The UN produced a report on the partition of Mandatory Palestine. This report proposed the potential land division for a two state solution between Palestine and Israel. Contrary to what some sources have claimed, the proposed boundaries were drawn to encompass where the majority of each population a) lived and b) owned land through historical purchase. Both countries would have had almost the same size countries.
The Arab countries that were members of the UN were invited to give input on the plan. Not only did they refuse, they convinced the Palestinians, who had little power of their own, to not negotiate. There could have been a Palestinian state built alongside Israel in 1947. If the Arab League didn’t like the UN proposal, they could have offered a counter proposal. Some anti-Israel protesters will ask why they should have to negotiate for their own land. It wasn’t all their land, not even legally. To honor the legal owners in certain areas, for peace, they absolutely could have negotiated, but they didn’t. The Arab League thought they were entitled to all the land, even the areas that had Jewish and Druze populations for hundreds of years, which is why they invaded in 1948 the day after Israel declared independence. This changed the legalities of war between countries against a territory versus country against country.
These countries not only started the war that triggered the Nakba, when it was all said and done, Egypt, Transjordan, and Syria all occupied swaths of land that had been meant for the Palestinian homeland. Look up the Pan Arabic Bloc. Read what the Arab League said themselves.
To reduce this to a war of Israeli aggression is to feed the narrative that has kept Israelis and Palestinians in conflict.
A reminder: Deligitimizing Jewish or Palestinian connections to the homeland is a bad look. Peace is the right look. Let’s focus on that.
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