The “Palestine” maps shown in the newsroom of MSNBC on October 17 represented what the pro-Palestine crowd believes to be the “disappearing Palestine.” These maps, often seen at “free Gaza” demonstrations, are a gutter tactic aimed at manipulating the masses by fictitious visual aids.
Following protests, MSNBC reluctantly apologized by saying that “in an attempt to shed light on the geographic context of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, we aired a map that was factually wrong.” Even if sincere, this apology can’t undo the impression these maps left on millions of viewers that pay little attention to the well-documented anti-Israel bias exercised by MSNBC.
The “disappearing Palestine” maps shrewdly misrepresent the word “Palestine,” which until 1948 was a territory ruled by Great Britain. This is why from 1917-1948, people dwelling in Palestine – both Jews and Arabs – were given certificates identifying them as Palestinians. This is why Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir could say that “we [Jews] are all Palestinians. Want proof? I still have my old [Palestine] passport.”
This is why “disappearing Palestine” actually represents the gradual British retreat from their original plan designating all of what is now Israel and Jordan for a Jewish state.
The map above shows how the British envisioned the borders of the future Jewish state in 1920. In an attempt to pacify its Arab allies, however, just two years later these borders were dramatically changed to what actually represents present-day Israel. The map below shows the new 1922 British borders designated for the Jewish state.
Dramatic as this change was, “Jewish Palestine” was reduced even further by the “partition plan” to roughly half the size of the 1922 borders. The map below shows the 1947 UN Partition Plan, where the white areas represent Jewish territory.
The Arab rejection of the Partition Plan sparked the 1948 War of Independence, which left the West Bank in Jordanian hands. The map below shows that the borders of Israel from 1948-1967 were slightly larger than those of the Partition Plan.
Following the Six Day War in 1967, the Jordanian West Bank, Egyptian Gaza and Syrian Golan Height were conquered by Israel. Following the 1993 Oslo Accord, Israel agreed in principal to shrink its borders once again back to those that existed until 1967, but instead of returning the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, respectively, a brand new Arab state would receive the land. The map below shows Israel’s future borders in light green.
Palestinian/MSNBC propaganda says the exact opposite simply by misrepresenting Mandate Palestine as a Palestinian state that supposedly pre-existed Israel. If anything, therefore, “disappearing Palestine” represents nothing less than the disappearance of Israel. Since Arabic is written from right to left, the proper meaning of these maps becomes obvious. The yellow areas in the MSNBC map represent the envisioned gradual disappearance of Israel.
