Plight of the Palestinian People: Part I, by Alice Scott

The Holocaust was one reason behind the plight of the Palestinian people. The Holocaust began in 1933 when Hitler was the dictator of Germany. He had the belief that Germans were “superior” to the Jews and many others. However, Hitler didn’t realize that there were over nine million Jewish people in Europe. “By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the Final Solution.” The Holocaust officially ended in 1957, when the last camp was closed. During the Holocaust, Hitler’s “Final Solution” pushed the Jewish people to flee to different parts of the world in order to keep their lives. One place they fled was to Palestine. In 1947, tensions were already growing between the Jews and Arabs (Palestine History).

The Jewish people owned six percent of the land in Palestine (United States HMM). The Palestinian people didn’t agree with the number of Jewish people increasing in their territory which led to an uprising. The British Government announces its plans to withdraw from Palestine on the 15th of May, 1948 (Palestine History). In 1947 Great Britain, which originally was in charge of Palestine, “handed the problem over to the United Nations for resolution” (“Key Historical Events”).

The official plight began in 1948. In order to make things easier, the United Nation Resolution 181 partitioned the territory from the British Mandate for Palestine into two states. However, the Arab countries were very stubborn and objected it and fought a war against the idea of the two states. The United Nations partition resolution was divided between Israel and Jordan. Unfortunately, the Palestinian Arabs were rejected by other Arab countries, with the exception of the small percentage that ended up in the refugee camps in Jordan. Those refugees are still there, till this day (“Truth about Palestinian People”).

A contradiction was also made throughout all of this chaos. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged, by the Arab leaders, to leave Israel and to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without seeing a single Israeli soldier. However, Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, also invited the Palestinians to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state (Bard).

In 1949 Israel offered to allow families, which were separated during the war, to return. They agreed to release refugee accounts that had been frozen and repatriate 100,000 refugees. Israel had offered to pay compensation for abandoned lands. The Arabs firmly rejected all the Israeli compromises (Bard). In 1967, Israel took over the last of the Palestinian territory. The last lands, that were Palestine territory, were Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and three others. Because of Israel’s decision to take the remaining territory, another migration of half a million Palestinians took place. The United Nations Security Council then spoke to Israel about withdrawing from the territories it had taken over. On October 6, 1973, a three week war began between Syria, Egypt, and Israel to get back the land that Israel had taken (“Key Historical Events”).


Works Cited
Bard, Mitchell. "The Palestinian Refugees." Jewish Virtual Library- Homepage. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html.

"Key Historical Events." Plight of the Palestinians. World Wide Web Domination, 2010. Web. 27 Nov 2011.

"The Truth about the Palestinian People." Target of Opportunity – Eliminating the Planet of Liberals One at a Time. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. http://www.targetofopportunity.com/palestinian_truth.htm.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia.http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10005143. Accessed on 27 November 2011

Shashaa, Esam, ed. “Palestine History.” Web. 15 Dec. 2011.