From what I’ve read the Jewish population at that time was much more that 3%, I can’t find a census for 1917 but extrapolating a bit shows maybe it was more like 8-9%. I might be totally off there but its not so relevant. Because the Arab leadership was fundamentally opposed to any kind of self determination for the Jews there regardless of its size.
The cartoon isn’t just presenting a made up history but its actually flipping history on its head. In the case of the Peel Commission it was the Jews asking for a state, or at least agreeing to a proposal for one, and the Arab leadership saying “no”. They didn’t make any kind of counter proposal because they were opposed to a Jewish state in any form. Yet, even up until fairly recently Israel’s official policy was still a two state solution.
I think its important to acknowledge that before moving on to talking about the efficacy of individual proposals. Sure, I can agree that land swaps and population exchanges are distasteful but still arguably a better alternative to never ending inter ethnic conflict and deadly violence. Greece and Turkey ended up with a similar solution and while it was a tragedy, in the long run it was perhaps better then the alternative. Yet still that was just the first of several proposal.
Not to mention the part where Palestine wasn’t given/offered independent statehood during the creation of Israel
By the time Israel declared independence, Palestine had been offered it TWICE and their response was no, with no counter proposal, because they were opposed to Israel’s existence as an independent Jewish state in any form. Palestinian statehood was less of a priority than denying Jewish statehood, it seems.
You’re right that the political cartoon captures the “sentiment at the current moment” but that’s what infuriates me about it. Because that sentiment is based on lies. Lies meant to make people sympathetic to the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the remaining Jews of the middle east. I am quite sure if we are ever unfortunate to witness a second holocaust against them, billions of people around the world will be gleefully cheering it on because they think they “deserve it”, based on these “sentiments” captured by the cartoon.
I’m not sure its accurate to say they’re “getting statehood”- they’re getting recognition from various countries now but real statehood is more than that. In my view it looks more like the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. But this “trial run” of statehood (at least that’s how I see it), ended with, again, the Palestinians leadership prioritising destroying Israel over building a functional state.
I agree that now it seems “far too late” though. I can empathise with Israelis who no longer believe a two state solution would help achieve peace. At every opportunity, as far as I’m aware (yeah I’m no historian either), the Palestinian/Arab leadership has chosen violence over peace and diplomacy, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve never even made a peace proposal themselves, and all of the various wars were initiated by them. And the ordinary Palestinians AND Israelis are paying the price for that.
At this rate their children and grandchildren will still be paying the price and to me that’s the biggest tragedy of this conflict- so far.
As for what “getting to be under jewish governance” means, well we can see it right now. There’s about 2 million Muslim Arabs living peacefully In Israel. They have democratic representation in the Knesset and full equal rights under Israeli law. Its not perfect, like in any society there are some bigotry against minorities there and I would argue they should have more representation in the supreme court too (only 1 of the supreme justices is an Arab so far and I would personally hope that increases with time, in the interest of equal representation).
I also don’t really agree with the view that they “flooded land of others and claimed rights to it”. As far as I understand anyway, Jewish immigrants generally bought the land legally. E.g. Tel Aviv was built on land legally bought from the Ottoman Empire in 1909. Nobody else was living there at the time and, personally anyway, I don’t see anything unethical about them founding this town as a safe haven for other Jewish people to live, as they escaped the various pogroms of the 20th century in Europe and the middle east. Especially as long as the government’s immigration policy allows it.
Lastly, no, I would never argue for taking anyone’s land away and that’s why I think the 1948 war, like most wars, was unjust, because that was the goal of the various Arab armies invading the newly declared state of Israel. For example, leadership of the Arab league openly described their intentions to “drive the Jews into the sea” (see “political objectives” here ) and Jewish leaders genuinely feared a second holocaust.
In the end as we already know, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced but it seems to me this was generally a result of what many of the Jews at the time saw as an existential struggle for their survival. Palestinians communities not perceived to be a threat in that regard just became Israeli citizens. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jews not involved with the war were displaced from the various Arab countries as “revenge”, their homes and possessions were taken from them, and where did they go? The only country where they could feel confident that the government wouldn’t eventually do the same thing to them again- Israel.