AHC/WI: Delay The Palestinian War

[Kibbutznik]

In OTL, the UN partition plan was condemned by nearly every Arab leader, and Mandatory Palestine quickly devolved into bloodshed, with the Israeli declaration of independence being met with declarations of war
Is there a way to delay either Israel's genesis or the partition plan that precipitated it, so as to give more time for tensions to be resolved through diplomatic means?

 

[Brundlefly]

Probably not at that stage, as the wheels were already in motion. And there's been much bad blood before following the Nabi Musa riots in the early 1920s and subsqeuent progroms, and the Arab revolt in 1936. If someone other than the Grand Mufti El-Husseini would have been leading the Arabs in the British mandate of Palestine, we might have seen a different development. At that time, the partition plan of 1947 was probably the best compromise you could imagine given the situation.

 

[Gannt the chartist]

Shoot the Mufti, allow unrestricted Jewish Immigration don't arm the arab states. 2 out of 3 probably work.

There are a lot of reasonable people around at the time. On the Palestinian side Mufti drowned them out and murdered them. The reason for the plan was the Palestinians were the majority in the whole of the mandate ( probably due to wartime immigration btw) and the jews did not trust a majority arab state. If the jewish population is the majority overall then sans Mufti there is a reasonable chance that other leaders would accept a cantonisation plan as they would not accept a majority Jewish state and the Agency would probably have gone along with that. It wont stp the crazies on both sides but the crazies are a minority and not well armed.

As it is the 47 plan is a sensible compromise and the arab crazies are backed by the external arab armies so they think they can win.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

So long as the scenario starts with Israel already carrying out war and creating refugees in the region with the Nakba, which had started before declaring independence, it's very unlikely for the neighboring states to avoid intervening. Everyone was intervening after Israel began conquering and ethnically cleansing territory in the Mandate, they had made it into a no-mans-land, and the only way for most locals to avoid being expelled was for a Muslim army to be there before the Israeli forces arrived.

The 1947 Partition would have been rejected in any peaceful arrangement, it's incredibly pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian.

 

[Marc Anthony]

Maybe have Abdullah of Jordan sign a non agression pact with the Zionists

 

[Marc Anthony]

It wouldnt prevent it but may ease the situation

 

[karatachi]

Stalin dies early, Beria or Zhukov decides to back up Israel explicitly?

 

[A Piece of History]

I would just like to point out to everyone that the only ones who really wanted a Palestinian state were the Palestinians. King Farouk of Egypt wanted to annex the Negev region while Transjordan wanted a port on the Mediterranean Sea. Syria and Lebanon both wanted pieces of Northern Palestine. Iraq even wanted Palestine to be part of a fertile crescent under Iraqi dominance.

To put it quite bluntly, no one gave a damn about the Palestinians. The Arab world only started supporting the idea of a Palestinian state in the 1960s with the formation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Shoot the Mufti, allow unrestricted Jewish Immigration don't arm the arab states. 2 out of 3 probably work.

Or better yet. Don't make Amin al-Husseinei the Grand Mufti in the first place. There was a four-way election between Al-Husseinei and three members of the Nashashibi clan. Al-Husseini won the fewest votes, but the British Commissioner to Palestine, Herbert Samuel, was desperate to keep a balance between al-Husseinei and the Nashashibi clan, a member of whom had become Mayor of Jerusalem. Eventually, Nashashibi front runner Hussam ad-Din Jarallah withdrew from the race, moving Al-Husseinei into third place and under Ottoman law, he won the position of Mufti, though he demanded this be changed to Grand Mufti. He would become leader of the Supreme Muslim Council the next year, becoming the political leader of Palestinian Arabs as well.

The Nashashibi clan, unlike many of their contemporaries including Amin Al-Husseinei, was one of the more moderate factions in the dispute between Palestinians and Jews after World War II. They supported British proposals, such as the partition plan of the Peel Commission in 1937 and the 1939 White Paper. They felt that the Arabs would be more likely to achieve their goals by working within the Mandate system.

Maybe have Abdullah of Jordan sign a non agression pact with the Zionists

According to The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, the Jewish Agency tried to negotiate a deal with him in which he would annex all of the Arab areas of Palestine (equivalent to about 39% of the region, I believe) in return for Jordan not invading Israel, but Abdullah refused to commit 100% to the deal and he was eventually cowed into joining with the other Arab states with the invasion.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Stalin dies early, Beria or Zhukov decides to back up Israel explicitly?

Huh? Stalin backed the Zionists OTL. The USSR and all its satellites voted for partition (i.e. to create Israel), and the Soviets did nothing to prevent Czech arms shipments to Israel during the war. (Israel's first fighter aircraft were Me-109s copies built in Czechoslovakia.)

 

[karatachi]

Huh? Stalin backed the Zionists OTL. The USSR and all its satellites voted for partition (i.e. to create Israel), and the Soviets did nothing to prevent Czech arms shipments to Israel during the war. (Israel's first fighter aircraft were Me-109s copies built in Czechoslovakia.)

Never mind, I was confused about when the Soviets stopped backing Israel.

 

[ArtosStark]

I was recently sent a source on another thread: http://joshualandis.oucreate.com/Syria_1948.htm

It’s worth a read. According to the article, the Arab contribution in the war could almost be seen as a civil war between Arab states as much as an intervention against partition. Syrian authorities(to some degree backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt) basically pushed an intervention by the Arab League to scuttle Jordan‘s (Backed by Iraq) plans to annex the Arab areas of Palestine as a prelude to unifying Jordan and Syria as Greater Syria.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

I was recently sent a source on another thread: http://joshualandis.oucreate.com/Syria_1948.htm

This begs the question then of why President Quwwatli and Prime Minister Jamil Mardam were so adamant about opposing partition and pushing for war. Indeed, Syria’s role in shepherding the reluctant Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward war is little appreciated. Of all the Arab states, Syria was the most adamant about the need to go to war. Indeed, it was the first in and the last out of the war and, thus, bears much responsibility for the extent of the nakba or disaster that befell the Palestinians as a result. So why would Syria encourage the Arab world to go to war in Palestine even as it prepared for defeat?

Syria bears much responsibility for the Nakba and the Palestinian refugee crisis? Is this supposed to be a neutral account?

 

[ArtosStark]

Syria bears much responsibility for the Nakba and the Palestinian refugee crisis? Is this supposed to be a neutral account?

Read it an form your own opinions. Or challenge its assertions with your own sources. I didn't submit the author to a lie detector about his political affiliation.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

Read it an form your own opinions. Or challenge its assertions with your own sources. I didn't submit the author to a lie detector about his political affiliation.

I'm just pointing it out. Palestinians and the Arab states are often blamed for the Nakba, it's always worth correcting. There are people who actually think the Nakba was caused by Palestinians fleeing as part of some Muslim master plan, rather than because they were running for their lives, and they might go a long time without seeing anything that contradicts this myth.

 

[Worffan101]

In OTL, the UN partition plan was condemned by nearly every Arab leader, and Mandatory Palestine quickly devolved into bloodshed, with the Israeli declaration of independence being met with declarations of war
Is there a way to delay either Israel's genesis or the partition plan that precipitated it, so as to give more time for tensions to be resolved through diplomatic means?

Shoot the Mufti, shoot Avraham Stern, throw out the British, somehow get international support for a single multiethnic state.

The last one is by far the hardest because this is in the middle of the age of nationalism.

That's a start. It won't solve the underlying ethnic disputes, but it will remove the UN support for the colonialist program, which will help a lot.

 

[ArtosStark]

I'm just pointing it out. Palestinians and the Arab states are often blamed for the Nakba, it's always worth correcting. There are people who actually think the Nakba was caused by Palestinians fleeing as part of some Muslim master plan, rather than because they were running for their lives, and they might go a long time without seeing anything that contradicts this myth.

AIUI, the source I quoted does not make such assertions. It asserts that Syria's particular actions in relation to the issue were a, to some degree successful, attempt to stop King Abdullah from absorbing the Palestinian areas of the partition plan into Jordan as this would have strengthened his hand in combining Jordan and Syria into Greater Syria. Basically it is, to me, an interesting look into the politics of Palestine's Arab neighbors and how that may have affected the 1948 war.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

AIUI, the source I quoted does not make such assertions. It asserts that Syria's particular actions in relation to the issue were a, to some degree successful, attempt to stop King Abdullah from absorbing the Palestinian areas of the partition plan into Jordan as this would have strengthened his hand in combining Jordan and Syria into Greater Syria. Basically it is, to me, an interesting look into the politics of Palestine's Arab neighbors and how that may have affected the 1948 war.

'Indeed it was first in and last out of the war, thus, Syria bears much responsibility for the extent of the nakba or disaster that befell Palestinians as a result. (of the war).' is the direct quote. It's saying pretty clearly that the intervention by the Arab states, as spearheaded by Syria, was the cause of the Nakba. It's not the central assertion of the essay, it's almost like a throwaway comment, not really worth more examination.

Most of it does seem like a detailed account of the history, but if it's got myths like that right at the start of the essay, written as though it's an undisputed fact rather than an extremist opinion, it calls the whole thing into question.

 

[ArtosStark]

'Indeed it was first in and last out of the war, thus, Syria bears much responsibility for the extent of the nakba or disaster that befell Palestinians as a result. (of the war).'

It's saying pretty clearly that the intervention by the Arab states, as spearheaded by Syria, was the cause of the Nakba.

Not entirely the same thing.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

Not entirely the same thing.

Not identical, but misleading when it's one of two mentions of the Nakba in a history of Syria in 1948, and it lines up with conspiracy theory on the subject.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

Would there be any appetite for a multinational force to stick around right after partition? Basically go 'Right, Israel over here, Palestine over here. Nobody's to go trying to redraw the borders, if you do there'll be trouble. Got it?'