No they had not yet had the opportunity to govern themselves, this is not however justification for imposing zionist rule and taking their land
The mufti was definitely an exclusionist, a mirror image of the Jabotinskys and a reaction to them, so imho a smart colonial project might have looked elsewhere for a location, starting in the twenties if not before ... in any case it doesn't matter if the mufti stood on his head and spit nickels, none of it is justification for imposing zionist rule on the people and taking their land
When you buy an apartment building that people are farming, on which they have planted olive trees and built homes and buried their dead, where they have for centuries enjoyed whatever religion to which they subscribe, and you neglect to search the title and you fail to discover that the fat old turk you 'bought' this apartment building from has arrived at being 'owner' only because he paid off some other fat old turk, and that these people happen to be human beings and have a custom of traditional rights of usufruct, and then you start up imposing rule of a religion they find hostile to their own, and making it plain that you are going to by hook or by crook take all the apartment buildings from the sea to bloody Yemen if you damn well feel like it, and you roll in with your guns and armoured bulldozers to evict them, then clearly you are not at all concerned with rights, you are electing to be the target of these people, you are begging them to shoot you
There were options better than your choice here, they include a re-think of the whole concept of establishing another Excludostaat, before it got rolling hard ... failing that, a re-think of just its location even ... failing that, a re-think of the wisdom of pumping into Palestine so many men and arms from mid-45 through 47 ... as if the natives didn't know what they were up to |
