The Dismemberment of Palestine

	Great Britin gained Palestine from the Ottoman Empire after World War I and ruled it by a League of Nations mandate. In 1917, There were over 500,000 Arabs and about 50,000 Jews in Palestine. More than half of the Jews living in Palestine at that time were recent immigrants, who had come to Palestine in the preceding decades in order to escape persecution in Europe. Thus, less than 5% of the population of Palestine were native Jewish Palestinians. Arab Palestinians owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (both natives and immigrants) owned only 2.5% of the land. During and after World War II, waves of Jewish refugees from Europe overwhelmed the region, hoping to create a Jewish homeland (an ideology known as Zionism). During the thirty years of British rule, however, the Zionists were able to purchase only about 3.5% of the land of Palestine, in spite of the encouragement of the British Government and much of this land was transferred to Zionist bodies by the British Government directly rather than being sold by Arab owners.
	In 1947, The United Nations (representing only a fraction of the world's peoples) voted to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, a plan the Arabs did not accept. Why? Even though Jews owned only less than 6% of the total land area of Palestine and composed about 1/3 of its population (mostly immigrants) ,the General Assembly of the UN granted that proposed Jewish state about 54% of the total area of the country! The following year Israel declared independence and five Arab nations attacked. By May 1948, Israel had immediately occupied 80.48% of the total land area of Palestine but most of this land was taken: 1.before the formal end of the British forces from Palestine, 2. before the entry of Arab armies to protect Arab Palestinians, and 3. before the the Arab-Israeli war. In the war, over 700,000 Arab Palestinians were displaced from their homes.
	Forty-four years after Israeli independence a Palestinian homeland still did not exist. During the Six Day War of 1967 Israel captured the West Bank, formerly held by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, held by Egypt bringing all of historic Palestine under occupation.
	The Israeli-PLO agreement signed in Washington in September 1993 provided for a transitional period not exceeding five years of limited Palestinian self-rule in parts of the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area of the West Bank. Today that self-rule has been extended to include Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkaram, Qalqilya, part of Al Khalil (Hebron).. Whether this is the beginning of an independent Palestinian state with Al Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital or just an Israeli version of South Africa's racist "homelands" policies remains to be seen.