Following up a discussion on the Middle East and some of the root causes of the ongoing situation.

What really started this tragic situation? This site has been compiled under Win98/XP with a simple sitebuilder. Any observations from the users of other OS are welcome. That means to ANY of the pages and content.   This page PKM 8th July 2012 Edited Any comments are appreciated. Please use the e.mail link on the Feedback page or the forum also on that page. The e.mail may not work with Hotmail or similar accounts, but mouseover the link will show you my e.mail address. If you want anything posting here, send it over or give me the link. Material here is from the locations linked, or from Wiki, as well as my own comments and observations. Recent comments made elsewhere on this situation appear at the end of this page, with my own observations. They are all "Anon" so I am unable to contact the posters.

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, and the City of Jerusalem. Each state would comprise three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads; the Arab state would also have an enclave at Jaffa. The Jews would get 56% of the land, of which most was in the Negev Desert; their area would contain 499,000 Jews and 438,000 Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs would get 42% of the land, which had a population of 818,000 Palestinian Arabs and 10,000 Jews. In consideration of its religious significance, the Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, with 100,000 Jews and an equal number of Palestinian Arabs, was to become a Corpus separatum, to be administered by the UN. The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan, without reservation, as "the indispensable minimum," glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.

Arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs with regard to the population balance at that time, the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and rejected its authority to involve itself in the entire matter. They upheld "that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations."

The paragraph above is FUNDAMENTAL. Had that been accepted, it is possible that things would be totally different. Maybe the various elements of the current population (Jew, Arab and Christian) could have worked things out peacefully between them had they shared control?

The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine started on 30 November 1947, the date after the UN General Assembly vote on the UN Partition Plan.[30] It finished on 14 May 1948 when the Jewish People's Council approved a proclamation  which declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. During this period, the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine clashed, while the British, who had the obligation  to maintain order, organised their own withdrawal and intervened only on an occasional basis. Arab Palestinians left, fled or were expelled in large numbers, especially after Jewish forces took the major seaport  of Haifa in April 1948.

Yishuv Benny Morris states that the Yishuv's aims evolved during the war.

Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply, genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust, which had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As the war progressed, the aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated Jewish settlements and later to  add more territories to the state and give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among the  political and military leaders after four or five months was to "reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and  hostile Arab minority, seen as a potential powerful fifth column, by belligerency and expulsion."

Plan Dalet, or Plan D

Plan Dalet, or Plan D, (Hebrew: ?????? ?', Tokhnit dalet) was a plan worked out by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary  group and the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, in autumn 1947 to spring 1948, which was sent to Haganah units  in early March 1948. According to the academic Ilan Pappe, its purpose was to conquer as much of Palestine and to  expel as many Palestinians as possible. though according to Benny Morris there was no such intent. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappé asserts that Plan Dalet was a "blueprint for ethnic cleansing": ....this ...  blueprint spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to go ... The aim of the plan was in fact the destruction of both rural and urban areas of Palestine. The intent of Plan Dalet is subject to much controversy, with historians on the one extreme asserting that it was entirely defensive, and historians on the other  extreme asserting that the plan aimed at maximum conquest and expulsion of the Palestinians.

http://www.1948.org.uk/plan-dalet-and-the-nakba/

The above site mis represents Plan Dalet as shown in the earlier link. The plan ONLY called for expulsion from villages which were a source of attack on the forces searching the area. http://www.ijs.org.au/Extracts-from-the-Text-of-Plan-Dalet-Plan-D-10-March-1948/default.aspx

4. Mounting operations against enemy population centres located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:   ... Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state&ldots;

The Deir Yassin massacre

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine. Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while  others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary. Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured.  The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed. The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences. The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other—by the Palestinians to besmirch Palestine's Jewish community and subsequently Israel; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair; and later by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms, thus blackening Israel's name around the world. News of the killings sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. http://middleeast.about.com/od/israelandpalestine/a/me090412b.htm In short, this was carried out by a "Zionist" group - see here:- "although the massacre itself was mostly the work of two illegal, terrorist Jewish organizations,and the Jewish Agency Executive sent a formal letter of apology to King Abdullah immediately after the massacre". Thus began the "Eye for an eye" sequence of reactions which has gone on ever since!

Deir Yassin’s Consequences It is likely that the stories of the massacre had their desired effect: Palestinian Arabs began fleeing their homes in droves, fearing a repeat. Jewish intelligence services, according to Morrics, called Deir Yassin “a decisive accelerating factor” in the Arab exodus. It is also one of the contributing factors that led other Arab armies, such as Egypt’s, to join the battle against Jewish forces. And it set a precedent, psychological and literal, in Jewish (and subsequently Israeli) treatment of Arabs, and Arab perceptions of Israel.

Anon2845: You WON'T bloody debate full stop!

The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan, without reservation

the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and rejected its authority to involve itself in the entire matter.

Anon2845: I am angry, that you won't accept the single fact that the people of Israel, are the ones causing all of this conflict to go on and on and on, if you argue eye for an eye tooth for a tooh, it ends up with everybody in the bloody world, blind and toothless!

This was written by myself in the blog Anon4329: So it has nothing to do with the fact that certain other parties deny the right for the state of Israel to exist at all, despite the fact that it allows religious freedom and that Jews and Muslims are actually all the same fundamental racial group. Anon4329: Stockpiling and firing random rockets is NOT the way forward. That has provoked all the supposed "aggression" by Israel. Anon4329: It has led to all the loss of territory (which Israel has NO RIGHT to build settlements on)over and over again.

Anon7672: So why is Israel always playing the victim card, when it violates international law? And if Israel accepts the notion “an eye for an eye” then it cannot complain when inevitably the type of violations it commits daily go full cycle and are visited upon Tel Aviv

Anon0995: How can it commit "daily" violations in Gaza without being seen? It responds to actions from within Gaza.

Comments on the "Holy Books" used in Middle East. Page set up 8th July 2012 Last section on "debate" added 5th March 2013