Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Oh good, you are back!
Do you view East Jerusalem as part of Israel, or an occupied territory?
The bolded bit is pretty debatable. They really weren't "a majority" until some time after 1944. Not that it should be all that relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ative_majority |
All of Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city. East Jerusalem only exists as any kind of a separate entity because Arabs invaded and then Jordan annexed it and expelled all Jews. Jordan controlled it for less than 20 years.
I regard it as disputed land. I do not regard it as land inherently belonging to Arabs and unlawfully occupied by Israel. Israel has, in fact, offered the Arab inhabited sections of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as their future capital. Dividing the city in the future is the likely only path forward. I wouldn't say that division has to be based on the former ceasefire lines of 1948, that were later violated by Arabs less than 20 years later.
Edit: I would consider these to be a majority and/or an absoulte majority:
Jews Musilms Christians Total
1844 7,120 5,000 3,390 15,510
1846 7,515 6,100 3,558 17,173
1850 13,860 ? ? ?
1853 8,000 4,000 3,490 15,49
1857 7,000 ? ? 10–15,000
etc...
It should be noted that Muslims and Christians at this point, were not necessarily Arabs. Many of the non-Arabs, such as Turks, left after the war in 1948:
Official reports
In 1920, the British Government's Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine:
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There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions. Jewish agricultural colonies were founded. They developed the culture of oranges and gave importance to the Jaffa orange trade. They cultivated the vine, and manufactured and exported wine. They drained swamps. They planted eucalyptus trees. They practised, with modern methods, all the processes of agriculture. There are at the present time 64 of these settlements, large and small, with a population of some 15,000.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...estine_(region)