laitimes

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

author:The bird flies high and flies thousands of miles in one fell swoop

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has long been a hot spot in international geopolitics, but now the two sides of the conflict are constantly linked to each other. For more than two thousand years, Palestine has been a geo-cultural concept of region, not a national concept. Ancient Palestine included present-day Palestine, Israel, southern Lebanon, southwestern Syria, Jordan, the northern Red Sea, and the eastern Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Today's Palestine is much smaller than the ancient Palestinian area, but in today's Palestine there are de facto two political entities, Israel and Palestine.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

As early as 1200 BC, Jews settled in Palestine and established their own Kingdom of Israel. At that time, the area was not called Palestine, but the Canaanite area. The kingdom of Israel, founded by the Jews, was later divided into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judea in the south, which were later destroyed by Assyria and Babylon, respectively. Since then, the Jews in Canaan have been ruled by the Persian Empire, the Alexander Empire, the Roman Empire and other empires. In 135 AD, the Roman Empire expelled Jews from the region in favor of non-Jewish residents from other areas. The Romans also changed the name "Canaan" to "Palestine" to erase local Jewish traces. Jews began to move around the world.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

The land of Palestine has been multi-ethnic since ancient times. Even during the reign of the ancient kingdom of Israel, the land known as "Canaan" was inhabited by many peoples other than the Jews. In the 7th century AD, the Arabs seized Palestine from the Eastern Roman Empire. Since then, the region has been Arabized and Islamized. Jews encountered white eyes, persecution and even massacres in European countries during their long wandering, and Zionist thought began to rise at the end of the 19th century. The First World Congress of Zionist Organizations, held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, set the destination for Zionism in Palestine, the homeland of Israel.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

After the victory of the First World War in 1918 with the victory of the Allies, the former Middle Eastern hegemon, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, was completely dismembered as a defeated country. At this time, Palestine became a British trusteeship. Jews began to pour into Palestine. The Arabs, who had lived here for thousands of years, believed that the Jews had usurped their land. When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the persecution of Jews led to an increasing influx of German Jews into Palestine. At the beginning of the mass migration of Jews to Palestine in 1919, there were only 65,000 Jews living in the entire Palestinian area, but by 1939, when World War II broke out, it had risen sharply to 450,000.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution stipulating that the Canaanite region, then under British trusteeship, would establish the Jewish State of Israel and the Arab State of Palestine after the end of the British Mandate in 1948. In this partition plan, the Jews, who accounted for less than one-third of the total population of Palestine, received about 55% of the land and most of it was in rich coastal areas, while the Arabs, who accounted for more than two-thirds of the total population, received only about 45% of the land and most of them were hilly and barren areas. The Jews formally established the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, on the territory demarcated by the United Nations, in compliance with United Nations resolutions, while the League of Arab States categorically rejected the United Nations partition plan.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

In the early hours of May 15, 1948, the Arab coalition of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon launched war on Israel, which had only been established the day before. Israel, which had only been established for a day, had not yet had time to form a regular army, so the Arab coalition had the upper hand at first. At this time, at the suggestion of the United States, the United Nations Security Council demanded a ceasefire between the two sides within 36 hours, and the Arab coalition, which thought it had the upper hand, agreed to a temporary ceasefire. It is precisely this precious respite time that Israel uses to expand its troops and purchase weapons, while the Arab coalition forces are caught in a situation of finger-pointing. On March 10, 1949, the first Middle East War came to an end with Israel's victory.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

On 11 May 1949, Israel officially became the 59th Member of the United Nations. Since then, four wars in the Middle East have broken out between Israel and Arab countries. In the process, Israel has won many battles, while the Arab countries have repeatedly lost battles. After the Fourth Middle East War, Egyptian President Sadat realized that the traditional demand of Arab countries to eliminate the Israeli state was unrealistic, so he believed that in the future, Arab countries and Israel could only solve the Middle East problem through peaceful negotiations. On November 19, 1977, Sadat became the first Arab head of state to visit Israel. Sadat did not reach any substantive agreement on Israel's visit, but the symbolic significance of the visit was enormous.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

The visit marked the first time in history that Arab countries had recognized Israel's right to exist. Egypt's recognition of Israel did not lead other Arab countries to follow suit. As of October 2020, only Egypt and Jordan recognize Israel and have diplomatic relations with them. Since 2020, four Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, have successively announced the normalization of relations with Israel under the facilitation of the United States. To date, the vast majority of Islamic countries still do not recognize Israel. In addition to Islamic countries, North Korea and Cuba are two countries that do not recognize Israel given their special relationship with the United States.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

At present, 27 countries in the world do not recognize Israel: North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros, Niger, Senegal, Mali and Cuba. If Israel is a state that is not widely recognized, then whether Palestine, as an adversary, is an independent, sovereign state is also controversial internationally. Generally speaking, a country needs to have its own territory, citizens, political power and other elements. Theoretically, the territory of Palestine is the 45 per cent of the land originally demarcated in the United Nations partition plan.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

But Palestine's rejection of this partition plan was tantamount to abandoning statehood. At that time, the Arabs felt that they could completely drive Israel out and establish a Palestinian state that belonged entirely to the Arabs before rejecting the partition resolution. But later, when it became unrealistic to drive out the Israelis, it was better to have a small territory than nothing, so the local Palestinian Arabs expressed their willingness to recognize Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state on 11,500 square kilometers of land belonging to them according to the original United Nations partition resolution. Who knew that Israel, which won successive wars in the Middle East, had changed its mind. Palestine did not recognize the partition resolution and did not recognize the State of Israel; It is now the turn of a victorious Israel not to recognize the Palestinian State.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

Israel does not recognize Palestine as an independent sovereign State and is gradually encroaching on the territory originally allocated to Palestine in accordance with the United Nations partition resolution. From November 1974, the Palestine Liberation Organization began its activities as a United Nations observer entity. On 15 November 1988, the State of Palestine was officially proclaimed, and on 15 December 1988, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution deciding to officially replace the original use of the title "PLO" by the name "Palestine" within the United Nations. By 1993, Israel had signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, officially recognizing Palestine as a state, but the IDF still occupied 31 percent of Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

At present, the area under the actual control of Palestine is only 3,220 square kilometers. This is less than one third of the area allocated to the Palestinian territories in the original United Nations partition plan. Even this territory, which is less than a third of the original partition plan, is divided into scattered enclaves by Israel by the separation zone and road network. While Palestine theoretically has its own territory, in practice most of the legal territory of Palestine is under the de facto Israeli occupation. Palestine also has its own nationals: as of November 2020, the Palestinian population is 13.5 million. However, a significant number of Palestinians live in Israeli-controlled areas. In fact, the question of whether Palestine is a state is controversial internationally.

Whether Palestine is a country or a region

Of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 137 recognize Palestine as an independent State. In other words, more than 50 countries do not recognize Palestine. Of course, the vast majority of countries recognize both Israel and Palestine as independent sovereign states. On 29 November 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution granting observer status to Palestine by 138 votes in favour, 9 against and 41 abstentions. At present, Palestine has no voting rights in the United Nations and only observer status. This does not affect the fact that the United Nations recognizes Palestine as a sovereign state – the Palestinian flag has been flying in front of the United Nations Headquarters building since 2015. Of course, Palestine has also been striving for many years to become a full Member of the United Nations.

Read on