Talk:1947 UN Partition Plan
From Academic Kids
Deleted: The shore plain, previously swampy, was developed into a zone suitable for agriculture by the Jews. Reason: Although there were some areas of swamp that were drained by the Jews (with British help) they were only a small part of the coastal plain. Most of the coastal plain had been heavily cultivated for centuries. -- zero 13:28, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
NICE MAPS! BL 21:55, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Glad you like them. About to rearrange some of the other map references, since these local maps seem to have survived without objection for a while. Jamesday 15:28, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I did a bit more than just maps. Notes on my edits:
- Removed part of a sentence about 1/4 Arab because it conflicted with 1/3 Arab in the preceding sentence.
- Changed Palestinian to Arab in various places. In the context of the partition of Palestine, every resident of the territory is Palestinian, so we need to use Arab instead.
- Dropped "terrorist" from Irgun and Lehi piece when I wikified the links to them and noted that they were fighting the British, which seems to convey the same point in a less contentious way.
- Question: What parts of the land allocated to the Arab state does Israel today claim as "Israel" and what parts does it identify as occupied, autonomous, otherwise not part of Israel proper or otherwise conceivably open to returning to the Arab state area as part of a land return for peace deal comparable to the one which led to peace with Egypt? A (brief!) description of this would be good for the final paragraph, showing how subsequent events developed but we don't want to cover all of the controversy here - just add a little historic context on how the land split has turned out so far. Jamesday 16:59, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
"Jewish settlements" map
I'm removing the "Jewish settlements" map because it is hardly NPOV:
- The yellow area is unlabeled, but when viewed together with the partition map, one get the impression that the yellow area is all populated by Arabs. In fact, much of it (including the entire southern Negev) was virtually unpopulated. Overall, the map creates the impression that Palestine was an Arab land, with a tiny scattered Jewish community. In fact, as the text of the article states, the population was approximately 1/3 Jewish.
- It uses the term "settlements", thus ignoring Jewish population living in the land for centuries in cities like Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias. Also, the term "settlements" has gained certain connotations in recent years, since it's applied to Jewish population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
uriber 11:23, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Uriber's complaint is reasonable. We should be able to find a map that shows the whole population distribution. I'm leaving for a week but if nobody finds something suitable before I return then I'll look for it. --Zero 12:01, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The Jewish population which had been living in the cities for centuries was not very significant in terms of numbers - about 18,000 based on the 1882 census (plus some 10,000 non-native Jews from the circa 1870-1882 Montefiores, Rothschilds and Russian First Aliyah). That's about 3% of the Jewish population at the time of partition. The Zionist settlers plus immigrants during and just after the Nazi period are the really significant factor in terms of Jewish population. What the map shows is that the Jewish population was relatively concentrated and that the borders were drawn to encompass most of that concentrated population in the Jewish state. The border did so, placing 498,000 Jews in the Jewish state and 10,000 in the Arab state. Zero, good luck with finding something which does a better job of showing why the borders were drawn as they were - if you can find anything I'm definitely interested - good and usable maps are tough to find! Jamesday 16:11, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Unintelligible sentence
I'm having trouble understanding the following line:
- Much was owned by Jewish interests (about 7% of the area of Palestine) or the state.
Could someone please rephrase?
