On 29 November 1947, the UN general assembly voted to partition Palestine
between native Palestinians and overwhelmingly European Jewish colonists. The partition
plan granted the colonists (one-third of the population) 57% of the land,
and granted the native inhabitants (two-thirds of the population) 43%. On 30
November, the colonists embarked on the military conquest of Palestine,
expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. They declared their state on 14
May 1948. Of the 37 Jewish signatories to the "Declaration of the Establishment
of the State of Israel," only one was born in Palestine, the Moroccan Behor
Chetrit. Palestinians rejected the plan as it dispossessed them of their lands.....
By recognising a diminished Palestinian state, the vote effectively abandons
the UN understanding of the "Jewish state" as one that has no right to
discriminate against or ethnically cleanse non-Jews. The new arrangement confers
the blessing of this international forum on the Israeli understanding of what a
"Jewish state" entails– namely, the actually existing legal discrimination and
ethnic cleansing practised by Israel –as acceptable. That this occurred on 29
November, the date of the partition plan, reiterates this date as one of
continuing defeats for the Palestinians who continue to suffer from Israel's
colonial laws, and repeats UN guilt in denying Palestinians their rights not to
suffer dispossession and racism. The Palestinians, however, whose majority is
not represented by the PA, will no more heed this new partition plan than they
did the last one and will continue to resist Israeli colonialism until it comes
to an end and until Israel becomes a state for all its citizens with equal
rights to all regardless of national, religious, or ethnic background."
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