Talk:1949 Armistice Agreements

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I removed the "demographic implications" section because it is propagandistic and inaccurate. The circumstances of the refugees is stated falsely, and the part about Jordan is also false (in fact, Jordan gave citizenship to all the Palestinian residents of the West Bank or Jordan). Something could be put back, but let's aim for some NPOV.

I also added links to the armistice agreement texts.

-- zero 13:20, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can anybody explain why the Green Line is called the Green Line?

-- Ken Bloom

That's the color the Israel-Jordan line was drawn in the first official maps for the armistice agreements. They're out there somewhere on the web, probably at the UN. Should dig up a link and put it in the article one of these days.--John Z 02:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Percents and spellings

C'mon. These are mainly obvious errors, which are frankly a bit painful to read, and easy enough to check. Read the armistice agreement for Lebanon. The 70% figure is just wrong - a probable typo - and not used elsewhere in Wiki, where the correct 78% is used. The original mandate did not (necessarily) include Jordan - e.g. read the article on San Remo, with, again, references to the original document (which I provided.). (I plan to write more on this complicated and confusing issue. It is not a good idea to unnecessarily introduce such confusing issues in a not really relevant article.) I gave impeccable references for the consideration of the lines as boundaries by Israel. The negative statements here concerning the lines all date after 1967, as there were no such statements before 1967, Israel being basically happy to stay within the armistice line borders, especially at first. "Realted" is a remarkable spelling for "related", and "stayed occupied" rather peculiar English for "was occupied." So I am reverting, as I do not see why well sourced and universally-acknowledged-as-accurate statements by all sides should be replaced by unsourced confusions. --John Z 10:01, 15 May 2005 (UTC)


For the peace treaty offers, particularly Israel -> Jordan, Jordan -> Israel and Syria -> Israel (twice) see e.g. Shlaim's Iron Wall and Morris' Righteous Victims, among other sources. --John Z 10:20, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I have to admit (ingloriously) that some of the errors were mine. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 10:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Some of the insertions were POV, others unsourced. If you have sources, put them in with footnotes. Jayjg (talk) 17:25, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Which were POV? I honestly don't see what you are saying is POV. Some things that I gave a reference for were removed. E.g. the peace treaties - these are by now well-known, or the Israeli position on the lines after 1949. There is no original research, no novelty, no "untested theories; data, statements, concepts and ideas" no "novel narrative or historical interpretation" here. Everything I said is universally, across the spectrum, agreed on as the truth by all serious sources I have ever seen that treat these matters. Basically Israel and the Arabs switched positions on the 1949 armistice lines being considered as (tantamount to) borders in 1967. (Of course they maintained their positions if one is considering the new post 1967 lines). This makes perfect sense in light of their interests at the two times. What I did was remove "original research" - that Israel was unsatisfied with the Armistice lines as borders after 1949, in the way it was after 1967. This is (a) untrue and was unsupported and (b) makes very little sense. Sure, Begin was not satisfied, but he was not in power. Ben-Gurion, who most of the time had no real problem with the lines per se (as I documented) - was. Humus, being a mensch, has said he wrote some of what I changed, and not only does he appear to be satisfied, but he has left some very kind comments about me.
Of course there are additional nuances, e.g around the 1956 war, but that blew over quickly and basically solidified the Israeli and Arab positions until 67 reversed them. That, a bit more on the DMZs and reference to the tripartite declaration(s) seem to be some of the only things the article now needs.
You are right that the phrasing of the remarks about the Israeli attitude was not good and went too far, I wasn't really satisfied with it then, I hope it is better now. The general attitude I mean is exemplified e.g. in the Korean War over an armistice line, or perhaps the 73 war.
TransJordan being part of the original mandate is (a) not relevant and (b) not really true. (I also gave a reference for this - again, see San Remo Conference - I emended this article and added references to the original documents. This is a complicated and very confusing issue, which is why almost every account in the literature I've seen except among the best specialists, (e.g. Bernard Wasserstein, Leonard Stein) is not just wrong, but self-contradictory or incomprehensible. (From memory, Sachar is OK, but his maps contradict his text.) I'm still not sure about some fine points myself. Why bring up confusing, perhaps controversial items in an irrelevant article? --209.165.24.138 01:23, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
You still bring no source for the claim, and what's more, the examples do not show that they considered them to be "official borders". As for what's "relevant" or "true", the argument that Israel only got 17.5% of the mandate is used all the time, regardless of whether on not you agree with it. And the use of the term "unfortunately" is also POV. Jayjg (talk) 02:03, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I changed my phrasing - I did not say they considered them as official borders, just that Israel (and the great powers, too, btw, I'll put this in later) (immediately) after 1948 tended to consider them that way, as tantamount to such, to extol their importance and the importance of the armistice agreements, and make clear that they would be happy to have them as official borders, with of course minor adjustments where they were silly as permanent borders. Do you genuinely disagree with this? It is an accepted and fairly well known fact, that no one has ever disputed afaik. Maybe we are just having a semantic dispute, I would be happy to change the phraseology again as long as the general drift is the same.
See, e.g. the books I cited. I just grabbed the first and most decisive (I thought) references on the web I could. The Sharett speech and the "Attitude of the parties on the territorial issue" aren't enough as a source? I mean, anybody who says Israel said things like the post 67 quotes (except for a short time around 56) is afaik, lying. Anything else would smack of expansionist aims and rhetoric that Israel respectively did not have and was never stupid enough to use, except in 1956.
Of course, it is true that Israel got only 17.5% of the territory under the British Mandate in the 40s - P + TJ. What is bad is "original". It's a complicated can of worms that I plan to slowly help improve on Wikipedia, and I started logically at San Remo, which I hope is enough to refute "original." Just because something is said often should not be enough for it to be in Wiki if such sources fail to use their own sources correctly, or don't source their claims at all.
I took out "unfortunately".--John Z 04:19, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I have issues with a claim that is unsupported, and which your sources don't support. "Provisional boundaries" to me sounds like the exact opposite of "permanent borders", yet you claim the former implies the latter. Why don't you grab one of those handy history books you have, and quote some historian making that claim instead, then we should have no issue. Until then, I will be reverting unsourced speculation and original research as per Wikipedia policy. Jayjg (talk) 17:47, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and as for the 17.5%, it's quite clear that there was an original mandate that was considerably larger, and that Israel got 17.5% of that mandate; on this we agree. However, you think that including this fact is "complicated". Regardless, there are many sources which use this number, and excluding their POV is the opposite of the NPOV policy. Jayjg (talk) 17:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
As I said before, what relevance do events that happened in the 20s - the drawing of the boundaries of the mandate(s) have to things, the armistice lines - that relate solely to the 1948 war? There is not the slightest question that the San Remo resolution did not necessarily include, all / or even any, of TransJordan in the mandate. So the problem here is that we do not agree. "Original" is unacceptable, and it is better to just get rid of a confusing issue in a not really relevant article, and treat it in its proper place. (If this isn't policy, it should be.) When Israel was born, Jordan had not been under the Mandate, for a couple years, further complicating writing an accurate sentence. (Which would be something like "17.5 % of the area ruled under the terms of the Palestine Mandate from March 1921 (de facto), 1924 de jure) to May 46" ) Rather more complicated than "original"
NPOV does not mean one must make inaccurate statements if they contradict (easily) available, e.g. 20th century documents. (From the NPOV page, roughly) The problem on this issue is that a lot of secondary sources confuse a confusing issue even more, and that there is political motivation ironically shared by wildly different actors - the PLO, Jordan, and some circles in Israel, to do so.
I gave a link to the text of San Remo in the San Remo article. The boundaries were acrimoniously debated there, and the parties decided to put off the matter til later, as the Resolution shows. As a matter of fact, the first provisional boundary, in June 1920, drawn for the Palestine Mandate was the Jordan River, and TransJordan was explicitly excluded. (See Bernard Wasserstein, Israelis and Palestinians ... ISBN 0300101724, p.100, or so, or the Leonard Stein book I referred to in the San Remo article, last page) I want to read a few more books this summer and look up some primary sources to get the matter completely straight so I can write very NPOV articles, but the Wasserstein book will probably still be my main source.
On the armistice line issue, my main point was that Israel went from "talking up" the lines generally (especially immediately after 49), to "talking down" after 67, and you are right that I went too far, as the earlier version had gone too far the other way. The fact that Israel did not make any territorial claim beyond them (see second source) seems pretty important to me, too, as did the sourced claim I gave for the treaty offers. Do you object to them being included? But in any case, I dropped this wording and I'm sure we can come to mutually acceptable wording. We obviously differ (reasonably) on some interpretations, and I admit I could provide additional sources for the Israeli attitude. So I made just minor changes here for now, based completely on the two MFA sources. Hope we can have an armistice here.--John Z 06:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Your edits are reasonable. I've restored one small phrase from your previous edit; let me know what you think. Jayjg (talk) 15:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Great, even better; it's worthwhile to make that clear. Thanks. --John Z 17:57, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article shows heavy Bias

Presently this article shows a heavy bias in the section Violations it does not show the Israeli violations or the resolutions that came out of them. Yet these were far more than the Jordanian, Syrian or Egyptian violations.Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 13:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to put some citations in notably

http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/e7f2011e251d236105256728005b8174!OpenDocument

and some to show that the Israeli complaints were not upheld in the main. although I feel that all of this should go under a separate page of Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC).Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 14:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Percentages again

I don't think it's POV to explain where the various percentages come from, but I certainly don't agree that one could handily take Transjordania/Jordan/Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan out of the equation. The Mandate did include Jordan + present day Israel and arguably at least also the Golan Heights, and nowhere did it stipulate that a Jewish homeland had to be limited to areas west of Jordan. The truth is that the area available to Jewish settlement shrunk with each year, in violation of the original mandate. --Leifern 23:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

True. ←Humus sapiens ну? 23:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
It's a question of the appropriate encyclopedic context for the article. The 1947 resolution allocated about 55% of Palestine to the Jewish state and Israel was eventually established on 78% of the territory of Palestine. These figures are not disputed and appear in many standard accounts. The Balfour Declaration, 1917 only promised a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine and not the British Mandate of Palestine, which didn't exist then. The Palestine Mandate of 1922 noted that "the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" and article 25 effectively exempted what became Transjordan from the provisions of the mandate. I think you could say something like "Israel was established on 18% of the land to which Zionists aspired", but then some, including Ben Gurion, aspired to more than Palestine and Transjordan and so the figure of 18% is still somewhat arbitrary. However, I don't think you could argue that Zionist aspirations are the appropriate encyclopedic context. I also don't see a good reason for excluding the standard 78% figure. --Ian Pitchford 14:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I think "Zionist aspirations" and the intentions attributed to Ben Gurion are perjorative, to say the least, and indicative of an anti-Zionist perspective. "Effectively exempted" is a weasel term, and "Palestine" had no firmer boundaries in 1917, 1922, or 1947 than it has now. The 78% number misleads a reader into thinking that Jews were involved in a land grab of "Palestine" at the expense of Arabs, which is surely one perspective; but another equally valid perspective is that of all the land the UK controlled in the original mandate, the vast majority - in terms of area - went to Arabs for their exclusive use. It is not as if Egypt or Jordan were anxious to delineate the boundaries of Palestine between 1949 and 1967. --Leifern 14:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

"Zionist aspirations" is certainly the right phrase - remember we are talking about the situation before the establishment of Israel and so one could hardly refer to "Israeli aspirations". "Jewish aspirations" would be even less appropriate, given that most Jews aspired to live in places other than Palestine and that some prominent Jews (e.g., Einstein) were anti-Zionist. In any case I had a specific resolution in mind, that of the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich in 1937, but obviously there are plenty of examples from other Congresses. The Balfour Declaration, 1917 only refers to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home" and the Palestine Mandate document refers back to the Balfour Declaration. In 1917 the Ottoman territory of Palestine didn't include Transjordan. There are many maps of this period on the web. Ben Gurion wrote about his territorial ambitions. For him the "Land of Israel" was Palestine, Jordan and parts of Syria and Lebanon - this wasn't speculation on my part. As you say we are talking about different perspectives and I'm sure you'd agree that an encyclopedic article should describe them in an NPOV way, making it clear that they are perspectives and not undisputed facts. --Ian Pitchford 15:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

"Land of Israel" refers to a historical region, in Hebrew "Eretz Israel" - has nothing to do with aspirations. Your version is unmitigated propaganda. Zionist aspirations were to live in a Jewish homeland where they wouldn't be killed for being Jews. This was and obviously still is too much to ask. --Leifern 16:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
At the 1937 World Zionist Congress Ben Gurion argued for the acceptance of partition as a step towards securing all the "Land of Israel" or "Greater Israel". That's my point. It's just arbitrary to express the percentage of the land held by Israel in 1949 as a percentage of the British Mandate of Palestine, but it's important as one of the ideological perspectives. The existing version is propaganda because it doesn't place the figures in any perspective at all. --Ian Pitchford 16:39, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I certainly agree that the figures need to be put into perspective, and this should possibly be a separate paragraph. It is false to lead a reader to the impression that Israel grabbed most of the available land, while it is certainly true that Israel ended up with more land than the partition plan envisioned. --Leifern 16:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. It's possible to cover all of this in relatively few words without doing injustice to either/any perspective. --Ian Pitchford 17:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
In this light, why not cite both numbers counting/excluding Transjordan? ←Humus sapiens ну? 21:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that would be best as it wouldn't elevate the perspective of one community above the other. --Ian Pitchford 09:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Humus Sapiens (to put both numbers in), as they are equally relevent. :-) 172.138.114.72 15:35, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This needs a lot of reworking to be made into something approaching correct. The areas under Israeli control, as set by the agreements, encompassed about 21% of the original mandatory Palestine established in 1921, and 78% of the remaining mandate following the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. Jordan was created from the Churchill white Paper of 1922 under article 25 of the British mandate. It was 17 June 1946 that the second Anglo-Jordanian treaty, on the basis of which Britain recognised the independence of Trans-Jordan under the name of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but Jordan was established in 1922 under the British tutelage and then gained independence in 1946.Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

This matter is too complex to be treated here in depth. I once tried to just entirely cut it out of this not directly related article, but it has slowly crept back in. It is treated in depth in the articles British Mandate of Palestine, Transjordan and particularly Talk:British Mandate of Palestine see about a year ago. Also see some comments above on this page. There are at least 4-5 dates that could be considered the creation of Transjordan: Abdullah's autumn 1920 armed arrival there, the march 1921 Cairo conference that added Article 25 to the draft mandate and the Jerusalem Churchill-Abdullah talks, the 1922 League of Nations conferral of the mandate on Britain after the Churchill White Paper, the 1923 'independence' of Transjordan and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which is what finally clearly removed the area from Turkish sovereignty. That is why I left it at "early 20's" in order to not drive the casual reader insane and to not pick any one of these dates. Because of these complexities one should not use the words "original mandate" because according to the best sources, the original mandate, what Herbert Samuel ruled under the terms of the draft mandate according to his superiors' orders after his arrival in July 1920 did not include Transjordan. Nor did even what the Weizmann and other Zionists requested at Versailles and elsewhere include all of modern (Trans)jordan. As I noted inline, this is a confusing matter, and so many, many sources, which usually are not particularly devoted to this matter or written by specialists on this period get it wrong. I tried to write something about which everyone can agree and that includes both the big and little percentages. Cheers, John Z (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Instead of "Original mandate" try using the correct term of the "The Palestine Order of Council 1922" which duly received Royal assent and Given at Our Court at Saint James's this Fourteenth day of August, 1922, in the Thirteenth Year of Our Reign.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/361eea1cc08301c485256cf600606959/c7aae196f41aa055052565f50054e656!OpenDocument

shortly after the League of Nations issued the Palestine Mandated and under article 25 the territory that was to be later named Trans-Jordan was excluded from the Palestine Mandate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashley kennedy3 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting Trivia

During the negotiations on the island of Rhodes in January 1949, Ralph Bunche used a new method to defuse tension and arguments. He invited each of the delegates to adjourn to a nearby room and shoot pool with him. His best competitor in these matches was Moshe Dyan, smoke curling up from both their cigarettes.

After a treaty was signed and sealed, Ralph Bunche walked about the room, handing gift wrapped packages to the delegates. Moshe Dyan recalled unwrapping a ceramic plate, made by a local Rhodes pottery and bearing decoration and text to commemorate their treaty. Moshe Dyan realized that these plates had to have been ordered in advance of agreement. "Suppose we had not reached agreement, Ralph?" "I'd have busted them on your %@#&*@ heads," Bunche answered.

This material came from an interview Ralph Bunche gave to the author of a book about the Nobel Peace Prize, plus Moshe Dyan's memoirs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.188.29.213 (talk) 16:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)