Is Israel trying to take all of Palestine?

When World War I began the “Arab World” consisted of approximately five million square kilometers of territory, of which approximately one million 240 thousand square kilometers were under the imperial rule of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire, one million 470 thousand were British protectorates (including Egypt), and about 2 million 210 thousand that were either semi-independent or desert wasteland with no active government.

Today those five million square kilometers of “Arab” territory are the independent Arab States of Saudi Arabia (2.150 Million), Egypt (1,01 Million), Yemen (555 Thousand), Iraq (438 Thousand), Oman (310 Thousand), Syria (185 Thousand), Jordan (90 Thousand), the United Arab Emirates (84 Thousand), Kuwait (18 Thousand), Qatar (12 Thousand), Lebanon (11 Thousand), and Bahrain (8 Thousand), and one 20% Arab State, Israel, designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine to include 27 Thousand square kilometers, of which 7,000 were occupied by Egypt and Jordan for a period of 18 years, from 1949 to 1967.

There was no entity “Palestine” at the time of the First World War, and there hadn’t been since at least the time of Christopher Columbus. The last time there had been a sovereign entity in what was designated by the Allied Powers during World War I as Palestine, was 65 years before the Romans changed the name of Judea (from which the term Jew is derived) to Palestina, in the year 135. The League of Nations defined Palestine at the same time it defined Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, by decolonizing Ottoman Asia and issuing Mandates to the British and French, obligating them to prepare these “mandates” for eventual independence. And in the case of Palestine the League of Nations Mandate was very specific in its intention for Palestine et al to be the Jewish national home.

One could say that the League of Nations “took” 0.55% of the entire territory that was predominately populated by Arabs at the time and allowed the Jews to reconstitute their ancient homeland there, or you could look at it as the League of Nations creating the conditions for the independence of the Arab people in 99.45% of the vast territories that they occupied, in place of subjugation by distant empires. In the process the League of Nations ended 75 generations of subjugation and persecution of one of the oldest remaining ancient peoples in the world, restoring their freedom and independence as well.

But of course allowing a Jewish State to exist in 0.55% of what Arabs believed their supremacy entitled them to exclusive hegemony, was 0.55% too much. After thirty years of violent opposition to the Mandate and after the UN further reduced the territory of the Jewish home by half, the entire miltary forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded Palestine, hours after the State of Israel was born, with the explicit intent of TAKING ALL OF PALESTINE.

The Arabs failed in their attempt to take exclusive possession of Palestine, but refused to acknowledge their failure. After an 18 year long armistice hostilities resumed and this time the territory originally designated by the League of Nations to be part of the Jewish home was liberated from Egyptian and Jordanian occupation. And still the Arabs refused to acknowledge their failure. They declared at the Arab League Summit in Khartoum: “NO RECOGNITION, NO NEGOTIATION, NO PEACE!” After their next attack, on the Yom Kippur holiday in October 1973, the world community, instead of denouncing their cynical aggression against a fellow UN member, declared the Palestinians to be a people entitled to self-determination and declared the terrorist Yasser Arafat their “sole legitimate representative”. Yet the charter of the PLO, the organization Arafat chaired, that was founded in 1964 to “liberate” Palestine, clearly stated that Palestine was “indivisible”, rejecting the very idea that the Jews had any right whatsoever to any part of what had been Mandatory Palestine.

To this day every Palestinian Arab repeats the mantra “From the River to the Sea”, negating any legitimacy to Israel’s existence, and yet you can only question whether Israel is trying to take all of Palestine? How disingenuous of you. Inevitably Israel will assert its sovereignty over all of what had been Mandatory Palestine, as was destined to be, in accordance with the League of Nations Mandate, not because it was Israel’s intention, but because the Palestinian Arabs refuse to accept the principles of compromise, cooperation, and coexistence. If the Palestinian Arabs insist on “all or nothing” they will end up with nothing.

Culled from Quora