A Promised Arab State Was Never Set Up

By Gerry Nadler, United Press International

Transcribed from the clipping

“The Palestinian problem began 27 years ago when the United Nations voted to partition the British-administered territory into Arab and Jewish states. The Arab state was never set up. Both states, according to the U.N. resolution, were to come into existence after Britain surrendered a 1920 League of Nations mandate to run Palestine.

The resolution unleashed a guerrilla war between Palestine’s Arabs and Jews, forcing the first of an estimated 700,000 Palestinian Arabs to flee their homes. After Britain departed Palestine on May 15, 1948, the Jews declared an independent state called Israel. The armies of seven Arab nations then attacked.

The war and the three 1949 truce agreements ending the hostilities obliterated the Palestinian Arab state outlined in the U.N. resolution. Egypt took the Gaza Strip, turning the Mediterranean coastal slice into a huge refugee camp for dispossessed Palestinians.

Transjordan, which had been formed from Palestine’s eastern wing, annexed the West Bank of the Jordan River and renamed itself Jordan. Israel incorporated the remainder of the proposed Arab state. Some of the Palestinians moved to refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza to be cared for by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.

Others became citizens of the new Jordanian state. And 140,000 remained in Israel, where they lived under martial law until 1966. The better educated resettled in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, working as doctors, lawyers, accountants and administrators.

Palestinian political consciousness, which never died, began stirring in 1956 when a group of young refugees in Gaza formed Al Fatah — an Arabic acronym for the Palestine Liberation Movement. Al Fatah demanded that the Palestinian issue be viewed as a problem of statehood rather than one of refugees.

The original Gaza group included a young engineer — Yasser Arafat. Al Fatah spawned other groups. The guerrilla fedayeen — men of conscience — joined together in 1964 as the Palestine Liberation Organization. Arafat became head of the PLO after the 1967 Middle East War.

With the disastrous defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war, the PLO came to prominence as the sole and immediate force resisting Israel. The PLO demanded that Palestinians rely on themselves to resolve the Palestinian problem and not depend on socalled ‘Arab unity.’

To focus world opinion on their plight, the guerrillas turned to terror tactics outside as well as inside Israel. Israeli reprisals, however, led King Hussein to force the commandos out of Jordan in 1970. Despite terror attacks, the PLO has continued to gain world recognition as the spokesman for the national rights of Palestinians.

The United Nations invited the PLO to send a delegation to this week’s debate on the Palestinian problem. And the 20 Arab heads of state have granted the PLO sole authority to set up a state in any ‘territories liberated’ from Israel.”

Context added by this archive

West Virginia’s first appearance in this archive, and the headline is a plain statement of the half of partition that did not happen. The news agency explainer counts 700,000 forced to flee, records that 140,000 stayed in Israel and lived under martial law until 1966, and dates Palestinian political consciousness to a group of young refugees in Gaza in 1956.

Cite this item

"A Promised Arab State Was Never Set Up," The Raleigh Register, 13 November 1974. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1974-009. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1974-009