We can't know, the fellaheen were illiterate, only the zionists kept records, until the brits come along late in 1917 ... there are various british reports commissioned in the years following, and correspondence from/to the colonial office is now declassified, so that's as close as you can get to an objective viewpoint, many brits in power were zionist supporters though, that comes out quite clear
Early on, natives tended to be treated much more fairly, it's true then that zionists would pay off the effendi 'owners' and in many cases the fellaheen as well, this was the case with one of the early Rothschild colonies i think, it is noted as such .... also the fellaheen there were not chased far away, it was before the zionist boycott of arab labour, the two communities were peaceful neighbours for years ... this was repeated elsewhere a number of times, it wasn't until 1919 or so that zionist inflow was built to threatening proportion, following the Balfour declaration, and developed a hard line on ethnic cleansing ... the more righteous examples did in fact exist, quite a few of them, to be used later by the propagandists as representative of the whole, when they are not |
