Yeah it's a simple equation.
> The Brits controlled India and decided to split it into two - India and Pakistan, much to the anger of indian nationalists at the time. But Indians put away their objections and reluctantly agreed to it.
> The Brits controlled Palestine and decided to split it into two - Israel and Palestine, much to the anger of many in that area. Instead of accepting the solution with grace , all the Arab states decided to declare war & attack Israel instead of accepting partition.
^ Look at the different reactions in these two scenarios.
However, the point of comparisons is not only to consider similarities but also to understand the differences. Here, the differences are rather critical.
First a point of clarification. The partition plan in 1947 was not a British plan per se. Britain, unsurprisingly, was unable to square the circle between its promise, as expressed in the Balfour declaration, of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ while at the same time not harming the ‘rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’
So the matter was referred, in February 1947, to the newly formed United Nations (UN). On 26 September 1947, Britain announced a unilateral exit from Palestine on 14 May 1948. It was, of course, the British that had made the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland possible. So it is ironic that the British were in large part forced out of Palestine by terror tactics used by the Irgun and Lehi. Though the leaders of the Jewish Agency criticised these underground groups, it could be argued that a precedent had been set of achieving political goals through terrorism.
The UN Partition Resolution, a major milestone towards the realisation of Israel, passed on 29 November 1947. American Zionists put considerable pressure on Harry Truman. Truman had said that he never “had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance.” Late in the day, the US performed a u-turn, abandoning its stance of non-intervention and applying pressure on other UN members to support the partition plan.
Palestinian Arabs constituted two thirds or 1.2 million of the population of the lands. Arabs owned 94 per cent of the total land area. Yet, the UN partition plan proposed that the Jewish state would get 55 per cent of Mandatory Palestine comprising 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs; the remaining land would be a Palestinian state, made up of 725,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. Jerusalem would be placed under international control.
Given what has transpired it is easy to assert that the Arabs should have taken the deal. But that is abusing the benefit of hindsight. Is it really that surprising that the Arabs rejected the partition plan that was so evidently inequitable? It is very well saying that, in contrast, Indian nationalists accepted partition, “putting away their objections,” but the Congress would never have accepted partition if it led to India getting such an unfair outcome, where it would end up with less territory than Pakistan, despite a larger population of non-Muslims.
There are other differences. The partition of India transpired with the consent - however, reluctant - of the British, the Congress and the Muslim League. The partition of Palestine was imposed on Palestinians. The basis of partition was different, too. In India, division was generally at a sub-district level - tehsil and even the level of thana. If the same basis was applied in the case of Palestine, the Jewish state would have been very small indeed: the Jewish community was only a majority in one of the sixteen sub-districts - Jaffa. Then there is the matter of a settler component to Jewish settlement, which has been mentioned by other posters, so I will not repeat the point here.
My final point is not about comparisons, but more a general one, which I have said elsewhere, but will repeat here. I don’t subscribe to the ahistorical view that the Palestinian-Israel conflict is a continuous struggle between Arabs and Jews extending back into the mists of time. Rather it is something rooted in the modern era and that can only be understood in the age of nationalism. It is also a problem, in many ways, that was created in Europe.
As Sholomo Avineri - an Israeli political scientist - said: "European nationalism in the 19th century made Jews strangers or foreigners for the first time. Whatever you say about the Middle Ages, Jews then were viewed as the “other”, but not as alien. Modern European nationalism therefore created a different identity for the Jews. And when Jewish nationalism developed, it was very much a mirror image of European nationalism.”
