Mafeesh Falisteene
(Compiled and Edited by Adam Halley)
It was U.S. support for Israel that garnered the blame. This is a familiar gripe of the Arab world, the attempt to deflect attention from its own corruption and ineptitude by identifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the ultimate cause of Arab animosity. That distant conflict, which had nothing to do with al-Qaeda´s motivation for the attacks on
America is so often used as a blind for Arab rejection of the West, that it has crumbled into parody.
Palestinian suffering, apparently so deeply sensed by all Arab nations that not a finger has been lifted by them to relieve the misery of refugees living in squalid camps within their own borders, is rarely ever the true reason for Arab rejectionism. It is a handy screen behind which to hide a glibly anti-Western agenda.
It is not American support for Israel that causes consternation in the Arab world. It is what Israel and the U.S. represent. Democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and a free press are anathema to tribal elites and dictators who display the barest interest in the welfare of their own people. The United States´ allies in the Middle East are indistinguishable from the more extreme regimes in this regard. In fact states such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are so accustomed to their own designation as "moderate" that they expect their own records of repression and militarism to be cavalierly ignored.
There was no Palestinian identity before World War I, as convincingly demonstrated Professor of history Rashid Khalidi, himself a so called Palestinian Arab. He admits that "Palestinian identity" was the last garb that the Arabs of Palestine tried on when all other possibilities where exhausted. It was shared "by a relatively restricted stratum and among them, as well as among the rural and illiterate majority of the population, the new sense of Palestinian identity competed and overlapped with Ottomanism and Arabism, as well as older religious, local and family loyalties." (1)
A political accord signed in Paris on January 3, 1919, Feisal, Emir of Mecca, (later King of Iraq, son of Sharif Hussein of a Hashemite family that had ruled Mecca since the 11th century CE, and the brother of the Emir Abdullah, who was given the Emirate of Transjordan by the British and founded the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan) one of the most prominent and influential Arab leaders, signed an agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, (in the name of the Zionist Organization) the leader of the Zionist movement.
The agreement was preceded by a
British-mediated meeting of the two in June 1918. The agreement specified conditions for the establishment
of the Arab and the Jewish states. In
all the articles of the agreement the future Jewish state was called
"Palestine." Thus Article 2
of the Agreement stated, "Immediately following the completion of the
deliberations of the [San Remo] Peace Conference, the definite boundaries
between the Arab State and Palestine shall be determined by a Commission to be
agreed upon by parties hereto." (4)
The agreement stated
that it was made in the spirit of the racial closeness and ancient ties between
the two peoples and on the assumption that the safest way to fulfill their
national aspirations was by means of bold cooperation. The Arabs would
recognize the Balfour Declaration and would encourage Jewish immigration and
settlement in Palestine. (5)
This fact is extremely important. It proves without the shadow of doubt that at the time of the San Remo Peace Conference, when the Jewish and the Arab sides came forward with their claims, the Arab claimants identified the Jewish side with Palestine. Thus confirming again that a separate "Palestinian people" did not exist at the time. (4)
“The struggle was rather between the Arabs of the Middle East region (including some hundred thousand living in Palestine) and the Jews of the world, in which the Arabs took the lion’s share from which in due course a dozen and more Arab states emerged. Neither at the time of distribution, nor for decades later, moreover, was there any identifiable Palestinian Arab people, much less any center of Arab cultural or political life in Palestine.” (2)
Contrary to widely disseminated but wholly erroneous allegations, a Palestinian state did not exist before 1967 or 1948. A state of Palestine was not promised by authoritative U.N. Security Council Resolution # 242. Indeed, a state of Palestine has never existed. (4)
As a non-state legal entity, Palestine ceased to exist in 1948, when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. When, during the 1948-49 War of Independence, Judea/Samaria and Gaza came under illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively, these aggressor states did not put an end to an already-existing state. From the Biblical Period (ca.1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918-48), the land named by the Romans after the ancient Philistines (a naming intended to punish and demean the Jews) was controlled exclusively by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized. After World War I at the San Remo Conference of April 1920, a binding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over Palestine (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1516) to prepare it to become the "national home for the Jewish People." (2)
Palestine, according to the treaty, comprised territories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza. (2)
Present-day Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Gaza, comprises only twenty-two percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San Remo Peace Conference. In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally and illegally split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews - all of Palestine east of the Jordan River - and gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took the name Transjordan, which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed as Jordan. (4)
From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and a patent contravention of its Mandatory obligations. On July 20, 1951, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah because of his hostility to Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Several years prior to Abdullah's killing, in 1947, the newly formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the Jewish National
Homeland enacted a second partition. Ironically, because this second fission again gave unfair advantage to the Arabs, Jewish leaders accepted the painful judgment while the Arab states rejected it. (4)
On May 15, 1948, exactly one day after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to the tiny new nation founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre../..../.." This genocidal declaration has been and remains to this day at the heart of all subsequent Arab orientations toward Israel. (4)
In 1967, almost twenty years after Israel's entry into the community of nations, the Jewish State - because of its stunning military victory over Arab aggressor states - gained unintended control over Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Although the idea of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, there existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the territories could be "returned." Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer these territories back to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of extermination in 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian "self-determination" was only just beginning to emerge after the Six-Day War, and was not even codified in U.N. Security Council Resolution #242, which was adopted on November 22, 1967. For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it../..../.." (4)
The Talmud tells a story about two men who are crossing a desert. One of them has a small container with water enough for only one person to survive. Another man has no water whatsoever. The one with the water has a dilemma. What shall he do? Shall he share the water with the other man, in which case they will both die from dehydration, or shall he drink it by himself and thus make it through the desert? Our sages tell us that in this cruel situation the one with the water has an obligation to save his own life. They say that the one with the water should likewise not give all of it to the other man in order to save him and forfeit his own life. Since both their lives are precious and equal it is not up to the first man to decide that his own life is less important. (4)
Yesha is the small container of water that can save Israel. It can give her sufficient strategic depth and defensible borders. It must become an inseparable part of Israel. However, our situation is much better than the one in the Talmud parable. The Palestinian Arabs are not destined to perish if they do not get the lands of Yesha. If the world community thinks that the Palestinian Arabs need another state in addition to
Jordan they can make it happen at the expense of the Arabs. If it is possible to create a Jewish state in the midst of Arab hatred it is definitely possible to create an Arab state for Arabs amongst other Arabs. A piece of the Sinai would be a good location for it. (4)
If we are to forget that the Palestinian Arabs already exercised their right to self-determination on the territory of Jordan, we might speak of the need to give the Palestinian Arabs one more chance. However, it should be an internal issue for Arabs.(4)
The world community must therefore think outside the box. The situation must be solved from an unorthodox (thus far) standpoint: an Arab state should not be created on the lands of Yesha. They should become an integral part of the Jewish state. The question is not whether the Jews or the Arabs "deserve" the lands of Yesha more. The point is that Israel cannot survive without them. (4)
Nachman Syrkin, who was one of the founders of "Socialist Zionism", had no inhibitions about making public the possibility of transfer of Arabs from Palestine, and such a proposal appears in his booklet published in 1898. (3)
In the same year, Herzl visited Palestine and saw the country at first hand. A few years later in his unpublished "Draft Charter" for Palestine he wrote that the Jews would have the right to transfer Arabs to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Another person to visit Palestine at that period was the Anglo-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill, who, after a few years reflection, proposed such transfer in lectures which he gave in the U.S.A. and Britain in 1904 and 1905. One should note that the public pronouncements on this question by both Syrkin and Zangwill did not give rise to any adverse comments. (3)
Views of Rothschild's proposing transfer of Arabs were originally written in an (untraced) letter written by Rothschild to Jabotinsky in 1929. They were printed in the Mexican Yiddish newspaper "Tribuna Sionista", in May 1954, in an article by Solomon Gepstein,(320) a person who had been associted with Jabotinsky throughout the latter's career.] (3)
Further incidents concerning Baron de Rothschild and his plans to transfer Arabs from Palestine were related by Shabetai Levy. Levy was one of Baron de Rothschild's officials in PICA, where he assisted in land reclamation projects throughout Palestine. Later, between the years 1940 - 1951, he was Mayor of Haifa. (3)
"The idea of the removal of the Arabs from Palestine would not be received in official British circles as unthinkable."(3) A letter written by the London University lecturer, Edwyn Bevan to "The Times" in September 1936, proposing such a transfer to Iraq, and another was a London dispatch published in "The New York Times" in October 1936, from its staff correspondent, Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr. In this dispatch, Kuhn asked how the British could on the one hand satisfy the Arabs without betraying the Jews, and on the other hand maintain a Jewish National Home without condemning the Arabs to be a subject race. Answering his own question, Kuhn wrote that the rivalry between Arab and Jew in Palestine could be ended "perhaps by a large scale transfer of the population, perhaps by a legislative council or some other scheme". (3)
At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was elected President for an unprecedented fourth term. A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. After telling Roosevelt of their difficulties regarding Palestine, Stettinius wrote in his diary, that Roosevelt felt confident that he would be able to "iron out" the whole Arab-Jewish issue. "He thinks Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it", continued Stettinius, "and he has definite ideas on the subject. It should be exclusive Jewish territory." President Roosevelt had proposed the transfer of large numbers of Arabs from Palestine to Iraq and suggested that the American Government would be prepared to loan one third of the required sum for such a transfer. Weizmann hoped that other Arabs would follow the example. (3)
Roosevelt developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine during the last six or seven years of his life. His views became more extreme as time progressed. Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred thousand Arabs, he eventually stated unequivocally that "Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it." (3)
Numerous population transfers have been carried out during this century in many parts of the world. The ethical considerations underlying such transfers have been debated since the First World War. (3)
Very few people have had the courage to support publicly the transfer of Arabs from Palestine. A study of confidential correspondence, private diaries and minutes of closed meetings, made available to the public under the "thirty year rule", reveals the true feelings of the Zionist leaders on the transfer question. We see from this classified material that Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, Sharett and Ben-Zvi, to mention just a few, were really in favor of transferring the Arabs from Palestine. Attempts to hide transfer proposals made by past Zionist leaders has led to a "rewriting of history" and the censoring and amending of official documents! (3)
Many non-Jews were also in favor of transfer and publicly proposed various transfer plans. These proponents of transfer included two official bodies, namely the Peel Commission, which unanimously recommended transfer, compulsory if necessary, and the British Labour Party who resolved to "encourage" the Arabs to leave. Four Nobel Peace Prizewinners also proposed population transfer - Sir Norman Angell, Christian Lange and Philip Noel-Baker in the specific case of Palestine, and Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, who was the proponent of the Greco-Turkish exchange, which later formed a precedent for the Peel Commission's recommendations for Palestine. Two United States Presidents, Roosevelt and Hoover, and Czecho-Slovakian President Benes, also put forward their own proposals for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine. (3)
Were the non-Jews who made such proposals exclusively non-Jewish Zionists? Not at all. There were a number of anti-Zionists who felt that it was in the best interests of the Arabs of Palestine to be transferred out of a Jewish State. Thus, Harry St. John Philby was in favor of transfer, as were the prominent Arab, Mojli Amin and the rulers of Arab countries such as Iraq and possibly Saudi Arabia. Many of those who opposed proposals for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine claimed that it was unethical to displace Arabs who had lived in the country for "very long periods" of time. Some of these opponents quoted these "very long periods" in terms of centuries, others thirteen hundred years, and still others claimed that the Arabs of Palestine were the descendents of the Biblical Canaanites. Historically, however, such statements have little or no basis. A booklet published by the "Israel Academic Committee on the Middle East" brings numerous references to show the complete desolation of Palestine in the mid-nineteenth century. According to their research, a substantial segment of the "so-called Arabs of Palestine" were "migrants from the surrounding lands - and even farther afield - who have arrived in the country in course of the last 100 - 150 years."(3)
Support for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine was not a prerogative of the right wing. In fact the opposite was usually found to be the case. The first published plan for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine was put forward by Nachman Syrkin, a founder of socialist Zionism. A number of members of "Brit Shalom", a group advocating a bi- national state in Palestine recommended the voluntary transfer of Arabs from Palestine. The Peel Report recommendation for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine, compulsory if necessary, was supported by the members of Mapai (Labour Zionists), whereas the Revisionists strongly opposed it. Finally, the proposal to encourage the Arabs to emigrate from Palestine was made by the British Labour Party and not by the British Conservative Party. It was only in the 1940s that the Revisionists (from America) came out in favor of transfer. (3)
It is true that the extreme left wing party, Hashomer Hazair was consistently very vocal in its opposition to population transfer. However, "actions speak louder than words" and the actions of Hashomer Hazair in displacing Arabs in its own settlement program, and the population transfers in mixed Mapai/Hashomer Hazair kibbutzim makes further comment unnecessary! (3)
The various proposals for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine were intended to remove the friction, either present or future, resulting from an Arab minority in a Jewish State and to enable each nation to live amongst its own people. It was considered, that after the initial trauma of transfer, both Arabs and Jews would live unmolested by each other in their own States and that each people would be able to develop the under-populated and under-developed areas of their respective States. (3)
The Arabs do not want to admit that Israel is an established
fact. It is the duty of the international
community to force them to accept this fact.
This must be done not through the empty words of international
guarantees but by making Yesha an integral part of the Jewish state. By encouraging Israel to annex Yesha the
world community will make it clear to the Arabs that the Jewish state is here
to stay forever. Israel's survival must
take precedence over the creation of another Palestinian state. It is immoral and unethical to place an
existing state in mortal danger for the sake of a prospective state. There is only enough water to save one
man in this land.(4)
1. Rashid Khalidi. Palestinian Identity. Columbia University Press, 1998.
2. Julius Stone. Self-Determination and the Palestinian Arabs. From the book "Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East," Bantam Books, 1972.
3. Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons . A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895 - 1947 http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/transf1.html REVISED 2001
4. Boris Shusteff. http://www.freeman.org Various essays