Well, it's clear that the Zionists cannot be cleared of the "crime" of Zionism, trying to build a Jewish state in the land of Israel (btw, the Koran also acknowledges that Israel is Jewish homeland, so the idea wasn't entirely foreign to Muslims. But that was from the early suras, where the Muslims and Jews were still allies. But I digress). Now there was a pre-existing population, but not much of one, as the place was so mismanaged under the late Ottoman empire that no one could make a living there. The 24,000 Jews that you cite, if we accept it (and Ottoman censuses seem to inspire nothing but arguments, particularly when it comes to counting non-Muslims) was probably close to 10% of the population at the time. As I have mentioned, the Arab population rose something like five-fold between 1880 and 1947, which speaks to a large Arab immigration, brought on by Zionist development and (much improved) colonial government. Factoring this development in, it probably wouldn't have mattered if Palestine had been quite empty at the start of Zionism, because it would acquired an Arab population anyway.
That choice left the other party, the pre-existing population, with a choice of their own: to accept this initiative, which would mean living as non-Jews in a Jewish State, or to resist it. They chose the latter. It is not for me to proclaim this choice was “right” or “wrong”, I merely commented that given the context, the choice was inevitable.
Resistance can take many forms. I don't question the inevitability of some reaction, but the Arab one was particularly unsophisticated, disorganized and violent. I do question formulations that regard this particular result as "inevitable" and "inherent in Zionism".
The Arabs ran riots and pogroms at intervals, without ever organizing their society into any organizations that would have actually supported claims to self-determination, which was not even an idea that most of the Arabs of Palestine had before WWII since they had been ruled by the Turks for 400 years and still considered themselves part of Syria. What political organization they achieved was under the Mufti, who consolidated his power by assassinating his opponents. The sorry state of Arab governance that resulted from this was not "inherent in Zionism".
The British Colonial office meanwhile cursed the troublesome policy that the Foreign Office had saddled them with, and tried to appease Arab tempers when they flared with the delicate "evenhandedness" that your Hayes commission quote shows so well. Doesn't it read just like the Mitchell Report, which also delicately avoided concluding that anyone who worked for Arafat had anything to do with planning or running the intifada? |
