This is a major Edit Request. I already made a comment about the Negev some 2 months ago. I have now researched this matter because the differing information in various sources about the land use and importance of the Negev has so confused me. Recently, some new research was published on this matter. I now know significantly more than before and am therefore making another, greatly expanded edit request. I am now also WP:XC, but I am proposing such an extensive change here that I prefer to put it up for discussion first. Mainly, I propose to restructure and expand the Ad hoc Committee section.
Why it should be changed: The inclusion of the Negev was the major innovation of the Partition Resolution; therefore, it should be explained. It was also obviously unfair, and very likely even more unfair than depicted in older literature. This should not be obscured. Additionally, the Negev issue was linked to at least one major irregularity in the drafting of the partition (the meeting between Truman and Weizmann), and probably even two (the inaccurate British data). Lastly, this simply reflects the most recent state of research: The extent of the Bedouins' cultivated land according to pre-1946 estimates was only brought to public attention again by Abu-Sitta in 2010 (p. 54) and by Kedar et al. in 2019 (pp. 130-132), following the earlier work of Hadawi. The agricultural history related to this was reconstructed by Halevy only in 2021. The crucial role of Lowdermilk and the UNSCOP visit to Revivim for the Negev decisions was, as far as I know, only highlighted in the four cited monographs from 2019 and 2023. All these pieces are essential to understand both the peculiar innovation of the UN and the outrage of the Arabs about it.
− | The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the [[Sharon, Israel|Sharon]] on the coast, the [[Jezreel Valley]] and the upper [[Jordan Valley (Middle East)|Jordan Valley]].
The | + | The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the [[Sharon, Israel|Sharon]] on the coast, the [[Jezreel Valley]] and the upper [[Jordan Valley (Middle East)|Jordan Valley]].
The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the [[Sea of Galilee]], crucial for its [[Water supply and sanitation in Israel|water supply]], and the economically important [[Red Sea]]. The major innovation of the partition committee, however, unlike in all older partition proposals, was to additionally assign the [[Negev Desert]] and thereby nearly half of the Mandate territory to the Jewish state, despite Jews owning only about 1% of the land and constituting less than 1% of the population there (see below). [...] |
Draft:
==Ad hoc Committee and border adjustments==
old
On 23 September 1947 the General Assembly established the
Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question to consider the UNSCOP report. Representatives of the
Arab Higher Committee and Jewish Agency were invited and attended.
[1]
old
During the committee's deliberations, the British government endorsed the report's recommendations concerning the end of the mandate, independence, and Jewish immigration. [
citation needed] However, the British did "not feel able to implement" any agreement unless it was acceptable to both the Arabs and the Jews, and asked that the General Assembly provide an alternative implementing authority if that proved to be the case.
new
The chairman
H. V. Evatt excluded the Arab states from Subcommittee One, which had been delegated the specific task of studying and, if thought necessary, modifying the boundaries of the proposed partition: Initially, only UNSCOP's majority proposal was to be drafted, but an unnamed US politician maneuvered to also draft the minority proposal, thereby excluding the Arab states from the majority proposal's drafting. Instead, all Arab states were placed in Subcommittee 2 to draft the minority recommendation.
[2] Evatt also rejected a motion from Subcommittee 2 to balance this subcommittees' composition.
[3] He was later criticized for thereby preventing a compromise and a fairer partition proposal by creating these "unbalanced" subcommittees.
[4]
[5]
[6]
===Subcommittee 2===
partly new
Despite being primarily set up to draft a detailed plan for a future unitary government of Palestine (Resolution No. III
[7]), sub-committee 2's groundwork for this resolution only comprised sections 84-91 of their report. Additionally, they worked on two other draft resolutions: a recommendation to refer the Partition Plan to the
International Court of Justice (Resolution No. I
[8]), and concerning Jewish refugees from World War II, a recommendation for the countries from which the refugees originated to take them back as much as possible (Resolution No. II
[9]), which was partly adopted by the Ad hoc Committee.
[10] Furthermore, they elaborated in sections 57-83 why UNSCOP's partition proposal was "legally objectionable, politically unjust, and economically disastrous."
[11] A key point of criticism was the Negev and the Bedouins.
===UNSCOP's Negev proposal===
new
UNSCOP's inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state had had mainly two reasons:
new
(1) Some Palestinian researchers such as
Sami Hadawi and
Salman Abu Sitta have suggested that the British – who were determined not to cede the Negev to the Zionists, as they aimed to provide Jordan access to the Mediterranean and prevent Egypt, both of which were under British influence, from being isolated from other Arab states
[12] – may have provided inaccurate information about the land use of the Negev. Regarding the Jewish-owned area, this is certain.
[13] It is probably also true for the Bedouins: Most estimates assumed that during the British Mandate period, the Bedouin grain cultivation area in the Beersheba subdistrict had gradually expanded from 300,000 hectares to 400,000 hectares.
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17] If this is true, it would have constituted nearly 36% of the agricultural land in the region of Palestine
[18] and encompassed almost the entire northern half of the Negev.
[19] Indeed, during several years of the British Mandate period, barley produced by Bedouins in this area
[20]
[21] was Palestine's economically most important export.
[22] However, the British conveyed to both the 1946 Partition Commission and the Sub-committee 2 figures that were only half as large,
[23]
[24] and portrayed the Negev as largely barren with the exception of an area "in the extreme north-west of the sub-district" that was already firmly in the hands of the Bedouins,
[25] the barren remainder being suitable only for Bedouin livestock breeding.
[26] Finally, they emphasized the "land rights" of the "Beersheba Bedouin" and their "historic association" with the Negev.
[27]
new
(2) If the British numbers were indeed inaccurate, they had just the opposite effect:
Walter C. Lowdermilk, an American Christian Zionist, had written a renowned
[28] book that, among other topics, envisioned a water pipeline from the northern Jordan River to the Beersheba District to irrigate the Negev.
[29] During the UNSCOP's visit to
Revivim in the Negev, the sight of a field of gladioli, freshly irrigated by water from the new
Nir Am pipeline, convinced them of the feasibility of Lowdermilk's plans for agricultural development in the Negev.
[30]
[31]
[32] Believing that large areas of the Negev were still "capable of development", though only achievable with significant Zionist investment in irrigation, they recommended including the Negev in the Jewish state.
[33]
===Sub-committee 2's criticism===
partly new
Subcommittee 2 initiated its criticism based on the economic importance of the Negev and the large number of Bedouins living there, for which it also received figures from the British: The number of Bedouins was revised upwards from the 90,000 reported in the UNSCOP report to 127,000.
[11] This figure was likely also incorrect.
[34] This figure would have meant that, from the beginning, the now 509,780 Arabs would constitute a majority over the 499,020 Jews in the Jewish state.
[11] Sub-committee 2 further declared: Since all other agriculturally and economically important areas of Palestine had already been allocated to the Jewish state and the Bedouin were "responsible for the cultivation of the greater part of the [200,000 hectares] of cereal land" of Beersheba (which still amounted to nearly 22% of the agricultural land in Palestine),
[...] it is certain that the proposed Arab State cannot be viable. It would have no cultivable lands of any importance. Such cultivable lands as it would have would not supply a small fraction of the cereal requirements of its population. It would have no other economic resources, no raw materials, no industries, no trade, and would have to subsist on subsidies or loans.
— Sub-committee 2. [11]
===Boundary changes===
partly new
The population argument was accepted by Subcommittee 1 during plenary sessions of the Ad hoc Committee. Therefore it was decided to exclude the urban area of Jaffa as an Arab enclave from the territory of the Jewish state, which reduced the number of Arabs in the Jewish state by several tens of thousands.
[35]
new
Additionally, the dominant USA had already planned to reallocate the Negev to the Arab state to gain favor with Arab states and secure their support for the partition plan. However, when the Zionists learned of these plans,
President Truman's advisor
David Niles arranged a meeting with
Chaim Weizmann, who persuaded the President with the vision of a canal running through Jewish territory from the
Gulf of Aqaba to
Tel Aviv. Following Truman’s direct orders, the Americans abandoned their earlier tactic
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41] and only introduced a modification proposal (which was also accepted) to slightly enlarge the Palestinian area with the city of Beersheba and a section on the border with Egypt.
[42] This, however, did not change the issue of insufficient arable land, as this section primarily consisted of sand dunes.
[43]
[44]
old
The proposed boundaries would also have placed 54 Arab villages on the opposite side of the border from their farm land.[
citation needed] In response, the
United Nations Palestine Commission established in 1948 was empowered to modify the boundaries "in such a way that village areas as a rule will not be divided by state boundaries unless pressing reasons make that necessary". These modifications never occurred.
===Reactions===
old
The Jewish Agency expressed support for most of the UNSCOP recommendations, but emphasized the "intense urge" of the overwhelming majority of Jewish displaced persons to proceed to Palestine. The Jewish Agency criticized the proposed boundaries, especially in the Western Galilee and Western Jerusalem (outside of the old city), arguing that these should be included in the Jewish state. However, they agreed to accept the plan if "it would make possible the immediate re-establishment of the Jewish State with sovereign control of its own immigration."
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link): "With regard to the population of the future States as a whole, the Pakistan representative had said that there would be as many Arabs as Jews in the proposed Jewish State. [...] The delegation of Guatemala was ready to reconsider the position of Jaffa and to support any proposal which would give the Arab State possession of that city, to which it had an undeniable right. In that case, there would not be more than 337,000 Arabs in the Jewish State, according to the estimates [...]."
---
Two further comments:
(1) While Hadawi, Abu-Sitta, and Kedar's coauthor
Oren Yiftachel may have perspectives influenced by their backgrounds, the data they reference aren't "Palestinian" data. The Abramson Report was a British-Zionist venture; Epstein was a Zionist. To ensure balance, I searched for even more Zionist figures, but found only two: In a book by
Yosef Weitz, there is an estimate claiming that the Bedouins had cultivated only 6,000 hectares.
[1] But this is obviously unrealistic. Kedar et al. also cite
a Zionist survey of 1920, but this is incomplete, ignores several Bedouin tribes and sections of land, and some data are incorrect (for example, the individual percentages for the Azazima do not add up to the stated total). Thus, I don't think that they are worthy of Wikipedia.
(2) I should add that I now also know more about the geography of the agricultural areas as well. In case anyone searches for this info:
DaWalda ( talk) 09:19, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
− | In | + | In most cases, this meant including areas of Arab majority (but with a significant Jewish minority) in the Jewish state. [...]
According to UNSCOP's calculations, the Plan would have had the following demographics (data based on 1945) [...] |
This is a major Edit Request. I already made a comment about the Negev some 2 months ago. I have now researched this matter because the differing information in various sources about the land use and importance of the Negev has so confused me. Recently, some new research was published on this matter. I now know significantly more than before and am therefore making another, greatly expanded edit request. I am now also WP:XC, but I am proposing such an extensive change here that I prefer to put it up for discussion first. Mainly, I propose to restructure and expand the Ad hoc Committee section.
Why it should be changed: The inclusion of the Negev was the major innovation of the Partition Resolution; therefore, it should be explained. It was also obviously unfair, and very likely even more unfair than depicted in older literature. This should not be obscured. Additionally, the Negev issue was linked to at least one major irregularity in the drafting of the partition (the meeting between Truman and Weizmann), and probably even two (the inaccurate British data). Lastly, this simply reflects the most recent state of research: The extent of the Bedouins' cultivated land according to pre-1946 estimates was only brought to public attention again by Abu-Sitta in 2010 (p. 54) and by Kedar et al. in 2019 (pp. 130-132), following the earlier work of Hadawi. The agricultural history related to this was reconstructed by Halevy only in 2021. The crucial role of Lowdermilk and the UNSCOP visit to Revivim for the Negev decisions was, as far as I know, only highlighted in the four cited monographs from 2019 and 2023. All these pieces are essential to understand both the peculiar innovation of the UN and the outrage of the Arabs about it.
− | The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the [[Sharon, Israel|Sharon]] on the coast, the [[Jezreel Valley]] and the upper [[Jordan Valley (Middle East)|Jordan Valley]].
The | + | The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the [[Sharon, Israel|Sharon]] on the coast, the [[Jezreel Valley]] and the upper [[Jordan Valley (Middle East)|Jordan Valley]].
The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the [[Sea of Galilee]], crucial for its [[Water supply and sanitation in Israel|water supply]], and the economically important [[Red Sea]]. The major innovation of the partition committee, however, unlike in all older partition proposals, was to additionally assign the [[Negev Desert]] and thereby nearly half of the Mandate territory to the Jewish state, despite Jews owning only about 1% of the land and constituting less than 1% of the population there (see below). [...] |
Draft:
==Ad hoc Committee and border adjustments==
old
On 23 September 1947 the General Assembly established the
Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question to consider the UNSCOP report. Representatives of the
Arab Higher Committee and Jewish Agency were invited and attended.
[1]
old
During the committee's deliberations, the British government endorsed the report's recommendations concerning the end of the mandate, independence, and Jewish immigration. [
citation needed] However, the British did "not feel able to implement" any agreement unless it was acceptable to both the Arabs and the Jews, and asked that the General Assembly provide an alternative implementing authority if that proved to be the case.
new
The chairman
H. V. Evatt excluded the Arab states from Subcommittee One, which had been delegated the specific task of studying and, if thought necessary, modifying the boundaries of the proposed partition: Initially, only UNSCOP's majority proposal was to be drafted, but an unnamed US politician maneuvered to also draft the minority proposal, thereby excluding the Arab states from the majority proposal's drafting. Instead, all Arab states were placed in Subcommittee 2 to draft the minority recommendation.
[2] Evatt also rejected a motion from Subcommittee 2 to balance this subcommittees' composition.
[3] He was later criticized for thereby preventing a compromise and a fairer partition proposal by creating these "unbalanced" subcommittees.
[4]
[5]
[6]
===Subcommittee 2===
partly new
Despite being primarily set up to draft a detailed plan for a future unitary government of Palestine (Resolution No. III
[7]), sub-committee 2's groundwork for this resolution only comprised sections 84-91 of their report. Additionally, they worked on two other draft resolutions: a recommendation to refer the Partition Plan to the
International Court of Justice (Resolution No. I
[8]), and concerning Jewish refugees from World War II, a recommendation for the countries from which the refugees originated to take them back as much as possible (Resolution No. II
[9]), which was partly adopted by the Ad hoc Committee.
[10] Furthermore, they elaborated in sections 57-83 why UNSCOP's partition proposal was "legally objectionable, politically unjust, and economically disastrous."
[11] A key point of criticism was the Negev and the Bedouins.
===UNSCOP's Negev proposal===
new
UNSCOP's inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state had had mainly two reasons:
new
(1) Some Palestinian researchers such as
Sami Hadawi and
Salman Abu Sitta have suggested that the British – who were determined not to cede the Negev to the Zionists, as they aimed to provide Jordan access to the Mediterranean and prevent Egypt, both of which were under British influence, from being isolated from other Arab states
[12] – may have provided inaccurate information about the land use of the Negev. Regarding the Jewish-owned area, this is certain.
[13] It is probably also true for the Bedouins: Most estimates assumed that during the British Mandate period, the Bedouin grain cultivation area in the Beersheba subdistrict had gradually expanded from 300,000 hectares to 400,000 hectares.
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17] If this is true, it would have constituted nearly 36% of the agricultural land in the region of Palestine
[18] and encompassed almost the entire northern half of the Negev.
[19] Indeed, during several years of the British Mandate period, barley produced by Bedouins in this area
[20]
[21] was Palestine's economically most important export.
[22] However, the British conveyed to both the 1946 Partition Commission and the Sub-committee 2 figures that were only half as large,
[23]
[24] and portrayed the Negev as largely barren with the exception of an area "in the extreme north-west of the sub-district" that was already firmly in the hands of the Bedouins,
[25] the barren remainder being suitable only for Bedouin livestock breeding.
[26] Finally, they emphasized the "land rights" of the "Beersheba Bedouin" and their "historic association" with the Negev.
[27]
new
(2) If the British numbers were indeed inaccurate, they had just the opposite effect:
Walter C. Lowdermilk, an American Christian Zionist, had written a renowned
[28] book that, among other topics, envisioned a water pipeline from the northern Jordan River to the Beersheba District to irrigate the Negev.
[29] During the UNSCOP's visit to
Revivim in the Negev, the sight of a field of gladioli, freshly irrigated by water from the new
Nir Am pipeline, convinced them of the feasibility of Lowdermilk's plans for agricultural development in the Negev.
[30]
[31]
[32] Believing that large areas of the Negev were still "capable of development", though only achievable with significant Zionist investment in irrigation, they recommended including the Negev in the Jewish state.
[33]
===Sub-committee 2's criticism===
partly new
Subcommittee 2 initiated its criticism based on the economic importance of the Negev and the large number of Bedouins living there, for which it also received figures from the British: The number of Bedouins was revised upwards from the 90,000 reported in the UNSCOP report to 127,000.
[11] This figure was likely also incorrect.
[34] This figure would have meant that, from the beginning, the now 509,780 Arabs would constitute a majority over the 499,020 Jews in the Jewish state.
[11] Sub-committee 2 further declared: Since all other agriculturally and economically important areas of Palestine had already been allocated to the Jewish state and the Bedouin were "responsible for the cultivation of the greater part of the [200,000 hectares] of cereal land" of Beersheba (which still amounted to nearly 22% of the agricultural land in Palestine),
[...] it is certain that the proposed Arab State cannot be viable. It would have no cultivable lands of any importance. Such cultivable lands as it would have would not supply a small fraction of the cereal requirements of its population. It would have no other economic resources, no raw materials, no industries, no trade, and would have to subsist on subsidies or loans.
— Sub-committee 2. [11]
===Boundary changes===
partly new
The population argument was accepted by Subcommittee 1 during plenary sessions of the Ad hoc Committee. Therefore it was decided to exclude the urban area of Jaffa as an Arab enclave from the territory of the Jewish state, which reduced the number of Arabs in the Jewish state by several tens of thousands.
[35]
new
Additionally, the dominant USA had already planned to reallocate the Negev to the Arab state to gain favor with Arab states and secure their support for the partition plan. However, when the Zionists learned of these plans,
President Truman's advisor
David Niles arranged a meeting with
Chaim Weizmann, who persuaded the President with the vision of a canal running through Jewish territory from the
Gulf of Aqaba to
Tel Aviv. Following Truman’s direct orders, the Americans abandoned their earlier tactic
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41] and only introduced a modification proposal (which was also accepted) to slightly enlarge the Palestinian area with the city of Beersheba and a section on the border with Egypt.
[42] This, however, did not change the issue of insufficient arable land, as this section primarily consisted of sand dunes.
[43]
[44]
old
The proposed boundaries would also have placed 54 Arab villages on the opposite side of the border from their farm land.[
citation needed] In response, the
United Nations Palestine Commission established in 1948 was empowered to modify the boundaries "in such a way that village areas as a rule will not be divided by state boundaries unless pressing reasons make that necessary". These modifications never occurred.
===Reactions===
old
The Jewish Agency expressed support for most of the UNSCOP recommendations, but emphasized the "intense urge" of the overwhelming majority of Jewish displaced persons to proceed to Palestine. The Jewish Agency criticized the proposed boundaries, especially in the Western Galilee and Western Jerusalem (outside of the old city), arguing that these should be included in the Jewish state. However, they agreed to accept the plan if "it would make possible the immediate re-establishment of the Jewish State with sovereign control of its own immigration."
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link): "With regard to the population of the future States as a whole, the Pakistan representative had said that there would be as many Arabs as Jews in the proposed Jewish State. [...] The delegation of Guatemala was ready to reconsider the position of Jaffa and to support any proposal which would give the Arab State possession of that city, to which it had an undeniable right. In that case, there would not be more than 337,000 Arabs in the Jewish State, according to the estimates [...]."
---
Two further comments:
(1) While Hadawi, Abu-Sitta, and Kedar's coauthor
Oren Yiftachel may have perspectives influenced by their backgrounds, the data they reference aren't "Palestinian" data. The Abramson Report was a British-Zionist venture; Epstein was a Zionist. To ensure balance, I searched for even more Zionist figures, but found only two: In a book by
Yosef Weitz, there is an estimate claiming that the Bedouins had cultivated only 6,000 hectares.
[1] But this is obviously unrealistic. Kedar et al. also cite
a Zionist survey of 1920, but this is incomplete, ignores several Bedouin tribes and sections of land, and some data are incorrect (for example, the individual percentages for the Azazima do not add up to the stated total). Thus, I don't think that they are worthy of Wikipedia.
(2) I should add that I now also know more about the geography of the agricultural areas as well. In case anyone searches for this info:
DaWalda ( talk) 09:19, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
− | In | + | In most cases, this meant including areas of Arab majority (but with a significant Jewish minority) in the Jewish state. [...]
According to UNSCOP's calculations, the Plan would have had the following demographics (data based on 1945) [...] |