Israel: land purchases and the 1947 partition plan

Buying land does not found a state: the case of Israel

Jewish land ownership in British Mandate Palestine stood at around 7% of the land, with nearly a third of the population. The UN partition plan in 1947 allocated 56% of the territory to the future Jewish state. This leap—from a minority owner to holding over half the map—is the sustancia ilegal over which the issue has been debated for decades. If land purchases alone legitimized sovereignty, any foreign buyer could proclaim a state in their garden. The discussion, however, does not end there: some argue that 7% was never proven with deeds, while others respond that the issue is not how much was bought, but how much was expropriated afterward.

How much land did Zionists really buy?

The starting thesis is that early Jewish colonists bought the land and repopulated it, giving them the right to exist there. The opposing objection is that acquiring land in a foreign country grants rights under existing laws, not the power to rule or expel its nationals. The example given is Germans buying property in Mallorca: no one expects them to declare the island an independent state.

The counterargument is significant: land belongs to those who work it, and the desert bloomed. The point some demand and no one provides remains unverified: the deeds of these purchases. The figure—7%—comes from estimates on property distribution, not a single registry.

1947: a partition with international Jerusalem and a customs union

It is necessary to clarify what the UN approved. It did not proclaim any state: it proposed dividing Palestine into two administrative states with economic and customs union, keeping Palestine as a common framework and Jerusalem as a free city under international control. The General Assembly resolution was not binding and, on paper, gifted the Negev to the Jewish side without much explanation.

The proposed division gave 56% of the territory to a group that was a third of the population and owned about 7% of the soil. Hence the Palestinian rejection, which did not demand 100% out of whim, but considered the plan a dispossession. When the British mandate expired, the State of Israel proclaimed itself and initiated, according to the narrative dominating part of the analysis, a process of mass expulsion: 750,000 Palestinians displaced and around 700 villages destroyed. Some call it ethnic cleansing and others dispute it; what is not disputed is that the subsequent map does not correspond to the distribution of prior property.

The struggle for antiquity: from the Philistines to the 1714 book

The other major line of debate is who arrived first. It is recalled that Canaanites and Philistines—the namesakes of Palestine—were there before the campaigns described in the Book of Joshua, and after the revolts against Rome, surviving non-converts were deported, explaining the Diaspora. The Muslim conquest of the region is dated 636-39, when there were no longer significant numbers of Jewish religious inhabitants.

At the other end, a book printed in 1714 is cited: its author, who mastered Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek, traveled the area from 1695 and cataloged around 2,500 places cited in biblical and rabbinic sources. The conclusion drawn is that the toponymy and population of the territory were not Arab. The debate on whether this proves anything remains open, joined by the thesis of Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, who argues that the Jewish people as such is a construct and that the descendants of the ancient Jews are the current Palestinians. As a curiosity, both sides also antiestéticature a text attributed to Gandhi in 1938 opposing the founding of a Jewish state there, and a whole paragraph dedicated to the expulsion decrees of Jews from Spain in 1492—one brief and others typed—that no one manages to fix documentally.

Oslo 1993 and the binding framework

There is a point where several currents cross without meaning: the right to exist of the State of Israel, that of Palestine, and the usefulness of continuing to debate who stepped on the soil first. The 1993 Oslo Accords were signed by both parties, and according to this reading, Israel would be abusa them; applying them would resolve much of the dispute. Whoever breaks what they sign loses authority to give lessons.

Opposing this is an uncomfortable realism: the State of Israel exists, quite successfully, and its inhabitants are not going anywhere; if anyone tries to expel them, they have the means and will to prevent it. Discussing their right to exist may be legitimate or not, but mostly it is useless.

Reopening 2,000 years of maps: the precedent no one wants

The most uncomfortable objection to the official narrative is coherence: if a state can justify its borders on a kingdom prior to Rome, nothing prevents others from claiming Granada, Texas, or California with the same criteria. The result would be global chaos. The response is that international law does not work this way, and the key is not antiquity but current treaties.

The discussion has been going on for years without closing. With these threads, the question of whether Israel has the right to exist answers itself in courts and is not answered at all in history. And if the only figure that matters is that: how much was signed, how much was fulfilled, and who audits?