Talk:United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine/Archive 2

The CIA Report

The disputed CIA report ...

By March 1949, a classified CIA report declared Palestine was a 'Long Range Disaster'. The Agency report read in part:

'The establishment of the State of Israel by force, with intimidation of the Arab governments by the US and USSR, with the cutting off of the British arms and ammunition (the Arabs only source of supply), with ample sources for Israel of munitions and finance, the Israeli battle victory is complete, but it has solved nothing.

If boundaries to an Israeli State, any boundaries, had been set and guaranteed by the Great Powers, peace might return to the area. On the contrary, we have actually a victorious state which is limited to no frontiers and which is determined that no narrow limits shall be set. The Near East is faced with the almost certain prospect of a profound and growing disturbance by Israel which may last for decades... ...Instead of restoring the boundaries of the province of Judea as they were in 70 A.D., the Israeli leaders now state freely though usually unofficially, their demand for an ever expanding empire. Their present possessions are regarded by them as only a beachead into the Arab and Muslim World – a large part of which they plan to exploit. They are not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do... ...Alone among the Great Powers, Britain has been working on a plan to restore a balance between the forces in Palestine, but it already appears that this plan is doomed to fail. Zionist pressure in the USA, Anglophobia in Iraq and Egypt, and above all, Russia's determination to prolong chaos in the Near East and to complete the discrediting of British and American Diplomacy, combine to work against the policy of the British Government and its collaborators --King Abdulla of Trans-Jordan and the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri al Said.

Re: The CIA Report

Jayjg, a verbatim quote from a published CIA report is not original research by any stretch of the imagination. It is a presentation of existing knowledge from a previously published source which is available to all in the public domain. The Wikipedia:No original research page says "Our policy: Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia." This is an extract from the US government agency report. The complete document is available from the CIA FOIA web site, and from the Jewish Virtual Library Harry S. Truman Administration, 1949 documents section.

This material is relevant to the topic of the article, i.e. the creation of the State of Israel and its borders. It also discusses a British plan for the region and two Arab leaders who were collaborating with the British. Several of the published secondary sources cited in this same section also discuss collaboration between the British government, Abdullah, and Nuri al Said, e.g. Michael Doron, the Knesset members, Avi Shlaim, Efraim Karsh, and etc. harlan (talk) 04:20, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

According to which reliable sources is this material relevant to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? Jayjg ^(talk) 04:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The report itself says that it is relevant to the to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. The reliable sources guideline page you are citing explains that 'Primary sources are considered reliable for basic statements of fact as to what is contained within the primary source itself'. Section II of the CIA report, itself, discusses (a) the establishment of the state of Israel, (b) the failure of the Great Powers to set and guarantee any borders. 'Section IV United Nations' on the following page of the same report cites UN failure to enforce UN orders to Israel regarding the UN partition plan borders: '(f) To evacuate areas given to the Arabs by the UN proposal of November 29, 1947; although at the same time insisting upon invading the Negeb, to excuse which they quote the same UN partition proposal.' harlan (talk) 07:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

This article is United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. It is not The establishment of the state of Israel, nor is it Isreal's borders, nor Course of the 1948 war. Please stick to material that directly discusses the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. NoCal100 (talk) 03:50, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of citing yet another primary source, Part A of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine contained a request from the General Assembly that the Security Council guarantee the borders that were part of the settlement contained in part III of the resolution: '(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution.'

This CIA report discusses the failure of the Great Powers (the Permanent SC members) and the UN to honor the request to set and guarantee the borders, i.e. 'UN failure to enforce UN orders to Israel regarding the UN partition plan borders.' It also mentions the fact that the government of Israel had cited the 29 November 1947 UN partition proposal to justify their own military operations in the Negev. Therefore, I have been sticking to material that directly discusses the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. harlan (talk) 06:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

What you are doing is WP:SYNTH - taking material from a one primary source , and then materials from a second source that does not mention the first, and making the connection between the two. Please stop. NoCal100 (talk) 15:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Nearly all of the secondary sources cited in the article claim that Great Britain, Abdullah, and Nuri al Said were involved in a plan to flout the United Nations partition plan and annex Palestine to Jordan. Several of them outline the involvement of Jewish Agency/Israeli cabinet members in negotiations with Abdullah with the same sort of object in mind. Those theories did not originate with me, or spring into existence from this Wikipedia article.

The CIA report claims that Great Britain was still working on a plan to restore balance to the forces in Palestine in 1949, and that the leaders of two neighboring states (Abdullah and Nuri al Said) were collaborating with the British. The only unanimous UNSCOP recommendation had been a recommendation that Great Britain's mandate be terminated. Two-thirds of the General Assembly 'decided' that question according to the provisions of article 18 of the UN Charter, and Great Britain 'supposedly' terminated its administration of the country on 15 May 1949. There was no other authority for Great Britain's continuing interference in the domestic affairs of Palestine to maintain some sort of 'balance of forces' after that date. That simply prolonged the war. Unlike the CIA, the US State Department felt that Great Britain's plans for resumed arms shipments to the Arabs were inconsistent with their UN obligations. See for example Mr. McClintock's remarks in the FRUS, Volume V, Part 2(1948), page 1702.

I think Jayjg and NoCal100 may have a point. Perhaps there's a way to mention the relevant aspects of this CIA report without citing it in full? this may also be more in keeping with WP:QUOTE. -- Nudve (talk) 15:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I very much doubt it. Jayjg and NoCal100 have been long on deletions and short on explanations. harlan (talk) 23:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

My explanation is right above - pointing you to the relevant Wiki policy. The lengthy paragraph you are re-inserting does not mention the partition plan at all. It does not belong here. NoCal100 (talk) 14:57, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I am very familiar with the policy. However, you did not cite a single example of WP:Synth in any of my edits, or in the way I re-ordered the pre-existing materials. Once again, I am not violating WP:Synth, since both the secondary sources and primary source reach the same conclusions, i.e. that Great Britain, Abdullah, Nuri al Said, et al were either flouting the UN partition plan, or implictly doing so by secretly interfering in the affairs of another sovereign state. The quote already mentioned the failure to set and guarantee borders, any borders...' Nonetheless, I have bowed to your wishes and included the fact that the CIA report actually mentioned the borders contained in the UN partition plan. If you think the quote is too long, you should be suggesting an acceptable way to summarize it, without simply deleting the whole thing.harlan (talk) 20:38, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

If you're "very familiar with the policy", then why did you include a whole bunch of legal argumentation that used sources that didn't even refer to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:30, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: The CIA Report, Section Break 1

Harlan, how does the source relate the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine to the quote you have chosen? Jayjg ^(talk) 00:07, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The quote isn't too long. Come on, it's a couple of lines difference. Cropping out info does more harm than good. Let's make info accessible to people rather than spending ages on pedantry!! :) Vexorg (talk) 03:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the quote is too long. It's 300 words verbatim from a source of dubious relevance. Adding additional verbiage does more harm than good. See also WP:UNDUE. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

While I'm sure it's good faith you seem to be unduly digging your heels in upon such a few lines. I agree with Vexorg and adding this 'additional verbage' as you put is helping the reader understand the issues and is NOT doing any harm whatsoever. WP:UNDUE isn't applicable here. 84.70.79.110 (talk) 19:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

You agree with Vexorg? Are you sure you're not Vexorg? Anyway, the quote is unduly long; the words don't help the reader, and they harm the article. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Given the fact that the 'policy' you have cited is subjective and open to interpretation .... Could you kindly explain your two statements?

1] "the words don't help the reader" - how do the words in question not help the reader? I would posit that, for example, the removed words "Their present possessions are regarded by them as only a beachead into the Arab and Muslim World – a large part of which they plan to exploit. They are not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do... " help the reader understand the situation and consequences post the UN partition very well.

2] "... and they harm the article." - Could you explain how these extra words actually harm the article? There's certainly no rational case for the actual length of the quote having any noticeable impact on the whole article harmful or otherwise. The difference between the number of words between the two versions is 20% (256 v. 316) and difference between the length of the whole article is around 0.3%. So that leaves the meaning of the words. I assume you don't have a problem with the reader seeing the CIA regarding Israel as wanting to expand further than it's current 'beachhead'. Personally I think that's info that would enhance the article. So some explanation as to what harm the very slightly longer version will have on the article would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. :) Vexorg (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The words add nothing to the reader's understanding of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and appear to be added for the purpose of promoting a POV. We could quote the entire document; explain why these specific words "help the reader" understand the topic of the article, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Remember, the onus is no the editor who wants to add material to the article. Perhaps you'd like to "consult" with 84.70.79.110 (talk · contribs) on this. Jayjg ^(talk)

Jayjg, the UN resolution was a composite legal instrument. It contained a minority rights treaty that was the sole vehicle for any territorial cessions from the mandate. It also provided for protection of persons and property. The resolution contained a multilateral territorial integrity agreement which applied the international law doctrines of uti possedetis de facto, and uti possedetis de jure. The quote from the CIA report is directly related to the failure to observe those provisions of the resolution. Since the article didn't say a word about the constitutional plan, the minority rights treaty, or the implementation of the uti possedetis, I added some new sections with citations and references. I agree the article is way too long, but I would like to see the material on the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot, McMahon-Hussein, White Papers, and etc. moved to those articles and replaced with links here. The material is probably already in those other articles anyway.harlan (talk) 16:40, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. Harlan, how many of the sources actually mentioned the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? Also, how many actually drew the same conclusions you did regarding its legal implications? Jayjg ^(talk) 21:30, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Given there's been no rationale given behind the arguments for the slightly shorter version ( see my questions above ) I've returned the improved version. Vexorg (talk) 23:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Again returned very slightly longer and improved version, as there has still been no explanation of requests to explain the rationale above. Happy new year everyone. :) Vexorg (talk) 21:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

See above. WP:UNDUE. It may even violate WP:COPYVIO, though that depends on the copyright status of the source document. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:30, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I've addressed your citing of the WP:UNDUE above and asked for some explanations of your two reasons. The failure to provide rational for those reasons is why I put the slightly longer version back in. The longer version does not contravene WP:UNDUE in any case. If you can adequately answer the 2 questions asked above and also show why, with reasonable rationale, the slightly longer version contravenes WP:UNDUE then Let's leave the slightly shorter version. Otherwise the slightly longer version is more accurate and thus more helpful to the reader.84.70.79.110 (talk) 22:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Err, no. You're the one who is claiming that the material adds value and knowledge for the reader. We could quote any of the report, or all of it. You explain specifically what these particular insertions add to our understanding of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the subject of this article. For example, when the CIA makes the rather bizarre claim/speculation that the Jews were "not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do...", what does this tell us about the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? Jayjg ^(talk) 00:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

The extra words do help the reader understand how Israel, according to the CIA, want to expand not only to all of Palestine, but beyond. This is very important to understanding the wider context into which the UN plan was inserted. Now...

As I've previously asked could you please explain your reasons... 1] "..the words don't help the reader" - How do these extra words not help the reader and 2] ".. they harm the article." , how do they harm the article? Thanks in advance. Vexorg (talk) 19:11, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

When the CIA makes the rather bizarre claim/speculation that the Jews were "not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do...", what does this tell us about the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? Jayjg ^(talk) 23:21, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

The section in question is about the consequences of the UN Partition Plan, not the plan itself.

Your failure to explain your rationale is noted. I gave you ample time to answer the 2 questions in the first instance, but you reverted without any rationale. You have now failed to explain your 2 reasons, 1] "..the words don't help the reader", 2] ".. they harm the article." on 3 occasions now and have provided no further rationale for removing this slightly longer section. I'm therefore, and fairly, reinstating it. Vexorg (talk) 01:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it is your failure to provide any rationale for including the information that is noted. The material is speculative, tells us nothing about the United Nations Partion Plan, and is an over-lengthy quotation. Until you can provide a rationale for inserting this WP:UNDUE material I'll be removing it. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually I have given the rationale for leaving it in. It's above You haven't given a good reason for removing it. WP:UNDUE remains a non-reason. However many times you read it it doesn't apply to this dispute, and the other reasons you have given you have consistently and repeatedly failed to explain. I will politiely ask for a 4th time now... can you explain 1] "..the words don't help the reader", 2] ".. they harm the article." ??? Thanks in advance. Vexorg (talk) 05:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

You seem to be advocating the inclusion of rather conspiratorial crystal-balling from a 60 year-old CIA report that doesn't apparently add anything to our understanding of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Now, again, please answer what specifically does the rather bizarre claim/speculation that the Jews were "not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do..." add to our understanding of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? Also, explain what this specific material from this primary source is relevant to the topic of this article. Again, be very specific, and make sure your response relates the material directly to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Also, give the answer in your next response. Do not refer back to any previous comments, which have so far not answered this. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:38, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to comply with your demand to not refer back to any previous comments and you have no jurisdiction over what I may refer to in my commentary in any case. We still have your rationale outstanding, which I believe should be addressed. You gave TWO reasons for not including the slightly longer version in the article. Reason one: 1] "..the words don't help the reader" and reason two, 2] ".. they harm the article." - can you please explain to us how the extra words don't help the reader and how they harm the article. with all respect you have been asked this probably five times now, and I'm sure you can forgive me for thinkign you are avoiding answering those questions.

In regards the rationale for including the extra text I have no problem in explaing the reasons again.... The CIA report is in regard to the CONSEQUENCES of the UN partition plan,and it's the CONESEQUENCES that the report is dealing with, not the content of the plan itself. Now we've established the aim of the CIA report and the specific section of this article it's included in it's not unreasonable to expect the quote of the article to accurately state it's commentary. The removal of these extra words diminish the accuracy of the quote. it's as simple as that. It's not for us to determine the suitability for inclusion on a subjective basis. Your statements of 'rather bizarre' and 'rather conspiratorial' are subjective and that should really be left for the reader to decide. i have explained my rationale, you seem to be avoiding yours. I am returning the slightly longer and improved version. thanks. Vexorg (talk) 05:01, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I was quite clear as to why the material harmed the article; it was a 60 year outdated primary source that promoted strange conspiracy theories, and the material consisted of WP:NOR. Thus, it did not help the reader, and harmed the article. Now please respond meaningfully to the questions raised in my last comment. We need specific answers. For example, please answer what specifically does the rather bizarre claim/speculation that the Jews were "not prepared to live off what the land will yield as the Arabs do..." add to our understanding of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine? In what way does it explain "the CONSEQUENCES of the UN partition plan"? Jayjg ^(talk) 22:15, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Firstly this doesn't fall under WP:NOR whatsoever. And hiding WP:UNDUE underneath the text 'strange conspiracy theories' doesn't make WP:UNDUE applicable when it wasn't before. This quote comes from a reputable published source, the CIA. It's been shown that there is no case whatsoever for WP:UNDUE considering the extremely small percentage these extra words add to the article. Which leads us back to your rationale for not adding these extra words. You have failed to provide rationale, despite being asked 6 times now, for explanations to your two reasons for not adding this extra content. Please explain why these extra words won't help the reader. I have shown that these extra specifically help the reader because they provide a more accurate description of the CIA's reasoning in it's report on the CONSEQUENCES of the UN partition plane. Also please explain why these extra words will harm the reader. In what way will these extra words specifically 'harm' the reader? it's not unreasonable to predict you will once again fail to explain your reasoning.Vexorg (talk) 04:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg, Re: Living off what the land offers. The Israeli statebuilding section of the Kibbutz article points out that when it appeared that Palestine would be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, kibbutzim were planted in remote parts of the Mandate to make it more likely that the land would be incorporated into the Jewish state. That article also states that the location of tower and stockade settlement blocks was based primarily on military factors, not on the basis of agricultural need, or long term prospects. For example, the article on the 11 points in the Negev says they were put up literally overnight 'in order to create a Jewish presence in the Negev desert prior to any partition of Palestine.' These folks weren't taking up the Bedouin lifestyle, they were paramilitary units setting up skirmish or confrontation lines.

The newspapers (Davar and Al Hamishmar) and radio broadcasts during the run up to the elections for the Constituent Assembly had been full of editorials quoting members of the provisional council of state and other candidates saying much more damaging things than the stuff outlined in this CIA report. Several members of the first Knesset warned the others that those sorts of aggressive statements harmed Israel in regard to American public opinion. see for example Z Warhaftig's (Hapoel Hamizrahi) remarks to that effect on page 315 of Major Knesset Debates, 1948-1981, Netanel Lorch. Anyone who has read a few speeches by David Ben Gurion, D.Z.Pinkas, Menahem Begin, or Arieh Altman could hardly call the CIA assessment fringe. harlan (talk) 09:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Recent additions

Some of the recent additions to the article have an unfortunate tendency to imply that the specific obligations and terms of the UNGA Resolution 181 were and are legally binding on Israel. While some general principles of international law mentioned in the 1947 resolution may still be applicable, that's because they are general principles of international law, NOT because they happened to be mentioned in UNGA Resolution 181. The specific terms and conditions of UNGA Resolution 181 were dependent on both sides signing on to the agreement -- and since only one side signed on to the agreement (the Jews), while the other side (the Arabs) spurned the whole idea of any such agreement with vituperative contempt, therefore the resolution never came into effect, and has never had any binding legal force (though it still continued to be referred to as an informal general outline for a possible overall settlement by non-Israeli non-Arab international parties for several years afterwards, and Israel voluntarily chose to follow certain selected provisions of the resolution in order to generate goodwill).

Such a line of argument would seem to echo to some degree (whether consciously or unconsciously) certain dishonest historical Arab propaganda tactics of always deprecating the actual existing demarcation lines, while elevating the importance of previous lines which no longer are practical borders between opposing forces -- even though the same types of Arab propagandists (sometimes the exact same individuals!) had heaped abundant contumely and disdain before on exactly those same previous lines. So in 1947 and early 1948, the Arabs rejected the proposed lines of the UNGA Resolution 181 partition plan with sneering scorn and vilification, and loudly declared that they wouldn't be content with anything less than 100% of the Mandate territory -- but beginning in late 1948 or 1949 (once the war they had chosen to start was going against them), they began demanding that Israel withdraw behind the UNGA Resolution 181 partition plan lines. Similarly, between 1949 and 1967, the Arabs vocally denounced and derided the 1949 armistice boundaries, vehemently declaring them to be mere temporary cease-fire lines, without any binding legal force or any ability to create any kind of future precedent whatsoever -- but after the 6-day war of 1967, these same spokesemen and propagandists started to make a complete 180-degree turn and began to claim that these same 1949 armistice lines should now constrain Israel (though during the 1949-1967 period they had disparagingly reviled the idea that the 1949 armistice lines could be any kind of constraint on Arab territorial ambitions). Etc., etc. ad nauseam.

Along these lines, the principle of Uti possidetis principally refers to territory under the actual practical real-life control of a state (or that state's army), and so cannot usefully refer to the 1947 proposed partition lines, which were never a real-world line of control between two opposing forces, and were never an agreed boundary between the two sides. In any case, by implicitly endorsing the cynical British "law of the jungle" plan (according to which the British withdrew without formally handing over territory or authority to any party, thereby leaving to the two sides to fight it out), the United Nations would appear to have tossed overboard any application of uti possidetis with respect to British mandate or 1947 partition plan boundaries (since the fighting under the "law of the jungle" plan created new military borders, and so new relationships of uti possidetis).

It would seem to be much better to confine such discussion to the original terms of the League of Nations Palestine mandate (which are much less problematic as to having full legal force -- though such legal force would seem to mainly consist of obligations on the British), rather than trying to lump in UNGA Resolution 181 together with the League of Nations mandate terms, since those two things are quite different, and have quite different statuses, so that conflating the two does not lead to clarity. Perhaps the discussion of the binding force of the League of Nations mandate terms should be moved to another more appropriate article... AnonMoos (talk) 12:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

This is what happens when you insert large amounts of synthesized arguments. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:32, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

While I understand your interpretations of international law here to be basically correct, or at least defensible, I do wonder what would be the response to an analagous posting alleging the malign influence of "dishonest historical Jewish propaganda," and what the implications are for the prospects of neutrality and civil discouse on Wikipedia. <eleland/talkedits> 23:25, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Neither Jews nor Arabs have the slightest monopoly on either integrity or dishonesty, nor on either cogent argument or strained special pleading. However, when it comes to sheer brazen shamelessness in unblinkingly advocating a propaganda line which completely contradicts one own propaganda line of five years before, then I'm afraid that the Arabs do take the cake. However, I wasn't so much trying to convince anyone of my own personal take on history as I was trying to explain clearly and precisely why it is that many Israelis (and some others) display both extreme skepticism and extreme cynicism when it comes to Arabs (and certain supporters) retroactively sanctifying and glorifying the lines of the 1947 UN partition plan -- considering that in 1947 the Arabs made a great parading show of stomping on those same borders with contumelious vituperation.

The little mini-essay on the terms of the League of Nations mandate and the history of minority protection clauses in 1920's treaties is interesting, but it doesn't really belong on this article. In any case, the terms of the mandate would be most strongly binding on the British, and terms of the mandate can't transform the non-agreement over resolution 181 into having the same legal force that a mutual agreement to accept resolution 181 would have had... AnonMoos (talk) 04:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

On the substantive point about international law there can be little disagreement; UNGA 181 is explicitly phrased as a nonbinding recommendation to the British, and the General Assembly did not have the authority to make any binding determinations anyway. Res 181 created no new legal obligations for any party.

That said, I'd urge you to reconsider the wisdom of dropping statements like "when it comes to sheer brazen shamelessness [...] I'm afraid that the Arabs do take the cake." Quite honestly, if any editor here were to start talking about the sheer brazen shamelessness of "the Jews," they would be tarred and feathered and ran out on a rail, and rightly so. I know that your use of "the Arabs" is simply shorthand for "the government apparatuses of the various Arab states" (right?) but there is no reason to use ambiguous phrasings that can be read as openly racist.

Anyway, this is straying rather far afield. The best thing to do would be to quote solid academic sources which trace out the legal relationships between the Lausanne treaty of 1921, UNGR 181, the Rhodes agreements and UNGR 194, etc. <eleland/talkedits> 20:01, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Harlan's accusations

Since Harlan is trying to smear and slur me with sleazy accusations apparently based on the above, let me explain what actually shouldn't require much further explanation to honest people: When I made the assertions above, I wasn't making any claims about immutable biological characteristics, nor was I making any sweeping grandiose claims about Arab culture as whole. I was in fact generalizing about the behavior of government spokesmen and prominent public political personalities only, in Egypt and the Mashreq countries only, over the last seven or eight decades only -- probably not much more than a thousand individuals in all. Unfortunately for everyone, my original generalization is in fact substantially true about about a significant fraction of these thousand individuals -- where spokesmen and commentators in many other environments might refrain from making self-contradictory claims out of a sense of their own personal dignity if nothing else (even if they had no real inhibitions about lying in general), a significant number of spokesmen and commentators in Egypt and the Mashriq over the last 7 or 8 decades seem to show no hesitation in brazenly and unabashedly pushing a propaganda line which completely contradicts the propaganda line they were pushing a few years before. If Harlan can't see this written without going apeshit and tossing around defamatory personal attacks, then that's strictly his problem. AnonMoos (talk) 03:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Zionism-Israel.com being judged NOT WP:RS

FYI at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#zionism-israel.com_on_Zionist_history as of 1/1/09. CarolMooreDC (talk) 18:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI after that discussion started someone must have rebooted the search engine because suddenly dozens of uses popped up and there were no more denials it was a reliable source, at least on a case by case basis. CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The entry is not readable and contains a lot of irrelevant information

In general the text is too long and discusses issues completely unrelated to the UN Partition Plan. I have been working quite extensively trying to correct this, mostly by trimming. Just recently I tried to delete a citation of of CIA report from 1949 that deals with Israel and its influence on US-Arab relations that suffers from being a POV and irrelevant and a paragraph on the "status quo" agreement that is again POV and irrelevant. User: Harlan wilkerson keeps trying to insert such paragraphs that really hurt the entry. Mashkin (talk) 08:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Maskin there is a long thread above with replies to your objections. Jayjg has restored a 'consensus' version of this quote himself, so my revert isn't completely unprecedented.

(1) The CIA report specifically mentions the UN Partition Plan, and the failure to set and enforce any borders.

It does not mention the UN partition plan. Certainly not the citation you are trying to insert. What's the point? Mashkin (talk) 23:15, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

(2) The resolution called on the Security Council to consider any attempt to alter the border settlement an act of aggression in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter. That's CHAPTER VII which authorizes military enforcement.

(3) Until very recently, the article contained a quote from President Truman's speech explaining that the US would not impose the partition plan on the people of Palestine, but User:Mashkin deleted it because it was 'irrelevant'.

(4) The CIA report mentions the IDF operations in the Negev. The UN settlement made both Israel and the Arab State 'Guaranteed States' under international law. The same method of creating states according to customary international law employed by the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the Paris Peace Conference (1919) were utilized. The settlement awarded Israel and the Arab state legal title to land that neither had purchased, did not occupy, and did not effectively govern. Those titles were granted on condition that the states adopt a democratic form of government, and provide certain guarantees to the United Nations regarding the treatment of their national minorities in the form of a binding treaty Declaration (see AnonMoos rant in Recent Additions above). The Jewish Agency Status Quo agreement explained that establishment of the State required United Nations permission, and that it would not be forthcoming without those guarantees. It even mentioned a few of them. You also deleted that citation as irrelevant. harlan (talk) 10:50, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

there is a long thread where you have given completely irrelevant answers. You have turned this entry into one that has hardly anything to do with the partition and does not provide the reader with the needed information. You have also turned it into legal mumbo jumbo. The CIA report shows the anti-Israeli tendencies of the CIA at this time and hence it is of interest somewhere, but it has nothing to do with the partition plan and it is a POV mascarading as a source. Mashkin (talk) 14:35, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Dude, UNGA resolution 181 would have handed over to the Arabs an internationally guaranteed state on a silver platter -- a state that would have included much more territory than the 1949-1967 West Bank and Gaza -- but the Arabs chose to spurn and scorn such guarantees with open contempt, since they regarded the possibility of Jews having any sovereignty over any portion of the Mandate territory (no matter how small) as a standing insult and affront against their dignity which could only be appeased and revenged with blood. Thus the Arabs chose to start a war in order to take everything, so that the Arabs willingly chose to risk their future on the uncertain fortunes and outcomes of war. It's called "gambling double or nothing", and the Arabs lost on this gamble which they themselves freely chose to enter into.

Therefore it's extremely difficult to see how the Arabs can now benefit from those same guarantees which they made an ostentatious parading public show of flushing straight down the crapper in 1947. If you want to appeal to legal principles, how about starting with that portion of the principle of estoppel, which says if you relied on a proposition as part of your argument in a lawsuit, you can't generally rely on the negative of this same proposition as part of your argument in a subsequent phase of the lawsuit, or a subsequent related lawsuit?

Furthermore, if you want to get down to concrete factual historical details, then about the most you'll be able to find is the somewhat equivocal wording on http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/62c13fb98d54fe240525672700581383/83e8c29db812a4e9852560e50067a5ac%21OpenDocument , where it says "Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions" -- where the "declarations and explanations" referred to are in fact a long discussion by Abba Eban, mainly about why the terms of UNGA 181 in fact can not be implemented in Jerusalem. In those remarks Abba Eban never made any promise that Israel would be unilaterally bound by all the terms and conditions which the Arabs had already rejected with vituperative gusto and violence.

To cut to the chase, I see little reason why your innovative personal legal theories should have a prominent or lengthy place in this article. The bit about the increasing role of minority-rights guarantees in various treaties of the 1920's is interesting, and seems to have some degree of truth, but it's not really very directly relevant to this article at all. AnonMoos (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

---

Referring to Arab opposition to the application of Israel, Mr. Eban stated that the Arab States which now advocated compliance with General Assembly resolutions had in the past assaulted the very foundations of the United Nations by attempting to overthrow a General Assembly resolution by force. The threats they had uttered in various bodies of the United Nations, and which had been translated in destruction and slaughter, had rested upon the doctrine of the optional character of the resolutions of the General Assembly. On 24 February 1948 the representative of Syria had said that "in the first place, the recommendations of the General Assembly are not imperative on those to whom they are addressed" ... The General Assembly "only gives advice, and the parties to whom the advice is addressed accept it ... when it does not impair their fundamental rights." On 19 March 1948, he had said that "not every State which does not apply, obey or execute such recommendations would be breaking its pledges to the Charter". The representative of Egypt had made that theory his own and had said it was his country's privilege under the Charter not to comply with the General Assembly resolution on Palestine. Such defiance alone would have been sufficient to disqualify Arab States from discoursing on the binding force of General Assembly resolutions. Their defiance, however, had gone further and they had taken up arms to overthrow a resolution by force, after which they had persistently refused to cease fighting when ordered to do so by the Security Council. The only States ever described by the Security Council as having caused a threat to the peace under Chapter VII of the Charter were now posing as the disinterested judges of their own intended victim in his efforts to secure a modest equality in the family of nations.

Recalling that seven States, including six Members of the United Nations, had undertaken official "military intervention" in defiance of the General Assembly resolution, the representative of Israel stated that without recognition of the initial responsibilities for the war, no single aspect of the situation in the Near East could be properly evaluated. He drew attention to the paradox whereby the only States which had ever taken up arms to overthrow an Assembly resolution by force solemnly accused their intended victim of a lack of concern for Assembly resolutions. If any State's eligibility for membership should be under consideration, it would be the eligibility of those who consciously selected war as a method of contesting the authority of international judgment. If, as advocated by the representative of Lebanon, compliance with resolutions of the General Assembly should be a condition for membership in the United Nations, Lebanon would not be represented in the Organization. The Arab States had opposed by force the establishment of Israel as well as the establishment of an international regime in Jerusalem. -- Abba Eban, Thursday, 5 May 1949

---

The doctrine of waiver and estoppel is applicable to all of the parties involved. Obligations arising from international treay obligations don't become invalid simply because the parties decided to have a civil war instead. The proscription of territorial conquest and the non-recognition of all acquisitions made by force was announced by the First International Conference of American States in 1890 and incorporated in article 2(4) of the UN Charter. see the Declaration of Reciprocal Assistance and American Solidarity.

The disposition of the Palestine mandate was not a matter falling within the domestic jurisdiction of any UN member state. The Arab states repeatedly asked the General Assembly to terminate the mandate and grant independence. They also asked for an ICJ opinion. They clearly recognized these issues were within the competence of one or more bodies of the UN. The representative of the Jewish Agency, Moshe Shertok, acknowledged the same competency:

With regard to the status of Assembly resolutions in international law it was admitted that any which touched on the national sovereignty of the members of the United Nations were mere recommendations and not binding. However the Palestine resolution was essentially different for it concerned the future of a territory subject to an international trust. Only the United Nations as a whole was competent to determine the future of the territory and it's decision therefore had a binding force. April 27, 1948. UN Doc. A/C. 1/SR.A 127, para 7.

Note that by April 7, 1948 the Jewish Agency had implemented Plan Dalet. The text of that plan called for offensive military operations, including unprovoked attacks on Arab villages outside the "borders of the Hebrew state". The doctrine of unclean hands has been raised by scores of published WP:RS sources.

The resolution also provided that: "The Constituent Assembly of each State shall draft a democratic constitution for its State and choose a provisional government to succeed the Provisional Council of Government appointed by the Commission. The Constitutions of the States shall embody Chapters 1 and 2 of the Declaration provided for in section C below and include, inter alia, provisions for::

Settling all international disputes in which the State may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered;

Accepting the obligation of the State to refrain in its international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations;"

The provisional government of Israel did not accept the border settlement contained in the partition plan: 'Regarding borders, we have decided to evade the issue... We neither reject nor accept the UN proposals. This issue has been left open to developments.' see David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel, and the Arab World, 1949-1956, Zakai Shalom, Sussex Academic Press, 2002, ISBN 1902210212, page 150.

The Soviet delegate explained that his country had based it's recognition of Israel on the four standard criteria, including the territorial borders defined in the resolution. He also claimed that the resolution created an obligation to create the Arab state, and reject the Mediators recommendations. Several other delegations made similar statements during the course of the hearings. The verbatim records are still available. see for example A/AC.24/SR.45, 5 May 1949 at UNISPAL

Uri Davis wrote about the constitutional stipulations contained in UN GAR 181(II). He explained that the Constitutions of both the Jewish State and Arab State were to embody, under the terms of the said Plan, Chapters 1 and 2 of the Declaration provided for in section C of the Plan. This Declaration contained fundamental constitutional guarantees regarding holy places, religious buildings and sites, religious and minority rights, citizenship, international conventions, and financial obligations. see Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, By Uri Davis, Garnet & Ithaca Press, 1997, ISBN 0863722180, page 86

Abba Eban made a declaration before the committee that the rights stipulated in section C. Declaration, chapters 1 and 2 of UN resolution 181(II) had been constitutionally embodied as the fundamental law of the state of Israel as required by that resolution and assured the committee that Israel would not invoke Article 2, paragraph 7 of the Charter, regarding its domestic jurisdiction. The instruments that he cited during the hearings were the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, and various cables and letters of confirmation addressed to the Secretary General. See for example The Palestine Question, Henry Cattan, page 86-87 and the verbatim record, FIFTY-FIRST MEETING, HELD AT LAKE SUCCESS, NEW YORK, ON MONDAY, 9 MAY 1949 : AD HOC POLITICAL COMMITTEE, GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 3RD SESSION. It is available via the UN Official Document System using Symbol: A/AC.24/SR.51, Date: 01/01/1949

The Cuban delegate was satisfied with Israel's reply and noted that:

:::The representative of Israel had given the assurance that, if that country were admitted as a Member, such matters as the settlement of frontiers, the internationalization of Jerusalem and the Arab refugee problem, would not be regarded as within its domestic jurisdiction and protected from intervention under the terms of article 2, paragraph 7 of the UN Charter.

harlan (talk) 23:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Section Break Minority Rights and Trusteeship Agreements

The UN Charter gives the General Assembly the power to concluded international agreements and treaties relevant to the operation of the trusteeship system. The decision on the Corpus separatum was in keeping with the terms of Article 28 of the Mandate. The power of the organization to manage trusteeships directly is contained in article 81, 83, and 85 of the Charter. The Corpus Separatum needs to be mentioned in the lead.

The General Assembly noted that UN GAR 181(II) is still relevant today when it requested the advisory opinion from the ICJ on the Consequences of the Construction of the Wall.

The additions to the article stated that the UN Secretariat had reported that the General Assembly established a formal minority rights protection system as an integral part of UN GAR 181(II) the 'Plan For The Future Government of Palestine'. That is the name of the resolution, not 'Plan for the Future Governments of Palestine'. It was cataloged during a review of minority rights treaties conducted in 1950. It is available via the Official Document System using Symbol: E/CN.4/367, 7 April 1950. See Chapter III "United Nations Charter and Treaties Concluded After the War".

The Chairman-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Minorities, Mr. Asbjørn Eide, advised in 1996 that no competent UN organ had made any decision which would extinguish the obligations under those instruments. He added that it was doubtful whether that could even be done by the United Nations. See the discussion in Justifications of Minority Protection in International Law, Athanasia Spiliopoulou Akermark , see Chapter 7 Minority Protections in the United Nations, 7.1 The Validity of Undertakings Concerning Minorities After The Second World War, pages 119-122.

The personal freedom and property rights of the Arab and Jewish national minorities were placed under the protection of the United Nations, not the new states. The enumerated rights cannot be altered without the consent of the General Assembly. Disputes involving interpretation or application are subject to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. The new states acknowledged the international nature of the undertakings by making their Declarations.

UN GAR 181(II) is also listed in the Table of Treaties, on Page xxxviii, of Self-determination and National Minorities, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Thomas D. Musgrave, Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0198298986.

An authority on international law recently noted that several international law norms developed in the inter-war years by the League of Nations are still in use today. He cited the Palestine Partition Plan as one of several post-war examples of the European practice of conditioning recognition of statehood on human rights, democracy, and minority protection guarantees. see the discussion on pages 97-98 and footnote 353 in Managing Babel: The International Legal Protection of Minorities in the Twentieth Century, Li-ann Thio, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005, ISBN 9004141987

The practice of making specific grants of territory on the basis of the new state's acceptance of a minority rights treaty began in the 1870s with Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania. see Defending the Rights of Others, Carole Fink, page 37.

French Prime Minister Clemenceau noted in an aide-memoire attached to the Polish treaty that the minority protections were consistent with diplomatic precedent:

This treaty does not constitute any fresh departure. It has for long been the established procedure of the public law of Europe that when a State is created, or when large accessions of territory are made to an established State, the joint and formal recognition of the Great Powers should be accompanied by the requirement that such States should, in the form of a binding International convention undertake to comply with certain principles of Government.
In this regard I must recall for your consideration the fact that it is to the endeavors and sacrifices of the Powers in whose name I am addressing you that the Polish nation owes the recovery of its independence. It is by their decision that Polish sovereignty is being restored over the territories in question, and that the inhabitants of these territories are being incorporated into the Polish nation.... ...There rests, therefore, upon these Powers an obligation, which they cannot evade, to secure in the most permanent and solemn form guarantees for certain essential rights which will afford to the inhabitants the necessary protection, whatever changes may take place in the internal constitution of the Polish State. Sovereignty, Stephen D. Krasner, Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 069100711X, page 92-93

Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht explained the legal effectiveness of the operation of this system of minority protections. He pointed out the Court's determination to discourage the evasion of these international obligations, and its repeated affirmation of "the self-evident principle of international law that a State cannot invoke its municipal law as the reason for the non-fulfillment of its international obligations." see The Development of International Law by the International Court, Hersch Lauterpacht, page 262 harlan (talk) 22:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

---

It's perfectly true that there are certain legal issues or disputes still hanging around from 1948-1949 which have never been fully and finally resolved by a comprehensive agreement, but the UN ended all meaningful trusteeship supervision over Israel in that very same resolution http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/62c13fb98d54fe240525672700581383/83e8c29db812a4e9852560e50067a5ac%21OpenDocument which I already linked to above. Furthermore, the United Nations would appear to have forfeited any rights to haughtily lecture others about the morality of mandate/trusteeship obligations when in 1948 it implicitly endorsed the cynical British "law of the jungle" plan (according to which the British withdrew without formally handing over territory or authority to any party, thereby leaving to the two sides to fight it out). If there's unfinished Palestine trusteeship business, then maybe the UN should start by passing a resolution censuring the British, who rather brutally and rawly violated the most basic assumptions of the implicit "social compact" of trusteeship in their manner of leaving the Mandate in May 1948. Most trusteeship obligations were actually binding on the British only, in any case...

And the U.N. never "granted" to Israel any specific territory whatsoever -- the UNGA 181 boundaries are a null and void dead letter, while the 1949 partition plan boundaries were not "granted" by the U.N.

And the U.N. General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding on matters which fall under the aegis of the Security Council -- you can read what the representatives of Syria and Egypt had to say about that in 1948 directly above in the remarks by Abba Eban. Furthermore, biased anti-Israel resolutions passed by the same third-world tin-pot dictators and mini-Mussolinis who gave us UNGA 3379 of 1975 have no moral force among those who aren't already biased againt Israel... AnonMoos (talk) 13:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

A simple question: why have the citation from the March 1949 CIA Report

Please answer in one sentence why the citation from the report that does not mention the UN Resolution is relevant for this article. I have looked at the full report (hard to read btw) and it mentions the UN resolution only in passing (in page 3). As it is it is simply an opinion of an anonymous person on an unrelated subject. This long citation should be removed until the ned of the discussion. Mashkin (talk) 02:13, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

We've been through this already, and extensively. It's regarding the CONSEQUENCES of the UN plan. That's why it's in that section. The CIA report is NOT conspirational, it's a conclusion the CIA came to at the time and is important part of views of the CONSEQUENCES of the UN partition plan at the time. There's no reason to hide this from the reader. Vexorg (talk) 05:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Mashkin at the most basic level, the UN Charter and the Partition Plan required that all parties respect the territorial integrity of any State and obey the policy of non-intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of other states. The promulgation of a constitution affirming that limitation on the powers of the government was part of the United Nations Resolution, and a condition for achieving international legitimacy for both the Arab and Jewish states. That fact was thoroughly discussed in the Knesset. See for example: DK (1950) 715, Knesset member Nahum Nir.

Great Britain had no authority to interfere in the affairs of Palestine after the mandate had been terminated, yet this CIA report says that Jordan, Iraq, and Great Britain were collaborating to do just that very thing. In addition it mentions the failure of the Great Powers to set and enforce borders, i.e. to use force to implement this partition plan. This article used to have a quote from President Truman explaining why the US could not agree to do that, but it got deleted.

We've been discussing the reference on page 3 to the Negev and the partition plan. That is an example of the principle of an arbitrated grant of title, or uti possidetis de jure. on 15 May 1947, Israel had not purchased that tract of land, did not occupy it, or effectively govern it. Nonetheless, after Israel made the Declaration containing the required guarantees, the US and Soviet Union recognized Israel as 'an independent republic within the borders approved by the General Assembly'. for more information on the contents of the Declaration see "The Declaration has Two Faces: The Interesting Story of the ‘Zionist Declaration of Independence’ and the ‘Democratic Declaration of Independence’," Tel Aviv University Law Review (Iyunei Mishpat) Issue 23, 2000: 473-539 harlan (talk) 08:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the whole notion of "grant of territory" and "uti possidetis" seems to be blatant arrant nonsense with respect to UNGA 181 (which is the focus of this article), as previously explained. There was no "grant of territory" because because no-one formally legally handed over to the incipient government of Israel any territory whatsoever on May 15th 1948, and also because there was never any binding UN resolution (i.e. which actually entered into full legal force) specifying any boundaries of territories to be granted to Israel. Furthermore, the cynical British "law of the jungle" plan (according to which the British withdrew without formally handing over territory or authority to any party, thereby leaving to the two sides to fight it out), and the implicit United Nations endorsement of the "law of the jungle" plan, would appear to have wiped the slate clean and reset the clock. And "uti possidetis" with respect to the UNGA 181 partition plan is even more laughable, since the UNGA 181 partition plan boundaries were never a practical line of control between two opposing forces, and never the subject of a mutually-accepted agreement between both sides. Uti possidetis is really a rather practical matter, mainly concerned with the actual positioning of armies or effective exercise of governmental control on a given date -- so that abstract metaphysics and innovative personal hypothetical speculations are not very relevant. AnonMoos (talk) 08:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You have not managed to give a reasonable reason why this should be in. According toy your logic anything that has to with Israel can fit these criteria. Mashkin (talk) 15:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Maskin, This is an article about the Plan for the Future Government of Israel. The General Assembly prescribed a specific settlement that included borders, and a request that they be enforced by air, sea, or land forces if necessary. This CIA report is verifiable information published by a WP:RS source which includes a significant point of view regarding the consequences of the failure to enforce the borders contained in the partition plan, and the unauthorized efforts by Great Britain and its collaborators. The claim that unsettled borders would lead to long term conflict is not a minority viewpoint.

It is a Wikipedia policy to include multiple points of view. The summary of the report's contents and the quote have been discussed and were shortened by earlier consensus. I have restored the longer version of the summary. The report also mentions that the Israeli leadership had stated, both on and off the record, that they intended to acquire more territory. That is hardly a minority viewpoint, since that fact can be verified from: published Knesset speeches; Moshe Sharett's Diaries; Ben Gurion's War Diaries and his "Letters to Paula and the Children"; declassified Israeli government papers; not to mention the works of the New Historians. harlan (talk) 08:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Contrary to what you say, The CIA Anonymous report does not "and cited UN failure to enforce UN orders to Israel regarding the enforcement of the partition plan borders", it mentions the UN Partition Resolution only very briefly on Page 3 and not as the main reason to for the UN being discredited in Arab world. The long citation provided is from a section that has nothing to do with the UN (and certainly not the partition). It does not belong here but in CIA View in its Early Years. Removing it until end of discussion. Please do not insert until end of discussion. Mashkin (talk) 18:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Unwarrented Deletions and Talk Page Abuse

Several editors have been assiduously deleting material from the article. Most of it had been discussed on the talk page before going into the article. It was supported by multiple well-cited WP:RS published sources. The edit summaries state that the material is irrelevant, and that it can't be restored without further discussion.

There is no policy that says material can't stay in articles while these so-called 'discussions' take place. In any event, I complied with several of those requests. I discovered that one of the editors deletes portions of the talk page when he doesn't want to discuss his decisions. Editors are entitled to include WP:RS published sources, but they are not supposed to prevent others from having the same opportunity.

In another example, the quote, and linked citation to the Avalon project page on President Truman's statement explaining why the US would not authorize the use of force to impose this plan of partition was deleted. At the same time, the link to the Israeli MFA website containing Rabbi Silver's response to the temporary trusteeship proposal was deleted. The edit summary claimed that the material was 'irrelevant'.

In a previous thread, I mentioned that the inclusion of the Corpus separatum trusteeship ought to be mentioned in the lead. Seeing no objections, I added a link to that article. The same editor that deleted the earlier talk page entry deleted the link and frustrated attempts to restore it. He complained that the states should be mentioned first, but chose (instead) to delete the reference to the Corpus separatum altogether. At the same time the edit summary requested that the material not be restored without more 'discussion'.

In the case of the Minority Rights Protection System and the required Declarations, there have been zero authoritative citations from any WP:RS published source to support the proposition that that UN-backed treaty undertaking is no longer in force, or that it wasn't used in the customary manner according to the earlier 1878 and 1919 precedents in public international law. The sources that I supplied say just the opposite: that it was used in exactly that way.

The justifications for deleting that material were supplied after the fact and amounted to nothing more than a WP:Synthesis of Ipse-dixitisms with citations to sources that don't mention the extinction of the minority rights treaty obligations at all. It also goes without saying that Hersh Lauterpacht, Jacob Robinson, Raphael Lemkin, Lucien Wolf, Carol Fink, Oscar Janowsky, Stephen Krasner, Henry Steiner, Max Laserson. Nehemiah Robinson, Marc Vichniak, the Institute of Jewish Affairs working under the auspices of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress are an unlikely bunch of Arab propagandists. harlan (talk) 06:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Should the Paragraph Describing the CIA Report be in This Article

Should the Paragraph Describing the CIA Report be in This Article? Two users keep pushing it back with no real justification. It is very far from the topic of this article (the UN Partition Resolution).Mashkin (talk) 22:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

--- This is an article about the Plan for the Future Government of Israel.

According to this logic anything that has to do with the "government of Israel can fit the articleMashkin (talk) 09:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

The General Assembly prescribed a specific settlement that included borders, and a request that they be enforced by air, sea, or land forces if necessary. This CIA report is verifiable information published by a WP:RS source which includes a significant point of view regarding the consequences of the failure to enforce the borders contained in the partition plan, and the unauthorized efforts by Great Britain and its collaborators. The claim that unsettled borders would lead to long term conflict is not a minority viewpoint.

There are several secondary sources in the article which substantiate the points made in the CIA report. There was nothing contrary to what was said in the summary that you deleted. Here is a verbatim extract of the relevant portions from page 3, section "IV The United Nations":

The UN is already completely discredited in the minds of the Arab governments and Arab peoples. There are many reasons for this, but the evidence usually cited is the failure of the UN or the Mediator to enforce UN orders to Israel. For example:

(f)To evacuate areas given to the Arabs by the UN proposal of November 29 1947; although at the same time insisting upon invading the Negeb, to excuse which they quote the same UN partition proposal.

(g) To respect the international character of the Jerusalem area.

Both the Arab Higher Committee and the Jewish Agency had requested that the UN change the international legal status of Palestine and grant them independence. In the case of Jerusalem, the General Assembly did not give its consent, and the international legal status was retained under a UN trusteeship per the terms of this resolution. The report also reveals that Great Britain and its collaborators were interfering with the implementation of the partition plan and the domestic affairs of Palestine, long after the termination of its mandate. This material is relevant to the article.

As already noted, it is a Wikipedia policy to include multiple points of view. The summary of the report's contents and the quote have been discussed and were shortened by earlier consensus. I restored the longer version of the summary, since you keep begging the question of applicability. The report also mentions that the Israeli leadership had stated, both on and off the record, that they intended to acquire more territory. That is hardly a minority viewpoint, since that fact can be verified from: published Knesset speeches; Moshe Sharett's Diaries; Ben Gurion's War Diaries and his "Letters to Paula and the Children"; declassified Israeli government papers; not to mention the works of the New Historians.

This partition plan contained a regional plan for Economic Union that aimed to redress some of the problems that were inherent in establishing artificial political boundaries and living off the land.

The Ad Hoc committee noted that scores of Arab villages had been cut off from their farmland by the proposed borders. The partition plan was amended to instruct the UN border commission to make adjustments and keep farmland and villages in the same state if possible. Millions of dunams of Arab land had been included in the borders of the Jewish state under the plan that was adopted on 29 November 1947. Taxes on land under cultivation were payable to the Jewish state. Secretary of State George Marshall a memo explaining that revenue sharing would be necessary to the viability of the Arab state:

"Dept's economic experts believe there is serious doubt that Arab State can be financially stable if it has to depend solely upon its own tax resources for governmental revenues and upon foreign exchange earnings from exports originating in the Arab State 'for all import requirements of that State. It would appear reasonable -and compatible with UNSCOP concepts to provide for pooling of taxes and foreign exchange receipts and central import licensing for an initial period after political separation."

The Jewish Agency was not concerned about the viability of the Arab state or sharing the revenues from Arab taxes. Moshe Shertok had testified that Palestine was not included among the territories in which Arabs were supposed to realize their national sovereignty, and that the Jewish Agency did not consider economic union with the Arab state as essential.

The British and French mandate border treaties had guaranteed the fishing and navigation rights of the Syrians and Lebanese on the Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee, and the regional grazing rights of the Bedouins. Elizabeth Bishop noted that the creation of the previous artificial political boundaries that were imposed under the Palestine Mandate had deeply disruptive economic consequences for an area that prior to the Great War was already fully integrated into a wider regional network of production, distribution, and exchange. see "Imperialism on Trial: International Oversight Of Colonial Rule In Historical Perspective", Chapter 3 Economic Imperialism

Page 7 of this CIA report explains that the Jewish people could not maintain their higher standard of living while living off the land and selling their agricultural products in competition with the Arabs in neighboring states. Israel was asking for loan guarantees and subsidies. For example, the American Credit Loan request for 90 million dollars was under discussion when this report was published, see for example Major Knesset Debates, Volume II, Netanel Lorch, editor, Sitting 7, March 8, 1949; Sitting 13, March, 17 1949.

THe CIA report does not explain it. It claims it. Again, it talks about the future (and it is quite wrong about it). Yet another example of how irrelevant this vile report is. What does this rreprot have to do with Covert action to Circumvent the UN Partition Plan???? Mashkin (talk) 18:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Moshe Shertok had briefed the Provisional Council during the cease fire negotiations that the US had said "We shall not allow the Jews to conduct a war which we do not want with our dollars." By 1951, the US Secretary of State noted that US economic support was making possible the continuation of heavy immigration into Israel, and that Arab doubts concerning Israel's ability to maintain an expanded population within the armistice borders had some validity. He recommended another $80 million in assistance and the establishment of a firm termination date for US aid to Israel. Those economic consequences of partition are not minority viewpoints. harlan (talk) 01:30, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

In your long and highly irrelevant response you have failed to give even one reason why this highly opinionated and anonymous piece belongs in this article and this section (covert plan..)?

Mashkin (talk) 09:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability is an inclusion criterion. The article had links to a zionism-israel.com page, a Ha'aretz article, and contained comments about Efraim Karsh and the "covert plan" to annex the Jewish or Arab state to Transjordan long before I ever laid eyes on it. You could add the Jerusalem Post article "Espionage and the Zionist endeavor", by Meir Zamir to the list. It talks about a secret British arms deal for the Arabs and claims:

::"The British Foreign Office, which mediated the deal, maintained the utmost secrecy, as its involvement contravened the UN resolution on partition and flouted the appeal by the UN Security Council for an embargo on arms sales to either Arabs or Jews."...

..."Until now, historians have failed to find conclusive evidence in British archives either validating de Gaulle's accusations of a British conspiracy against France in Syria and Lebanon, or David Ben-Gurion's charges that the British strove to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. (Apparently, the British are extremely efficient when it comes to concealing their dirty deeds.)"

There are also a number of books listed in the references section which discuss the British collaboration with Abdullah and et. al. harlan (talk) 07:58, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The arguments presented against the inclusion of this CIA report have no credence. The CIA article is referring to the consequences of the plan. And it certainly doesn't violate WP:NPOV as it's content is a conclusion of the CIA at the time in response to the partition plan. The user Mashkin has made no justification for removing it. Vexorg (talk) 00:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the CIA report does not refer to the consequence of the plan. It refers to the state of affairs as the writer of the report saw it 1949. It is not particularly related to to the UN Plan. By this logic anything that has to do with Israel can fit this article since it a "consequence of the UN Partition plan". It certainly has nothing do with the section (titled covert plan...)Mashkin (talk) 00:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

In the history page on 00:30, 26 January 2009 Mashkin wrote in history "Removing anti-Israel drivel" - This shows that editing is not being done in good faith. Vexorg (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It clearly shows that your edits are bad faith. please stop ruining this wonderful project called Wikipedia. You know perfectly well that this piece has no place here. Mashkin (talk) 23:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If you have run out of arguments please don't descend into rhetoric lacking in any substance. All the reasoning for the inclusion of the section has been given time and time again. I'm not going to get into a circular backwards and forwards rally of name calling.Vexorg (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

On 18:32, 27 January 2009 Mashkin wrote in history "This is becoming vandalism at this point. You have not provided a single argument for its inclusion!" - This is clearly not editing in good faith. First we have the section cited as "anti-Israel drivel" and now my good faith edits are being cited as vandalism!! Mashkin this has been discussed to death and the rationale for including this section have been put forward many times. It's all in this talk page, including archives now. You have clearly no proper rationale for removing the section and your descent to claiming it's vandalism is both offensive and uncalled for. You are clearly editing in bad faith and it's clear your only reasons for wanting to remove the section because you find it personally offensive ("Anti-Israel Drivel"). We cannot edit Wikipedia on the basis of whether we find something personally offensive. If you're offended then take it up with the CIA. Don't take it out of Wikipedia.Vexorg (talk) 18:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Mashkin , please read [[WP:NPOV]. The inclusion of the CIA quote does not violate WP:NPOV. With all respect it's clear that you are clutching at straws to find an excuse not to include this section. There's been a huge amount of discussion regarding this CIA report in these talk pages already and it's inclusion has been justified. Just because you personally find the content of the report offensive that is no reason to not include it in this article.Vexorg (talk) 02:03, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

On 04:22, 28 January 2009 Mashkin wrote in history "The CIA report is a vile POV" - it's quite clear that the agenda of Mashkin is not one of good faith whatsoever. We only have to look at his/her past few entries in the history and here to see that. Once again, please understand Mashkin that your personal offence to a source is NOT a reason to edit Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia not something you can sanitise for your own personal tastes. Please stop this ridiculous edit warring Vexorg (talk) 06:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Stop the personal attacks. Quit removing the alert label that this section (also) suffer from a lack of NPOV. The report is a an anonymous opinion whose significance and influence are not clear and was of course classified. It also has nothing to do with the article and the section. That is why it also a violation of NPOV. If you continue with this behavior I will have to contact the administrators. Mashkin (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually if YOU continue this behaviour I shall report YOU to the administrators. Your history of trying various methods, including your comments in the history page is why it is clear you edits are not in good faith. And your false claim I am making personal attacks against you is only damaging your case further. Please show where I am making personal attacks against you or retract that accusation.

It's clear by the fact you are trying out various reasons to get this section removed shows you have no proper rationale. Your reference to the section being 'Anti-Israel' drivel and 'vile POV' is a clear indication this is a personal agenda for you. And in fact your removal of the section would violate PW:NPOV on YOUR part. You are further clutching at straws with your irrelevant rationale that says the report was classified. What has that got to do with anything? Nothing. the report is from a proper and significant source, the CIA, and is important to show the reader the evaluation of the consequences of the Partition plan by the CIA. Your opinion that it is vile and drivel is your subjectivity, but objectively it is not Anti-Israel.Vexorg (talk) 22:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Stop the personal attacks.

The CIA report is a) Not relevant to the article b) Not relevant to the covert attempts section. c) An opinion whose significance has not been clarified. All we know is that someone within the CIA wrote this report. Who read it, who acted upon it, who wrote it, what other things that person did we do not know. This report could be a source if you wanted to demonstrate the attitude within the CIA at the birth of Israel towards the newly created state. It has nothing to with the current article. Picking the most vile paragraphs from the report and copying them verbatim is a serious violation of the NPOV policy. Mashkin (talk) 11:34, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Stop the nonsense accusations of personal attacks. no one is personally attacking you. I have simple demonstrated how your personal POV is blinkering your ability to edit Wikipedia. You continue your obvious POV with your hyperbole rants of "Picking the most vile paragraphs" . I have also shown how your reasons for removing the section have changed as you realize each attempt fails. There is no voilation of WP:NPOV. Just because it violates your own POV doesn't make it so. Wikipedia strives to be NPOV but of course this will always upset someone.Vexorg (talk) 22:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I have just read this entire section, and can see few content arguments and a lot of personal attacks. I call on all users to stop threatening each other and revert to civil debate.

About the content: I have not seen a single convincing argument asserting the relevance of the CIA report to this article. The report deals with the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and is not relevant to the partition plan. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 17:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

On several occasions the editors have made non-constructive edits by removing the summary that explains the relevance of the report: "By March 1949, a classified CIA report described Palestine as a 'Long Range Disaster'. The report claimed that the UN was already discredited in the minds of the Arabs, and cited UN failure to enforce UN orders to Israel regarding the partition plan borders. The report also revealed that Great Britain was flouting the UN resolution which had terminated its mandate, by continuing to interfere in the domestic affairs of Palestine." harlan (talk) 16:12, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course the CIA report doesn't belong in here; it's speculation unrelated to the topic of this article, which is the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. The quote itself doesn't even mention the plan. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Jayjg. Also, the link provided in the ref is to the FOIA page. Can you provide a link directly to the report? and are the italics in the original document? Lastly, this is a content dispute. Users who disagree with you are not necessarily vandals. -- Nudve (talk) 08:40, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ynhockey, Jayjg and Nudve here above.

At best, this information is for the "consequences" section of the article about the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

At best, because it is a primary source and we are not here to report primary source if they are not used in wp:rs secondary sources. Even if in that case, I think it could be discussed. CIA is not a relevant sources for facts but the analysis performed by CIA can be considered as relevant information (whether right or wrong). Ceedjee (talk) 10:50, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The CIA report is available from a number of secondary sources including the Jewish Virtual Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/CIA/ciarabs031849.pdf.

I've been on the receiving end of a great deal of errant wikilawyering regarding the use of primary sources, the inclusion of notable published viewpoints held by "revisionist" Israeli historians, and expert opinions on the creation and recognition of states in international law. There is no requirement that primary sources be excluded, or that they be cited by a secondary source. In this case there are a number of secondary sources cited that agree with the facts and conclusions contained in the CIA report. The relevant Wikipedia policy is that Wikipedia, itself, should not be the source of new ideas or theories about the subject, and that the article should rely (for the most part) on published secondary sources. This section satisfies the policy guidelines. A significant number of people worldwide are in agreement that the failure to respect or enforce the borders contained in the partition plan has been a total disaster which has resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths on both sides.

When the Question of Palestine came before the United Nations, the law of conquest, territorial aggrandizement, and the adoption of prescriptive borders were no longer acceptable practices in relations between states under international law. Those practices were proscribed by the provisions of the UN Charter itself. This is an article about an international legal instrument that contains the decisions of the General Assembly regarding the disposition of territory and non-self-governing peoples that were under an international mandate. The General Assembly prescribed a specific settlement that included borders, a trusteeship regime for Jerusalem, and a request that those borders be recognized and enforced by all sides. The General Assembly also authorized the provisional governments and inhabitants of both states to raise their own local militias as soon as possible to prevent frontier clashes and to take actions to implement the plan. That legal status wasn't changed by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. None of the participants in that conflict had the competence to alter a decision of the United Nations, or annex additional territory without UN consent. See for example the advisory opinion of the State Department Legal Advisor, the UK position on Jerusalem, and the reaffirmations of the continuing relevance of General Assembly resolution 181(II) in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 303, General Assembly Resolution ES-10/14, and General Assembly Resolution ES-10/15. harlan (talk) 20:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, are you trying to say that the U.N. was discredited to the Arabs because they did not enforce a partition plan that the Arabs had totally rejected in the first place? 69.133.126.117 (talk) 01:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying anything. The article cites a CIA report that contains interviews with local Arabs who pointed out that the UN had failed to consistently enforce the borders the General Assembly had adopted. There were Arabs elected to the first Knesset, so the notion that they all totally rejected the partition plan is an overstatement. harlan (talk) 07:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The Report and Britain

The report says "Alone among the great powers Britain has been working on a plan to restore the balance between the forces in Palestine, but it already appears that this plan is probably doomed to fail". Earlier it talks about the Britain as the weapon supplier of the Arabs and the affect of the truce. So what Harlan has written is not only irrelevant to this article and section but also not true. Mashkin (talk) 01:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

We've been here before. The CIA report confirms the details contained in the secondary sources, i.e. that Great Britain was interfering in the domestic affairs of Palestine after the General Assembly resolution had terminated its mandate. Like the Corpus Separatum, that was more than a recommendation. It also confirms that Britain was collaborating with Abdullah and Nuri-al-Said. The FRUS report confirms that the State Department advised Great Britain that the arms deals violated its UN obligations. harlan (talk) 03:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The report is completely inappropriate. It does not confirm that "Britain was interfering in the domestic affairs of Palestine after the General Assembly resolution", while there are plenty of sources, most interestingly Zamir, that do talk about Britain's plans. Not to mention that the available version of the report is hardly readable and large parts of it are censored. Mashkin (talk) 11:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The General Assembly prescribed a specific settlement that included borders, and a request that they be enforced by air, sea, or land forces if necessary. You deleted Truman's statement that it had become clear that the partition plan could not be carried out by peaceful means. He declined to impose a solution on the people of Palestine by the use of American troops on Charter grounds, and as a matter of national policy.

On the eve of independence, there was no objection in the Peoples Council of Israel to a proposal to fix the state boundaries. However, Ben Gurion decided to evade the question of borders. He explained that if the UN would stand by its resolution and carry out its decisions using its own forces, that Israel would respect all of the resolutions. see Jerusalem in America's Foreign Policy, 1947-1997, By Shlomo Slonim, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998, ISBN 9041110399, page 87.

The CIA report noted the failure of the Great Powers to set and guarantee any borders to an Israeli state and cited UN failure to enforce UN orders to Israel regarding the partition plan borders. That alone makes the report pertinent. Great Britain and its collaborators in Transjordan and Iraq had no authority "to restore balance between the forces in Palestine", since its mandate had been terminated by the UN resolution, and article 2(4) of the Charter prohibits members from using the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

The deletions regarding this CIA report have been reverted by several editors since the discussion started. Some of us have tried to compromise, but you keep making deletions of properly sourced pertinent material like the FRUS citation about the British arms deals. You haven't obtained a consensus, you've simply used insults and high drama in an attempt to drive away editors with views that are different from yours. harlan (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

You were caught lying red handed, so your distress is natural. Everything that you have said above is not related or relevant to mentioning, let alone quoting that part of the report. If you want to talk about British covert activities in trying to circumvent the UN Partition Resolution, fine, but note that the issue appears throught the section. The report is not a Wikipedia source for it. Mashkin (talk) 19:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I haven't lied about a thing. see Wikipedia:Harassment You are trying to start a flame war and I'm simply not interested. see WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND. Trumans statement is relevant to the resolution. Ben Gurion's statement is relevant to the resolution, and the CIA and FRUS material are relevant to the resolution. You don't like what the report says, but that sometimes happens. see WP:NOTCENSORED You can go through dispute resolution if you still have objections. harlan (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, as explained many times, in addition to violating WP:UNDUE, the speculative CIA report was not about the UN Partition Plan, nor does the quotation you have included refer to the UN Partition Plan. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Mashkin please stop removing this CIA report. There has been a long discussion in these talk pages about it and the consensus is that it is relevant and properly sourced. Vexorg (talk) 19:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The consensus is that it is not relevant. Shame on you for misleading. Mashkin (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

No the consensus is not that at all. The section is properly sourced and relevant. Even a cursory look back through this talk shows you are not editing in good faith, and now additionally you are falsely accusing harlan of lying. As harlan correctly points out you simply don't like the content of the report. This is proved by your previous comments of "anti-Israel drivel" and "The CIA report is a vile POV" in the history page. Vexorg (talk) 20:06, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't seen any sign of a "consensus" to keep this speculative, unduly weighted, unrelated material. Can you explain why you think there is a consensus for this? Jayjg ^(talk) 20:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

this talk page already provides all the proper rationale for the inclusion of this section. Repeating it over and over is a waste of bandwidth. If you need a re-fresher please see above. Vexorg (talk) 20:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the Talk: page provides all the rationale for removing this speculative, unduly weighted, unrelated material, and no significant rationale for keeping it. Please point to the "consensus" for keeping it you mentioned before, I couldn't find it. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

This talk page provides all the rationale for keeping this section. The section is properly sourced and is relevent. And please do not use your position as admin to carry your weight. I am editing in good faith here. If you block me in relation to this issue I shall report you for abusing your position as admin. Vexorg (talk) 21:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Vexorg, the CIA report is not about the Partition Plan, and the quote used doesn't mention it. In addition, there's no indication the report is particularly notable. Please address exactly how the quote is relevant to this article, and why the report is notable. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg, the CIA report specifically mentions the borders and the partition plan, and I've included that fact in the summary that keeps getting deleted. The last version I edited simply mentioned the report, without including any quoted material at all. I'll be happy to include a verbatim quote (again), so that you can find something else to complain about. harlan (talk) 05:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned a couple of times above, the report (i) Hardly mentions the UN Resolution (ii) Does not describe covert operations (iii) given its partly censored parts and the unreadability, any direct usage of it should be described as original research (iv) It significance or influence have never been established. Mashkin (talk) 05:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Quoting published country reports that were provided to policy makers on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency is not WP:UNDUE or original research by any stretch of the imagination.

No evidence was given as to who has read the reprot and what effect it had on them.

The FRUS series, is peer reviewed by an outside panel of historians, political scientists, archivists, international lawyers, and other social scientists who are distinguished in the field of U.S. foreign relations. You keep deleting the FRUS citation to the State Department discussions regarding the British plan to supply arms to the neighboring Arab countries that were illegally occupying Palestine. Under the terms of the General Assembly resolution itself, any attempt to alter the boundaries envisioned in the settlement by force constituted an attempt to "flout the United Nations".

This is not the current discussion. The claim that Britain was arming the invading armies does belong here, but in the 1948 war.

The CIA report says that Great Britain was working on a unilateral plan of its own to restore balance to the forces in Palestine. Those forces were largely Egyptian, Transjordanian, Iraqi, and etc. It says that the leaders of two neighboring states, Abdullah and Nuri al Said, were collaborating with the British. Several of the secondary sources mentioned in the article claim that the British secretly wanted to obtain military bases in Palestine, or to annex the Arab state to Transjordan in cooperation with Abdullah and Nuri al Said. e.g. Ends of British Imperialism, by William Roger Louis, Major Knesset Debates, 1948-1981, Netanel Lorch, the FRUS, Collusion across the Jordan, by Avi Shlaim, and Pan-Arabism Before Nasser, by Michael Doran. The State of Israel rejected the UN Mediator's proposal on the grounds that the annexation of the Arab state by Transjordan fundamentally changed the nature of the boundaries and Economic Union from those contained in the General Assembly partition plan. see The Future of Arab Palestine and the Question of Plebiscite.

Again, this is not what the current debate is about.

Here is an idea: prepare a section about British attempts to circumvent the partition resulution. There is plenty of material and it has nothing to do with the CIA report. Mashkin (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to follow Nudve's suggestion and simply mention the CIA report without using extensive quotes, but you have deleted those edits. Despite your claims, the report specifically mentions the UN partition plan, the failure to enforce the borders contained in the UN resolution on a equitable basis, and the failure to respect the international character of Jerusalem. The legal status of Jerusalem and UNGA resolution 181 are still relevant issues of international law that need to be mentioned in this article. See for example General Assembly Resolution ES-10/14 which specifically cites both Jerusalem and UNGA resolution 181.

There have been a number of reverts on this topic by other editors who avoided the conflict generated here on the talk page and in the edit summaries. I don't believe the matter should be decided by a tag-team on either side of the issue. harlan (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The rationale for the inclusion of this section has clearly and repeatedly been described numerous times both by myself and harlan (talk). The editing by Mashkin has been proven to be not in good faith and Jayjg (talk) has provided no rationale for the section to be WP:UNDUE. I can see no consensus for the removal of this section either. it should go back in. Vexorg (talk) 21:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, Vexorg, let me repeat what has been said several times already.

1. The material comes from a primary source that is not about the Partition Plan (the topic of this article), and, in fact, hardly even mentions it. Thus it presents a WP:NOR issue.
2. The quotation in question also does not refer to the Partition Plan. Thus it presents a WP:NOR issue
3. There is no indication that the CIA report was significant in any way, or that reliable secondary sources have discussed it. Thus it presents a WP:UNDUE issue.
4. As no reliable secondary sources have discussed this quote, or these speculations, there is no indication that the specific quote is in any way significant. Thus it presents a WP:UNDUE issue.

Other issues have been raised, but those will suffice for now. I've highlighted the policy concerns with the material, so, Vexorg, let's have no further claims that "User:Jayjg has provided no rationale for the section to be WP:UNDUE". Also, regarding "consensus", there has never been any consensus for its insertion, and there still is not. Pending such a consensus, please do not re-iterate any claims about there being such a consensus. Instead, please find reliable secondary sources that discuss this report, and explain its significance to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which is the topic of this article. Until then, it is not appropriate for inclusion in the article. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The rationale for inserting this section has been given numerous times. The CIA report is highly relevant to the Consequences of the Partition Plan, and you have provided no rationale for the section giving undue weight whatsoever. In fact I note your reasons above for WP:UNDUE do not actually conform to the recommendations of [[1]]. With respect have you actually read WP:UNDUE ?? The inclusion of the section does not by any means give undue weight to the views of the CIA in this article.

harlan (talk) in particular has put in considerable work to provide the rationale. The section is also properly sourced. You seem to be ignoring the secondary source provided by I believe, Harlan. Your reasons above have, again, been proved to be erroneous. So unless you can provide reasons why this section should not be included then the inclusion of said section is highly appropriate. Vexorg (talk) 02:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

According to whom is "The CIA report is highly relevant to the Consequences of the Partition Plan". Please name the source - and it cannot be merely a Wikipedia editor, but rather, must be a reliable secondary source. And do not again repeat the claim that "no rationale" regarding WP:UNDUE has been given; I will not respond to any comments that include that false claim. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see you have changed your comment after I have already responded. Please don't do that again. Regarding your comments, there's no point in claiming my reasons have been "proved to be erroneous", especially when the opposite is actually congruent with reality. Now, according to whom is "The CIA report is highly relevant to the Consequences of the Partition Plan". Please name the source - and it cannot be merely a Wikipedia editor, but rather, must be a reliable secondary source. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:16, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not a false claim at all. I would advise you read WP:UNDUE. I just have. Again. And your justifications for contravening WP:UNDUEhave nothing to do with it. The main consequence of the Partition Plan was the creation of Israel and the CIA article is commenting on this. You really have no grounds for removing this section whatsoever and how ever many time you repeat the same old erroneous claims it won't make it so. Vexorg (talk) 02:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

According to whom is "The CIA report is highly relevant to the Consequences of the Partition Plan". Please name the source - and it cannot be merely a Wikipedia editor, but rather, must be a reliable secondary source. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

"Ah, I see you have changed your comment after I have already responded]. Please don't do that again." - Stop ordering me around! I didn't change them after you responded, I started editign my comments BEFORE I saw your reply Vexorg (talk) 02:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

After reviewing the report, I am inclined to agree that it should not be used. In addition to the relevance and undue weight issues, it is a problematic primary source. The copy is very grainy and hard to read, and much of it is censored. Furthermore, we don't know wrote it, who submitted it, and who read it, if at all. A label on the first page reads "THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION". We really do need a secondary source to verify it. -- Nudve (talk) 07:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

None the less it is relevant, it is sourced and no rationale has been given for it's removal.Vexorg (talk) 17:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It's clear certain people are coming out of the woodwork to keep removing this section, despite there being no rationale for such removal. I can understand and even sympathise why the content of this CIA report is something that some people might not want on Wikipedia but we musn't let our personal feelings take priority over wikipedia rules. All the rationale for this section being included is sound and it should be included. Vexorg (talk) 21:19, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Vexorg, I just read the entire talk page comments after the argument restarted, and noticed that you keep repeating the same phrase (no rationale for removal), instead of providing any rationale for keeping the report. There are several reasons for removing it, as started countless times above:

1. Not relevant to the partition—even if the document technically mentions the partition, it talks about the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
2. Undue weight—there is no indication of notability for this report from secondary sources (historians, for example). I have not seen a single mention by either a notable traditional or new historian. Some mention must be made for the report to be notable enough for the article.
3. The report is a primary source, and primary sources should not be used to state facts, except in certain non-controversial cases.

Now it's your turn. What is the reasoning for keeping the report? -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

'after the argument restarted' ?? YOou should read ALL of the discussion, not just a section that helps your argument. - Now, ironically you are rehashing the same old fallacious arguments. Once again I need to show your arguments as being plain wrong.

1. The report is relevant to the consequences of the partition. This has been stated many times but ignored by those not wanting the report included.
2. Like the other editor your reasons for it's inclusion contravening WP:UNDUE has nothing to do with WP:UNDUE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UNDUE#Undue_weight says 'Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each' - This section in no way contravenes that.
3. your arguments regarding primary source do not apply int his instance. The CIA report is not being used to source facts. i.e It is NOT a case of "the article is claiming X and this report is the source for it" - rather the report is what it is. just like for example, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 is what it is.
4. The CIA is a recognized reputable source by Wikipedia.

You are failing time after time to provide any rationale for the removal of this report,and again I have shown your claimed rationale as fallacious. The editor Mashkin (talk) is certainly not editing in good faith. How many more times does this have to go on? Vexorg (talk) 23:19, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

1. According to what reliable source is the report "relevant to the consequences of the partition." It has indeed been claimed many timers, by you and Harlan, but so far you have failed to provide a reliable source backing up your view.
2. According to what reliable source is the report a "significant viewpoint"? Is there some reliable source that notes its importance?
3. The CIA report is not a government proclamation, like the Balfour Declaration. Rather, it is an anonymous, censored, highly speculative report that warns readers its contents consist of "UNEVALUATED INFORMATION".
4. We need a reliable secondary source that links this report to the Partition Plan, not a primary one like the CIA report that barely mentions it.

Until you adequately respond to these policy issues, the material cannot remain in the article. Rather than trying to edit-war this policy-violating material into the article, while claiming non-existent "consensus", or invoking WP:IDONTHEARTHAT whenever editors point out the policy issues with this material, please instead engage in finding material from secondary sources that is actually relevant to this article. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I have pointed out the flaws in your rationale numerous times and you still cannot supply any. You have no rationale for not including this report. Your 'tag-team' agenda of reverting has also been noted. Vexorg (talk) 00:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

All we have asked for is reliable, secondary sources that indicate the report and quote's relevance to this article, and significance. That's all you need to provide. Not your opinions, sources. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

*** "All we have asked for is reliable, secondary sources" *** That is an untruth, which this talk page clearly proves. You have claimed WP:UNDUE, which I have repeatedly proved to be not a valid claim and your reasons for it not relevent. You have claimed it isn't relevant to the Partition Plan, ignoring the fact that the report is relevant to the consequences of the partition plan. I have shown the the CIA is a reliable source. WP:NOVhas also been tried as an excuse which is also clearly nonsense. YOU are the one's who are invoking WP:IDONTHEARTHAT. There has also been editing of bad faith by the user Mashkin who exposes an agenda by citing 'anti-Israel drivel'. Mashkin is clear at least in that he admits he has a problem with the report's content. Reading through this talk page it's clear that for those who want to remove this CIA report have made their minds up it doesn't belong and have tried a number of false rationales and cited WP:XXXX in order to justify that. The tag-team antics and scraping the barrel to keep this CIA report out of Wikipedia is transparent. Vexorg (talk) 00:41, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

As we have been repeatedly saying, you need reliable secondary sources to show that the quote is related to the topic, and is notable. The policy and common-sense reasons why the material is un-suitable have been explained ad nauseam. Please re-read those comments. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia policy violation in quoting a verifiable published report of the United States government. There is no Wikipedia policy requirement that it be mentioned by secondary sources, only that they agree on the stated facts and reach the same conclusions. The talk page is not the place to regurgitate claims that don't match published Wikipedia policy guidelines.

Many secondary sources offer selected collections of key primary documents, for example "Israel in the Middle East: documents and readings on society, politics, and foreign relations, pre-1948 to the present", By Itamar Rabinovich, and Jehuda Reinharz, the Foreign Relations of the United States series, the Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations series, the Paperless Archive files on the Irgun, and etc. The Jewish Virtual Library is an award winning cyber encyclopedia designed to offer students, and anyone else, facts about Jewish history. I've already pointed out that they offer a small collection of documents from the era of the Truman Administration, and that they selected this particular CIA report for inclusion in their Harry S. Truman Administration archives.

This is the Wikipedia article about the UN resolution that authorized the establishment of a Jewish state in a portion of the territory of Palestine. That was done in an attempt to solve the "Question of the Future Government of Palestine". David Ben Gurion testified that a Jewish State should be established. He was in favor of foreign intervention, and the use of the armed forces of the United Nations to impose the partition plan. see A/364/Add.2 PV.19, 7 July 1947. The General Assembly also recommended that the Security Council use UN forces to counter any armed attempt to alter the boundaries proposed in the partition plan. On March 25, 1948 President Truman declined to commit US armed forces to that undertaking. see the Statement by President Truman on the United States Proposal for Temporary United Nations Trusteeship for Palestine. On the eve of independence, Ben Gurion explained that if the UN would stand by its resolution and carry out its decisions using its own forces, that Israel would respect all of the resolutions. see Jerusalem in America's Foreign Policy, 1947-1997, By Shlomo Slonim, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998, ISBN 9041110399, page 87. The CIA report not only discusses the long term consequences of the failure of the Great Powers to set and guarantee boundaries for the state of Israel, it observes that the establishment of the State of Israel by armed force had solved nothing. That viewpoint has also been expressed by a host of authors including Alfred Lilienthal, Simha Flapan, Ilan Pappe, Hannah Arendt, Judge Paul de Waart, and etc. As time permits I intend to include all of that information in the article, but real life calls at the moment.

Nudve, the coverpage of the report indicates that it was approved for release by the Agency, and that it was distributed on 8 March 1949. The entry you mention is a term of art that indicates the report contained raw intelligence. That consists of first-person "comments by personalities made in private interviews" beginning on page 5. The National Security Act of 1947 legislated changes in the production of national intelligence estimates and reporting. The Act stipulated that the CIA, and the Director of the CIA were to provide "foreign intelligence" reports to the National Security Council. That intelligence consisted of reports, assessments, and information - including "unevaluated information" - relating to the capabilities, intentions, or activities of foreign governments, foreign organizations, or foreign persons and their activities. The Council itself included the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. harlan (talk) 01:56, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, this is really simple. Have you read WP:NOR? Have you read WP:UNDUE? O.K., now, please provide reliable sources that show that the paper and quote are related to the topic and are notable. Your argumentation that they are related, and notable, despite the fact that the paper is quite obviously a bizarre, censored speculation un-noticed by any source which discusses the Partition Plan, is not relevant to this Talk: page. Provide reliable secondary sources that discuss this primary source, and explain its relevance to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the subject of this article. Sources, harlan. Not your arguments. Not all sorts of links to various other sources that do not discuss this report. Not the names of various people who, in your view, share the CIA reports "viewpoint". Not links to the Jewish Virtual Library's list of documents relevant to the The Harry S. Truman Administration. The "The Harry S. Truman Administration" is not the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the report does have some relevance to the article, because it discusses, among other things, the failure to enforce the partition plan. However, the fact that the plan was never actually enforced is hardly a secret and the fact that the 1949 Armistice Agreements borders are different from the ones in the partition plan is not really questioned. So I don't see why we must use this questionable primary source to establish it. I am still unconvinced that this report is actually the official position of the CIA at the time. The censorship is problematic. -- Nudve (talk) 04:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg, I'm sorry, but the guidance from arbitration that I've read has stated that control of the information about the Arab-Israeli conflict is part of the conflict itself. No person or group has the right to control content of Wikipedia articles, demand pre-approval, or remove adequately referenced information. The Wikipedia policy of editing from a neutral point of view is a central and non-negotiable principle of Wikipedia. It applies to situations like this, where there are conflicting viewpoints. It contemplates that significant viewpoints regarding such situations all get included in as fair a manner as possible.

Neither WP:NOR or WP:UNDUE mention a requirement that quoted primary sources need to be cited by secondary sources. In fact, "Primary sources are considered reliable for basic statements of fact as to what is contained within the primary source itself". It is just that simple. The policy only requires that secondary sources be used to supply any conclusions, interpretation, or analysis of the events, and so forth that aren't contained in the primary account itself. You know how to add a fact tag. I've supplied several sources which explain that British strategy called for Abdullah to annex most of Palestine so that it would remain a strategic asset of the British Empire. Here are two more: Theory and Practice in the History of European Expansion Overseas, and Ends of British imperialism both by William Roger Louis. The Meir Zamir cite explains there are declassified French documents (somewhere) that show this all violated British UN obligations, but the deleted FRUS discussion of the arms deal was more adequately sourced and peer-reviewed.

The fact that the CIA report discusses the creation of the state of Israel, the international status of Jerusalem, and the enforcement of the UN partition plan is not a matter of personal opinion or interpretation.

WP:NOR specifically states that the contents of primary sources can be used. WP:UNDUE doesn't mention sources at all. It applies to the weight given to minority points of view in articles. It does not require that those views be excluded from articles. I don't think you have demonstrated that the viewpoints expressed in the report were, or are, limited to a relatively small minority. Any number of people and organizations had rejected calls for the establishment of a Jewish state (King-Crane Commission, Anglo-American Commission, American Council for Judaism, Gandhi, Eistein, and etc.) I'd be happy to consult my copy of Yoram Hazony's "Jewish State" for more details. Many UN member states refused to endorse the foundational logic of political Zionism or Pan-Arabism. They demanded that both of the proposed states adopt constitutional guarantees of equal rights for their minority populations. Even Truman rejected the use of force, or the threat of force, to impose partition on the people of Palestine. The fact that leaders like Menachim Begin and David Ben Gurion continued to discuss territorial claims to parts of "Ertez Israel", or the disputed territories lying beyond the UN settlement boundaries is certainly no secret.

Unlike the neighboring Arab cultivators, Israeli leaders didn't envision subsistence farming as their economic engine that would support their standard of living. Substantial foreign loan guarantees were a constant topic of discussion in the People's Council and Knesset. Moshe Shertok warned of threats to the United Jewish Appeal in America, and a US-imposed "dollar embargo". There are still on-going debates about bringing political, diplomatic and economic sanctions against Israel, and experts like Bernard Avishai believe that globalization will eventually bring peace to both sides of the conflict.

Nudve, the 1949 Armistice agreements did not contain a settlement of the disputed boundaries. Judge Paul de Waart wrote an article for the Leiden Journal of International Law in 2007 bemoaning the fact that the ICJ missed an opportunity to address the relevance of UNGA Res 181 when they mentioned Security Council 242 in the advisory opinion on the Security Wall. He noted that 242 is not incompatible with UNGA Res 181. harlan (talk) 10:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, I have a sinking feeling that you haven't read my previous comment, so I'll have to repeat much of it. Harlan, this is really simple. Have you read WP:NOR? Have you read WP:UNDUE? O.K., now, please provide reliable sources that show that the paper and quote are related to the topic and are notable. I'll quote the part of WP:UNDUE that is relevant:

Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and will generally not include tiny-minority views at all.

Your argumentation that they are related, and notable, despite the fact that the paper is quite obviously a bizarre, censored speculation un-noticed by any source which discusses the Partition Plan, is not relevant to this Talk: page. Provide reliable secondary sources that discuss this primary source, and explain its relevance to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the subject of this article. Not sources that "explain that British strategy called for Abdullah to annex most of Palestine so that it would remain a strategic asset of the British Empire". Not sources about "declassified French documents (somewhere) that show this all violated British UN obligations". Sources that discuss this report, harlan. Not your arguments. Not all sorts of links to various other sources that do not discuss this report. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to report the cabal of silencing that is going on here. I was blocked from editing Wikipedia for 72 hours based upon the false allegation by CIreland (talk)who said "Some of the reasons you have provided in edit summaries for your reversions are, at best, clearly mistaken and, at worst, a deliberate misrepresentation of discussions on the talk page." - This is untrue of course and has been proven by harlan (talk) above. The editors who don't want this CIA report added on the other hand continue to revert and are not blocked. So even though a proper case has been made for the inclusion of this CIA report I know that if I restore it to the article I will be blocked further from editing. This is a sad time for wikipedia when such brute force tactics have to be used in order to silence certain editors. Vexorg (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

When "a proper case has been made for the inclusion of this CIA report", please let me know. So far that has not happened. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

A proper case has been made for the inclusion of the CIA report. It's all here in the talk page and archives. Those who don't want the report included because they don't like the content of the CIA report are hiding behind administrator status. Thankfully all this is being logged. Vexorg (talk) 04:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The Legal Status Of The Resolution

Some editors have concluded that the resolution never went into effect, or that it is no longer relevant. On 8 December 2003, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution ES-10/14 which addressed questions of international law to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion. On that occasion the General Assembly cited the legal relevance of UN GAR 181. see paragraph 1 of the ICJ Advisory Opinion

Some editors have suggested that General Assembly resolutions regarding non-self governing peoples and territories are somehow restricted to offering recommendations. That claim has no basis in the UN Charter. The Charter provides the General Assembly with the necessary powers to make decisions, conclude international agreements, and directly administer non-self governing peoples and territories. When the question of Palestine was addressed to the General Assembly, the Jewish and Arab peoples of Palestine were not self-governing or independent. That means they did not enjoy the right of sovereign equality guaranteed by the Charter to UN member states. The Southwest Africa cases established the fact that all of the remaining League of Nations mandate territories had a special international legal status, and that none of the mandatory administrations, or neighboring states, could dispose of the mandate territories - or govern their populations - without the consent and supervision of the General Assembly.

The article cites legal opinions that Judge Hersh Lauterpacht addressed to the Jewish Agency and the Provisional Government of Israel. He said that the General Assembly decision to authorize the creation of the new states was part arbitration, part legislation, and that recognition of the right to establish the new states was irrevocable. Another Jewish Agency legal counsel, Jacob Robinson, explained that the new states had come into existence with the adoption of the General Assembly resolution. He was not alone in that opinion. The US State Department legal counsel, Ernest Gross, advised that even the Security Council was not empowered to alter the November 29, 1947 resolution of the General Assembly. He explained that while the resolution stands, groups in Palestine are authorized to take the steps contemplated in the resolution for implementing the partition plan. see Foreign relations of the United States, 1948, Volume V, Part 2, page 747-8.

During the Security Council and Ad Hoc Committee hearings on Israel's application for UN membership, it was repeatedly stressed that the state of Israel was created as a result of the decision of the General Assembly. The list of delegates who made that claim includes: the Soviet Union, El Salvador, Australia, Uruguay, Lebanon, Ecuador, Yemen, China, Syria, Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, and Colombia.

For example, at the 386th meeting of the Security Council the representative of the Soviet Union, Mr Malik said: "In our opinion, the territory of the State of Israel has been determined and delimited by an international instrument, that is, the General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, and which remains in force. Not only does that resolution delimit the territory and boundaries of the State of Israel, but the resolution has a map appended to it which can be consulted by any member of the Security Council or by anybody else. Thus, the question is indubitable. It is true that the USSR delegation in the Security Council has always maintained, still maintains and will continue to maintain that the basis for the creation and the existence of the State of Israel and of an Arab State in Palestine is the General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947. That resolution is an international legal document entitling the State of Israel and the Arab State in Palestine to their creation and existence, and nobody-–except, of course, the General Assembly-–has a right to revoke it." harlan (talk) 14:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Whatever -- as has been extensively discussed above on this page, UNGA 181 made a public declaration that the establishment of two states was the UN-preferred solution, and until about 1956 it was assumed by many outside the region to constitute a basic template for a possible future settlement. Also, it detailed a list of protections and minority rights which most parties to the conflict agreed in the abstract was a good thing, and which Israel undertook to follow (at a time when the Jordanian government was systematically demolishing the synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem). However its detailed provisions did NOT enter into formal binding legal force, something which could only happen if both sides agreed to it -- something which did not in fact happen, since only the Jews agreed to it, while the Arabs made a parading public show of scorning and spurning it with contumelious vituperation. Its implementation depended on mutual agreement, and it simply WAS NOT implemented. I really don't give a flying frig what the Soviet representative to the UN said at a time when Stalin had turned on Israel and was preparing the ground for the Doctors' plot, since the pronouncements of Stalin's flunkies do not constitute international law... AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Anonmoos, the Soviet flunky was responding to an objection that Israel didn't meet the legal requirements of a state under international law because it lacked a defined territory. He pointed to the boundaries in the resolution. The Stalinist flunkies were the first state to grant de jure recognition based on those borders. Truman also conditioned US recognition on the basis of the boundaries contained in the UN resolution.

Both the Palestinians and Israel have provided declarations in keeping with the minority protection plan. It is you who have innovative theories about treaty obligations that can only be supported with invectives and rhetoric. The citations accompanying my edits and the "extensive discussions" on this talk page (to date) have demonstrated that:

• Uri Davis wrote about Israel's obligations to provide constitutional protections for minorities under the terms of this resolution;
• Harry Cattan's account regarding the Ad Hoc Committee demand for evidence of Israel's minority rights declaration is backed-up by the verbatim record;
• Li-ann Thio wrote about the UN utilizing the same customary League of Nations procedures to manage inter-ethnic issues as part of the Palestine Partition Plan. She specifically cited the fact that recognition of statehood was conditioned on human rights, democracy, and minority protection guarantees;
• Carol Fink, Stephen Krasner, and Oscar Janowsky each wrote about the customary practice in European public law of conditioning territorial cessions upon minority rights guarantees;
• The Jewish Agency Status Quo agreement said that establishment of the State required United Nations permission, and that it would not be forthcoming without those guarantees;
• Athanasia Spiliopoulou Akermark wrote about the validity of post-war UN minority rights undertakings and cited the Secretariat report (E/CN.4/367, 7 April 1950) which explains that this resolution contains a UN-guaranteed minority protection plan;
• The Oxford Monographs in International Law (published in 1997) lists UN GAR 181(II) in a Table of Treaties pertaining to Self-determination and National Minorities.
• That Jacob Robinson noted that the provisional states had come into existence with the start of the transition period on the day the resolution was adopted.
• Ernest Gross noted that as long as the resolution stands, the parties in Palestine can take the necessary steps to implement the plan, and that only the General Assembly can revoke the settlement.
• That Moshe Shertok accepted the resolution as a legally binding settlement.

None of that is my personal innovation, and none of it is WP:OR or WP:Synth. I would hasten to add that the decision to terminate the British mandate was implemented. The theory of estoppel on the question of Jerusalem that you brought-up in an earlier thread doesn't account for the subsequent resolutions, like UN GAR 303, the Consular Corps of the Corpus Separatum, or the finding regarding Jerusalem contained in the ICJ Advisory Opinion. harlan (talk) 07:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, the 1947 UNGA 181 partition plan was extremely important in a way in laying the groundwork for the future recognition of Israel by other states, and for UN membership for Israel, and during the next ten years or so many Europeans and other non-Middle-Easterners naturally assumed that the outlines of a final settlement would be roughly along the lines of UNGA 181. I have no problem whatsoever in admitting this. Also, during the period between November 29th 1947 and May 1948, some Zionist supporters placed great reliance on UNGA 181, because it was almost all they had to rely on at that time. However, UNGA 181 was pretty much overtaken by events beginning in May 1948, and the mainstream interpretation is that since the proposed UNGA 181 agreement was not accepted by both sides (to whom the agreement was proposed), therefore the great majority of its provisions never entered into force. I sometimes grow frustrated because you seem to place extreme importance on selective abstractions of metaphysical legal-philosophical hypothetical speculation, while completely ignoring very significant real-world events which actually affected millions of people's lives. Such as, for example, that the United Nations implicitly endorsed (by its inaction) the British "law of the jungle" plan, according to which the British did not hand over legal authority or territory to any party when they withdrew in May 1948, but instead intentionally and deliberately left a vacuum behind them, in which the Jews and Arabs were free to fight things out. The British attitude was that they left behind a hunk of meat in the animal enclosure at the zoo, without giving it to any one particular animal, and the different animals could fight for it as they pleased. It's hard to reconcile your theories of extreme legal continuity from 1919 to the present with the fact that on the ground in 1948 no one handed any territory or legal authority over to the incipient Israeli government (which seemed like leaving the Jews to their fate, since the majority of outside observers thought that the Arabs would probably have the upper hand in the coming conflict -- the British government certainly would have never withdrawn if they hadn't felt that the Arabs were going to prevail). AnonMoos (talk) 09:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Anonmoos, The original two-year transition period was shortened to just six months at the request of the Jewish Agency. The Government of Israel repeatedly pointed to the self-help provisions contained in the resolution. They claimed those allowed them to implement the partition plan. At the 262nd meeting of the Security Council held on 5 March 1948, Rabbi Silver stated that the implementation of the partition plan had already begun, and that the process was therefore legally binding and irreversible. See UN doc. S/PV.262. During the Third Session of the General Assembly, at the 118th meeting, the representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine claimed that partition was already a reality:

"explanations for the convocation of that session of the Assembly had an air of unreality. The argument, advanced by some representatives, that a new solution should be sought for the Palestine problem because the Partition Plan could not be implemented without recourse to force, was fallacious. The report of the Palestine Commission had clearly established the facts in the situation. Partition had become a reality in Palestine. May 15 would mark the end of the Mandate. On the following day, a provisional Jewish Government would begin to function in accordance with the spirit of the United Nations resolution." see YEARBOOK OF THE UNITED NATIONS, 1947-48, 1949.I.13, dated 31 December 1948

White House Counsel Clark Clifford objected to efforts to get the Security Council to secure a truce or trusteeship in Palestine. He said that while efforts to secure a truce had produced no results, the actual partition of Palestine had taken place during the fighting "without the use of outside force". He urged the President to give prompt recognition to the Jewish State after the termination of the mandate on May 15.

In The Middle East Today, Don Peretz wrote that the Provisional Government of Israel formed on 14 May 1948 was new in name only. He noted that the Palestine Commission had worked with it, and that it had assumed de facto control of many areas in early March.

It is a matter of public record that the Jewish Agency turned down the UN cease fire proposals because they preferred the offer of a modus vivendi agreement from the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. Foreign Minister Shertok told US Secretary of State Marshall about the plan for the Arab Legion and the Haganah to coordinate their respective military plans in order to "avoid clashes without appearing to betray the Arab cause". Marshall also wrote that Shertok had plainly stated the intentions of the Provisional Government of Israel to make arrangements and partition Palestine between themselves and Abdullah. The Emir later confirmed the existence of those agreements to the US Consul in Amman.

During the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the The Colonization Of The West Bank Territories By Israel in 1977. The legal status of the partition plan and the minority rights provisions were addressed by Dr W. Thomas Mallison. He stated that territory was only allocated by the UN on condition that certain duties imposed upon each state to be established in Palestine were carried out. He said the legal obligations contained in section 10(d) of part IB were particularly important. It provided that each of the states to be set up in Palestine shall have a constitution which includes provisions: "Guaranteeing to all persons equal and nondiscriminatory rights in civil, political, economic, and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech and publication, education, assembly, and association." Dr. Mallison stated "In most civilized legal systems it is recognized that legal rights may only be exercised conditioned upon compliance with legal duties. The refusal of the State of Israel to comply with the nondiscriminatory requirements of the Palestine partition resolution, its main claim to title, puts in serious jeopardy its claim to legal title to the limited territory allocated to it by the resolution." harlan (talk) 18:30, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

As usual, Harlan turn the talk into an endless discussion of "international law". This is compettely besides the point. The lead should describe what the decisions meant. Did they "facilitate the creation of two proviosnal states?" No, of course not. Therefore the alternative is way preferable. Mashkin (talk) 16:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Mashkin, sorry that's wrong. The original UNSCOP report noted that the proposed Arab state would not be viable, and proposed an economic union with the Jewish state. The Palestinians were given their independence when the mandate was terminated. They could determine their own political status, and form or dissolve unions with each other or with other states. The article already says that there were two provisional governments announced on 15 May 1948. The UN Security Council addressed a questionnaire to all of the government parties involved in the fighting, including the new provisional governments. The Jewish Agency and Arab Higher Committee both responded in their new capacities. see The Jewish Agency response and the Arab Higher Committee response.

The AHC said that it was just a coalition of local councils, that it was represented in the Arab League, and that it had called upon the other members of the League for assistance with public security. The majority of local councils in Central Palestine subsequently adopted a resolution at the Jericho, Ramallah, and Nablus Conferences calling for Union with Transjordan - and asking the Emir Abdullah to proclaim himself King of the territory. The Jewish Agency had already advised the US State Department that it intended to divide the territory with Abdullah. The UN Mediator recommended that Palestine, as defined in the original Mandate including Transjordan, form an economic union comprising two members, one Arab and one Jewish and the US announced that it accepted those conclusions. Israel complained about the idea publicly, but forged ahead with the secret negotiations between Shiloah, Dayan, and Abdullah. In December of 1948, the US government sent a Top Secret message to Abdullah and the officials of Transjordan saying that it accepted the principles contained in the resolution of the Jericho Conference. The US said the logical disposition for the bulk of the territory of Arab Palestine was incorporation with Transjordan. The US subsequently extended de jure recognition to the Government of Transjordan and the Government of Israel on the very same day, January 31, 1949.

The first classified country report for Jordan mentioned that the Jordanian Parliament had unanimously approved a resolution concerning the union of Central Palestine with Jordan. The report said the US had advised the British and French Foreign Ministers that it approved the action and that it represented "a logical development of the situation which took place as a result of a free expression of the will of the people." harlan (talk) 18:30, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The Arabs rejected UNGA 181, and refused to sign off on the proposed agreement, yet they are supposed to benefit from all its provisions?

Harlan, it's very difficult to see according to which supposed principle of "international law" the Arabs get to both have their cake and eat it too, in that particular lop-sided manner. That is, in 1947 the Arabs spurned and scorned UNGA 181 with extreme virulent vituperative vehemence, and made a parading public show of trampling the very idea of UNGA181 underfoot with abundant sneering jeering contumely, and instead freely chose to start a war to take everything, and therefore of their own free will made a conscious deliberate intetional decision to risk their fates on the inherently uncertain outcome of war -- but now, despite all that (and despite the "Law of the jungle" manner in which the British withdrew from Palestine mandate, with NO formal legal handover of authority), the Arabs are somehow supposedly entitled to the full realization of every single one of the UNGA181 provisions (despite the fact that this proposed agreement was NOT agreed to by both sides at the time). I don't want to be unnecessarily brutal, but this really violates common sense, and doesn't pass the "laugh test". You know what they say, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:36, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You keep repeating the same old propaganda that contradicts the statements made by Jewish Authorities as part of the published official UN records. In any event, the Emir Abdullah notified the US State Department that he accepted the recommendation for partition in 1937 and did the same thing again in 1948. After the Der Yassin massacre he notified the State Department that he had to intervene to stop the Jewish terror groups, but that he still was willing to negotiate with the Jewish Authorities. Moshe Shertok "plainly told" Secretary of State Marshall that the Jewish Agency had established a modus vivendi with Abdullah, and that he and the Jewish Agency were going to partition Palestine between themselves. That is exactly what happened, and the State Department records have all been declassified and published. I've added a subsection on Arab Palestine to the section on recognition of the new states. I'm ready to address any remaining dispute over inclusion of the grant of title/Minority Rights Treaty mini-essay and that to the Moderation Committee. harlan (talk) 17:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes it's well known that Abdullah of Transjordan would have have liked to have come to an open agreement, if he hadn't been prevented by disfunctional inter-Arab politics (where the various Arab rulers had to compete to "outbid" each other in rigid extreme qawmiyyah nationalism in order to retain the fickle favor of the Arab "street"). However, that didn't prevent Abdullah from acting with gusto to opportunistically grab the largest chunk of former mandatory Palestine that he could when the fighting started, and some Israelis remember rather bitterly that the Kfar Etzion massacre took place with the participation of troops from Abdullah's British-trained, British-armed, and British-led Arab Legion under "Glubb Pasha" (a.k.a. Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE).

But an under-the-table de facto working agreement on military spheres of influence between Israel and Transjordan really can't do anything to retroactively change the fact that between November 29, 1947 and May 15, 1948, all relevant Arab entities maintained a unanimous public stance of strongly rejecting UNGA 181 -- and the suggestion that a furtive sub-rosa tactical military accomodation could somehow take the place of formal open accession to a proposed agreement is really rather strange and bizarre when coming from an ultra-legalistic person such as yourself...

However, none of this particularly serves to answer the main question, which is: -- Please do tell me why it is that (according to you) the Arabs somehow have a quite extraordinary and unprecedented legal privilege of "double-dipping", or "two bites at the apple", or "having their cake and eating it too", or whatever you want to call it. In order words, the Arabs loudly and vocally rejected the UNGA 181 proposed agreement, which (if they counterfactually had agreed to it) would have granted them a state under certain specified terms, such as borders open to economic trade, non-aggression, respect for the holy places of other religions, etc. The Arabs complied with none of these terms (after they had uniformly rejected UNGA 181), and yet (according to you) they are still supposedly entitled to all the benefits that could have come to them if they had assented to the agreement. So that seems to be saying that the Arabs are bound by none of the obligations of UNGA 181, but are still entitled to all of the privileges they might have had under it. For the Arabs (according to you), UNGA 181 is "all pleasures and no pains" (as Dr. Johnson might have phrased it).

If you can't provide a clear and concrete explanation as to why provisions of international law would result in such an extremely unusual and out of the ordinary one-sided legal situation, then it would be better for you to refrain from re-adding your hypothetical theoretical abstract metaphysical philosophical speculations to this article... AnonMoos (talk) 20:50, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing speculative or hypothetical about adding information from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) to the article. It's authoritative, self-explanatory, it's in the public domain, and it's all third party verifiable. The US has always recognized the territory outside the UN boundaries of the Jewish state as Arab Palestine, and said as much publicly in the General Assembly. Recognition of other states or governments is a matter of sovereign discretion. The political decision to establish bilateral relations is based upon US interests.

The article mentions that Hersh Lauterpacht advised the Provisional Council of Israel that the United Nations recognition involved rights and obligations that were irrevocable, notwithstanding any difficulties or opposition to the plan on the part of some people. During his Senate testimony Yehuda Blum, the author of the "Missing Reversioner", acknowledged that if Israel's rights had not been supported by physical force, its rights under the partition plan would still have been held in abeyance by the international community. The same legal principle applies to the rights and territorial integrity of Arab Palestine. Under the UN Charter, the juridical status of a victim of aggression is irrelevant.

The FRUS says that an informal meeting of British, Belgian, American, and French UN representatives was called on 2 May 1948. The USUN office advised the State Department that the French representative, Parodi, said that as of May 15 they would be faced by declarations of two states of Palestine coupled with the entrance of Abdullah. Regarding the latter, two ideas were current. The first was that if Abdullah moved beyond his own frontier it might constitute an act of aggression. The second idea was that if he entered on the invitation of the Arab population of Palestine, his act might not constitute aggression. Parodi said he was inclined to the second theory and thought a conclusion to that effect would avoid endless argument. The US agreed with the French view of the situation.

Here is a USUN memorandum written after the meeting:

Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett)

SECRET [WASHINGTON,] May 4, 1948.

Subject: Future Course of Events in Palestine

The refusal of the Jewish Agency last night to agree to our proposal for on-the-spot truce negotiations in Palestine on the grounds that they could not accept the "moral obligation" to undertake such conversations rather clearly reveals the intention of the Jews to go steadily ahead with the Jewish separate state by force of arms. While it is possible that Arab acceptance of our proposal might place the Jewish Agency in such a position vis-a-vis public opinion that it would have to go through the motions of looking for a truce, it seems clear that in light of the Jewish military superiority which now obtains in Palestine, the Jewish Agency will prefer to round out its State after May 15 and rely on its armed strength to defend that state from Arab counterattack.

Military operations after May 15 will probably be undertaken by the Haganah with the assistance of the Jewish terrorist organizations Irgun and Stern. Copies of Consul General Wasson's excellent reports, as set forth in his telegram 530 of May 3, are attached, and provide the estimate of the British General Officer Commanding as to the probable course of military events after British withdrawal on May 15.

If these predictions come true, we shall find ourselves in the UN confronted by a very anomalous situation. The Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN and approved, at least in principle, by two-thirds of the UN membership. The question which will confront the SC in scarcely ten days' time will be whether Jewish armed attack on Arab communities in Palestine is legitimate or whether it constitutes such a threat to international peace and security as to call for coercive measures by the Security Council.

The situation may be made more difficult and less clear-cut if, as is probable, Arab armies from outside Palestine cross the frontier to aid their disorganized and demoralized brethren who will be the objects of Jewish attack. In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside Palestine which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.

There will be a decided effort, given this eventuality, that the United States will be called upon by elements inside this country to support Security Council action against the Arab states. To take such action would seem to me to be morally indefensible while, from the aspect of our relations with the Middle East and of our broad security aspects in that region, it would be almost fatal to pit forces of the United States and possibly Russia against the governments of the Arab world.

Given this almost intolerable situation, the wisest course of action might be for the United States and Great Britain, with the assistance of France, to undertake immediate diplomatic action seeking to work out a modus vivendi between Abdullah of Transjordan and the Jewish Agency. This modus vivendi would call for, in effect, a de facto partition of Palestine along the lines traced by Sir Arthur Creech Jones in his remark to Ambassador Parodi on May 2, as indicated on Page 3 of USUN's telegram [549], May 2,2 which has been drawn to your attention.

In effect, Abdullah would cut across Palestine from Transjordan to the sea at Jaffa, would give Ibn Saud a port at Aqaba and appease the Syrians by some territorial adjustment in the northern part, leaving the Jews a coastal state running from Tel Aviv to Haifa. If some modus vivendi along these lines could be worked out peaceably, the United Nations could give its blessing to the deal.

harlan (talk) 10:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, I'm really growing extraordinarily tired of your habit of producing selective speculative interpretations and subtle-hyper-refined abstract philosophico-legal hypotheses which glaringly contradict certain basic facts of standard history as accepted by the mainstream consensus of historical scholarship. For a while there, it was sometimes sort of entertaining to debate you, but by now it feels a lot more like a tedious tiresome toilsome burdensome chore, and I've really lost all patience whatsoever with your metaphysical counterfactuals.

Since it was very easily accessible to me, I looked at the late-Mandate section of the article "History of Palestine" on the 2002 Encyclopaedia Britannica DVD-ROM (which is as good a starting point as any for a basic yet somewhat authoritative quasi-non-partisan secondary source) authored by Walid Ahmed Khalidi (whom you can hardly accuse of being pro-Israeli!) and Ian J. Bickerton, and it states the following:

"These recommendations were substantially adopted by a two-thirds majority of the UN General Assembly in a resolution dated Nov. 29, 1947, ... All the Islamic Asian countries voted against partition, and an Arab proposal to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants ... was narrowly defeated. ... As in 1937, the Arabs fiercely opposed partition both in principle and because a substantial minority of the population of the Jewish state would be Arab. Great Britain was unwilling to implement a policy that was not acceptable to both sides and refused to share with the UN Palestine Commission the administration of Palestine during the transitional period. ... on March 16 the UN Palestine Commission reported its inability, because of Arab resistance, to implement partition."

The simple basic historical fact, as accepted by all standard reputable sources, is that the Arabs DID NOT accept or agree to UNGA 181, and I really don't want to hear any more from you about how the Arabs supposedly somehow did accept or agree to UNGA 181, because that's pretty much blatant flagrant pure unadulterated nonsense prettified with a little abstract metaphysical speculation and hair-splitting philosophico-legal hypothetical interpretation based on certain selectively-chosen sources.

Yes, it's perfectly true that during the last month of 1947 and part of 1948 some Zionists placed great emphasis on UNGA 181, and also perfectly true that Abdullah would have liked to sign off on UNGA 181 if he had dared to go against the mob-politics of the "Arab street" (and assuming that he would have been in control of the Arab state in Palestine, of course). However, in the end these facts count for a whole lot less than you seem to think, and they do nothing whatever to change the accepted historical fact that the Arabs DID NOT accept or agree to UNGA 181... AnonMoos (talk) 02:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

You need to slowdown on the overuse of hyperventilated propaganda. Palestinians can't ever lose the inalienable right to self-determination and a state of their own. That isn't "selective speculative interpretations and subtle-hyper-refined abstract philosophico-legal hypotheses which glaringly contradict certain basic facts of standard history as accepted by the mainstream consensus of historical scholarship." If your theory is correct that a second bite of the apple violates international law, it ought to be able to make accurate predictions. But the Quartet Roadmap has always mandated a State of Palestine. Judge Higgins explained what is legally required in the advisory opinion on the consequences of the wall. Here is part of her concurring opinion: "the Court should have spelled out what is required of both parties in this "greater whole". This is not difficult - from Security Council resolution 242 (1967) through to Security Council resolution 1515 (2003), the key underlying requirements have remained the same - that Israel is entitled to exist, to be recognized, and to security, and that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State."

The second monthly report from the Palestine Commission is available online at UNISPAL. They didn't say they couldn't "implement partition", they said they couldn't appoint either the Jewish or the Arab provisional government by the 1st of April.

The myth that all of the Arabs rejected partition has been totally discredited since the US State Department Historian released our government's own declassified records in 1977-1980. Avi Shlaim, Simha Flapan, and practically every other historian has since been citing the Foreign Relations of the United States. Flapan's first myth that Zionists accepted the plan is mirrored by the second myth that Arabs rejected the plan and invaded. Looking over Flapan, Shaliam, and etc. footnotes, here are some examples:

• In 1937 the US Consul General at Jerusalem told the State Department that the Mufti refused the principle of partition and declined to consider it. He said the Emir Abdullah urged acceptance on the ground that realities must be faced, but wanted modification of the proposed boundaries and Arab administrations in the the neutral enclave. He also noted that Nashashibi side-stepped the principle, but was willing to negotiate for favorable modifications.

• The US Minister in Saudi Arabia told Secretary Marshall that the Saudi's and Abdullah had warned the other members of the Arab League in March of 1948 that the partition was a civil matter and that the Arab states shouldn't take any action that the Security Council might interpret as aggression.

• Sir Arthur Creech Jones, assured Moshe Shertok that Abdullah might enter the Arab portions of Palestine, but that the British led and subsidized Arab Legion would not seek to penetrate Jewish areas of Palestine. Shertok told Secretary Marshall that Colonel Goldy of the Arab Legion had made contact with the Haganah in order to coordinate their respective military plans and "avoid clashes without appearing to betray the Arab cause." Under Secretary Lovett reported that the Jewish Agency was no longer interested in a truce, but counted on the "behind the barn deal" with Abdullah.

• Abdullah explained to the Security Council: "we were compelled to enter Palestine to protect unarmed Arabs against massacres similar to those of Deir Yasin."

• Flapan and others through Schlomo Ben Ami (2006) tell essentially the same story. 60 percent of Israel's casualties happened outside the borders of the Proposed Jewish State. The FRUS contains most of the relevant details of the secret negotiations between Meyerson, Shiloah, Dayan, Shertok, Sasson, Abdullah or Abdullah al Tel. harlan (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, as I already made abundantly clear above, I'm really just not interested any more (if I ever was) in your metaphysical claims that the Arabs somehow supposedly agreed to and signed off on UNGA 181, when the accepted consensus of mainstream historical scholarship is that the Arab did NOT agree to or sign off on UNGA 181. Your calling an Encyclopaedia Britannica article written by an Arab historian "hyperventilated propaganda"[sic] is a symptom of your problematic overall general approach, most of whose results are simply inappropriate for inclusion in Wikipeda.

What I might be interested in (if you would deign to condescend to explain yourself clearly and directly on this point) is your rationale for your rather extraordinary claim that the Arabs enjoy a quite unprecedented legal privilege of "double-dipping", or "two bites at the apple", or "having their cake and eating it too" -- that is, they rejected the proposed agreement of UNGA 181, and according to you they are not bound by any of its obligations, but (again according to you) they are still fully entitled to all of the benefits and privileges that would have come with the agreement (if, counterfactually, they had agreed to it). AnonMoos (talk) 13:41, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, notice how after the Armistice Agreements, the countries that had recognized Israel and that would recognize Israel recognized it in the Armistice Lines, thus no Arab-Palestine, thanks to turning down the rejection? for example, "the parts of Palestine under Arab control….no independent Arab state has been organized or attempted. This situation may be explained….by Arab unwillingness to undertake any step which would suggest even tacit acceptance of partition…." UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Secretariat General Report. July 30, 1949" "The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety." ….." UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Secretariat General Report, July 30, 1949." You cannot make a state where there is none. There was never a diplomatic recognition of what the Arab State would have been. Stop trying to make something up. The fact is by rejecting the partition, the Arabs abrogated self-determination. I haven't even heard hardcore anti-israel advocates saying Israel should go back to partition lines, as the Arabs rejected it, therefore it was legally no man's land, and when the armistice lines were signed, the countries that recognized Israel recognized it within those lines. Also, some say Ben Gurion didn't declare independence within the partition. What evidence is there for this? Harlan again gives us more propaganda. honestly, this is so dangerous, on wikipedia already with this. The obvious fact is that Israel accepted the partition in UN boundaries which Arabs rejected. Not to mention, the attack on Israel itself proved the UN boundaries, which Arabs rejected, were clearly not safe and defensible, which is why no one questions the armistice agreements unless you question Israel on the whole. Tallicfan20 (talk) 22:29, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Tallicfan20, the armistice agreements stipulated that the demarcation lines were not permanent political boundaries. No one said that Israel has to return to the 1947 borders. The negotiating history of the armistice agreements and Security Council resolution 242 in the FRUS and the ISA both say that Israel should provide territorial compensation for any modifications to the frontiers and that the borders have to be mutually agreed upon.

There are dozens of books that cite the information I've included in the article. Peace for Palestine: first lost opportunity, By Elmer Berger is a good example. Berger provides inline citations to the FRUS, UK, and Israeli State Archives. Flapan, Shlaim, Quandt, and etc. all cite the same material. On the 1st of December 1948 the US Consul cabled the State Department saying that the governments of Israel and Transjordan had started conducting negotiations under the guise of implementing a truce in order to protect Abdullah from criticism from the Arab League that he accepted partition and had entered into direct negotiations with Israel. see the FRUS footnote [2]

On the 2nd of January 1949 the Israeli Foreign Office issued a statement which said that in any war "only military considerations decided the fixing of the establishment of positions. The new facts created in that regard need not determine the final territorial settlement which awaits the conclusion of permanent peace between Israel and her neighbors." The same day Shiloah advised the US State Department that Israel and Transjordan were conducting their own secret armistice negotiations. [3]

Berger explains that by 25 March 1949 Dayan thought the UN Mediator should be advised about the secret armistice agreement, since Bunche would be tasked to implement it in early April. Israel decided to go on concealing it from Bunche. The US State Department and UK Foreign Office knew about the secret negotiations, but they also decided not to tell the UN Mediator. see Berger's account [4]

The 30 July 1949 Conciliation Commission report that you cited does NOT mention the 4 April 1949 armistice agreement with Transjordan. It is titled "The Future of Arab Palestine and the Question of Partition". It does NOT say that the Palestinians had abrogated self-determination, or that Arab Palestine was a legal no mans land. In fact, it says that the US had accepted the Mediator's suggestion that the territory of Arab Palestine should be merged with the territory of Transjordan. It also states that Israel would welcome the creation of an independent Arab State in Palestine conforming to the extent possible with the disposition of the 29 November UN resolution, and that Israel was willing to discuss frontier adjustments. The report goes on to say that while Israel preferred a separate Arab state to the merger with Transjordan, it had not set that as a condition sine qua non to a final settlement.

During the 1949 armistice negotiations, Moshe Shertok reminded the UN Mediator that the partition plan remained "the only internationally valid adjudication of the future government of Palestine". see War in Palestine, 1948, By David Tal

"Jerusalem in America's foreign policy, 1947-1997", By Shlomo Slonim, page 192 discusses the use of the terms Arab Palestine, and the term Central Palestine for the West Bank. The author cites the 1950 FRUS footnote which says the US suggested and approved of the union of Central Palestine with Transjordan. The US said "it represented a logical development of the situation which took place as a result of a free expression of the will of the people." The UK Foreign Minister also advised the Parliament that the annexation had resulted from an Act of union that had been adopted by representatives of the two territories. [5]

After the Six Day War, the US government (Dean Rusk, Arthur Goldberg, and Eugene Rostow) told Israel that it assumed that Jordan would receive the bulk of the West Bank, and that the US regarded it as "Jordanian territory". see for example FRUS, 1964-1968, Volume XIX, Document 411. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Israel, Eugene Rostow. harlan (talk) 14:57, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

So-called metaphysical claims

Anonmoos, "hyperventilated propaganda" was a reference to your inappropriate attempts to use unsourced "historiography" and rhetoric to justify deletion of well-sourced neutral narratives about the legal or political determinations made by governments and the United Nations. The policy says "Wikipedia articles are supposed to represent all views (more at NPOV), instead of supporting one over another, even if you believe something strongly. Talk (discussion) pages are not a place to debate value judgments about which of those views are right or wrong or better."

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami is an Oxford-trained historian who recently wrote that "For 60 years, both the Israelis and the Palestinians have used the past to illuminate the present and confer legitimacy on their nations' respective founding myths." Stephen M. Walt wrote that he is baffled when someone invokes "history" to justify a territorial claim and assumes that this basis is unchallengeable, or that there's only one version of history that matters. One of the contributors to the Brittanica article you cited, Ian Bickerton, wrote "There is disagreement among historians on nearly every aspect of the first Arab Israeli war. Claims and counterclaims have been made by both sides so that it is virtually impossible to reach conclusions that are not disputed." (A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 4th Edition, page 101).

The General Assembly has never rescinded resolution 181(II). The UN has reaffirmed its intentions to protect Palestinian minority and human rights and to establish a Palestinian state. The General Assembly cited 181(II) as a relevant resolution in its request for an ICJ advisory opinion regarding the construction of a wall in Palestinian territory.

After reviewing the evidence in that case, Judge Higgins said the Palestinian people are legally entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State. In "International Court of Justice Firmly Walled in the Law of Power in the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process", Paul J. I. M. De Waart said the court had "ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine's statehood." You've responded by citing a Brittanica article that doesn't even mention international law, "double-dipping" or "having their cake and eating it too".

The UN General Assembly established a "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" in 1975. The General Assembly acknowledged the 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine and adopted a resolution which said that the declaration was "in line with UN resolution 181(II)", and that it had been made in the exercise of the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people". The Security Council subsequently endorsed the Oslo Agreements and the Quartet Road Map to establish a viable Palestinian State. The President recently insisted that the Netanyahu government publicly endorse the two-state solution. A few weeks ago, the EU Foreign Minister said the Security Council should go ahead and recognize the state of Palestine, and impose a settlement if the parties fail to reach an agreement by a reasonable deadline.

Each of the contributors to the Brittanica article you cited have written books or articles which contradict your (WP:Synth) theory:

• Rashid Kalihdi wrote that Israeli state archival materials and Israeli historians have confirmed elements of the standard Palestinian narrative about collusion between Israel and Jordan, and Britain and Jordan. (Iron Cage XXXIV Introduction). For example, Flapan wrote that during the Jericho Conference in November of 1948, Israel told Abdullah to accelerate his efforts to annex the areas of Palestine occupied by the Arab Legion. In December, Israel repeated the suggestion to Abdallah al Tal (see Myths and Realities, page 145 and "Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Israel State Archives, Volume 3, Document 181, pp 331-32, December 14, 1948"). "Jerusalem in America's foreign policy, 1947-1997, By Shlomo Slonim, page 192 refers to the 1950 Foreign Relations of the United States report on Jordan which said the US had recommended the union between Central Palestine and Transjordan, and that the US had told the British and French foreign ministers that it had approved the annexation.

• Ian Bickerton's "A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict" says that few Palestinians joined the Arab Liberation Army because they suspected that the other Arab States did not plan on an independent Palestinian state. Bickerton says for that reason many Palestinians favored partition and indicated a willingness to live alongside a Jewish state (page 88, 4th Edition). He also mentions that Nashashibi family backed Abdullah and union with Transjordan (page 103). King Abdullah appointed Ibrahim Hashem Pasha as the Governor of the Arab areas occupied by troops of the Arab League. He was the former Prime Minister of Transjordan. He supported partition of Palestine as proposed by the Peel Commission and the UN. Fakhri Nashashibi and Ragheb Bey Nashashibi were leaders of the Nashashibi led movement that opposed the Mufti during the mandate period. Both men accepted partition. Bey was the mayor of Jerusalem. He resigned from the Arab Higher Committee because he accepted the partition proposal. Fu’ad Nasar, the Secretary of Arab Workers Congress, also accepted partition. The FRUS says that Truman accepted Bernadotte's proposal for the Palestinian union with Transjordan. Bernadotte's diary said the Mufti had lost all credibility on account of his unrealistic predictions regarding the defeat of the Jewish militias. Bernadotte said "It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Transjordan." see Folke Bernadotte, "To Jerusalem", Hodder and Stoughton, 1951, pages 112-13.

• Wahlid Kahlidi wrote that partition was simply the first step in Ben Gurion's plan for Palestine. Kahlidi said that Ben Gurion had adopted Avnir's plans to take over the rest of the territory by force. Two of his papers on that subject are readily available online: Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution and Plan Dalet Revisited. In "Letters to Paula and the Children (page 153), Ben Gurion wrote that he was in favor of partition because he didn't envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. He said that "What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish." He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit the Zionists to settle in the rest of the country and complete the historic task of redeeming the entire land with or without the consent of the Arabs. harlan (talk) 00:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

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I call your innovative contributions "metaphysical" for the reason that you start with certain carefully-selected sources, then weave a web of extended speculative philosophico-hypothetical ultra-formalistic legalistic reasoning and rhetoric around them, until in the end you come up with conclusions which flatly contradict the basic known facts of the accepted consensus of mainstream historical scholarship. For that reason, I'm just not interested any more in "debating" this at any length. Furtive under-the-table sub-rosa surreptitious "collusion between Israel and Jordan" is simply not the same thing as open public Arab acceptance of, and formal signing off on, the proposed agreement for a United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (the actual topic of this article), and your attempts to make believe that these two things are somehow equivalent is verging perilously close to blatant flagrant nonsense in its purest form. And during the whole history of the British mandate of Palestine, the Nashashibi family (relatively "moderate" in some respects) systematically got stomped on by the more extreme Husseini family in the political sphere; by 1947, the Nashashibis were rather impotent and ineffectual as far as any ability to significantly influence the course of events -- which makes your invocation of them here seem to be a rather desperate clutching at straws (and is far more of an "original synthesis" on your part than anything you've accused me of). And Rashid Khalidi is not Walid Khalidi! AnonMoos (talk) 14:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I haven't been watching this article closely lately, but there seem to be some issues here.

The whole "legal precedent" part seems to be original research. It is cited to "examples", which are a collection of primary sources, none of whom actually say exactly what the paragraph says.

I'm not sure what the relevance of the "status quo" is here. It is indeed a source of controversy in Israel, which stems from Israel's self-definition as a Jewish state. But why is Israel, a sovereign state, not allowed to decide not to separate church (or synagogue, as the case may be) and state, or decide not to draft a constitution? Why is this a violation of the UN decision or international law?

Dr. Mallison's opinion on Israels' occupation of the West Bank is interesting, but why is it notable? the occupation only started in 1967. AFAIK, as of 2009, the US still recognizes Israel's sovereignty over the territory within the Green Line. The current article implies that Israel's existence is currently illegal. This is an extreme position.

The part about Ben-Gurion's letter to Paula is also interesting. But this is a primary source, and there seems to be an interpretation of it. Is this all he writes? are his views presented in full? and is there a reliable secondary source that repeats them?

The whole part about the US involvement is also interesting, but is again cited to primary sources. Also is it all really relevant? not everything connected to Middle East politics belongs here. -- Nudve (talk) 06:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I think you've said it rather well. These metaphysical claims from Harlan are his interpretation, not what actually happened or believed. It is simply spin. Extreme views have no place in "encyclopedia." -- 07:13, 18 August 2009 User:Tallicfan20

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(outdent) I've been over this already. Please don't revert sourced statements and then cite "AFAIK" as if your personal opinion is a WP:RS published source.

This is an article about a primary source document. It also happens to be an international legal instrument. It had to conform to the dictates of customary international law regarding the creation of new states. That situation has been discussed and multiple WP:RS authorities on international law and political science have been cited. The possibility that Israel might be in breach of one or more international obligations does not mean its existence is illegal. The Jewish communities of Palestine are the ultimate object of international law, not their governments. They and the Arab communities have inalienable rights to organize states and form governments. Those rights cannot be lost or revoked. Here are some of the references that were supplied to support the statements in the article. Quite a few were contained in the "mini-essay" that AnonMoos deleted:

• Li-ann Thio said that international law norms developed in the inter-war years by the League of Nations are still in use today. She lists some of the methods employed such as international supervision, regional economic unions, minority protection, plebiscites and partitions - all of those methods are employed in the General Assembly "Plan For The Future Government of Palestine", 181(II). Thio specifically cited the Palestine Partition Plan as one of several post-war examples of the European practice of conditioning recognition of statehood on human rights, democracy, and minority protection guarantees. see the discussion on pages 97-98 and footnote 353 in Managing Babel: The International Legal Protection of Minorities in the Twentieth Century, Li-ann Thio, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005, ISBN 9004141987

• Henry Cattan mentioned that during the hearings on Israel's UN membership Abba Eban was asked about the execution of resolution 181(II). More specifically he was asked whether or not Israel had made the required Declaration regarding the guarantee of Holy Places, human rights, fundamental freedoms, and minority rights as required by the resolution of 29 November 1947. He also mentions the evidence and formal declarations that Eban provided, and the fact that Israel provided assurances that it would not invoke its domestic jurisdiction. The rights are under UN guarantee, so fulfillment of the undertaking is one of the responsibilities expected of any UN member state. The Palestine Question, Henry Cattan, page 86-87

• Uri Davis said that the Constitutions of both the Jewish State and Arab State were to embody, under the terms of the said Plan, Chapters 1 and 2 of the Declaration provided for in section C of the Plan. This Declaration contained fundamental constitutional guarantees regarding holy places, religious buildings and sites, religious and minority rights, citizenship, international conventions, and financial obligations. see Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, By Uri Davis, Garnet & Ithaca Press, 1997, ISBN 0863722180, page 86

• Carol Fink wrote about the allocation of territory based upon minority rights guarantees. She says the Great Powers dictated conditions of internal government to four new states and that the imposed clauses of minority rights became requirements not only for recognition, but were also conditions for receiving specific grants of territory. see Defending the Rights of Others, Carole Fink, page 37.

• Oscar I. Janowsky said that at the Versailles Peace Conference the Supreme Council established 'The Committee on New States and for The Protection of Minorities'. All the new successor states were compelled to sign minority rights treaties as a precondition of diplomatic recognition. It was agreed that although the new States had been recognized they had not been 'created' before the signatures of the final Peace Treaties. see THE JEWS AND MINORITY RIGHTS, (1898-1919), OSCAR I. JANOWSKY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1933, page 342

• French Prime Minister Clemenceau noted in an aide-memoire attached to the Polish treaty that imposing minority protections was part of the long established procedures of the public law of Europe. He said that when a State is created, or when large accessions of territory are made to an established State an obligation rested on the Great Powers, which they cannot evade, to secure in the most permanent and solemn form guarantees for certain essential rights which will afford to the inhabitants the necessary protection, whatever changes may take place in the internal constitution of the State. see Sovereignty, Stephen D. Krasner, Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 069100711X, page 92-93

• Athanasia Spiliopoulou Akermark said the UN Secretariat conducted a review of all minority rights treaties in 1950 and that they were listed in UN Document E/CN.4/367, 7 April 1950. Akermark says that the Chairman-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Minorities (Mr. Asbjørn Eide, 1996), advised that no competent UN organ had made any decision which would extinguish the obligations under those instruments. He added that it was doubtful whether that could even be done by the United Nations. See the discussion in Justifications of Minority Protection in International Law, Athanasia Spiliopoulou Akermark see Chapter 7 Minority Protections in the United Nations, 7.1 The Validity of Undertakings Concerning Minorities After The Second World War, pages 119-122.

• The UN Secretariat report E/CN.4/367, 7 April 1950 says that the General Assembly established a formal minority rights protection system as an integral part of UN GAR 181(II) the 'Plan For The Future Government of Palestine'. The review also listed the unilateral declarations of Iraq, Albania, and etc. In the Minority Schools in Albania Case, the Permanent Court of International Justice held that minority rights declarations made before the League Council were tantamount to a treaty. See International Human Rights in Context, Henry J. Steiner, Philip Alston, Ryan Goodman, Oxford University Press US, 2008, ISBN 019927942X, page 100

• UN GAR 181(II) is listed in the Table of Treaties, on Page xxxviii, of Self-determination and National Minorities, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Thomas D. Musgrave, Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0198298986.

• The Status Quo Agreement acknowledges the mandatory nature of the religious and minority rights guarantees. It said that the establishment of the state required the approval of the United Nations, and that it would not be possible unless the state guaranteed in advance freedom of conscience, full and equal rights for all citizens, and the absence of coercion or discrimination in religious matters.

• Dr. Mallison's testimony included his legal opinion about this UN resolution. He said the territory allocated to Israel was only allocated on condition that certain duties imposed upon each state to be established in Palestine were carried out. He mentioned the requirement from resolution 181(II) to constitutionally guarantee to all persons equal and nondiscriminatory rights in civil, political, economic, and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech and publication, education, assembly, and association. He testified that "refusal of the State of Israel to comply with the nondiscriminatory requirements of the Palestine partition resolution, its main claim to title puts in serious jeopardy its claim to legal title to the limited territory allocated to it by the resolution."

• Stefan Talmon, "Recognition of Governments in International Law" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) page 36 cites the Memorandum on 'Recognition of New States and Governments in Palestine' by Ernest A. Gross, Legal Adviser to the US State Department, dated 11 May 1948. The memo is contained in the FRUS 1948, volume 5, part 2, page 964. Gross advised the administration that 'The Arab and Jewish communities will be legally entitled on May 15, 1948 to proclaim states and organize governments in the areas of Palestine occupied by the respective communities. He said the law of nations recognizes an inherent right of people lacking the agencies and institutions of social and political control to organize a state and operate a government. The fact that the United States recommended the incorporation of Central Palestine into Transjordan and that it officially recognized the act of union is mentioned in the FRUS 1950 country report on Jordan, and in Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) page 229; and Aqil Hyder Hasan Abidi, Jordan: A Political Study: 1948-1957 (New York: Asia Publishing House, pages 55–56. John Quigley noted that the 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine was not the declaration of a new state. THE PALESTINE DECLARATION TO THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: THE STATEHOOD ISSUE. Uri Davis says King Hussein dissolved the union and ceded the West Bank to the PLO. [6]

Wikipedia policy says: "Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." The FRUS is a secondary source. It presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian. It cites original source documents, but it also contains editorial notes, including explanations, and commentary from other secondary sources. It is peer-reviewed by a group of distinguished scholars from outside the U.S. Government and speaks for itself. Entire FRUS volumes are cited and discussed in Flapan's "The Birth of Israel" and dozens of other WP:RS sources from authors like Shlaim, Morris, Ben Ami, Pappe, and etc.

Ben Gurion was explaining his own views in the passage from the letter, so no interpretation is involved. Nonetheless, Michael Neumann cites the letter at Swan's Commentary. He says it is a myth, not even a plausible one, that partition was likely to give the Palestinians anything at all. Benny Morris said that both Weizmann and Ben Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. He cited the same passage from Ben Gurion's "Letters to Paula" in "Righteous Victims", on page 138. Simha Flapan devoted an entire chapter to the "Myth of Zionist Acceptance of the Partition Plan" in "Birth of Israel, Myths and Realities", 1987. He cited Ben Gurion's War Diaries, "Letters to Paula", the UN Yearbook 1947-48, the FRUS 1947 vol.5, Moshe Sharett's Diaries, and of others. The 1947-48 Yearbook of the United Nations says the representative of the Jewish Agency characterized the UNSCOP majority proposal as unacceptable from it's very inception, and was highly critical of the provisions concerning Jerusalem. He complained that the Jewish section of modern Jerusalem (outside the Walled City) should be included in the Jewish State. He explained that the Jewish Agency was prepared to recommend the acceptance of the partition solution to the Jewish community, subject to those reservations and some others regarding the constitutional and territorial provisions of the plan. The Yearbook doesn't say that those reservations regarding constitutional issues and west Jerusalem were ever withdrawn.

The armistice lines are not permanent political borders or a final settlement. see for example Intel chip plant located on disputed Israeli land The Truman and Johnson administrations provided the Arab states written assurances that the US would seek territorial compensation for any modifications to the 1949 armistice lines. The Bush administration said the settlement would require "mutually agreed upon adjustments" to the armistice lines of 1949 in order to create a contiguous and viable Palestinian state. [7] The majority of states do not recognize unilateral Israeli claims of sovereignty over Jerusalem, either within or without the Green line. harlan (talk) 17:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

---

Whatever -- I've said in the past (above on this page) that some of your discussions on post-WWI minority-rights provisions are quite interesting, and possibly have a place on Wikipedia in some form. Unfortunately, their relevance to this specific article happens to be rather small -- and when you interweave your discussions on this topic with your ridiculous claims that the Arabs somehow counterfactually supposedly agreed to UNGA 181, in a way that makes the interesting (but marginally-relevant) material hard to disentangle from the preposterous and nonsensical material, then I have no compunction whatseover about cutting the Gordian knot and reverting it all wholesale... AnonMoos (talk) 14:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

No, not "whatever". You are supposed to be providing citations to published sources which support your legal theories, and put those into the article. You haven't done that. This page is for discussions about the article, it isn't a forum for personal attacks. I've asked that you stop deleting the very well sourced material on this page about the minority rights treaty provisions of this UN resolution long enough for it to be put into the article. The UN resolution is the topic of this article, and it is a treaty instrument with continuing legal effect - according to the responsible UN monitoring body for Minority Rights. The text of the resolution itself says the rights cannot be altered without the consent of the General Assembly. Your suggestion that it isn't relevant or that it belongs somewhere else on Wikipedia serves no useful or educational purpose.

The continuing legal effect of the resolution was noted at the time of its adoption by the US State Department legal advisor, Ernest Gross, and a host of other governments including the representative of the Soviet Union, Mr. Malik (mentioned above). Both men said that unless the General Assembly revoked the resolution, it would continue to provide legal authorization for the parties in Palestine to take the necessary steps to establish Arab and Jewish states. Judge Lauterpacht told the People's Council the very same thing. Jacob Robinson said there was a difference between a state and an independent state. He also said the states were already in existence according to the resolution. [8] Modern-day legal commentators including James Crawford, Stefan Talmon, John Quigley, and T.W. Mallison have taken notice of those same facts. Despite your suggestion to the contrary, [9] the on-going legal disagreement over the status of Jerusalem has a great deal to do with this resolution, as does the fact that the majority of other countries have legally recognized the West Bank and Gaza as the State of Palestine. see for example Judge Dugard's Op-Ed in the NY Times and Francis A. Boyle, "The Creation of the State of Palestine", European Journal of International Law 1: 301-306.

The little-known fact that the United States recommended the incorporation of the districts of Central Palestine into Transjordan, and that it officially recognized the political act of union is mentioned in the US State Department's Foreign Relations series for 1950; and in Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) page 229; and Aqil Hyder Hasan Abidi, Jordan: A Political Study: 1948-1957 (New York: Asia Publishing House, pages 55–56. John Quigley noted that the 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine was not the declaration of a new state in a Rutgers Law review article "Palestine Declaration To The International Criminal Court: The Statehood Issue" - and Uri Davis wrote about King Hussein's decree that dissolved the political union and ceded the West Bank to the PLO. [10]. I had very little problem locating a pair of articles in the Palestine Post about the Palestinians who said that the other Arab States weren't their representatives, and that they wanted to save the remainder of their homeland by crowning Abdullah the King of Arab Palestine and making the two areas a "joint kingdom". see Jericho Declaration and Hebron Mayor Challenges Egyptians to Tell the Truth: [11]

Crawford, Boyle, and Quigley each discuss the legal effect of General Assembly resolution 43/177 of 15 December 1988. It recalled the partition resolution and noted "the proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council in line with General Assembly resolution 181(II) and in exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people". You have advanced a "race-based" legal theory that "the Arabs" somehow abrogated those "inalienable rights", but you haven't supported the claim with a single citation to a published legal authority. You also are conveniently ignoring the many citations to accounts by your own hand-picked historians (in most posts above) which admit that Abdullah and many Palestinian leaders did accept the partition and setup a Palestinian state called Jordan (which included the districts of the West Bank). Even the Palestinian factions that rejected partition declared an independent government, and remained under an Egyptian trusteeship in the territory of the Gaza district. Historians don't decide legal questions in any case.

General Assembly resolution 48/158D, 20 December 1993. para. 5(c) stipulated that the permanent status negotiations should guarantee "arrangements for peace and security of all States in the region, including those named in resolution 181(II) of 29 November 1947, within secure and internationally recognized boundaries". The UN Secretariat is doing exactly that under the terms of the Quartet Road Map which was adopted by Security Council resolution 1515 (2003). After reviewing the evidence in the 2004 "Wall" case, Judge Higgins said the Palestinian people are legally entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State. In "International Court of Justice Firmly Walled in the Law of Power in the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process", Paul J. I. M. De Waart said the court had "ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine's statehood." Your response all along has been WP:IDONTLIKEIT, arbitrary deletions, and personal attacks. harlan (talk) 00:14, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I have not had time to conduct an extensive legal research. I am also not sure why we should mix the history with various contemporary legal interpretations. Perhaps a section (even a separate article) is due. But then we really need a more balanced view. Here (p. 30) is one source about the rejection of the plan. Here is an opinion piece saying some international jurists believe the Green Line can be seen as formal. And we can recall the President Obama recently called for recognition of Israel[12]. -- Nudve (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Francis Boyle explained that one of the reasons the PLO Declaration of the State of Palestine was premised upon UN resolution 181(II), was to provide an implicit acceptance of the partition of Palestine, and to underscore its recognition of the other state mentioned in the resolution. If by more balance you mean to keep begging the question: "The Arabs rejected UNGA 181, and refused to sign off on the proposed agreement, yet they are supposed to benefit from all its provisions?" Then the answer has already been provided by the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the ICJ.

The Green Line can be seen as a formal armistice line that was imposed under the terms of a Chapter VII UN Security Council resolution. The EU Foreign Minister has suggested that the Security Council go ahead and impose the two state solution in line with the 4 June 1967 boundaries. The armistice agreement was supposed to lead to a mutually agreed upon permanent boundary agreement between the two parties. It is the implied withdrawal line for the purposes of UN resolution 242 and any mutually agreed upon concessions. see for example [13]

The UN Security Council could not alter the General Assembly decision, so they sent it back for further consideration. Then the Security Council ordered the Mediator to find any peaceful solution, imposed a cease fire, and the establishment of the permanent lines of demarcation. On behalf of the UN, the Mediator accepted an armistice agreement that granted a joint Israeli-Jordanian committee "exclusive competence" to develop any future plans and agreements (article VIII). It also instructed UNTSO to enforce whatever plans and agreements the Israeli-Jordanian committee provided (article IX). The Security Council adopted that arrangement, cited article 40 (Chapter VII of the Charter), and thanked the mediator (Security Council resolution 73). That should mean the two sides can "call all the shots", because they have the exclusive legal competence to jointly decide matters (like the future governance of Jerusalem) in an atmosphere free from UN interference. The arrangement didn't permit unilaterally declared settlements.

The majority of states have already recognized both Israel and Palestine without prejudice to the final borders. harlan (talk) 20:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

In short: Asides from this one sentence you quoted from this judge in 1977, did the US actually renounce its recognition of Israel? if not, I am not sure his view is important enough. Most of the legal debate belongs in other articles, including Israel, Palestine, and the United Nations and State of Palestine. This article is about a historical event, and what is relevant is how the parties reacted to it at that historical moment, not how some people interpret it decades later, after so many wars and treaties.

About the "Letters to Paula" part: I've looked at the Michael Neumann article, and the quote he gives there is not quite what you said. He talks about acquiring land, not an army, and the term "redemption" (geula) of land traditionally refers to the process of purchasing parts of Eretz Yisrael. There is no indication here that he was rejecting the 1947 partition plan or planning a war (although many scholars agree that he was expecting one, but that's a different thing). Also, Neumann does not date the letter, but Morris (p .138) talks about reaction to the Peel Commission, not the 1947 partition. This is why the use of primary sources is discouraged: it is easy to manipulate them, take them out of context or draw original conclusions from them. -- Nudve (talk) 16:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Nudve, Ben Gurion's letter doesn't mention the Peel Commission. In 1937-1938 the Jewish Agency developed its own partition proposal see Partner to Partition, Yossi Katz, Frank Cass, 1998. I also notice you are performing your own personal analysis on Neumann's extract instead of relying on Ben Gurion's original 1937 letter to his son Amoz. Can't you at least provide an opposing view from a published source that mentions Letters to Paula and the Children? I cited Ben Gurion's book because he was explaining his plan to use partition as the first step in putting settlers in the rest of the country. He mentions the army on page 154. He said we plan on organizing a first class army and then I am certain we will be able to settle in all the other parts of the country, whether through agreement and mutual understanding with our Arab neighbors, or in another way. That statement really doesn't need any further analysis. But since you asked, I supplied three secondary sources who came to the same conclusion: Neumann, Morris, and Flapan. They each cited "Letters to Paula" and they each said Ben Gurion intended to take over the whole country. I prefer to let Ben Gurion speak for himself. That, after all, is why he published his book in the first place.

WP:OR says primary sources that have been reliably published for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper may be used in Wikipedia. Letters to Paula was published by University of Pittsburgh Press. If any analysis of the material is required then you should supply it from published secondary sources that specifically mention Letters to Paula.

Each of the following published sources specifically discusses the fact that a minority treaty was an integral part of the UN plan for the future government of Palestine. There will never be a consensus to remove it, or place it in another article. Li-ann Thio cited this UN resolution as an example of the partitioning territory and of conditioning recognition on minority rights. Henry Cattan cited this resolution and said that during the committee hearings on Israel's membership Mr. Eban was asked to supply evidence that Israel had provided the required minority rights Declaration. The minutes of the hearing confirm Cattan's account and the resolution that admitted Israel to the UN cited this resolution and Mr. Eban's declarations. Uri Davis and T.W. Mallison mentioned that the minority rights guarantees contained in this UN resolution were obligatory. Mallison noted that the territory was allocated on the basis of that undertaking. In the "Status Quo Agreement" Ben Gurion acknowledged that the state could not be established without UN permission that was given in this resolution. He said that guarantees regarding non-discrimination and equality were required in advance. The Oxford Monographs in International Law series on Self-Determination and Minority Rights lists this resolution in its table of treaties. Athanasia Akermark and the UN Secretariat report confirm that this resolution contains a minority protection plan and address the continuing validity of the treaty obligation.

This article used to contain citations to Carol Fink, Stephen Krasner, and Oscar Janowsky's works. They were cited because they explain that there was a longstanding precedent of conditioning specific grants of territory and recognition on guarantees of minority rights. Anonmooos deleted that sourced material, and now you have come along and complained about the lack of support for the claims in the "legal precedent" section.

I included the US policy statement that President Truman gave to King Abdullah because it demonstrated that the US viewed the territorial settlement contained in the General Assembly resolution as more than a recommendation and that the US government policy called for territorial compensation. You said that the Green Line was a Red Flag issue, but could only provide a NY Times article that says it is "an administrative boundary" that "is not a recognized boundary". The fact that many jurists think it is "sufficiently defined to recognize it as the formal line of political separation" is unsurprising since that's the function of an armistice line. In any case, there are several other Wikipedia articles which address the fact that the U.N. system is currently enforcing several regimes of non-recognition under international law with regard to Israel which include disputes about the Green Line and Jerusalem. Several of those actions were taken with respect to the validity of Israel's territorial claims, and treatment of religious and minority groups. see for example East Timor, the U.N. system, and enforcing non-recognition in international law, by Thomas D. Grant. harlan (talk) 11:52, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

If you want to include such material, then it has to be somewhat specifically relevant to the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (the actual topic of this article). It cannot be a broad general treatise or disquisition on the development of minority-rights provisions in treaties from 1912 to 1947. And it cannot be predicated on a counterfactual (i.e. phrased so that it states or implies that the Arabs agreed to the November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine when the simple fact is that the Arabs did not agree to November 29th 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine). AnonMoos (talk) 13:04, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Everything I've cited is cross-referenced to this resolution by the published sources - including President Truman's remarks about territorial compensation. Nudve raised the issue of the Green Line and said it was a Red Flag issue. I consider it a complete non-sequitur. You need to stop harrasing editors with your pet theories. Put them in the article and let them go head to head with the opposing POVs that have been published on this subject. harlan (talk) 12:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, I looked up the sources you provided. I do not intend to invent an alternative theory of what Ben-Gurion was thinking in November 1947, based on what he may have written in 1937. Many people have different views on "what would have happened if" (here is one debate). This article is not supposed to reflect them all, certainly not as fact. Asides from this, I agree with AnonMoos that this article needs to stick to facts. The extensive legal theories belong, perhaps in International law and the Arab–Israeli conflict. -- Nudve (talk) 19:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Nudve there is no policy that allows you to decide what are, or are not facts. Any editor can add material supported by third-party verifiable information obtained from reliable published sources -including opinions so long as they are attributed to the author. That is what I'm doing. There is no elaborate legal theory in the material you deleted. The Arab-Palestinian Congress declared Abdullah King of Arab Palestine. That's a "bake a pie, eat a pie", political science 101 declaration of statehood. The minority treaty material is well documented and undeniably relevant.

This article falls within the scope of the Wikipedia International Law project because "The Plan for the Future Government of Palestine" is an international legal instrument. Various legal commentators, the General Assembly, and the Judges of the ICJ agree that this resolution has continuing relevance and had many legal effects.

"Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present" is comprised largely of primary sources, but the editors, Rabinovich and Reinharz included an editorial note that explains the connection between the agreement, the UNSCOP fact finding mission, and the state that would be founded on 14 May 1948. The analysis is provided by Ben Gurion in the text of the document itself and by another secondary source - Ian S. Lustick. Dr. Mallison's and Yehuda Blum's testimony before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee regarding claims to territory, the allocations, and minority rights obligations under this UN resolution are discussed and cited in "Settlements and the Law, Sally and T.W. Mallison, published by the American Educational Trust, 1982, footnote 49. Ernest Gross legal opinion was cited in Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948, Robert J. Donovan, University of Missouri Press, 1996, ISBN 082621066X, pages 382-383 which was already mentioned in the article. All of the authors listed in the collusion and conspiracy section of the article cited these same sections of the FRUS.

Please stop deleting well-sourced neutral statements on the basis of your personal opinions about "facts". There is no doubt that an Arab state was established in the West Bank area awarded to the Arabs in the region that was contiguous with the Transjordan frontier. The Palestine Post reported that Abdullah had been proclaimed King of Arab Palestine, and that actions were underway to establishment of a "joint Kingdom". [14] Wikimedia has a copy of the discussion in Parliament when Great Britain extended recognition to the union. That isn't metaphysical or a mass hallucination. [15]

Eyal Benvenisti, and Eyal Zamir cited 2 Whiteman, DIGEST 1163-67 (1963) which related that the Second Arab-Palestinian Conference held in Jericho on December 1, 1948 had proclaimed Abdullah King, and decided to unite Palestine with the Kingdom of Transjordan. The Transjordanian Government agreed to the unification on December 7, 1948, and on December 13 the Transjordanian parliament approved it. The step of unification was approved finally by a joint Jordanian National Assembly on April 24, 1950. see "Private Claims to Property Rights in the Future Israeli-Palestinian Settlement," American Journal of International Law 89.2 (1995): page 301

The fact that Israel claims a better title does not mean it has one, or that Jordan never had one. Michael Galchinsky said that according to the 1968 "missing reversioner" theory advanced by Yehuda Z. Blum, Jordan's aggression against Israel in 1967 caused it to lose its title to the West Bank. see Galchinsky, Michael. The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: International Law and Israeli Jurisprudence Israel Studies - Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp. 115-136. harlan (talk) 07:18, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

That's nice -- there was the "King of Palestine" in the West Bank, and the "All-Palestine Government" (under pro-Nazi war criminal Haj Amin Husseini) in Gaza. However, neither one of them had ever publicly or openly assented to, accepted, or signed off on the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which is part of why UNGA 181 was a dead letter in most respects, and remains so... AnonMoos (talk) 14:08, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The Core issue

Now that there's no longer the issue of unfortunate epithets being loosely tossed around, I'd like to get the main discussion back on track. For me the core issue is the following:

According to the accepted consensus of mainstream historical scholarship, the Arabs simply did NOT approve of, agree to, or formally sign off on, UNGA Resolution 181 (the November 29, 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine). Clear plain simple statements to this effect can be found in many standard sources (such as the Encylopaedia Britannica article I quoted from above). Any alleged counterexamples which Harlan_wilkerson has brought up have either been glaringly inadequate (such as a surreptitious furtive under-the-table tactical military accommodation between Israel and Transjordan, or Abdullah of Transjordan and the Nashashibis sometimes wishing that they could have been able to sign off on UNGA 181, if circumstances had been different), or they involve heavy doses of Harlan_wilkerson's special brand of extended hypothetical abstract philosophico-legalistic speculation.

I'm afraid that this matter is really not up for "debate" (any more than whether the earth is round or flat is up for debate on the Earth article), and Harlan_wilkerson will not be able to very usefully contribute to this article until he accepts the facts which are broadly accepted by all reputable scholars in this field of historical study.

I would be the first to admit that sometimes Harlan_wilkerson has added some interesting things to this article -- but unfortunately, most of them are either only rather marginally relevant to this article, or are phrased in terms which assume that UNGA 181 was publicly accepted by the Arabs (when the simple plain historical fact is that UNGA 181 was not publicly accepted by the Arabs), and so have very little usefulness in the form which Harlan_wilkerson added them. AnonMoos (talk) 00:21, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, at Lausanne the two sides did publicly accept the core of GA 181, the partition map, as the basis of negotiation, in the Lausanne protocol.[16] Probably should be here and there too.John Z (talk) 10:59, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

However, 1949 was not 1947, and a lot of water had flowed under the bridge in the intervening two years. And I'm not sure how the Arabs could be said to have agreed to or signed off on UNGA 181 even in 1949, considering that they refused to countenance or recognize the existence of Israel in any manner whatsoever (other than as a de facto belligerant party, whom they refused to directly negotiate with). The document you linked to says only this:

"To this document was annexed a map on which was indicated the boundaries defined in the resolution of the General Assembly of 29 November 1947, which has thus been taken as the basis of discussion with the Commission. It is understood that any necessary adjustments of these boundaries could be proposed"

In other words, everything in UNGA 181 other than the map was jettisoned overboard and ignored, and even the map was used only as a non-binding starting point for negotiations (in which the parties could have redrawn the map in any way they chose, if they had come to an agreement). Of course, in actuality, the Arabs did not accept the UNGA 181 map in the negotiations, and refused to offer their own map, since they did not accept the legitimacy of Israel in any manner whatsoever. AnonMoos (talk) 12:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Anonmoos, when you say it's simply not up for debate, I agree. The Wikipedia:Etiquette policy guideline says: "Wikipedia articles are supposed to represent all views (more at NPOV), instead of supporting one over another, even if you believe something strongly. Talk (discussion) pages are not a place to debate value judgments about which of those views are right or wrong or better."

You haven't placed any reference to Brittanica in this article. I suppose that's because none of the claims you've made about the resolution being jettisoned are supported by the Brittanica article you mentioned. Truman was still citing the resolution in regards to a final settlement. The second Chapter of Simha Flapan's 1987 book, "The Birth of Israel Myths and Realities" was titled "Myth Two: Arabs Rejected Partition and Launched War". The "Palestine" additional reading list at Brittanica lists a half dozen more "flat earth" books like that one. Avi Shlaim's "Collusion Across the Jordan" is listed and it gives another account of the "not-so-secret" deal between Abdullah and Israel. Both books are based upon the "official accounts" found in the "Foreign Relations of the United States", the "Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel", and the "Documents on British Foreign Policy". The UN Commission report does not say that all of the Arabs rejected partition. The Brittanica article misquotes the conclusions that the Commission's report actually did provide to the security Council. I've already given you citations to other published works by the three contributors which indicate that they don't agree with your views. One of them said that many Palestinians supported partition. That information is going into the article.

The US Minister in Saudi Arabia told Secretary Marshall that the Saudi's and Abdullah had warned the other members of the Arab League in March of 1948 that the partition was a civil matter and that the Arab states shouldn't take any action that the Security Council might interpret as aggression. [17] UNISPAL has Abdullah's May 1948 announcement that he was entering Palestine to protect unarmed Arabs after recieving the reports of massacres. The 1949 FRUS volume VI reported on a March 1949 statement by King Abdullah that was printed in Al Garida Al Misaiya, an evening daily newspaper in Cairo. He was quoted as saying he had marched into Palestine without having changed the views expressed in his warning to the other Arab states. He said his warning had pointed out that it would not be sufficient to rely on courage and faith to secure victory, but that it was necessary to take into account every eventuality and to be prepared for "behind the scenes" activity. The order to enter Palestine had been given although he knew that the Transjordanian army and Kingdom lacked sufficient resources to face the situation. He said "we are now faced with two alternatives". He defined these as being either to resume fighting with the object of annihilating the Zionists in Palestine and their supporters abroad, or to acknowledge the present status quo and to sign peace agreements. "I believe", added King Abdullah, "that Transjordan will adopt the latter course". That doesn't sound like a secret to me, and he was definitely an Arab.

You also keep begging the central question about the continuing validity of this resolution, but you don't provide a single WP:RS source. The UN Rapporteur for minority rights said the minority treaty was still in force. The US State Department legal advisor, Leo Gross, said that unless the General Assembly revoked it, the parties in Palestine could take actions to organize governments and establish their own states. In 1948 Rabbi Silver testified that talk of a trusteeship was nonsense because partition had become a binding legal obligation the moment the British had decided to accept the plan and dissolve their mandate. In Chapter 5 of "The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie" John Crawford makes a similar claim. He says that the General Assembly had the power to make binding dispositions of territory in the context of the Mandate system, and that it had been twice affirmed by the International Court. He claimed it is clear that the resolution had authoritative legal effect, since a mandatory cannot terminate a mandate by its own unilateral act. Britain relinquished the Mandate at midnight on 14-15 May 1948, but its action was only legally effective by virtue of the Assembly's approval in Resolution 181(II). He also inferred that GA Res. A/RES/181(II) still has some continuing effect, because GA Res. A/RES/43/177 of 15 December 1988 recalled the resolution and noted 'the proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council in line with General Assembly resolution 181(II) and in exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people'. GA Res. A/RES/48/158D, 20 December 1993. para. 5(c) stipulated that the permanent status negotiations should guarantee 'arrangements for peace and security of all States in the region, including those named in resolution 181(II) of 29 November 1947, within secure and internationally recognized boundaries'. harlan (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean "disagree", not "agree". The relevant Wikipedia policies are in fact WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. Unfortunately for you, despite your undeniable factual knowledge and intelligence, you have painted yourself into a fringe corner on this article. You're the one making extraordinary claims, and so are therefore required to come up with extraordinary evidence. Since I'm merely reinforcing the conventional verities of the standard accepted historical account of this period, there is no such burden on me. I already came up with something which should have been enough, namely the Encyclopaedia Britannica article quoted from above -- something which you've conspicuously refrained from directly confronting in any way (other than to resort to abstract metaphysical philosophico-legalistic analysis to claim that the authors of the Britannica article may have hypothetically speculatively theoretically undermined elsewhere what they said in plain clear undeniable language in the article)! AnonMoos (talk) 20:57, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not an issue at all

Your bizarre WP:Synth legal thesis about the "Arab resistance" mentioned in the Brittanica article and your nonsensical claims that there is a "consensus among mainstream historians" have already been addressed. I pointed out that one of the contributors to the Brittanica article you cited, Ian Bickerton, wrote "There is disagreement among historians on nearly every aspect of the first Arab Israeli war. Claims and counterclaims have been made by both sides so that it is virtually impossible to reach conclusions that are not disputed." (A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 4th Edition, page 101). He also wrote that few Palestinians joined the Arab Liberation Army because they suspected that the other Arab States did not plan on an independent Palestinian state, and for that reason many Palestinians favored partition and indicated a willingness to live alongside a Jewish state (page 88, 4th Edition). You need to look at Information suppression in the NPOV tutorial and stop deleting other significant published POVs. [18]

According to Robinson, and Lauterpacht the General Assembly did not create the right of the Jewish or Palestinian communities to a state, it merely recognized the rights of the communities. [19] Both communities declared states and established them. For example, the Arab conference at Jericho declared Abdullah King of Arab Palestine (he was already King of Transjordan). The US government accepted the principles contained in the resolutions of the Jericho Conference. It had already publicly endorsed the recommendation of the UN Mediator to establish a union between the Arab portions of the former mandate, and had expressed an unequivocal intention to enter into formal relations with the new state.

In any event the Jericho conference proclamation served as a legal "act of state" for Arab Palestine. The "act of state doctrine" applies to acts such as constitutional amendments, statutes, decrees, and proclamations, and in certain circumstances to physical acts such as occupation by the armed forces in application of state policy.

The Palestine Post took note of the proclamation. The Mayor of Hebron and other leaders declared that the other Arab States weren't their representatives, and that they wanted to save the remainder of their homeland by crowning Abdullah the King of Arab Palestine and making the new territory a "joint kingdom". Legally speaking that mandate meant that Abdullah was already the King of the two territories (annexation was not a precondition). He had already installed an effective government headed by a military governor and district commanders in the West Bank. [20]. Any government can be considered legitimate, "no matter how unfreely chosen", if the citizens manifest a long-continued acquiescence in the regime. see Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law By Brad R. Roth, page 140 [21]

Uri Davis wrote about King Hussein's decision to dissolve the union decades later and cede the West Bank to the PLO. There is nothing metaphysical about any of that. [22]

The Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 201 Reporters note 3 says "The United States will treat States the territory of which is under foreign military occupation as continuing to exist." John Quigley wrote that "The statehood declared by the Palestine National Council in 1988 was not of a new statehood. Rather, it was a declaration of an existing statehood. That fact strengthens the Palestine claim to statehood, as requirements for an existing state are less rigorous than those for an entity purporting to be a new state." [23]

The UN General Assembly acknowledged the Declaration as being in line with this resolution and said it was made in the exercise of an inalienable right. Over 100 countries have legally recognized the State of Palestine. harlan (talk) 12:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You somehow left out the clause about "... As in 1937, the Arabs fiercely opposed partition" etc. Some Arabs may have been in favor of accepting UNGA 181 as individuals, but it's an unfortunate fact that in their public acts and statements all Arab governments and representative institutions (such as the Arab Palestine Higher Committee etc.) had a completely diametrically opposed position. Scattered and isolated pockets of moderate sentiment strewn here and there across the landscape cannot sign a treaty or treaty-like agreement -- it takes someone with recognized authority or an official position to sign an agreement, and everybody in 1947-1948 on the Arab side who had recognized authority or official positions unanimously REFUSED to sign UNGA 181. It's been a kind of tragedy of Arab history that at a number of points individuals holding sensible moderate points of view have been unable to effectively make themselves heard, and have been instead overwhelmed by extremist demagogues and the mob politics of the Arab "street". It would have been nice if that pattern had not prevailed in 1947, but I'm afraid that mere wishing doesn't change the solid and established facts of history...

Once you accept the fact that the Arabs did not publicly and collectively accept, agree to, or sign off on UNGA 181 (they couldn't of course, since accepting UNGA 181 would have meant accepting Israeli sovereignty, and the Arabs publicly vehemently and violently refused to recognize or accept Jewish sovereignty in any form whatsoever), and you accomodate your edits accordingly, then you may be able to constructively edit this article -- but until you do so, it's extremely doubtful whether any large-scale major edits of yours will be at all useful in improving this article. Most of what you've previously written which can be incorporated into the article without changing historical fact to historical nonsense, or without including long marginally-relevant treatises, is already in the article, so I don't see what valid great cause for complaint you have... AnonMoos (talk) 14:05, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

This resolution terminated the mandate for Transjordan too

Marginally-relevant? I guess we had better clarify that this resolution terminated the mandate with respect to Transjordan too. The Jordan river was the boundary of an administrative district. Seventeen days before the 29 November 1947 vote, the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine was still debating whether or not it would desirable to give the Jewish state the Transjordanian port of Aqaba. [24] When the Arab Legion occupied the West Bank, the US introduced a resolution which addressed a number of questions to the government of Transjordan. The Foreign Minister replied that neither the UN nor US had recognized Transjordan, although they both had the opportunity for more than two years. He noted that the US had recognized the Jewish state immediately, although its qualifcations were lacking. [25]

You need to stop talking about "the Arabs" because you've completely worn out your welcome on that subject. Opposition to partition isn't the same thing as joining the Arab resistance. Israel insisted on negotiating with each state party individually. The Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Lebanese were not parties to the Palestine mandate or the partition plan. Their acts of state don't create rights or obligations for the people of Palestine. I've provided reliable published sources to show that Abdullah accepted partition, and that the Jewish Agency had established a modus vivendi with him. The ratio of territory "governed" by the AHC vs. Abdullah was something like 1 to 20.

In 1937, partition was merely a proposal. According to Ben Gurion (Letters to Paula page 135) the Permanent Mandates Commission agreed with the parties that opposed partition. They advised the Jewish Agency leadership that the Mandate could not be implemented according to the Agency's wishes. In any event Abdullah and the Nashashbis had told the US State Department that they were willing to negotiate on partition in 1937 and in 1948. Most Palestinians sided with them in 1948 and ended up being governed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan - a new state that was formed from former mandate territory. Other than the Corpus Separatum, that territory had all been allocated to the Arabs by the League of Nations and th UN General Assembly.

When Great Britain subsequently announced its plans for Transjordanian Independence in 1946, it was the Jewish Agency who claimed the Mandate was indivisible. They said that article 25 of the Mandate permitted Great Britain to postpone or withhold the provisions regarding the Jewish National Home, but not to annul them. They said Great Britain didn't have the legal competence or authority to divide the mandate without the permission of the United Nations. At that time the US agreed to provisionally recognize Transjordan's independence after obtaining assurance of the rights guaranteed the US under the Palestine Mandate Convention of 1924. However, formal termination of the mandate would only be generally recognized upon Transjordan's admission into the United Nations as a fully independent country. [26]

During the 1947 Pentagon talks the US told the UK it was withholding recognition of Transjordan pending a decision on the subject of Palestine by the UN.[27] On May 13th the State Department Legal Adviser, Leo Gross wrote a memo to the Under Secretary of State, Robert Lovett regarding "Recognition Of Successor States In Palestine" [28] He said his inquiry called first for a determination concerning the legal status of Palestine just prior to the proclamation of any new states in that country. He specifically mentioned Transjordan and included all of the communities that had been subject to the mandate in the assessment.

He said that "We are then faced with the situation where the only agencies claiming to have governing powers over Palestine are organizations within that country. The law of nations recognizes an inherent right of people lacking the agencies and institutions, of social and political control to organize a state and operate a government. Article 22 of the League Covenant provided "Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached 'a stage of development where 'their existence 'as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject, to the rendering of administrative advice 'and 'assistance by a Mandatory until such time 'as they are able to stand alone." [29] Apart from the issue of Jerusalem, once the mandate had been terminated, the communities in Arab Palestine and Transjordan were free to determine their own political status. The US extended de jure recognition to Israel and Jordan on the same day, shortly after they had signed the armistice agreement. harlan (talk) 18:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

There are plenty of historians who have written that there was an agreement between Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine between themselves - Avi Shlaim, Simha Flapan, Uri Ben-Joseph, Dan Schueftan, Ilian Pappe, Eugene Rogan, and etc. They generally agree that Abdullah was going to occupy the area allocated to the Arab State and avoid clashes with the Jewish militias. -- 18:03, 24 August 2009 Harlan wilkerson

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Harlan, your habit of extensively exploring the remote implications of various side issues, while dancing around and refusing to confront the actual main issue involved in the actual main topic of this article, is really quite annoying. In the context of this article, when I use the phrase "the Arabs", I refer mainly to Arab governments, other relevant representative or institutional bodies such as the Palestine Arab higher committee, and their public pronouncements and actions in the ca. 1947-1948 period. In most cases, there's no real need to distinguish between them here, because they were all UNANIMOUSLY vehemently opposed to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Please stop this nonsense about Abdullah of Transjordan, because as has been repeatedly painstakingly explained above, a surreptitious furtive sub-rosa tactical military accomodation between Israel and Transjordan simply cannot take the place of the government of Transjordan publicly and openly formally signing off on the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine -- and when you make believe that the two things can be somehow equivalent, then you're floating off into some personal fantasy land which has very little relevance to the actual facts of history. AnonMoos (talk) 22:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You haven't made any attempt to include those offensive Arab stereotypes in the article, so I don't want to hear anymore about the subject on the talk page. The Brittanica article on King Abdullah says that he accepted partition and Bernadottes proposals. He gave an interview to the Al Garida Al Misaiya newspaper in Cairo and talked about behind the scenes negotiation and plainly stated that he was willing to accept the status quo and to sign peace agreements with Israel. The fact is that nobody objected to secret negotiations between the parties in Palestine to partition the country. There were several UN Security Council resolutions (e.g. resolution 59, S/1044, 19 Oct 1948 and resolution 62, S/1080, 16 Nov. 1948) which called on the parties to negotiate with one another directly with that object in mind.

There was nothing remote or implied about the attempts to get the UN Ad Hoc Committee to include the port of Aqaba in the Jewish State. The Jewish Agency had raised legal objections to Transjordan's independence, and had demanded that it not be recognized as a separate state. The Agency said that it was an integral part of Palestine and that according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, the Jewish people had a secured interest in its territory. see the 1946 Palestine Post article "The Mandate is Indiviible" [30] The Israeli MFA published material well into the late 1980s saying that "Jordan is Palestine".

The FRUS and dozens of books and articles say that Abdullah and the Yishuv had negotiated the non-belligerent partition of Palestine between themselves, and that initially the parties had agreed to abide by the terms of this resolution. The commander of the Arab Legion, John Baggot Glubb, wrote that Bevin had given the green light for the Arab Legion to occupy the territory allocated to the Arab state. The Prime Minister of Transjordan explained that Abdullah had received hundreds of petitions from Palestinian notables requesting protection upon the withdrawal of the British forces. Rogan says that hundreds of those petitions, from nearly every town and village in Palestine, are preserved in "The Hashemite Documents: The Papers of Abdullah bin al-Husayn, volume V: Palestine 1948 (Amman 1995)". see Chapter 5, Jordan and 1948, in "The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948", By Eugene L. Rogan, and Avi Shlaim, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

The works of the Kimche brothers, Morris, Shlaim, Pappe, Wilson, Rogan, and etc. which outline the agreement are taught in most Israeli university courses on the history, political science, and sociology. see for example "Doubting the Yishuv-Hashemite Agreement" starting on page 7 of "Refabricating 1948", by Benny Morris, Journal of Palestine Studies. [31] harlan (talk) 14:12, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, Harlan, just stop already! You're trying to interpret something, which in the end did not happen because the Arabs REJECTED. Who denies that? You have a clear agenda here, trying to make it look like they accepted when they didn't. Seriously, I think someone should report your for your disruptive and pointless edits, ONLY intended to mislead people. Like your recent edit is all that is wrong. You say someone declared Abdullah "King of Palestine." But unless you believe Jordan is Palestine, did he actually become King of "Palestine," or was he still simply Hashemite King of Jordan? -- 14:40, 28 August 2009 User:Tallicfan20

Whatever, Harlan -- saying that the Arabs vehemently and violently rejected the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine is not a "stereotype"[sic] -- it's a pithy and sweeping, but nonetheless essentially accurate, summary of the PUBLIC reactions of Arab governments and institutions, and of the great majority of prominent political personalities who spoke out OPENLY and PUBLICLY, not to mention the voices of the so-called Arab "street". Abdullah of Transjordan certainly cooperated on some matters with the Israelis in a surreptitious under-the-table manner, but he had to maintain a certain facade of plausible deniability at all times in order to avoid incurring the wrath of extreme qawmiyyah Arab nationalist demagogues, and their supporters on the Arab "street" -- and the basic reason Abdullah was assassinated a few years later was that his facade of plausible deniability was wearing just a little bit too thin... AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

My "personal interpretation" is shared by over 100 countries. The next time I have to write this up, I'll just go ahead and make it an ARBCOM request. You haven't cited any published sources that say the Palestinians have lost their right to establish a state under the auspices of this resolution. The UN has said that permanent status negotiations have to guarantee arrangements for peace and security of all States in the region, including those named in resolution 181(II) of 29 November 1947, within secure and internationally recognized boundaries. see General Assembly resolution 48/158D, 20 December 1993. para. 5(c).

The Second Arab-Palestinian Conference held in Jericho on December 1, 1948 had proclaimed Abdullah King, and decided to unite the new Kingdom of Arab Palestine with the Kingdom of Transjordan. see the citation to the Palestine Post article you deleted. The Transjordanian Government agreed to the unification on December 7, 1948, and on December 13 the Transjordanian parliament approved the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The step of unification was finally approved by a joint Jordanian National Assembly on April 24, 1950. The assembly was comprised of 20 representatives each from the East and West Bank. The act of union itself contained a protective clause which persevered Arab rights in Palestine without prejudice to any final settlement. Egypt never claimed anything but a trusteeship over the Gaza Strip in order to preserve the rights of the Palestinians. see "From Occupation to Interim Accords, Raja Shehadeh, Kluwer Law International, 1997, pages 77-78. In "Palestine and International Law", ed. Sanford R. Siverburg, McFarland, 2002, "Palestine the issue of Statehood", page 47, John Quigley mentions the act of union and said that Jordan's claim of Sovereignty was provisional, because it had always been subject to the emergence of the Palestinian state.

During the 1967 negotiations on UN resolution 242, the US government told the government of Israel that it regarded the West Bank as Jordanian territory. see FRUS, 1967, Volume XIX, Document 411. Quigley cites "The Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States", § 201, Reporters note 3, which says: "The United States will treat States the territory of which is under foreign military occupation as continuing to exist." and "An entity does not necessarily cease to be a state even if all of its territory has been occupied by a foreign power, or if it has otherwise lost control of its territory temporarily". see "Palestine and International Law", page 44, footnote 47.

Article 2 of the 11 February 1985 agreement between Jordan and the PLO recognized the Palestinians right of self-determination, and called for a confederation between "the two states of Jordan and Palestine." see The Middle East: ten years after Camp David, By William B. Quandt, Brookings Institute Press, Annex F, page 473. Quigley says that Jordan renounced its claims of sovereignty in favor of the Palestinians in 1988 ("Palestine and International Law", page 47). The General Assembly recognized the 1988 Declaration as being in line with GA resolution 181(II) and said it was made in the exercise of an inalienable right. Over 114 countries immediately recognized the statehood of occupied Palestine. see Francis A. Boyle, "The Creation of the State of Palestine", European Journal of International Law 1: 301-306. The EU issued a statement which explained that Israel cannot veto Palestinian statehood, since it is an imprescriptible right. The overwhelming majority of states, 164, have affirmed the "Permanent Sovereignty of the Palestinian People Over The Natural Resources Of The Occupied Palestinian territories". Everything I've written is backed-up by multiple WP:RS published sources.

Resolutions of the Second Palestine Arab Conference

A slate of six resolutions were prepared in advance, but only four were adopted. None of them rejected UN resolution 181(II) or mentioned Greater Syria. [32]

They contained the following provisions:

• 1. Palestine Arabs desire unity between Transjordan and Arab Palestine and therefore make known their wish that Arab Palestine be annexed immediately to Transjordan. They also recognize Abdullah as their King and request him proclaim himself King of new territory.
• 2. Palestine Arabs express gratitude to Arab states for their efforts in behalf of liberation of Palestine (The delegates indicated the object of this was hint to Arab states that their job was done).
• 3. Expression of thanks to Arab states for their generous assistance and support to Palestine Arab refugees.
• 4. Resolve that purport of first resolution be conveyed to King at once

Mary Wilson reports that several warmed-over versions were publicized including one that recalled that Palestine was part of natural Syria and one that recognized Abdullah as King of all Palestine and called for it's liberation. Abdullah had been told that the British-controlled Arab Legion would loose British support unless he limited his ambitions to Arab Palestine as defined in the 1947 partition plan. King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, By Mary Christina Wilson, Cambridge UP, 1990, page 182. harlan (talk) 22:09, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Not sure why you're offering an ultra-solemn legalistic analysis of something which many (at the time and afterwards) have perceived as merely a thin facade of cynical propaganda to justify a Transjordanian land-grab (raw territorial expansionism)... AnonMoos (talk) 13:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Background

The background section in this page is extremely long and one-sided, and omits a great deal of relevant information while containing a great deal of irrelevant information. Most importantly, there is extensive discussion of Jewish reaction to earlier partition proposals, and no discussion whatsoever of Arab reactions. The section is also difficult to follow as much of the discussion is incomprehensible until one reads the next section on the Mandate of Palestine. It seems to me that there are two basic options here: (1) cut out most of the discussion of the Jewish reaction or (2) add a lot of material about the Arab reaction. In any event, some of the unnecessary detail should be cut. I will do a series of edits along the lines of option #1, unless there appears to be a consensus in favor of option #2. Responses? Knowitall639 (talk) 12:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

TL:DR?

I was actually canvassed to this page so it might not be fair if I make edits. However, right now it just seems like a lame edit war between users who I doubt read the talk page, and rightfully so because of its enormous size and impossibility to read. One shouldn't make far-reaching edits that they know are going to be controversial. So I am here to request that each side present its argument shortly and concisely, and stop edit warring. If will do all of us good, and then we can decide what to do next. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:36, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of issues (such as whether this article is a suitable location for extended legal treatises of marginal direct relevance to the article topic) -- but as I've said above, the basic core issue is that according to the accepted consensus of mainstream historical scholarship, the Arabs simply did NOT approve of, agree to, or formally sign off on, UNGA Resolution 181 (the November 29, 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine). For example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica "History of Palestine" article by Walid Ahmed Khalidi and Ian J. Bickerton states the following:

"These recommendations were substantially adopted by a two-thirds majority of the UN General Assembly in a resolution dated Nov. 29, 1947, ... All the Islamic Asian countries voted against partition, and an Arab proposal to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants ... was narrowly defeated. ... As in 1937, the Arabs fiercely opposed partition both in principle and because a substantial minority of the population of the Jewish state would be Arab. Great Britain was unwilling to implement a policy that was not acceptable to both sides and refused to share with the UN Palestine Commission the administration of Palestine during the transitional period. ... on March 16 the UN Palestine Commission reported its inability, because of Arab resistance, to implement partition."

Unfortunately, Harlan_wilkerson has a habit of extensively exploring side issues at great length, but only rather infrequently and grudgingly confronting the basic core issue. When he does choose to do so, then he has absolutely no evidence of Arab signatures on UNGA 181 to offer, but instead comes up with notably lame arguments which implicitly assume that other historical stuff (which is not Arab signatures on UNGA 181) is somehow quasi-equivalent to Arab signatures on UNGA 181 (though the basis for this assumed quasi-equivalence is left quite hazy and unspecified, in striking contrast with Harlan_wilkerson's very detailed legal reasoning in many other contexts). No matter how many times this is pointed out, Harlan_wilkerson never has any better arguments to offer on this basic core issue, but never alters his position by one iota either. Frankly, some of the stuff Harlan has previously added to the current version of the article is a little dodgy, but other editors have let it slide -- however, when it comes to the basic core issue that the Arabs in fact rejected the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, then that simply can't be let slide, because to do so would turn historical fact into historical nonsense... AnonMoos (talk) 23:45, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The states were required to make a declaration which acknowledged their acceptance of the plan for the future government of Palestine. The General Assembly in-turn adopted resolutions which acknowledged that each state had "signed-off" on the international undertaking. The Declaration of the State of Palestine supplied by the Palestine National Council specifically cited UN resolution 181(II) as its legal foundation and implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. The General Assembly acknowledged that declaration as being in line with General Assembly resolution 181(II), and said it had been made in the exercise of an inalienable right. see General Assembly resolution 43/177, 15 December 1988. harlan (talk) 01:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Which "states" were those? Israel and Nephelococcygia? In real life, there was no Arab state established under the provisions of UNGA 181. There were the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, the "All-Palestine Government" in Gaza, and Transjordan's occupation of the West Bank -- but all of those vocally rejected UNGA 181 in all relevant public statements. AnonMoos (talk) 01:41, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Whether it's controversial or not is irrelevant. It is a fact that WP:RS sources say that the majority of states legally recognize the State of Palestine, and it is a WP:RS fact that the terms and conditions of this UN resolution included a treaty-based Minority Protection Plan that has continuing legal effect. A number of WP:RS sources say the General Assembly has resolved that the final settlement should include both the states mentioned in this resolution. W:RS sources say the General Assembly and EU insist that Palestinian statehood is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people. No one is stopping AnonMoos from putting sourced statements which represent the opposing POV in the article, but he hasn't found any WP:RS published sources which support his claim that the Palestinians no longer have any recognized rights under the terms of this resolution. Many Palestinians weren't alive in 1948, and we are discussing an inalienable or imprescriptible right. harlan (talk) 23:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue

I'm going to do what none of you bothered and summarize the issue in one sentence:

Did the Arab states, or specifically, the Palestinian Arab leadership, accept the UN partition plan?

Simple, wasn't it? Now, what are the arguments for yes and for no? Keep it short please. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:09, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, the votes of Arab states are on record and they all voted against (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen), as is clearly stated in all versions of this article, even the Harlanized version. As for the Palestinians, the consensus of reputable mainstream historians is that they rejected the plan in all relevant public pronouncements, as is clearly indicated in the Britannica quote given immediately above. There was some disagreement by some individuals behind the scenes (which Harlan tries to magnify in importance), but all representative institutions and prominent public spokesmen unanimously rejected it in their public statements... AnonMoos (talk) 12:50, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Anon, actually, the Palestinian Arabs at the time, in the form of the Arab Higher Committee, which was Palestinian Arabs, also, like the states THRU THEIR VOTES, overtly rejected it, they may have had a vote, IDK but they rejected it. They, along with most leading Arabs at the time, wanted "Greater Syria," and Abdullah wanted west Palestine all for himself, etc and so on. Hajj Amin Al-Husseini was the Palestinian Arab leader, he was outwardly against partition.Tallicfan20 (talk) 13:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

By "vote", I meant during the November 29th, 1947 session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Palestinian Arabs had channels by which they could express their acceptance or rejection of the proposed agreement, but they did not have a direct vote in the United Nations General Assembly... AnonMoos (talk) 13:16, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is a bit academic, since the Arabs were not successful in preventing the Partition resolution from being adopted by the General Assembly. It's not possible for Arabs to "opt out" of UNGA resolutions after they're adopted, the resolution came into force after a vote regardless of Arab opposition. They were opposed, naturally, since Arab lands were being partitioned to Jewish immigrants and the Jews were in favour (as Ben Gurion states) since it gave them a legal foothold in Palestine, from which to try to expand to the rest of the area and expel the Arabs. That the resolution remains in force is evident in, for example, the fact that the EU considers Jerusalem to de jure be a corpus separatum. --Dailycare (talk) 14:11, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

First off, your gratuitous editorializing and rather extreme rhetorical soapboxing are not very constructive in the context of the current discussion. And your main point is unfortunately not really valid -- it's true that UN General Assembly resolutions, as resolutions, don't depend on the consent of any individual member state, of course. However, the particular resolution which is the subject of this article proposed a specific agreement which by its nature could come into full force only if the two parties concerned each agreed to it and signed off on it. So in that sense, the consent or disagreement of the Palestinian Arabs, as expressed publicly through their representative institutions, was crucial in determining whether or not the terms of this resolution would become operational. Saying that the agreement came into force even though only one side agreed to it leads eventually to Harlan's nonsense, where he claims that even though the UNGA 181 proposed agreement would have granted the Arabs a state only under certain specified terms (such as borders open to economic trade, non-aggression, respect for the holy places of other religions, etc.), and the Arabs rejected the agreement and complied with none of these terms, yet according to Harlan they are still somehow entitled to all the benefits that would have come to them under the proposed agreement if thay had agreed to it -- so that the Arabs supposedly have a quite extraordinary privilege of "double-dipping", or "two bites at the apple", or "having their cake and eating it too" which is unprecedented under national or international law... AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

No Arab state accepted the partition plan officially. Jordan unofficially accepted the creation of a Jewish state but not the creation of an Arab state. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the partition plan, they wanted an Arab-dominated single Palestinian state. ("Greater Syria" as a cause had been nearly dead since the 1930s, only the minor party Hizb al-Istiqlal being an exception.) Whether the partition resolution had a lasting legal effect is a different question altogether. Most of the positive opinions I have read were pro-Israeli. Zero^talk 14:39, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

No one disputes that it had lasting diplomatic and historical effects. Whether it had some lasting legal effects is quite a different question than the question of whether the Arabs agreed to it in 1947-1948, or than the question of whether every single one of its provisions came into full legal force unconditionally. Assenting to either one of these last two propositions unfortunately leads to nonsense... AnonMoos (talk) 17:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Of course it was not accepted in 1947-48 by the Arab states or Palestinians. ( Haidar Abdel-Shafi is an example of a Palestinian who I believe did support it at that time though)) As I mentioned above, at Lausanne, it did win some formal Arab acceptance. I believe Quincy Wright makes this point supporting the resolution's force. As Harlan notes somewhere, Anthony D'Amato offers a recent non pro-Israeli argument that it had legal force.John Z (talk) 20:12, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

At Lausanne, as far as I can tell, the map alone (and nothing else from UNGA 181) was the non-binding starting point for negotiations (and the negotiations could have thrown out that map and written a completely new one from scratch, if they had been successful), so this hardly constitutes Arab "formal acceptance" of UNGA 181. And ex post facto arguments many years afterwards which reinterpret the resolution for the benefit of the PLO (which didn't exist until 1964) are not too impressive, considering that Arab public pronouncements between November 1947 and May 1948 almost unanimously maintained that the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was null and void and without legal force... AnonMoos (talk) 20:41, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolution

Resolved

It appears that there is unanimous agreement here that the Arab states did not accept the parition plan. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

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You and AnonMoos are conducting an ad hoc legal analysis without citing a single published WP:RS sourced citation. The result is predictably WP:OR. The Arab states accepted the principle of partition one day after the UN recognized Israel's acceptance of UN 181(II). During the hearings Mr. Eban acknowledged that the legal obligations arising from the minority rights undertaking were not contingent on the acceptance of the Arab states.

During the 45th meeting of the Ad Hoc Political committee hearings on Israel's UN membership application, on 5 May 1949, Mr. Eban acknowledged that the Arab states could not be logically blamed for withholding recognition, since the UN itself had not yet recognized Israel.

The committee questioned whether or not Israel had fulfilled the requirements for recognition contained in UNGA resolution 181(II). Several members asked for evidence that Israel had supplied the required declaration and had implemented the legal undertaking concerning the constitutional protection of religious and minority rights. It appeared that Israel had violated the prohibition against expropriating the refugees property and had failed to pay them any compensation. Mr Eban said that matter and the boundaries would be freely discussed, adjudicated, or resolved through mutual concessions during the Lausanne conference that was underway.

During the 51st meeting, on 9 May 1949, Mr Eban acknowledged that the minority rights obligations were not contingent upon Arab acceptance. He claimed the rights stipulated by the resolution had been constitutionally embodied as the fundamental law of the state of Israel as required by the resolution. During the same hearing several members of the committee, including the representative of Cuba, said that no argument based upon the alleged invalidity of the resolution establishing the state of Israel could be accepted without denying the legal existence of that state, because the General Assembly which had jurisdiction over Palestine had established the state. Until the General Assembly declared the resolution invalid, no state was entitled to declare it so. The United Nations might decide to change or abrogate its own decision, but not the parties themselves.

Israel's declarations and undertakings regarding the implementation of UN GA resolution 181(II) were cited in footnote 5 of UNGA resolution 273(III), 11 May 1949, which admitted Israel as a member of the UN. The very next day, 12 May 1949, the Arab states signed the Lausanne Protocol accepting the partition map from the 29 November 1947 partition plan as the basis for negotiations. Ahmad Shuqayri was a member of the Syrian delegation at the Lausanne Conference. He became the first head of the PLO. He said the adoption of the protocol proved the Arabs had not suffered from a "no" complex during 1947-49. There were also Palestinians in the delegation from Jordan, and Muhhamad Nimr al Hawwari, head of the General Refugee Congress in Rammallah, attended on an ad hoc basis.

Three days before the Arabs accepted the protocol Walter Eytan, head of the Israeli delegation, said "it would be a great thing for us if the Arabs, who had never been willing to touch November 29th with a barge pole, agreed to take this as a base de travail." He had incorrectly predicted that the Arabs would never agree to sign the protocol. The conference reached an impasse when Israel insisted that it should be allowed to annex Gaza, but offered no territorial compensation. The Arabs rejected the proposal because it violated the partition plan. see A Tale of Two Cities: The Rhodes and Lausanne Conferences, 1949, Neil Caplan, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1992), pp. 5-34.harlan (talk) 04:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Harlan, I really don't appreciate being told that I haven't brought forward any citations, when you're extremely well aware of the fact that I've brought forward the Britannica article (which, as a secondary source, is probably more conformant with Wikipedia policies than the some of the primary sources which you like to reinterpret). Unfortunately for you, such behavior on your part would seem to come perilously close to outright lying... AnonMoos (talk) 19:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

no harlan, they rejected it. The Arab states all voted agianst it, and the Arab Higher Committee made it pretty clear that it wanted Greater Syria instead. Those are facts, not anything "ad hoc." Journal of Palestine Studies is an extreme source of spin and cannot preclude the telling of the actual historical record.Tallicfan20 (talk) 18:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually you and AnonMoos are violating a well known policy which requires that articles reflect all published points of view and that talk pages not be used to discuss which version of history is better. I would appreciate it if you would cite WP:RS sources to support your edits instead of your personal opinions.

Dr. Neil Caplan would ordinarily be considered a WP:RS source by Wikipedia. He was published several books on the Arab-Israeli conflict and was awarded the Zipper Education Award 2004 by the J.I. Segal Committee of the Jewish Public Library. The prize honors outstanding contributions in the field of Jewish education.

His article provides 105 citations to third-party verifiable sources. The "Note on Sources" in Dr. Caplan's Tale of Two Cities article says he mainly relied upon the US State Department's "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949 Volume IV; the Israeli State Archive's "Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel Vol. 2: October 1948 – April 1949, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel Vol. 3: Armistice Negotiations with the Arab States December 1948 – July 1949, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel Vol. 4: May – December 1949; and newly declassified documents from the US National Archives, the UK Public Records Office, the Israeli State Archives, and the United Nations Archives.

Several other authors have written about the Arab's acceptance of the partition plan as part of the Lausanne Protocol. Most notably: Yagil Levy, Trial and Error: Israel's Route from War to De-Escalation, SUNY Press, 1997, ISBN 0-7914-3429-X; and Ilan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1951. I.B. Tauris, London, 1992, ISBN 1-85043-819-6 harlan (talk) 20:04, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Harlan: 1) Wikipedia is not required to take a "neutral position" with regard to whether the earth is flat vs. round. 2) If the statement that "the Arab states did not accept the partition plan" is not true, then why has every version of the article edited by you included the assertion that Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen voted against the plan on November 29th 1947? A little cognitive dissonance there, methinks... AnonMoos (talk) 19:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Britannica doesn't say that this resolution is null, void, or voidable. Your theory that the actions of the other Arab states have abrogated the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is utter nonsense that isn't mentioned in Britannica. You need to make a good faith effort to find a published source which actually supports those unsupported claims. At the Lausanne Conference the head of the Israeli delegation, Dr. Walter Eytan, officially challenged the right of any Arab state to interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian Arabs. He also insisted on observance of the UN resolution of 29 November 1947. see for example the front page of the May 15, 1949 Palestine Post [33] In any event, the Britannica article is completely silent about the Minority Protection Plan, the resolutions of the Second Arab-Palestine Conference at Jericho, the Lausanne Protocol, and etc.

During the hearings on Israel's membership, several states (e.g. USSR, Cuba, et al) said this resolution "is an international legal document entitling the State of Israel and the Arab State in Palestine to their creation and existence, and nobody-–except, of course, the General Assembly-–has a right to revoke it." [34] Hersh Lauterpacht advised the Provisional Council of Israel that a decision was adopted on 29 November 1947, and that it would not be invalidated even by the fact that, in the meantime, difficulties had arisen, and that some people had endeavored to cause the whole thing to fail. He also said the parties had the right to take the actions the Palestine Commission should have taken. The US State Department Legal Advisor, Ernest Gross, said that while the resolution stands, groups in Palestine are authorized to take the steps contemplated in the resolution for implementing the partition plan. [35] He also said the law of nations recognizes an inherent right of people lacking the agencies and institutions of social and political control to organize a state and operate a government. [36] During his testimony before the US Senate Dr. Yehuda Blum, the author of the "Missing Reversioner" theory, acknowledged that if Israel had not been able to overcome opposition and establish a state, its rights under the partition plan would still have been kept in abeyance by the international community. see page 40 [37]

For months now, every version of the article has had a POV tag on the section about the "Covert Plans to Circumvent the UN Partition Plan" and has mentioned Efraim Karsh's theories. The Benny Morris' article above challenges some of Karsh's conclusions. The Britannica articles on Abdullah and the "Jordan: Transjordan, the Hashimite Kingdom, and the Palestine war" say that Abdullah was prepared to accept partition and did engage in secret discussions with Jewish envoys about the area allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition plan. The latter article says Israel and Britain tacitly agreed to Abdullah keeping the area. The authors of the works cited in the "Covert Plans" section refer to the FRUS material you keep deleting. harlan (talk) 14:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You sure talk a lot, but unfortunately, you don't seem to have usefully answered either of the two questions immediately at hand, namely: 1) "If the statement that `the Arab states did not accept the partition plan' is not true, then why has every version of the article edited by you included the assertion that Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen voted against the plan on November 29th 1947??" 2) "Why is it that even though Arab government spokesmen and prominent Arab political personalities almost unanimously claimed in their relevant public pronouncements in 1947-1948 that the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was null and void and without legal force, and during 1948-1967 Jordan and Egypt complied with none of the major Arab obligations under the plan (not to mention that the plan has been an unenforceable dead letter for over 61 years, during which many other superseding legal developments have occurred), yet it is now claimed that the Arabs are supposedly somehow entitled to every single one of the benefits that they would have obtained if (counterfactually) they had agreed to the plan back in 1947?? What possible reasonable explanation can there be as to how the Arabs supposedly have such an extraordinary and quite unprecedented legal provilege of double-dipping, taking two bites of the apple, or having their cake and eating it too??"

If there are somewhat reputable scholars (not pure political advocates) who hold to the retroactive ex post facto "double dipping" interpretation, then they can be cited for that view in an appropriate location, but it cannot be represented as the main consensus default historical view, because it's not... AnonMoos (talk) 19:28, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You keep raising totally irrelevant questions that have nothing to do with whether or not an Arab State was actually declared and if it subsequently formed a terminable union with Transjordan. You are supposed to be using the talk page to resolve disputes, not prolong them.

You've been repeatedly asked to supply a reputable legal scholar who claims there is such a thing as "a retroactive ex post facto "double dipping" interpretation" involved in this case. At this point I consider your use of that shop-worn argument to prevent the inclusion of well-sourced material to be clear evidence of bad faith. The UN has repeatedly said that the Palestinians' right to a state is inalienable. That fact has been brought to your attention time and again. The countries on your list do not include Palestine or Transjordan. The votes of those other Arab states in the General Assembly did not create any binding legal obligation on the people of Palestine or Transjordan, or preclude those states and Israel from accepting the partition plan as the basis of the Lausanne protocol on 12 May 1949.

Even legal scholars who accept the idea of total Arab rejection as a "given" still dismiss its legal effects. For example, John Crawford says that the approval of the Mandate by the League Council had 'definite legal effect', so that the representative body of the Arab majority had no jurisdiction to question its validity. See Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, and Stefan Talmon, eds., The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) page 105.

David J. Ball questions Eugene Rostow's "continued mandate" theory and the claim that Israel holds better title to the land than the “Arabs” to whom the Partition Plan intended to grant their own state. He said:

"Even though the Arabs rejected the plan, the very nature of a mandate permits the mandatory power to make decisions affecting the area even in the absence of the inhabitants’ consent; that is the very raison d’ˆetre of a mandate. If consent were required, then the Arabs’ animosity toward the establishment of a Jewish state would have foreclosed its very creation. Thus, the Palestinians, based on the principles of self-determination and the power of the U.N., appear to hold better title to the territory." [38]

Judge Hersh Lauterpacht served on the International Court of Justice. He said that the UN "decision" would not be invalidated simply because some parties had endeavored to make the plan fail. The Namibia case demonstrated that General Assembly decisions regarding mandates have legally binding effects. Judge Elias served as President of the ICJ. He wrote about the legal effects of General Assembly resolutions and said "It seems clear that, as far as General Assembly recommendations in respect of the nine specifically enumerated matters in Article 18(2) are concerned, its "decisions" in the form of "recommendations" are binding upon all once they are adopted by a two thirds majority. [39] Judge Elaraby wrote that the transitional period pending the establishment of the two States had been a determination by the General Assembly within its sphere of competence and that it should be binding on all Member States as having legal force and legal consequences.

The majority of UN member states acknowledged the Declaration of the State of Palestine as being in line with this resolution. The majority of member states also have recognized the State of Palestine. Last year the overwhelming majority of countries, 164, voted to adopt yet another resolution which recognized the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the resources of their territory. That is the main consensus default historical view. harlan (talk) 03:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Does this mean that you FINALLY accept the simple and factual assertion that "the Arab states did not accept the partition plan", and are no longer seeking to confuse and cloud the issue with abstract metaphysical theoretical hypothetical speculative bafflegab? AnonMoos (talk) 12:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I have an extremely difficult time believing that Arab governments and prominent Arab public commentators in the ca. 1950-1966 period placed great emphasis on an interpretation that every single clause of UNGA 181 has full legal force, because to do so would have meant recognizing that Israel also legally existed, something which basically none of them were willing to publicly admit during that period. That's part of why the interpretation that you're pushing is merely retroactive, and so cannot be given primary place on this article... AnonMoos (talk) 12:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) No, for the last time it means that (1) your uncited generalizations about "the Arabs", "double dipping" and etc. don't come from the Britannica article; (2) they don't have any legal significance; and (3) they aren't pertinent to a discussion about this resolution. Every statement that you've made is contradicted by the published statements made at the time by the responsible Jewish authorities and their legal advisors, i.e. Eban, Eytan, Lauterpacht, Robinson, and etc.

You are still trying to substitute wikibullying and bluster for reliably sourced material from a competent authority on the legal issues. There is guidance from ArbCom that removal of statements that are, sourced reliably, and written in a neutral style constitutes disruption. From day one representatives of the UN advised Israel that this resolution authorized the establishment of an Arab state, and that only the General Assembly could alter or revoke it. None of your objections alter that situation. The following information is not my interpretation or retroactive:

Ian Bickerton's book "A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict" says that few Palestinians joined the Arab Liberation Army because they suspected that the other Arab States did not plan on an independent Palestinian state. He says for that reason many Palestinians favored partition and indicated a willingness to live alongside a Jewish state (page 88, 4th Edition). The Khalidis (Wahlid and Rashid) happen to be the editors of the journal that published Benny Morris' paper about the 17 November 1947 Yishuv-Hashemite Agreement. [40] Those are the co-contributors to the Britannica article that you cited.

The day after the partition plan was adopted, the Palestine Post ran a front page article saying that the influential Cairo newspaper Al Mokkatam had published an editorial supporting the partition of Palestine. It said "We stand for Partition because we believe it is the best final solution for Palestine. If rejection of Partition would have solved the problem we would have welcomed it, but in fact it will lead to further complications that will give the Zionists another space of time to complete their plans of defense and attack." [41] The FRUS says that on 8 May 1948, Moshe Shertok told the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, that Brigadier Glubb's assistant had already contacted Haganah to coordinate the respective military plans of the Arab Legion and the Jewish militia. The FRUS account was cited by Flapan and a host of other secondary sources [42]

There was nothing hypothetical about the proclamations of the Second Palestinian Arab Congress, or the accounts about it that were published in the Palestine Post,[43] John Quigley wrote about it, and it was also documented in the FRUS. In his book "The Palestinian Refugees In Jordan 1948-1957, Routledge, 1981, ISBN: 0714631205, pages 11-16, Avi Plascov said that the Palestinian Congresses were conducted according to prevailing Arab political custom, and that contrary to the widely held belief outside Jordan, the representatives did reflect the feelings of a large segment of the population. I have been patiently challenging your uncited claim that it was "abstract metaphysical theoretical hypothetical speculative and etc."

In March of 1949 the Cairo newspaper, Al Garida Al Misaiya, reported that King Abdullah had stated that he intended to negotiate a settlement with Israel. [44] On 5 May 1949, the UN representative for Lebanon acknowledged the existence of Israel and stated that "Israel had actually been created in November 1947 by a resolution of the General Assembly (181 (II))" [45]. Months earlier, the legal advisor to the Jewish Agency, Jacob Robinson, had come to the very same conclusion. [46] Judge Elaraby also said that the transitional period to independence for both states started with the adoption of the resolution. He said that it was a decision that was binding on all member states. [47]

Kaplan, Pappe, and et al. agree that on 12 May 1949 "the Arabs" signed-off on the Lausanne protocol and accepted the map of partition from resolution 181(II) as the basis for negotiations. On 15 May 1949 it was reported that the representative of Israel, Dr Eytan, was still insisting on the establishment of an independent state of Arab Palestine and observance of the November 1947 resolution. [48] harlan (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Next issue

Please state the next issue concisely below this line. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Bullying of knowledgeable editors, producing a good article under such conditions is out of the question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.159.70.117 (talk) 17:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)