Should the state of Israel have been created in Palestine?

Answer 1

Opinion: No!

That is a loaded question that will illicit responses from both extreme sides of the issue. It is a question of opinion rather than fact but I'll dive into this since controversy has never stopped me from saying what I believe. Given the conflict since the mandate for Israel was established and the fact Israel has not acted in good faith because it continually denies the right of return to the Palestinians who fled in fear during the years Israel was forming I would have to answer a resounding NO! Israel agreed to the right of return as a condition of their Statehood yet today Israel emphatically denies Palestinians that right so in my mind the conditions have not been met and the world should revoke State status and define all of the portioned lands as a united Palestinian State.

Opinion: Yes!

There are two operative parts to that question. There is the implicit question as to whether a Jewish State is something that should exist. There is the explicit question as to whether the geographical location chosen for this Jewish State is proper for its mission. Both questions should be answered in the affirmative for the following reasons.

1) Why a Jewish State: Herzl explained quite well that the European concept of a nation-state was dependent on the idea that all of the people in any particular nation were of the same ethnic stock and heritage. Jews were branded by this system to be "the Other" and were regarded at best as possible equals and at worse as traitors, spies, thieves, and fifth columns. When the Dreyfus Affair turned out marches in Paris that said "Death to the Jews" on account of a kangaroo court against a particular guiltless Jew, it became clear that the Jew could not be integrated into Europe. After the Holocaust, the strongest proof that the Jew and the European Nation-State were irreconcilable, this view persists. In Europe, it is now directed at the Moslems since the Jews are not large enough of a threat to the European System. Unlike Moslems, though, which can return to their countries of origin if the discrimination becomes intolerable, the Jews did not have such a place. This is why the Jewish State is necessary. Since it came into existence it has accepted Jewish political refugees from over 50 nations and flown missions at its own expense to rescue Jews from at least 10 nations.

2) Why Palestine: Ahad Ha'am explains that the Jewish Soul is intrinsically connected to his history and in the same way that a German-American can never be as properly German as a German in Germany, the People of Israel can never be as properly Jewish if they are not in the Land of Israel. The relics in that land speak to a Jewish sensibility and character. There are also religious reasons as expounded by Rav Avraham Kook which posit that the development of a Jewish State in Israel hastens the arrival of the Messiah. There are additional political reasons why Palestine and not Europe. As explained above, the European Culture is strongly anti-Other and making a Jewish State there would have fostered much more contempt and alienation (ironically).

Note: The "No" position is incorrect about the mandate to allow Palestinians to return to Israel being provided for in the permission to Declare a State. The UN specifically provided for two state with the intent that these two states would be ethnically pure or close to pure and that remaining minority would be granted equal rights (similar to the Balfour Declaration's idea of the Jews and Arabs living together in harmony). This explains why the regions selected for the Jewish State were exclusively those with large Jewish Settlements or almost no settlement at all. The Palestinians who assert the Right of Return do so under the United Nations Declaration of Rights which is a non-binding recommendation on Member States or do so through Resolution 194 whose implementation, Israelis assert is contingent on the "practicability" and "a desire to leave peaceably with their neighbors" which is unclear in the Palestinian Case.