The land of Israel is once again a powder keg. Jews and Palestinians are preparing for the seemingly inevitable conflict that lies just around the corner. This is a long standing conflict that has had numerous eruptions over the years.
      In the last issue we discussed the fact that Jews had lived continuously in the land of Israel ever since the day they entered it under the leadership of Joshua approximately 3500 years ago. It is a gross distortion of facts to state that the Jews have only returned to Eretz Yisrael (Eh-rehtz Ees-rye-ehl), the land of Israel, within the last one hundred years. Even in Jerusalem, from which the Jews were banished in 135 CE., it was only a few years time before they began to return to the Holy City.
      However, there was a steady stream of Jews that began to return to rejoin their brethren in the land, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many came from Russia and eastern Europe where continual pogroms (persecutions of Jewish people) were carried out on a fairly regular basis. Many Jews also came to America during that time, but others felt the call of the homeland and returned to help rebuild the old waste places in the land that had been given to their ancestors by God Himself.
      As the number of Jewish people began to increase, in what was then known as Palestine, problems began to develop. Many of the Arab people who could also trace their ancestry in Palestine back many generations, began to be concerned. While the Arabs owned most of the land it had pretty much lain fallow. People eked out an existence with small herds of sheep and goats. The Bedouins continued to roam the wild areas, living in tents and raising flocks of animals.
      While the vast majority of Jews who returned to the land were very poor, almost destitute, they did have the backing and support of many more affluent Jews in Europe and America. Because of this, the Jews were able to purchase land from the Arabs, often at greatly inflated prices. This seeming wasteland began to be transformed from a treeless desert into a land ‘flowing with milk and honey.’ It took a tremendous amount of hard work and sacrifice. The kibbutz concept was formed where Jews would live together in a communal arrangement, working for the success of the community. Personal property consisted of just that, a few personal items.
      David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the state of Israel lived on a kibbutz. He was the most powerful man in Israel, yet he lived in a very tiny house. His personal be-longings primarily consisted of his library. This was a far cry from the splendor in which the former heads of most western democracies live.
      Gradually the wasteland began to be transformed. Swamps were drained, crops were planted, orchards were set and the land began to blossom. Today there are vast forests on the mountains of Israel. Millions of trees have been planted, and they are beginning to effect a change in the climate of Israel. Now there is now more moisture in the land of Israel as a result of more rainfall and the water from those rains is being retained in the soil to a greater degree because of the great increase in vegetation.
      As a result of this progress there began to be a shortage of labor. Many Arab people began to -migrate in from the nations nearby. As more and more people came, both Jew and Arab, housing became a problem. Hardly any of the immigrants, whether Jew or Arab, had much money, but the Jews had their benefactors in Europe and America. The Arabs could have had benefactors among the rich sheiks of Arabia, but they did not respond nearly as readily as the Jewish people did.
      The return of the Jews of Israel became known as the Zionist Movement. The people were coming by the thousands to rebuild Tziyon (Tzeeown’ = Zion). Scripture was cited:

“Let heaven and earth praise Him,
The seas and everything that moves in them..
For God will save Zion
And build the cities of Judah,
That they may dwell there and possess it.
Also, the descendants of His servants shall inherit it,
And those who love His name shall dwell in it.”
(Psalm 69:34-36)

      During World War I, Palestine became a great strategic spot. it was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) which was allied with Germany. in December of 1917, the British troops led by Gen. Sir Edmund Allenby invaded Palestine. He marched his soldiers down the valley of Meggido to Jerusalem, ending four centuries of Ottoman rule. In 1922 Britain was given a mandate by the League of Nations to retain control over the region until self-government could be established.
      This began a tumultuous era in the history of the region. On November 2, 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Rothschild, who was leader of the British Zionist federation. This letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, and it provided that a national home be established in Palestine for the Jewish people. This statement was included in the British Mandate which was handed down by the League of Nations in 1922. The original plan for a Jewish state included a much larger area of land than currently under Israeli control.
      Times change, and it soon became apparent that the next war was going to need vast amounts of oil to grease the developing war machine. The Arabs controlled the oil. So, Britain, who had no known oil reserves of their own, began to chip away at the territory originally assigned to the Jews, in order to placate the surrounding Arab nations. In 1923 the Arab state of Transjordan became autonomous and it was recognized as an independent country in 1928. Today Transjordan is known simply as Jordan.
      As the Palestinian Arabs began to see the British waffle on the idea of an independent Jewish state, they took advantage of the situation. Originally Transjordan was to be the homeland for the Arab Moslems. But the Palestinians did not want to move there, and those that did were treated as refugees (and still are to this day). This was just the opposite of the manner in which the Jews accepted their kinsfolk from around the country. The Jews accepted the immigrants into their society and did everything they could to make them productive citizens of their future country.
      In 1919 the General Stan Congress in Damascus demanded that Syria be given independence and that Palestine be included in their new country. This gave additional encouragement to the Palestinian Arabs who wanted the entire region to be under Moslem control as it had been during the days of the recently deposed Ottoman Empire. As a result, anti-Zionist riots were perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs in 1920 and 1921. The riots in 1921 were a direct result of a British decision to allow the admission of 16,500 Jewish immigrants.
      The real problems came in the 1930’s, when Nazi persecution of the Jews began to escalate in Europe. As a result, Jewish immigration increased dramatically so that, by 1939, there were more that 400,000 Jews living in Palestine.
      Along with all of these problems, a power struggle developed within the Arab communities. A virtual civil war was carried out by Hajj Amin alHusayni, the grand mufti (chief Islamic judge) of Jerusalem, in which thousands of Arabs were killed and many more forced to flee or were deported. So much for the grand Arab alliance. it was during this period of time (1936-39) that the Jewish underground military force, the Haganah (Hah-gah-nah) was formed.
      In 1939 the British made another attempt to solve the situation by issuing a ‘White Paper’ which promised that within ten years an independent Palestine would be created with an Arab majority. This was in direct contradiction to the Balfour Declaration which had promised a separate Jewish state. Even worse, at a time when the Jews were under increasing persecution in Europe, the White Paper limited Jewish immigration to 1500 per month until 1944 when Jews would no longer be allowed to immigrate to Palestine.
      Needless to say, the White Paper was totally unacceptable to the Jewish residents of Palestine. They felt totally betrayed by the British and realized that if they were ever going to have a homeland they were going to have to take things into their own hands. Once World War II broke out, the Jews turned their attention to trying to attract support from political leaders in both Britain and the United States.
      During the war, Palestine became a critically important strategic area for the Allied powers. As Rommel began racing through the desert of North Africa it seemed there was nothing to stop him from going all the way on into the Holyland and securing the entire Middle East for Germany and the Axis powers. The Jews of Palestine became an important ingredient in the defense plans of the British and Americans.
      Meanwhile, the Arab states, while not involved directly in the War, were very supportive of the Nazis. The grand mufti of Jerusalem visited Hitler and proclaimed Arab support for his war efforts. As millions of Jews were being sent to their deaths in the Nazi camps, the Jews of Palestine were fighting along with the British and Americans to defeat the Nazi war machine. Needless to say, the Arab support of Hitler did not give the Middle Eastern Jews any hope that a peaceful settlement could be arranged with the Arabs.
      As World War II ended and the world became aware of the terrible holocaust that had taken place among the Jews and other ‘undesirables’ in Europe, the British refused to allow the survivors to immigrate in any significant numbers to Palestine. From the death camps of Hitler, the surviving Jews were herded into new refugee camps to await the decision of the world powers as to what was to become of them. No one wanted them except their Jewish brethren in Palestine. The United States could have opened wide it’s doors to these people, but they failed to do so, as anti-Jewish sentiment was still quite strong in this country as well.
      Thousands of Jews tried to come to Palestine anyway. Many were able to come in under cover of darkness, smuggled up on the beaches of Palestine into the welcoming arms of their Jewish compatriots. However, many thousands of Jews were caught by British patrols and sent to the island of Cyprus, where refugee camps had been established. There they languished until the day came when the nation of Israel was finally able to fly it’s flag in freedom.

      To be continued.

            DEW

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