to manage the Arab struggle in Palestine.
King Abdullah I of Jordan met with a delegation headed by Golda Meir
(who later became Prime Minister of Israel in 1968) to negotiate terms
for accepting the partition plan, but rejected its proposal that Jordan
remain neutral. Indeed, the king knew that the nascent Palestinian state
would soon be absorbed by its Arab neighbors, and therefore had a
vested interest in being party to the imminent war.
Soon after the UN resolution, less than half a year prior to the
expiration of the British Mandate, large-scale fighting broke out
between the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine. By the time Israel
declared its independence on 14 May 1948, the result of these five and a
half months of fighting was, according to historian Benny Morris,
a "decisive Jewish victory". On one side, the "Palestinian Arab
military power was crushed" and most of the Arab population in the
combat zones was fleeing or had been driven out. On the other side, the "Haganah
transformed from a militia into an army" and succeeded "in
consolidating its hold on a continuous strip of territory embracing the
Coastal Plain, the Jezreel Valley, and the Jordan Valley". The Yishuv
(the Jewish community and its "state-in-waiting"-type organisations)
proved it had the capability to defend itself, persuading the United
States and the remainder of the world to support it and the "victory
over the Palestinian Arabs gave the Haganah the experience and
self-confidence [...] to confront [...] the invading armies of the Arab
states."
On 12 April 1948, the Arab League announced:
The Arab
armies shall enter Palestine to rescue it. His Majesty (King Farouk,
representing the League) would like to make it clearly understood that
such measures should be looked upon as temporary and devoid of any
character of the occupation or partition of Palestine, and that after
completion of its liberation, that country would be handed over to its
owners to rule in the way they like.
On May 14, 1948, at the end of the British Mandate, the Jewish People's Council gathered in Tel Aviv and the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declaredthe establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry Truman recognised the State of Israel de facto the following day. The Arab countries declared war on the newly formed State of Israel heralding the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Armies of the neighbouring Arab states entered the former Mandate
territories the next day starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. But some
of the leaders of these countries had plans of their own for Palestine.
As the Palestinian writer Hisham Sharabi would observe, Palestine had "disappeared from the map".
As a result of the war, Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, and in September 1948, formed the All-Palestine Government
in Gaza, partly as an Arab League move to limit the influence of Jordan
over the Palestinian issue. The former mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
was appointed president. On October 1 of that year, the All-Palestine
government declared an independent Palestinian state in all of Palestine
region with Jerusalem as its capital. This government was recognised by
Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by Jordan
or any non-Arab country. However, it was little more than a facade
under Egyptian control and had negligible influence or funding. Egypt
did not permit unrestricted entry of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt
proper, and vice versa. In 1959, Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, dissolved the All-Palestine government to rule the Gaza Strip directly.
King Abdullah I of Jordan sent the Arab Legion into the West Bank with no intention of withdrawing it following the war. Jordan annexed the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, granting citizenship to the Arab refugees and
residents living in the West Bank against the objection of many Arab
leaders who still hoped to establish an Arab state of Palestine. The
country's name was changed in 1949 from Transjordan to Jordan and
Palestinians were given seats in the Jordanian Parliament. A royal
decree in March 1949 forbade the use of the term "Palestine" in legal
documents, and other measures were designed to emphasize that there would not be an independent Palestine.
He also banned any opinion contrary to unification of the two
territories and outlawed all All-Palestine Government activity within
territories under his control.
After the war, which the Israelis call the War of Independence
and the Palestinians call the Catastrophe, the 1949 Armistice Agreements
established the separation lines between the combatants, leaving Israel
in control of some of the areas which had been designated for the Arab
state under the Partition Plan, Transjordan in control of the West Bank,
Egypt in control of the Gaza Strip and Syria in control of the Himmah Area.
The Arab League "supervised" the Egyptian trusteeship of the
Palestinian government in Gaza after and secured assurances from Jordan
that the 1950 Act of Union was "without prejudice to the final
settlement".
Jordanian West Bank
King Abdullah I of Jordan
annexed the West Bank, granting citizenship to the Arab refugees and
residents against the wishes of many Arab leaders who still hoped to
establish an Arab state. Under Abdullah's leadership, Arab hopes of
independence were dealt a severe blow. In March he issued a royal decree
forbidding the use of the term "Palestine" in any legal documents, and
pursued other measures designed to make the fact that there would not be
an independent Palestine clear and certain.
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Transjordan occupied the area of Cisjordan, now called the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), which it continued to control in accordance with the 1949 Armistice Agreements
and a political union formed in December 1948. Military Proclamation
Number 2 of 1948 provided for the application in the West Bank of laws
that were applicable in Palestine on the eve of the termination of the
Mandate. On 2 November 1948, the military rule was replaced by a
civilian administration by virtue of the Law Amending Public
Administration Law in Palestine. Military Proclamation Number 17 of
1949, Section 2, vested the King of Jordan with all the powers that were
enjoyed by the King of England, his ministers and the High Commissioner
of Palestine by the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922. Section 5 of this
law confirmed that all laws, regulations and orders that were
applicable in Palestine until the termination of the Mandate would
remain in force until repealed or amended.
The Second Arab-Palestinian Congress was held in Jericho on 1 December 1948 at the end of the war. The delegates proclaimed Abdullah King of Palestine and called for a union of Arab Palestine with the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.
Avi Plascov says that Abdullah contacted the Nashashibi opposition,
local mayors, mukhars, those opposed to the Husaynis, and opposition
members of the AHC.
Plascov said that the Palestinian Congresses were conducted in
accordance with prevailing Arab custom. He also said that contrary to
the widely held belief outside Jordan the representatives did reflect
the feelings of a large segment of the population.
The Transjordanian Government agreed to the unification on 7
December 1948, and on 13 December the Transjordanian parliament approved
the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The change of status
was reflected by the adoption of this new official name on 21 January
1949.
Unification was ratified by a joint Jordanian National Assembly on 24
April 1950 which comprised twenty representatives each from the East and
West Bank. The Act of Union contained a protective clause which
preserved Arab rights in Palestine "without prejudice to any final
settlement".
Many legal scholars say the declaration of the Arab League and
the Act of Union implied that Jordan's claim of sovereignty was
provisional, because it had always been subject to the emergence of the
Palestinian state.
A political union was legally established by the series of
proclamations, decrees, and parliamentary acts in December 1948.
Abdullah thereupon took the title King of Jordan, and he officially
changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April
1949. The 1950 Act of Union confirmed and ratified King Abdullah's
actions. Following the annexation of the West Bank, only two countries
formally recognized the union: Britain and Pakistan.
Thomas Kuttner notes that de facto recognition was granted to the
regime, most clearly evidenced by the maintaining of consulates in East
Jerusalem by several countries, including the United States.
Joseph Weiler agreed, and said that other states had engaged in
activities, statements, and resolutions that would be inconsistent with
non-recognition. Joseph Massad said that the members of the Arab League granted de facto recognition and that the United States had formally recognized the annexation, except for Jerusalem.
The policy of the U.S. Department, was stated in a paper on the subject
prepared for the Foreign Ministers meetings in London in May was in
favor of the incorporation of Central Palestine into Jordan, but desired
that it be done gradually and not by sudden proclamation. Once the
annexation took place, the department approved of the action "in the
sense that it represents a logical development of the situation which
took place as a result of a free expression of the will of the
people.... The United States continued to wish to avoid a public
expression of approval of the union."
The United States government extended de jure recognition to the Government of Transjordan and the Government of Israel on the same day, 31 January 1949.
U.S. President Truman told King Abdullah that the policy of the U.S. as
regards a final territorial settlement in Palestine had been stated in
the General Assembly on 30 November 1948 by the American representative.
The U.S. supported Israeli claims to the boundaries set forth in the UN
General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, but believed that if
Israel sought to retain additional territory in Palestine allotted to
the Arabs, it should give the Arabs territorial compensation.
Clea Bunch said that "President Truman crafted a balanced policy
between Israel and its moderate Hashemite neighbours when he
simultaneously extended formal recognition to the newly created state of
Israel and the Kingdom of Transjordan. These two nations were
inevitably linked in the President's mind as twin emergent states: one
serving the needs of the refugee Jew, the other absorbing recently
displaced Palestinian Arabs. Truman was aware of the private agreements
that existed between Jewish Agency leaders and King Abdullah I of
Jordan. Thus, it made perfect sense to Truman to favour both states with
de jure recognition."
Sandra Berliant Kadosh analyzed U.S. policy toward the West Bank
in 1948, based largely on the Foreign Relations Documents of the United
States. She noted that the U.S. government believed that the most
satisfactory solution regarding the disposition of the greater part of
Arab Palestine would be incorporation in Transjordan and that the State
Department approved the Principle underlying the Jericho resolutions.
Kadosh said that the delegates claimed to represent 90 percent of the
population, and that they ridiculed the Gaza government. They asserted
that it represented only its eighty-odd members.
Egypt supervised the government of Palestine in Gaza as a trustee on behalf of the Arab League.
An Egyptian Ministerial order dated 1 June 1948 declared that all laws
in force during the Mandate would continue to be in force in the Gaza
Strip. Another order issued on 8 August 1948 vested an Egyptian
Administrator-General with the powers of the High Commissioner. The
All-Palestine Government had very limited power however, as Egypt
maintained control over Gaza's administration. The All-Palestine
Government was under official Egyptian protection, but on the other hand it had no executive role, but rather mostly political and symbolic. Its importance gradually declined, especially with the government seat relocation from Gaza to Cairo in December 1948.
Shortly thereafter, the Jericho Conference named King Abdullah I of Transjordan, "King of Arab Palestine". The Congress called for the union of Arab Palestine and Transjordan and Abdullah announced his intention to annex the West Bank. The other Arab League member states opposed Abdullah's plan.
The U.S. advised the Arab states that the U.S. attitude regarding
Israel had been clearly stated in the UN by Dr. Jessup on 20 November
1949. He said that the U.S. supported Israeli claims to the boundaries
set forth in the UN General Assembly resolution. However, the U.S.
believed that if Israel sought to retain additional territory in
Palestine it should give the Arabs other territory as compensation.
The Israelis agreed that the boundaries were negotiable, but did not
agree to the principle of compensation as a precondition. Israel's
Foreign Minister Eban
stressed that it was undesirable to undermine what had already been
accomplished by the armistice agreements, and maintained that Israel
held no territory wrongfully, since her occupation of the areas had been
sanctioned by the armistice agreements, as had the occupation of the
territory in Palestine held by the Arab states.
In late 1949, under the auspices of the UNCCP,
their subsidiary Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East, headed by
Gordon R. Clapp, recommended four development projects, involving the Wadi Zerqa basin in Jordan, the Wadi Qelt watershed and stream bed in Arab Palestine, the Litani River in Lebanon, and the Ghab valley in Syria. The World Bank considered the mission's plans positive, and U.S. President Harry Truman
subsequently announced that the Foreign Economic Assistance Act of 1950
contained an appropriation of US$27 million for the development
projects recommended by the Clapp Mission and to assist Palestinian
refugees.
In a diplomatic conversation held on 5 June 1950 between Stuart W. Rockwell
of the State Department's Office of African and Near Eastern Affairs
and Abdel Monem Rifai, a Counselor of the Jordan Legation. Rifai asked
when the U.S. was going to recognize the union of Arab Palestine and
Jordan. Rockwell explained the Department's position, stating that it
was not the custom of the U.S. to issue formal statements of recognition
every time a foreign country changed its territorial area. The union of
Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the
will of the people and the U.S. accepted the fact that Jordanian
sovereignty had been extended to the new area. Rifai said he had not
realized this and that he was very pleased to learn that the U.S. did in
fact recognize the union. The U.S. State Department published this
memorandum of conversation in 1978.
In 1957, the Basic Law of Gaza established a Legislative Council
that could pass laws which were given to the High Administrator-General
for approval. In 1959, Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser
ordered the dismantling of the All-Palestine Protectorate for good. In
March 1962, a Constitution for the Gaza Strip was issued confirming the
role of the Legislative Council.
The All-Palestine Protectorate is regarded by some as the first attempt
to establish an independent Palestinian state, whilst most just saw it
as an Egyptian puppet, only to be annulled a few years after its
creation by no less than PresidentGamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
In June 1967, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the area of Golan Heights from Syria as a result of the Six-Day War.
Israel, which was ordered to withdraw from territories occupied during
the war in exchange for Arab recognition and the negotiation of final
borders by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and later applied Israeli civil law to the Golan Heights.
On 9 June 1967, Israeli Foreign Minister Eban assured the U.S. that it
was not seeking territorial aggrandizement and had no "colonial"
aspirations. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk
stressed to Israel that no settlement with Jordan would be accepted by
the global community unless it gave Jordan some special position in the
Old City of Jerusalem. The U.S. also assumed Jordan would receive the
bulk of the West Bank as that was regarded as Jordanian territory.
The international community considers the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, held under military occupation by Israel subject to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel does not accept that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies de jure, but has stated that on humanitarian issues it will govern itself de facto by its provisions, without specifying which these are.
The Gaza Strip is still considered to be occupied by the United
Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of
governments and legal commentators, despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza.
On 3 November 1967, U.S. Ambassador Goldberg
called on King Hussein of Jordan, saying that the U.S. was committed to
the principle of political independence and territorial integrity and
was ready to reaffirm it bilaterally and publicly in the Security
Council resolution. According to Goldberg, the U.S. believed in
territorial integrity, withdrawal, and recognition of secure boundaries.
Goldberg said the principle of territorial integrity has two important
sub-principles, there must be a withdrawal to recognized and secure
frontiers for all countries, not necessarily the old armistice lines,
and there must be mutuality in adjustments.
The U.S. President's Special Assistant, Walt Rostow, told Israeli ambassador Harmon
that he had already stressed to Foreign Minister Eban that the U.S.
expected the thrust of the settlement would be toward security and
demilitarisation arrangements rather than toward major changes in the
armistice lines. Harmon said the Israeli position was that Jerusalem
should be an open city under unified administration, but that the
Jordanian interest in Jerusalem could be met through arrangements
including "sovereignty". Rostow said the U.S. government assumed (and
Harman confirmed) that despite public statements to the contrary, the
Government of Israel position on Jerusalem was that which Eban, Harman,
and Evron had given several times, that Jerusalem was negotiable.
Following the outbreak of fighting in Jordan in September 1970
between the Jordanian army and Palestinian guerilla, the US government
began considering the creation of a separate Palestinian political
entity. However, a Palestinian state was the least considered
alternative. A State Department memo of 1970 stated in that regard:
such a state would presumably have to be limited to the West Bank and
Gaza, it would probably not be economically viable without the
injection of large-scale outside financial assistance. Its political
viability is also doubtful, since a large number of Palestinians would
remain outside its borders and it would tend to be dominated by a larger
and more powerful Israel.
PLO and the binational state solution
Before the Six-Day War, the movement for an independent Palestine received a boost in 1964 when the Palestine Liberation Organization was established. Its goal, as stated in the Palestinian National Covenant was to create a Palestinian state in the whole British Mandate, a statement which nullified Israel's right to exist. The PLO would become the leading force in the Palestinian national movement politically, and its leader, Egyptian-born Yassir Arafat, would become regarded as the leader of the Palestinian people.
In 1969, the Fatah movement, accepting as a fait accompli
the presence in Palestine of a large number of Jews, declared that it
was not fighting against Jews, but against Israel as a racist and
theocratic entity. The fifth national council of the Palestine
Liberation Organisation in February 1969 passed a resolution confirming
that the PLO's objective was "to establish a free and democratic society
in Palestine for all Palestinians whether they are Muslims, Christians
or Jews". The PLO was not successful in building support for the
binational solution within Israeli society, however, which lay the
groundwork for an eventual re-scoping of the PLO's aim toward partition
into two states.
Rift between Jordan and Palestinian leadership (1970)
After the events of Black September in Jordan,
the rift between the Palestinian leadership and the Kingdom of Jordan
continued to widen. The Arab League affirmed the right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination
and called on all the Arab states, including Jordan, to undertake to
defend Palestinian national unity and not to interfere in internal
Palestinian affairs. The Arab League also 'affirmed the right of the
Palestinian people to establish an independent national authority under
the command of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in any Palestinian
territory that is liberated.' King Ḥussein dissolved the Jordanian
parliament. Half of its members had been West Bank representatives. He
renounced Jordanian claims to the West Bank, and allowed the PLO to
assume responsibility as the Provisional Government of Palestine. The
Kingdom of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria no longer act as the legitimate
representatives of the Palestinian people, or their territory.
Ten Point Program
In 1974, the PLO adopted the Ten Point Program, which called for the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian democratic, binational state (a one state solution).
It also called for the establishment of Palestinian rule on "any part"
of its liberated territory, as a step towards "completing the liberation
of all Palestinian territory, and as a step along the road to
comprehensive Arab unity." While this was not seen by Israel as a
significant moderation of PLO policy, the phrasing was extremely
controversial within the PLO itself, where it was widely regarded as a
move towards a two-state solution. The adoption of the program, under pressure from Arafat's Fatah faction and some minor groups (e.g. DFLP, al-Sa'iqa) led many hard-line groups to break away from the Arafat and the mainstream PLO members, forming the Rejectionist Front.
To some extent, this split is still evident today. Declassified
diplomatic documents reveal that in 1974, on the eve of the UN debate
that granted the PLO an observer status, some parts of the PLO
leadership were considering to proclaim the formation of a Palestinian government in exile at some point. This plan, however, was not carried out.
At the Rabat summit conference in 1974, Jordan and the other members of the Arab League declared that the Palestinian Liberation Organization
was the "sole legitimate representative of the [Arab] Palestinian
people", thereby relinquishing to that organization its role as
representative of the West Bank.
During the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Israel and Egypt Anwar Sadat proposed the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel refused.
In a speech delivered on 1 September 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan
called for a settlement freeze and continued to support full
Palestinian autonomy in political union with Jordan. He also said that
"It is the United States' position that – in return for peace – the
withdrawal provision of Resolution 242 applies to all fronts, including
the West Bank and Gaza."
The Amman Agreement of 11 February 1985, declared that the PLO
and Jordan would pursue a proposed confederation between the state of
Jordan and a Palestinian state.
In 1988, King Hussein dissolved the Jordanian parliament and renounced
Jordanian claims to the West Bank. The PLO assumed responsibility as the
Provisional Government of Palestine and an independent state was
declared.
The declaration of a State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين) took place in Algiers on November 15, 1988, by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
(PLO). It was approved by the Palestinian National Council (PNC) by a
vote of 253 in favour, 46 against and 10 abstentions. It was read by Yasser Arafat at the closing session of the 19th PNC to a standing ovation. Upon completing the reading of the declaration, Arafat, as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization assumed the title of "President of Palestine". By the 1988 declaration, the PNC empowered its central council to form a government-in-exile
when appropriate, and called upon its executive committee to perform
the duties of the government-in-exile until its establishment.
The borders of the state were not specified. Jordan extended recognition to the state and ceded its claim to the West Bank
to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which had been previously
designated by the Arab League as the "sole legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people".
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA), the United States, the European Union, and the Arab League, envision the establishment of a State of Palestine to include all or part of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, living in peace with Israel
under a democratically elected and transparent government. The PNA,
however, does not claim sovereignty over any territory and therefore is
not the government of the State of Palestine proclaimed in 1988.
Referring to "the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian
Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination," the declaration recalled the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and UN General Assembly Resolution 181
(1947 Partition Plan) as supporting the rights of Palestinians and
Palestine. The declaration then proclaims a "State of Palestine on our
Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem".
The borders of the declared State of Palestine were not specified. The
population of the state was referred to by the statement: "The State of
Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be". The state
was defined as an Arab country by the statement: "The State of Palestine
is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation".
The declaration was accompanied by a PNC call for multilateral
negotiations on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242. This call was later termed "the Historic Compromise",
as it implied acceptance of the "two-state solution", namely that it no
longer questioned the legitimacy of the State of Israel. The PNC's political communiqué accompanying the declaration called only for withdrawal from "Arab Jerusalem" and the other "Arab territories occupied." Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later
were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the
ambiguities it saw in the declaration and to fulfill the longheld
conditions for open dialogue with the United States.
As a result of the declaration, the United Nations General
Assembly (UNGA) convened, inviting Arafat, Chairman of the PLO to give
an address. An UNGA resolution was adopted "acknowledging the
proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council
on 15 November 1988," and it was further decided that "the designation
'Palestine' should be used in place of the designation 'Palestine
Liberation Organization' in the United Nations system,"
and it delegate was assigned a seated in the UN General Assembly
immediately after non-member states, and before all other observers.
One hundred and four states voted for this resolution, forty-four
abstained, and two – the United States and Israel – voted against. By mid-December, seventy-five states had recognized Palestine, rising to eighty-nine states by February 1989.
The declaration is generally interpreted to be a major step on the path to Israel's recognition by the Palestinians. Just as in Israel's declaration of independence, it partly bases its claims on UN GA 181. By reference to "resolutions of Arab Summits" and "UN resolutions since 1947" (like SC 242) it implicitly and perhaps ambiguously restricted its immediate claims to the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem.
It was accompanied by a political statement that explicitly mentioned
SC 242 and other UN resolutions and called only for withdrawal from "Arab Jerusalem" and the other "Arab territories occupied."[92]Yasser Arafat's
statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States
as sufficient to remove the ambiguities it saw in the declaration and to
fulfill the longheld conditions for open dialogue with the United States.
Under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO, the latter assumed control over the Jericho area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on 17 May 1994. On 28 September 1995, following the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli military forces withdrew from the West Bank towns of Nablus, Ramallah, Jericho, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Bethlehem. In December 1995, the PLO also assumed responsibility for civil administration in 17 areas in Hebron.
While the PLO assumed these responsibilities as a result of Oslo, a new
temporary interim administrative body was set up as a result of the
Accords to carry out these functions on the ground: the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
According to Omar Dajani,
the relationship between the PLO and PNA (or PA) in light of the
interim arrangements of Oslo Accords may be stating as "Palestine may
best be described as a transitional association between the PA and the
PLO." He goes on to explain that this transitional association accords
the PA responsibility for local government and the PLO responsibility
for representation of the Palestinian people in the international arena,
while prohibiting it from concluding international agreements that
affect the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This situation is said to be accepted by the Palestinian population insofar as it is viewed as a temporary arrangement.
In 2005, following the implementation of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, PNA gained full control of the Gaza Strip with the exception of its borders, airspace, and territorial waters. This increased the percentage of land in the Gaza strip nominally governed by the PA from 60 percent to 100 percent.
The West Bank and Gaza Strip continued to be considered by the international community to be Occupied Palestinian Territory,
notwithstanding the 1988 declaration of Palestinian independence, the
limited self-government accorded to the Palestinian Authority as a
result of the 1993 Oslo Accords, and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as
part of the Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2005, which saw
the dismantlement of four Israeli settlements in the West Bank and all settlements in the Gaza Strip.
In March 2008, it was reported that the PA was working to
increase the number of countries that recognize Palestine and that a PA
representative had signed a bilateral agreement between the State of
Palestine and Costa Rica. An Al-Haq
position paper (2009) said the reality is that the PA has entered into
various agreements with international organizations and states. These
instances of foreign relations undertaken by the PA signify that the
Interim Agreement is part of a larger on-going peace process, and that
the restrictions on the foreign policy operations of the PA conflict
with the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination, now a norm with a nature of jus cogens, which
includes a right to engage in international relations with other
peoples. Israeli government and many experts consider such actions as violation of the Oslo Accords.
When the PA is exercising the power that is granted to them by
the Oslo Accords, they're acting in the capacity of an agency whose
authority is based on an agreement between Israel and the PLO and not as
a state.
In 2007, after Hamas's legislative victories, the Fatah and Hamas engaged into a violent conflict, taking place mainly in the Gaza Strip, leading to effective collapse of the Palestinian national unity government. After the takeover in Gaza by Hamas on 14 June 2007, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and appointed Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister. Though the new government's authority is claimed to extend to all Palestinian territories, in effect it became limited to the West Bank, as Hamas hasn't recognized the move and continued to rule the Gaza Strip. While PNA budget comes mainly from various aid programs and support of the Arab League, the Hamas Government in Gaza became dependent mainly on Iran until the eruption of the Arab Spring.
After a two-year impasse in negotiations with Israel, the Palestinian
Authority sought to gain recognition as a state according to its 1967
borders with East Jerusalem as its capital from the UN General Assembly in September 2011.
A successful application for membership in the UN would require
approval from the UN Security Council and a two-thirds majority in the
UN General Assembly.
On the prospect of this being successful, U.S. Ambassador to the United NationsSusan Rice alluded to a potential U.S. government withdrawal of UN funding:
"This would be exceedingly politically damaging in our domestic
context, as you can well imagine. And I cannot frankly think of a
greater threat to our ability to maintain financial and political
support for the United Nations in Congress than such an outcome." On 28 June, the U.S. Senate passed S.Res. 185 calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to veto the motion and threatening a withdrawal of aid to the West Bank if the Palestinians followed through on their plans.
At the likely prospect of a veto, Palestinian leaders signalled they
might opt instead for a more limited upgrade to "non-member state"
status, which requires only the approval of the UN General Assembly.
Mahmoud Abbas stated he would accept a return to negotiations and abandon the decision if the Israelis agree to the 1967 borders and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Israel labelled the plan as a unilateral step, to which Foreign Minister Erekat replied,
"We
are not going [to the UN] for a unilateral declaration of the
Palestinian state. We declared our state in 1988 and we have embassies
in more than 130 countries and more countries are recognising our state
on the 1967 borders. The recognition of the Palestinian state is a
sovereignty decision by the countries and it doesn't need to happen
through the UN."
The Arab League formally backed the plan in May, and was officially confirmed by the PLO on 26 June.
On 11 July, the Quartet on the Middle East met to discuss a return to negotiations, but the meeting produced no result. On 13 July, in an interview with Haaretz, Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour claimed that 122 states had so far extended formal recognition to the Palestinian state.
On the following day, the Arab League released a draft statement which
declared a consensus to "go to the United Nations to request the
recognition of the State of Palestine with Al Quds as its capital and to
move ahead and request a full membership." The league's secretary-general, Nabil al-Arabi, confirmed the statement and said that the application for membership will be submitted by the Arab League. On 18 July, Syria announced that it had formally recognised the State of Palestine, the last Arab state to do so. The decision was welcomed by the league, but met with criticism from some, including former Lebanese prime minister Selim al-Hoss:
"Syria has always been calling for the liberation of Palestine from
Israeli occupation and ambitions. The latest stance, however, shows that
[Syria] has given up on a national policy that has spanned several
decades. ... Why this abandonment of a national principle, and what is
the motive behind it? There is no motive except to satisfy international
powers that seek to appease Israel".
On 23 September, Abbas delivered to the UN Secretary-General the
official application for recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN
and a membership in the same organization.
On 11 November a report was approved by the Security Council which
concluded that the council had been unable "to make a unanimous
recommendation" on membership for Palestine.
2011 UNESCO membership
The PLO was accorded observer status at UNESCO
in 1974. In 1989, an application for the admission of Palestine as a
member state was submitted by a group of seven states during the 131st
session of UNESCO's executive board.
The board postponed a decision until the next session, and the item was
included on each session's agenda thereafter, being repeatedly
deferred.
During the board's 187th session in September 2011, a draft resolution
was presented by 24 states requesting that the application be considered
and Palestine be granted membership in the organisation. Following
consultations between the representatives of the 58-member board, the
draft resolution was put for voting on 5 October. The board voted in
favour of recommending the application, winning the approval of 40
states. The resolution to admit Palestine as the agency's 195th member state was adopted at the 36th General Conference on 31 October. Of the 185 dues-paying members eligible for voting, 107 were in favour, 14 were against, 52 abstained and 12 were absent.The resolution was submitted by a total of 43 states. Its membership was ratified on 23 November.
By September 2012, with their application for full membership
stalled, Palestinian representatives had decided to pursue an upgrade in
status from "observer entity" to "non-member observer state".
On November 27 it was announced that the appeal had been officially
made, and would be put to a vote in the General Assembly on November 29,
where their status upgrade was expected to be supported by a majority
of states. In addition to granting Palestine "non-member observer state
status", the draft resolution "expresses the hope that the Security
Council will consider favorably the application submitted on 23
September 2011 by the State of Palestine for admission to full
membership in the United Nations, endorses the two state solution based
on the pre-1967 borders, and stresses the need for an immediate
resumption of negotiations between the two parties."
On Thursday, November 29, 2012, in a 138–9 vote (with 41 abstentions and 5 absences), General Assembly resolution 67/19 was adopted, upgrading Palestine to "non-member observer state" status in the United Nations. The new status equates Palestine's with that of the Holy See. Switzerland was also a non-member observer state until 2002. The change in status was described by The Independent as "de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine".
The vote was a historic benchmark for the recognition of the State of Palestine,
whilst it was widely considered a diplomatic setback for Israel and the
United States. Status as an observer state in the UN allows the State
of Palestine to participate in general debate at the General Assembly,
to co-sponsor resolutions, to join treaties and specialized UN agencies. Even as a nonmember state, the Palestinians could join influential international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Bank and the International Criminal Court, where Palestinian Authority tried to have alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza (2008-2009)
investigated. However, in April 2012 prosecutors refused to open the
investigation, saying it was not clear if the Palestinians were
qualified as a state - as only states can recognize the court's jurisdiction. But the prosecutor confirmed explicitly in 2014 that the upgrade of November 2012 qualified the state of Palestine to join the Rome statute.
On 31 December 2014 Palestinian President Abbas signed a declaration in
which Palestine recognized the jurisdiction of the International
Criminal Court for any crimes committed in the Palestinian territory
since 13 June 2014.
The UN has, after the resolution was passed, permitted Palestine
to title its representative office to the UN as 'The Permanent Observer
Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations', seen by many as a reflexion of the UN's de facto recognition of the State of Palestine's sovereignty, and Palestine has started to re-title its name accordingly on postal stamps, official documents and passports. The Palestinian authorities have also instructed its diplomats to officially represent 'The State of Palestine', as opposed to the 'Palestine National Authority'.
On 17 December 2012, UN Chief of Protocol Yeocheol Yoon decided that
'the designation of "State of Palestine" shall be used by the
Secretariat in all official United Nations documents'.
In January 2013, by an official decree of the Palestinian Authority
President Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority has officially
transformed all of its designations into the State of Palestine.
2013 State of Palestine decree
Following the successful passage of the 2012 United Nations status resolution which changed Palestine's status at the UN to that of observer state, on 3 January 2013, Abbas signed a presidential decree 1/2013
officially changing the name of the 'Palestinian Authority' to the
'State of Palestine'. The decree stated that "Official documents, seals,
signs and letterheads of the Palestinian National Authority
official and national institutions shall be amended by replacing the
name ‘Palestinian National Authority’ whenever it appears by the name
‘State of Palestine’ and by adopting the emblem of the State of
Palestine."
According to international lawyer John V. Whitbeck the decree results
in absorbing of the Palestinian Authority into the State of Palestine.
On 8 January 2013 the Minister of Communication Safa Nassereddin, said
that because issuing new stamps requires Israeli approval to print them
and bring them into the country, it was decided that the new stamps will
be printed in Bahrain and the first of these stamps will be used by Palestinian embassies and other diplomatic missions abroad.
On 5 January 2013 Abbas ordered all Palestinian embassies to
change any official reference to the Palestinian Authority into State of
Palestine. Missions in countries that voted "against" UNGA resolution 67/19 of 2012 are ordered to consult the foreign ministry. Three days later, Omar Awadallah, a foreign ministry official, said that those missions should also use the new name.
Some of the countries themselves, such as Norway, Sweden and Spain,
stick to the Palestinian Authority term even though they voted "in
favor" of the UNGA resolution.
On 6 January 2013, Abbas ordered his cabinet of ministers to prepare regulations to issue new Palestinian passports, official signs and postage stamps in the name of the 'State of Palestine'.Two days later, following a negative reaction by Israel, it was announced that the change will not apply to documents used at Israel checkpoints in the West Bank and Israeli crossings, unless there is a further decision by Abbas. Saeb Erekat then said the new emblem will be used in correspondence with countries that have recognized a state of Palestine.
For the time being the governments of the renamed Authority established in 1994 and of the State established in 1988 remain distinct. On 5 January 2013 it was announced that it is expected the PLO Central Council would take over the functions of the Palestinian Authority's government and parliament.
On the following day, Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO negotiations
department, said that the authority should draft a new constitution.
Following the change in name, Turkey became the first state to
recognize this change, and on 15 April 2013, the Turkish Consul-General
in East Jerusalem Şakir Torunlar presented his credentials as first Turkish Ambassador to the State of Palestine to Palestinian President in Ramallah.
In the 1990s, outstanding steps were taken which formally began a
process the goal of which was to solve the Arab–Israeli conflict through
a two-state solution. Beginning with the Madrid Conference of 1991 and culminating in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords
between Palestinians and Israelis, the peace process has laid the
framework for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and in Gaza.
According to the Oslo Accords, signed by Yassir Arafat and then Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Washington,
Israel would pull out of the Gaza Strip and cities in the West Bank.
East Jerusalem, which had been annexed by Israel in 1980 was not
mentioned in any of the agreements.
Following the landmark accords, the Palestinian National Authority
(PNA) was established to govern those areas from which Israel was to
pull out. The PNA was granted limited autonomy over a non-contiguous
area, though it does govern most Palestinian population centers.
Israel ceased acting in cooperation with the PNA. In the shadow of the rising death toll from the violence, the United States initiated the Road Map for Peace
(published on June 24, 2002), which was intended to end the Intifada by
disarming the Palestinian terror groups and creating an independent
Palestinian state. The Road Map has stalled awaiting the implementation
of the step required by the first phase of that plan with then Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stating within weeks of the release of the
final text that a settlement freeze, one of Israel's main requirements,
would be "impossible" because of the need for settlers to build new
houses and start families.
It remains stalled because of Israel's continuing refusal to comply
with the requirement to freeze settlement expansion and the civil war
between Hamas and Fatah,
except that on April 27, 2011, it was announced that Hamas and Fatah
had reached a reconciliation agreement in a pact which was brokered by
Egypt. Hamas, Fatah, and the other Palestinian political factions signed
the reconciliation agreement in the official signing ceremony of that
agreement which took place on May 4, 2011.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip as part of the Disengagement Plan.
In 2008, U.S.-brokered negotiations were ongoing between
Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the outgoing Israeli Prime
Minister, Ehud Olmert.
In 2011, Al Jazeera
published thousands of classified documents that it had received from
sources close to negotiators in the 2008 negotiation talks between
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The documents, dubbed the Palestine Papers,
showed that in private the Palestinians had made major concessions on
issues that had scuttled previous negotiations. Olmert also presented
his ideas for the borders for a Palestinian state, dubbed the "Napkin
Map" because of Abbas having to sketch the map on a napkin because
Olmert refused to allow Abbas to keep a copy for further consideration.
Olmert's proposal largely followed the route of the Israeli West Bank barrier,
and placed all of the Israeli settlement blocs and East Jerusalem
Jewish neighbourhoods under Israeli sovereignty. Israel would retain
around 10% of the West Bank and in return the Palestinians would receive
around 5% of Israeli territory adjacent to the southern West Bank and
lands adjacent to the Gaza Strip.
In early September 2010 the first peace talks since the Gaza war in
2009 were held in Washington DC between Israeli prime-minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The pace of the talks
were assessed by the US as "break through". However, on 25 September
Netanyahu did not renew a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction
in the West Bank,
which brought him severe criticism from the United States, Europe and
the United Nations. Abbas stated that Netanyahu could not be trusted as a
'true' peace negotiator if the freeze was not extended. Netanyahu's
failure to uphold the commitments he made just a few weeks earlier "to
reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with Palestinians" through extending the term of moratorium has caused a de facto halt of peace negotiations.
On 28 September 2010, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, presented to the UN a ″peace plan″
according to which ″parts of Israel's territory populated predominantly
by Israeli Arabs would be transferred to a newly created Palestinian
state, in return for annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank
and/or population swap″.
The statement came about while Israeli prime-minister Netanyahu and
Palestinian leader Abbas were holding peace talks mediated by the United
States. In the press conference on 28 September Netanyahu stated
"Israel, Palestinians can reach Middle-East peace in a year".
However, Liberman's controversial proposal means that "the conflict
will not be solved within a year and that implementation of the peace
agreement will take generations". Lieberman's proposal was viewed as
undermining Netanyahu's credibility in the discussions and causing
embarrassment for the Israeli government. According to a New York Jewish
leader "Every time when Lieberman voices skepticism for peace talks, he
gives Abu Mazen [Abbas] and the Arab League an opportunity to reinforce
their claim that Netanyahu isn't serious." On 29 September, while
commenting on the Lieberman proposal Netanyahu said that "I didn't see
[the] speech beforehand, but I don't reject the idea."
The proposal also caused wide 'outrage' among Israelis and US Jews. Seymour Reich,
a former president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organizations stated that "If Lieberman can't keep his personal opinions
to himself, he ought to resign from the cabinet."
Positions
The 2013 position of the Palestinian Authority was that all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip should form the basis of a future "State of Palestine". For additional discussion, see Palestinian territories. Israeli governments have maintained that the area involved is subject to future negotiations, and within territorial dispute. However, the position of the IslamicHamas
faction of the PA, as stated in its founding Covenant, is that
Palestine (meaning all of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) is
rightfully an Islamic state.
The main discussion since 1993 has focused on turning most or all of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into an independent Palestinian state. This was the basis for the Oslo accords, and it is, as a matter of official policy, favoured by the U.S. The status of Israel within the 1949 Armistice lines
has not been the subject of international negotiations. Some members of
the PLO recognize Israel's right to exist within these boundaries;
others hold that Israel must eventually be destroyed.
Consequently, some Israelis hold that Palestinian statehood is
impossible with the current PLO as a basis, and needs to be delayed.
Israel declares that its security demands that a "Palestinian
entity" would not have all attributes of a state, at least initially, so
that in case things go wrong, Israel would not have to face a dangerous
and nearby enemy. Israel may be therefore said to agree (as of now) not
to a complete and independent Palestinian state, but rather to a
self-administering entity, with partial but not full sovereignty over
its borders and its citizens.
The central Palestinian position is that they have already
compromised greatly by accepting a state covering only the areas of the
West Bank and Gaza. These areas are significantly less territory than
allocated to the Arab state in UN Resolution 181.
They feel that it is unacceptable for an agreement to impose additional
restrictions (such as level of militarization, see below) which, they
declare, makes a viable state impossible. In particular, they are
angered by significant increases in the population of Israeli
settlements and communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the
interim period of the Oslo accords. Palestinians claim that they have
already waited long enough, and that Israel's interests do not justify
depriving their state of those rights that they consider important. The
Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a territorially disjointed
state.
Parties which recognise a Palestinian entity separate from Israel
There are conflicting reports about the number of countries that
extended their recognition to the proclaimed State of Palestine. In
Annex 2 of the Request for the Admission of the State of Palestine to UNESCO
from 12 May 1982, several Arab and African countries provided a list of
92 countries allegedly having extended such recognition. In the same
document (Corrigendum 1), it is requested that Austria be removed from
the list. Namibia is listed even though it was not independent at the
time. The list also includes a considerable number of states that ceased
to exist during the 1990s, most notably the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Democratic Yemen, People's Republic of Kampuchea (today: Cambodia) and Zaire (today: Democratic Republic of the Congo).
On 13 February 2008, The Palestinian Authorities' Minister of Foreign
Affairs announced he could provide documents for the recognition of 67
countries in the proclaimed State of Palestine. The existing countries that are known to have extended such recognition include most Arab League nations, most African nations, and several Asian nations, including China and India.
Many countries, including European countries, the United States and Israel recognize the Palestinian Authority established in 1994, as per the Oslo Accords, as an autonomous geopolitical entity without extending recognition to the 1988 proclaimed State of Palestine.
Since 1998, football's world governing body FIFA have recognized the Palestine national football team as a separate entity. On 26 October 2008 Palestine played their first match at home, a 1–1 draw against Jordan in the West Bank.
On January 18, 2011, Russia reiterated (first time 1988) its support and recognition of the state of Palestine.
In January 2011, Ireland upgraded the Palestinian delegation in Dublin to the status of a mission.
In July 2011, the Sheikh Jarrah
Solidarity Movement organized a protest march in East Jerusalem, with
approximately 3,000 people participating, carrying Palestinian flags and
repeating slogans in favor of a unilateral declaration of independence
by the Palestinian Authority.