We all know how the real plan looked, but what would you have changed, or how would you have made it if you had to draw it? (answers like no partition, or one state do not count, this is a question specific to how you would design or modify the 1947 plan)
The most common answer, that of giving pockets of majority this or that their own area if they are of a certain minimum size, wouldn’t have worked then. The majority of the Jews were in the cities, and you can’t split a city.
The best plan would have been to divide up the entire territory, so there would be sufficient resources for each group to remain sustainable, but carving out Jerusalem as something like Vatican City, and administered as a World Heritage Site. The issue with a division based upon resources, though, is there were no good surveys done at the time as to what kinds of resources there were and what future growth would do. Look at the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The Jordan is but a trickle when it reaches the Dead Sea, and the Sea itself is shrinking almost daily.
Climate change may make any division of the land moot as the area continues to dry out, and it makes human habitation unfeasible. The inland areas, namely Palestine, will feel those effects first and probably exacerbate the situation.
so what would you have changed about it?
I don’t believe any partitioning scheme would have survived the interests of that time, or those that came to power over the next decade. This includes government, as well as terrorist/freedom fighter groups.
I agree, but how would you have changed the preposed map?
I don’t believe any map would have worked out as it relies upon artificial, imposed from outside borders. The only borders that have ever worked are the ones that have been agreed upon over generations by the inhabitants themselves.
I know that is the case, this is purely a thought experiment.
