You keep forgetting that the Arab powers were behind the intransigence of the Palestinian Arabs, and vowed military support for their cause, which promise they kept in '48. Those are the Arabs I am referring to.
Again, which "Arab powers" are we talking about here? Last time around you told me that "Arab Powers", and specifically the British desire to keep these "Arab powers" from restricting oil exploration, were responsible for British restrictions on Jewish immigration. I asked for citations to prove this. You have quoted reams of material, not one word of which suggests that any "Arab power" had a significant influence on British immigration policy, and not one word of which cites any specific instance during the period under discussion if which oil exploration rights were used by an "Arab Power" as a quid pro quo to influence British policy in Palestine.
This technique is familiar on SI: if you can't find a citation that proves your point, cite something else, preferably at such length that everybody will simply assume without reading that your point is proved.
So I'm still waiting for a citation, and now I must wait as well for one to demonstrate that, in the period under discussion, "Arab powers", rather than the simple desire not to be incorporated into a Jewish State, were behind the Palestinian intransigence. Which “Arab power” was “behind” the riots of 1921 and 1929? I would readily agree that Arabs outside Palestine got involved once the rebellion that started in 1935 was underway. My point is that they did not initiate the conflict, they entered a conflict that was already established, and that if there was no established conflict, there would not have been any reason for them to get involved. This conflict, the one that first flared seriously in 1921, was, I maintain, the inevitable consequence of Arab reaction to Jewish immigration, the open Jewish intention to gain sovereignty, and (I will now add) the overt bias of the mandatory power toward the cause of the immigrants.
The items of conflict that I would specifically cite as products of this inevitable tension are (most particularly) the riots of 1921, the riots of 1929, and the initial phases of the all-out conflict that started in 1935. The last item is to some extent arguable; I think it would be difficult to cite the influence of “Arab powers” in the feeble military action staged by Izzedin Qassam in November 1935, the incident usually cited as the start of the rebellion, but it might not be impossible. Certainly after this point the waters muddied quite a bit.
None of this is relevant, though, to my initial proposition that Jewish immigration, coupled with the overt intention to achieve sovereignty, made violent confrontation with the local populace inevitable. The single incident most relevant to this hypothesis is the outbreak of 1921, which arguably was the incident that established the atmosphere of violent confrontation that has prevailed since. If it can be demonstrated that the cause of this outbreak was the Arab reaction to Jewish immigration and the avowed Zionist intent to achieve sovereignty, my hypothesis is validated.
In order to seriously challenge my hypothesis, then, you would have to demonstrate that the influence of “Arab powers” was a significant cause of the riots of 1921. This, I think, would be very difficult to do, not least because no “Arab power” existed at the time.
The British Foreign Office did, in fact, limit Jewish immigration in deference to Arab concerns at a critical time in the life of European Jewry-- as they were trying to escape the Nazis, regardless of what Churchill said in 1921.
I do not dispute this, I merely maintained that the concerns in question were primarily those of the domestic Arab population, and that the British actions were motivated primarily by a desire to maintain some semblance of peace in the area. Anything that happened during the Nazi era occurred well after the period we’ve been discussing, and is thus not relevant to the discussion.
This open-ended commitment to the Zionist cause was modified by the British almost from the beginning. In 1922, the Churchill White Paper confirmed the right of Jewish immigration but stipulated that this should not exceed the economic absorptive capacity of the country.
Yes, the open-ended commitment was modified. This is what generally happens to open-ended commitments when they meet the real world. Describing the retreat from 100% support of the Zionist cause as a switch to a “pro-Arab” position is a huge exaggeration. The new position was in no way pro-Arab, it was simply something less than 100% pro-Zionist.
Then, in the greatest act of treachery against the Palestine Mandate, the British split the Mandate with all land east of the Jordan River going into an entity called Transjordan, constituting almost 80 percent of the original Mandate. Jewish immigration and Jewish land ownership were forbidden in Transjordan.
How is this treachery against the mandate? Neither the mandate nor the Balfour declaration declared that all of Palestine should be included in the Jewish National Home. They merely specified that a Jewish National Home be established in Palestine. Describing the partition of Transjordan as “treachery” is hyperbole.
But that didn't satisfy the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabist British. Even with the unbalanced division in their favor, the Arabs were uneasy with the Mandate's recognition of the Balfour Declaration -- they were adamantly opposed to any Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Which “Arabist British” would these be? Names, please. Naturally the Arabs that resided in the part of Palestine that was not included in Transjordan were uneasy with the terms of the Mandate, and naturally they were opposed to seeing their homes included in a Jewish State. What would you expect?
After Arab rioting in 1929, the Shaw Commission called for a re-examination of immigration policy
As I said, the restrictions on immigration were a response to the rioting, which in turn was the Arab response to the prospect of having the place where they lived incorporated into a foreign nation. You will notice that there is no mention here of the involvement of some hypothetical “Arab power”.
In 1936, the Arabs again staged a revolt in Palestine with stoppage of Jewish immigration as one of their principal demands. In response to the Arab unrest, the British Peel Commission recommended freezing immigration at 12,000 per year for five years … More Arab violence led to the White Paper of 1939 that made concessions to the Arabs on a wide range of issues.
Again, your source confirms my hypothesis. The freeze on immigration was a consequence of internal unrest among the Arab population, not the influence of “Arab powers”. You may maintain, if you will, that this unrest was inspired by outside Arab influence, but you will have to demonstrate it. Certainly there was a well established pattern of unrest by this time, a pattern that was established well before any Arab power existed.
The immigration restrictions were tantamount to a death sentence for countless European Jews. Even after the Holocaust became well-known, Britain's restrictive policy remained in effect in Palestine, and the British administration in Palestine attempted to enforce it, continuing until the end of the Mandate period in 1948....
Again, this is well outside the framework of this discussion. I must point out, though, that if the civilized nations of the world were seriously concerned with the perils faced by European Jews, it would have made far more sense to allow refuge in England or the US, where their presence would not have inspired more violence that would have threatened their lives again. The reaction of the US and England to the Holocaust was indeed despicable, but the attempt to drag it into this discussion is poorly placed.
...throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted.... far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied ..." How could the British claim that the Zionist settlers were the problem when Arab immigration continued unchecked?
I haven’t seen any suggestion that the Arab riots were caused by claims of “persecution”. The negative reaction was not caused by any claim that the Jews were overpopulating the country, but by the accurate perception that the Jewish immigrants were planning to declare sovereignty and impose a government unacceptable to the other residents. The Zionist settlers were the problem not because there were more of them or because the land could not sustain the people. They were the problem because their immigration was accompanied by a specific intention to achieve absolute political sovereignty, an intention that the rest of the population regarded as absolutely incompatible with their interests. It was this condition accompanying their immigration, far more than the immigration per se, that made violence inevitable.
The issue of Arab immigration is thus irrelevant to this discussion.
The answer can only be that the British administration was far more sensitive to the Arab's claims than to those of the Jews.
The answer might be that since Arab immigration wasn’t producing riots and Jewish immigration was, the British restricted Jewish immigration in an effort to keep peace, and ignored Arab immigration because it wasn't causing riots.
We all know that Reza Pahlavi and the British had a brief little spat in ’32, but this is, again, well after the period most germane to this discussion, and I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Palestine was a significant issue in that dispute. |
