[previous] | [next]Palestine, history of Palestine and the Palestinians (1948-67) The partition of Palestine and its aftermath
If one chief theme in the post-1948 pattern was embattled Israel (for greater detail on the history of Israel, see Israel, history of) and a second the unremitting hostility of its Arab neighbours, a third was the plight of the huge number of Arab refugees . The violent birth of Israel led to a major displacement of the Arab population. Many wealthy merchants and leading urban notables from Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, disproportionately Christian, fled to Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan, while the middle class tended to move to all-Arab towns such as Nablus and Nazareth. The majority of peasants ended up in refugee camps. More than 350 Arab villages disappeared, and Arab life in the coastal cities (especially Jaffa and Haifa) virtually disintegrated. The centre of Palestinian life shifted to the Arab towns of the hilly eastern region later called the West Bank.
Like everything else in the Arab-Israeli conflict, population figures are hotly disputed. About 1,300,000 Arabs lived in Palestine before the war. Estimates of the number of Arabs displaced from their original homes, villages, and neighbourhoods during the period from December 1947 to January 1949 range from about 520,000 to about 1,000,000. Some 276,000 moved to the West Bank; by 1949 more than half the prewar Arab population of Palestine lived in the West Bank (from 400,000 in 1947 to more than 700,000). Between 160,000 and 190,000 fled to the Gaza Strip. More than 20 percent of Palestinian Arabs left Palestine altogether. About 100,000 of these went to Lebanon, 100,000 to Jordan, between 75,000 and 90,000 to Syria, 7,000 to 10,000 to Egypt, and 4,000 to Iraq.
The term "Palestinian"
Henceforth the term Palestinian will be used when referring to the Arabs of the former mandated Palestine, excluding Israel. Although the Arabs of Palestine had been creating and developing a Palestinian identity for about 200 years, the idea that Palestinians form a distinct people is relatively recent. The Arabs living in Palestine had never had a separate state. Until the establishment of Israel, the term Palestinian was used by Jews and foreigners to describe the inhabitants of Palestine, but it was rarely used by the Arabs themselves; mostly they saw themselves as part of the larger Arab or Muslim community. But after 1948 (and even more so after 1967) for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future. The Arabs of Palestine, and then of the West Bank and Gaza only, began widely using the term Palestinian to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people and, after 1967, of a Palestinian state.
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"...there are no "PALESTINIANS; they are squatters...""...The violent birth of Israel led to a major displacement of the Arab population..."
Jews are the only people who wanted Palestine. For hundreds of years, Jews prayed "next year in Jerusalem."
The only claim Islam has on Jerusalem is that it was Muhammad's first choice as his holy city. That claim was abandoned when Muhammad chose Mecca instead.
Until the Jews made the place prosperous, Arabs had no use for Palestine.
Until the Nazi war criminal Arafat claims as his uncle said so, Jerusalem itself meant nothing to the Arabs.