The history of the Holy Land, its people and borders over the last century is among the most complicated in the world, but there are always some who seek to reduce history to simple, one-sided narratives with one party portrayed as helpless victims and the other as violent aggressors.
It’s the kind of unfortunate gutter debate seen so often on the internet, and that is spread by dishonest advocates who end up doing tremendous damage to both the public conversation and the chances of peace. This is the kind of rhetoric that newspaper reports are supposed to strenuously avoid.
Unfortunately, an image caption in an otherwise well-written recent Irish Times piece falls foul of this basic standard, and is helping spread a pernicious Palestinian lie.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
In the photograph, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is seen holding up an infamous set of maps that purport to show a “loss of Palestinian land” or, in this case , “Palestinian compromise.”
The photograph, sourced from Getty Images, was originally uploaded to the Getty website with the following caption. Note its careful language:
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas holds a placard showing maps of (L to R) historical Palestine, the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, the 1947 United Nations partition plan on Palestine, the 1948-1967 borders between the Palestinian territories and Israel, and a map of US President Donald Trump’s proposal for a Palestinian state under his new peace plan, as he speaks in the West Bank’s Ramallah on September 3, 2020, as he meets by video conference with representatives of Palestinian factions gathered at the Palestinian embassy in Beirut in rare talks on how to respond to such accords and to a Middle East peace plan announced by Washington this year. (Photo by Alaa BADARNEH / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ALAA BADARNEH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)”
As Getty’s explanation makes clear, the set of maps held by Abbas in the picture are a mixture of reality and plans put forward by third parties as visions for ending the conflict. Although the poster held by Abbas has the headline “Palestinians historic compromise,” the maps would be better titled “Palestinian historic selectivity”, for they show only a very partial picture of the last century.
Regardless, any news writer or editor worth his or her salt should know not to accept at face value the claims made by a politician. Yet, for some reason, someone at the Irish Times had the photograph inserted with the following, inaccurate caption:
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas holds a placard showing the diminishing size of Palestinian territory since the 1947 United Nations partition plan as he addresses a video conference from Ramallah. Photograph: Alan Badarneh/AFP/Getty”
Of course, the maps do not simply show “Palestinian territory” since 1947 – they show the region before that year, as well as subsequent plans. And of course the words Palestinian territory are highly contentious; after the 1948 Arab-Israel war, lands occupied by Jordan and Egypt were not typically referred to as “Palestine” or “Palestinian territory.”
Regrettably, by accepting Palestinian propaganda at face value, the Irish Times is spreading an anti-Israel trope, one that places all the blame for the conflict on Israel while absolving the Palestinians of any blame and agency.
So, what do the maps really show?
The placard held by Abbas describes the maps as demonstrating “historic compromise,” and the Irish Times calls them an illustration of “the diminishing size of Palestinian territory.” But what do they really show? Let’s look at the maps one at a time:
The first map, strangely ignored by the Irish Times, makes out as if all the land was under “Palestinian” control before 1917. In reality, the land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Inhabitants – Jews, Muslims and Christians alike – were called Palestinian.
Related Reading – The Palestinian People: What’s in a Name?
The second map is of the Peel Commission’s 1937 partition plan. It called for a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international protectorate enveloping Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but violently rejected by the Arabs. The inclusion of this second map is highly misleading as it was only a plan, and never the reality on the ground.
The same goes for the third map, which is of the 1947 UN Partition Plan. This plan was rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews. Had the Palestinian Arabs actually *compromised* there could have been a two-state solution that looked like the map. Instead, Arab rioting against Jewish businesses led to attacks against Jewish civilians, and a war soon followed, with Jewish areas coming under siege, cut off from food and water. Its inclusion on a list of alleged compromises is highly duplicitous.
As a result of being forced to fight, the frontiers of the State of Israel were significantly larger than those in the 1947 and 1937 plans the Arabs rejected. This crucial detail is not clear from the map series.
Related Reading – Israel’s Great Risk for Peace: The 2005 Gaza Disengagement
In the fourth map, the status quo between 1949 and 1967 is depicted. These were never “borders,” as Israel’s enemies refused to acknowledge Israel’s existence. These were mere ceasefire lines, with the understanding that the Arab countries would eventually attempt to erase Israel.
It’s interesting to note one particularly egregious omission from this cherry-picked series of maps: Israel managed to preempt the 1967 attack by its enemies and gained control of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza – only to later return them to Arab control.
An accurate reflection of reality would have shown large growth of territory controlled by Israel following the 1967 war, followed by a significant reduction as Israel gave away the two swathes of land. But this doesn’t fit the narrative of ‘Israel steadily taking more and more land while the Palestinians are ready to compromise,’ so these stages simply don’t appear.
And what the maps certainly won’t tell anyone who looks at them is that the Palestinian people have a greater degree of sovereignty over the last 25 years following the Oslo Accords than they have had at any point in their history.
Over the years, Israel’s territory has grown and shrank. That’s an indisputable fact. Labeling misleading maps as evidence that Palestinian territory is being diminished is the kind of rhetoric expected of cheap propagandists – not of a reputable news outlet such as The Irish Times.
