I just don't see where this argument is going to get you legally, factually or morally.
I've never claimed that the land transfers were illegal or immoral. Factually, however, they had consequences.
The land tenure system at the time was feudal: the estates were owned by absentee landlords. traditionally the tenants were part of the estate, when the estate changed hands the tenants paid rent to the new landlord. Many of them had never seen the owners of the land.
All of a sudden the new owner didn't want the people, only the land. Evicted with minimal compensation, the former tenants generally ended up in urban shantytowns, with no employable skills.
Two factors complicated the equation: the openly declared intention of the Zionists to achieve sovereignty over all of the land in the area - including any that was not sold - and establish a Jewish State, and the full support the Zionists had from the British. Given the inevitable eviction of Arabs from any land acquired by Zionist settlers, the assumption that Arabs would be evicted from the entire area once the Zionists achieved sovereignty was only natural.
Arab leaders petitioned the British for a halt to immigration. The petition was flatly denied (by Winston Churchill), and months later the first anti-Zionist riots broke out. The displaced tenants in the shantytowns were the cannon fodder, ideal subjects for poitical demagoguery.
None of this is meant to affix blame, or to say that anything that was done was illegal: since the laws were being made by the British and the British supported the Zionists, there was no need to break any laws. The dislocation of tenant farmers and Arab resistance to the intention to declare a Jewish State did, however, initiate the cycle of violence that we see continuing today. |
