Land Without a People
Chapter 1 of The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People From Their Homeland
by Michael Palumbo, 1987
I shall not expel them from the land in one year for fear that the land will become a desert... I shall expel them slowly before they multiply and possess the land. --Exodus 23, 29-30
'There is no hope that this new Jewish state will survive, to say nothing of develop, if the Arabs are as numerous as they are today." So spoke Menahem Ussishkin, at seventy-five, one of the oldest and most respected Zionist leaders. His audience on the afternoon of 12 June 1938 was the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency, which was considering a plan by the British administration to divide Palestine between Arabs and Jews. For decades there had been strife between the two ethnic groups in the mandate territory and now the British administration was considering partition as the best way to end the conflict between the Jewish colonists and the indigenous Arab population. But partition would leave over 200,000 Arabs in the proposed Zionist state, and the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine was grappling with the problem of how best to get rid of them.
None of the members of the Executive disagreed with Ussishkin when he stated: 'The worst is not that the Arabs would comprise 45 or 50 per cent of the population of the new state but that 75 per cent of the land is owned by Arabs.' This land was desired for the waves of Jewish immigrants who would populate the Jewish state. There were many other reasons why the Zionists wished to get rid of the Arabs. Ussishkin claimed that with a large Arab population the Jewish state would face enormous problems of internal security and that there would be chaos in government. 'Even a small Arab minority in parliament could disrupt the entire order of parliamentary life.'
For Ussishkin the solution to the problem of the large Arab Population in the proposed Jewish state was for their removal by the British army before the state was established. 'For this two things are required, a strong hand by the English, and Jewish money. With regard to money, I am sure that if the first requirement is met the Jewish money will be found.' Like most other Zionists at the time, Ussishkin believed that the Palestinians could be coerced into leaving their homes and settling on land that would be purchased for them in Trans-Jordan, Iraq or Saudi Arabia. He made it clear that he did not favour sending the excess Palestinians to the Arab state that the British planned to create on the West Bank. 'If you wish ever toexpand you must not increase the number of Arabs west of the Jordan,' Ussishkin reminded his colleagues.
Ussishkin seems to have had no moral scruples about dislocating tens of thousands of Arab families at gun point and moving them out of villages their people had occupied for centuries. He firmly believed in the Jewish right to all of Palestine; a belief he based on the Bible and the promises made by the British. For Ussishkin, the Palestinians were usurpers who deserved to be expelled. 'I am ready to defend this moral attitude before the Almighty and the League of Nations,' he said.
All the other speakers at the Executive Committee meeting voiced similar sentiments. Berl Katzenelson of Ben-Gurion's Mapai party saw only disaster in a Jewish state with a large Arab minority. 'There is the question of how the army will function, how will the police, how will the civil service. How can a state be run when part of its population is unloyal to the state.'[2] As a 'liberal' Zionist, Katzenelson had a relatively tolerant attitude toward the Palestinians. 'I am willing to give the Arabs equal rights,' he said, 'if I know that only a small minority stays in the land.' He proposed for the new state a development plan that would include a provision to eliminate thousands of Palestinians. He made the position clear: 'A development plan means evictions.' The Mapai party official urged negotiations, with neighbouring Arab states that might be persuaded to receive the expellees.
The proposal to partition Palestine and to transfer the Arabs out of the resulting Jewish state came from a Royal Commission under Lord Peel, which had been appointed in November 1936,in the wake of widespread Arab disturbances. Peel and his colleagues decided that the only solution to the Palestine problem was to divide the country, thus forming a Jewish state that would include Galilee and most of the coastal plain. Though small in area, the Jewish state would have most of the fertile regions of the country. The Peel Commission suggested that, if necessary, force should be used to eliminate the Arabs living in the proposed Jewish state. For several decades the Zionists had favoured the removal of the Palestinians and so they attempted to persuade the British to carry out the transfer. On 19 July 1937, Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist organization, spoke with Ormsby-Gore, the British Colonial Secretary. Weizmann told the British minister that the whole success of the partition depended on whether the removal of the Arabs was accomplished. Weizmann later noted, 'The transfer could only be carried out by the British government and not by the Jews. I explained the reason why we considered the proposal of such importance.'[3] It would serve the purpose of the Zionists to have the British carry out the expulsion for them.
But many British ministers, while favouring partition, had serious reservations about the transfer of Arabs. At a Cabinet meeting, the Secretary of State for India, 'pointed out the great difficulty which lay in, the transfer into Arab territory of some 250,000 Arabs now located in territory proposed for the Jewish state. It was clear from the report of the Royal Commission that land was not available for them in the proposed Arab state. What was to happen to the quarter million Arabs in the interval?'[4]
In January 1938, the British government appointed a second commission under Sir John Woodhead to consider the technical implementation of partition. Sir Stephen Luke, a British official in Palestine, noted that when the Peel Commission had originally proposed the transfer, it had in mind the 1922 'vast exchange of population between Greece and Turkey. They had hoped a similar situation could be found in Palestine but even before the [Woodhead] partition commission left England, the Secretary of State had ruled out any possibility of compulsory transfer of population and the Woodhead Commission concluded after investigating the situation that the Prospects for a voluntary transfer were slight indeed.' [5]
But despite the equivocal attitude of the British, most Zionists were determined to implement the transfer of the Arabs. David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency Executive, believed that the Zionists had to exert pressure to force the British to act. But if necessary, he wrote in his diary, we must ourselves prepare to carry out'[6] the removal of the Palestinians.
A plan had been developed by Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund, who served on the Population Transfer Committee of the Jewish Agency. He wrote in a report that the transfer of the Arab population from the Jewish areas, 'does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evacuate land now cultivated by Arabs and thus release itfor Jewish settlement.'[7] Weitz believed that the transfer of the rural Arab population should be,given preference over the removal of the city Arabs. In all he Calculated that 87,000 Arabscould be removed from the rural hreas along with 10-15,000Bedouins. Most would go to Trans@ordan while the remainderwould go to Gaza and Syria. Weitz realized that the Britishwould not remove the Arabs by force, so he hoped to persuade the Arabs to leave by economic inducements. For this he calculated that over two million Palestinian pounds would beneeded.
The Weitz plan was thoroughly discussed by the Zionistleaders, all of whom favoured the removal of as many Arabs as possible. Dr Yakov Thon also served on the Population Transfer Committee. Thon had been a founding member of Brit Shalom, the 'ultra-liberal' group composed of Jewish intellectuals who sought reconciliation and accommodation with the Arabs. But his remarks in the secret committee meetings made it clear what type of reconciliation he had in mind. 'Without transferring the Arab peasants to neighbouring lands,' he said, 'we will not be able to bring into our future state a large new population. In short without transfer there can be no Jewish immigration.'[8] Thon noted that the British would not use force to implement the removal of the Arabs but he urged that all other possible measures be taken.
Another member of the transfer committee, Dr Mendelsohn, suggested that once the Jewish state was formed, 'a certain amount of pressure could be used to encourage transfer - such as agrarian reform or government measures.'[9] At a later meeting of the Executive, Isaac Ben-Ziv proposed that, 'super-vision of citizenship'[10] might provide an opportunity to force the Palestinians to leave.
The British, however, soon abandoned the idea of partition and with it the plan to transfer the Arab population. But a decade later, the idea of partition would be revived in the form of a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly, which proposed a Jewish state with an even larger Arab population. The Arab-Jewish conflict which followed the passage of the UN resolution would provide an opportunity for the Zionists to achieve their goal of a Jewish state in Palestine that was largely free of Arabs.
In the early years, the political Zionists, including the founder of the modern movement, Theodore Herzl, were not particular about where their Jewish state would be located. In 1896 when Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat, he was undecided as to whether the new Jewish nation would be in Palestine or Argentina. At various other times he considered Cyprus, Kenya, and the Sinai peninsula. Some early Zionists even proposed that wealthy Jewish bankers purchase several of the western territories of the United States as a site for a Jewish nation. In the end Herzl chose Palestine because of its strong emotional appeal to the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe. But he was opposed by practically every rabbi in Europe, many of whom denounced political Zionism as a vile heresy since religious Jews at that time believed that only the Messiah could resurrect the Kingdom of Israel. It was not until well into the twentieth century that the majority of religious Jews were converted to political Zionism. As Herzl, Max Nordau and many of the other early Zionist leaders were non-believers, the religious objections to political Zionism did not concern them.
An even more disturbing feature of the early Zionists was their close relationship with anti-Semites, who Herzl believed were the most useful allies for the Zionists because no one could doubt the sincerity of their desire to see the Jews leave to found their own homeland. Herzl wrote, 'Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow and so do I.'[11] He referred to anti-Semitism as a great force which, 'if rightly employed is powerful enough to propel a large engine and dispatch the passengers and goods' - to Palestine or anywhere else the Zionists desired.
Herzl did not hesitate to negotiate with the German Kaiser who made anti-Semitic remarks in his presence to which the Zionist leader offered no objection) as well as the dreaded Russian Minister Wenzel von Plehve, the most notorious Jew hater of his age. Although no concrete agreements emerged from Herzl's negotiations with anti-Semites, he set a precedent, which was followed by many Zionist leaders of subsequent generations who had extensive relations with all manner of Jew haters.
This tendency to deal with anti-Semites is more easily under-stood if we consider the anti-Semitic mentality of many leading Zionists. Herzl remarked on the lack of 'ethical seriousness in many Jews' and the 'crookedness of Jew morality'.[12] He looked down on the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe and admired the haughty Prussian aristocracy. Other Zionists called Jews 'parasitic' and 'fundamentally useless people'. [13] They criticized their own people for being a commercial urban race who they claimed worshipped the Golden Calf. The Zionists bemoaned the fact that few Jews were farmers or workers who created with their own hands. This they believed was the source of the hatred which many gentiles felt towards Jews.
The answer to this problem, the Zionists believed, was the establishment of a Jewish state in which all functions of society, including the working-class jobs, would be performed by Jews. The Zionist ideologue A. D. Gordon insisted that 'There is only one 'way that can lead to our renaissance - the way of manual labour... a people can acquire a land only by its own efforts.' [14] Unlike other European colonies in Africa and Asia, where the manual labour was done by local people, the Zionists were determined that in Palestine Jewish labourers would work the farms and industries of the new state. Thus there was no place for the Arabs, since Zionist ideology dictated that Jewish farm owners and capitalists could not employ non-Jewish workers.
Herzl foresaw that the Arabs would have to be removed froma Jewish state in Palestine. This is clear from long-suppressed entries in his diaries. 'We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border', Herzl wrote, 'by procuring employment for them in the transit countries while denying any employment in our country.'[15] Herzl believed that the 'expropriation and removal of the poor [Arabs] must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.' As for the richer Arabs of Palestine, Herzl urged that they should be bought out even if they demanded very high prices for their land. He wanted the Jews to buy up every parcel of land in Palestine. The Arabs, Herzl observed, 'will believe that they are cheating us, selling things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.' As with so many of Herzl's ideas, his plan that the Zionists buy up as much land as possible while denying employment to any Arabs on this land was to become standard procedure for Zionist colonies in Palestine.
The Zionists spoke of making Palestine 'As Jewish as England is English'. They also used the slogan 'A land without a people for a people without a land' to describe their attitude toward Palestine. The Zionists considered Palestine uninhabited, despite the fact that in 1881 almost half a million Arabs lived in Palestine, forming almost 95 per cent of the population.
Although the early Zionists made a considerable effort to organize a mass movement to the Holy Land, few Jews actually emigrated to Palestine. Most Jews who left Eastern Europe went to America, where there was considerable economic opportunity. By 1914, there were still only 85,000 Jews in Palestine, many of whom were religious people who strongly opposed the political Zionists in their aim of establishing a Jewish state. Those who ventured to Palestine before the First World War found a land that was not 'without a people' but a province of the Turkish Empire which was inhabited by an Arabic speaking race (85 per cent Muslim, 15 per cent Christian) most of whom traced their ancestry in the country back formany generations.
Ahad Ha'Am (ne? Asher Ginzberg) was a religious Jew who recorded many prophetic observations on the way in which the political Zionists were treating the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. Ahad Ha'Am deplored the fact that many Jewish settlers in Palestine believed that 'the only language that the Arabs understand is that of force.'[16] He observed that many Jews 'behave toward the Arabs with cruelty, infringe upon their boundaries, hit them shamefully without reason and even brag about it.' He believed that the main reason the political Zionists treated the native population so badly was that they were 'angry towards those who reminded them that there is still another people in the land of Israel that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave.'
During this period many Zionists were already setting up their own banks, schools and businesses. Although Palestine was still part of the Turkish Empire, Jews often flew their Star of David flag and were preparing for the day when they could create a Jewish state. As a young man, Moshe Menuhin studied at the dlite Herzlia Gymnasia. He later recalled, 'it was drummed into our young hearts that the fatherland must become goyim rein [free of Gentiles-Arabs].'[17]
In the years before the First World War, political Zionism continued to be rejected by many Jews. Although most religious Jews supported spiritual Zionism, which saw Palestine as the cultural centre of Judaism, they remained convinced that political Zionism, which favoured the establishment of a Jewish government in Palestine, was heretical. Assimilated Jews were offended by the suggestion that their loyalty must be divided between a Jewish state and the land of their birth. But Zionism had surprising support among the non-Jewish population inmost Western countries.
Besides anti-Semites, Evangelical Christians are another large and influential group that to this day remains as a strong base of support for Zionism. Evangelicals believe that the return of the Jews to Palestine is a necessary prerequisite to the second coining of Christ. The Zionists have not been reluctant to exploit the theology of fundamentalist Christians for their benefit.
In England in the early part of this century, many Christians believed that the millennium predicted in the Bible would occur when the Zionists achieved their goal of founding a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In his conversations with government officials, the leader of the British Zionists, Chaim Weizmann, often used religious arguments to gain support for his cause. Other arguments were used as well. When the First World War broke out, Weizmann suggested that if the London government sponsored Zionism, Jews all over the world would rally to the British war effort. Thus in November 1917, the British issued the famous Balfour Declaration which proclaimed: 'His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.'[18] But the document also made it clear that, 'nothing shall be done which will prejudice the civil and political rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.'
geocities.com |
