Is Palestine actually a country?
Palestine is a nation, but not yet a country. It is one of the unfortunate legacies of European colonialism that many nations have been left over without a country of their own and without the basic right of self-determination. Historically, Palestine was a territory that encompassed all of the area of modern Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After WWII, this territory, which at the time was a British colonial mandate, was turned over to the UN, which voted to partition the land between Arabs and Jews, giving Jews 55% of the land despite the fact that they owned only 7% of it. Arabs throughout the region rejected the partition, considering it a European colonial giveaway of historically Arab land. In the war that followed in 1948, most of the Arab armies failed to live up to their anti-colonial rhetoric. Iraqis, for example — themselves having been under a British colonial mandate for decades — had outdated equipment and ineffectual leadership. Some Iraqi soldiers were sent t
