put facts on the ground
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Used by early leaders of the Zionist movement to refer to staking a claim to disputed land in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Verb[edit]
put facts on the ground (third-person singular simple present puts facts on the ground, present participle putting facts on the ground, simple past and past participle put facts on the ground)
- (idiomatic, especially diplomacy) To quietly or incrementally change the de facto situation in one's favor in order to win a legal dispute.
- 2002 July, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry[1], Washington, D.C.: President's Council on Bioethics, →ISBN, page 278:
- And while people are dithering, the cloning research in the private biotech industries will put facts on the ground that will be difficult to challenge. Only a moratorium can test the good faith of those who say they want regulation.
- 2013 September 11, Flavia Rocha Loures, Alistair Rieu-Clarke, The UN Watercourses Convention in Force: Strengthening International Law for Transboundary Water Management[2], Oxford: Routledge, →ISBN, page 191:
- Its commanding influence in the signature and future ratification of the CFA, and its attempt to put facts on the ground through hydraulic structures, has brought the relationship between Ethiopia and Egypt to its lowest level since the establishment of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI).
- 2013 December 5, “First planned Palestinian city a symbol of pride”, in AP News[3], Associated Press:
- "It's a message ... that we can also put facts on the ground," said Palestinian-American developer Bashar Masri, using a phrase associated with Israel's settlement construction on lands the Palestinians want for a state.
- 2020 August 14, Anemona Hartocollis, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, “Yale Decision: Justice Dept. Ruling Stings Students”, in The New York Times[4]:
- Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan, suggested that the Yale finding was motivated by "the almost certain fear by Trump administration officials that there's at least a substantial likelihood that come January, they won't be here. So they want to put facts on the ground, to try them in a potential Biden administration."