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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (120807)	12/2/2003 12:34:03 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

So if it wasn’t for the bad Mufti, the Arabs would have packed their bags like good little children and gone away? I’m sorry, but however convenient that contention might be to those with a stake in the matter, it does not conform to either any period account I’ve seen, or to common sense. No, actually, if it weren't for the Mufti, they might have NOT packed their bags and gone away, as the entire "effendi class" of the Mandate did in 1947 and 1948. They might have stated forming an Arab nation instead. But they didn't, because they weren't organized as a nation and they didn't think of themselves as a nation, in large part due to the rule of fear imposed by the Mufti. Whereas the Yishuv was organized as a nation and did think of itself as a nation. Had the Arabs of Palestine thought of themselves as a nation, they might have started agitating for their rights in a more organized fashion than random murder and banditry. Steven, you have pointed out the petition of 1921 about 10 times now. That's because it's your sole instance of Arab 'negotiation'. In fact, later Arab unrest and riots did create marked shifts in the British position, who to avoid trouble and curry favor for newly-found oil, moved more and more to the Arab side of the dispute. But every commission designed to find a solution, Peel in 1937 or UN in 1947, got nowhere, because the Arabs of Palestine were controlled by the Mufti by that point, for whom no terms short of the genocide of the Jews of Palestine were acceptable. The Arabs knew that whenever an estate was acquired by Zionists settlers, any Arabs living there were evicted The Jews evicted tenants from land they owned. They did not evict anybody from land they didn't own. In fact, where Jews moved in, Arabs moved there in large numbers too. Between 1922 and 1947 the Arab population of areas of Jewish settlement like Tel Aviv and Haifa tripled, while it only rose about 50% in Arab areas, like Nablus. It might have been obvious for the Arabs to worry about the future. But it was neither necessary nor obvious to be controlled by a demagogue who used their worries to incite riots and war, instead of working out any kind of accord or protections for Arabs. If a number of black families move into a previously all white neighborhood, there may be a response. The white families may respond by shooting some of the newcomers and burning crosses on their lawns. But we usually don't dignify this response with the words "natural" and "obvious". We know the Arabs had no objection to Jews per se: they had lived peacefully with them for years. So the Arabs have always said. The Jews, who were subject constant degradations and occasional persecutions accompanied by random death, didn't find the relationship satisfactory. Read the observations of various British 19th century consuls, and you will see plentiful references to the pitiful conditions of the Jews. But the Arabs keep repeating how great their relationship was with the Jews before Zionism, and have obviously convinced themselves. But then, the old-fashioned segregationists who said that there was never any trouble between the races in Alabama before outside agitators stirred it up, were perfectly sincere too.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (120807)	12/2/2003 4:55:41 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

The inquiry into the causes of the rioting found that the major cause of anti-Zionist sentiment was the widespread fear among Arabs that the Zionists intended to take control of the territory (as in fact they did). The widespread dissemination of Zionist literature calling for the establishment of a Jewish State was specifically cited as a major factor in the development of this fear. And you forget to mention that the Jews effectively gained control over most of the Yishuv through purchases of land from dubious Palestinian owners. Let's not forget that this entire territory had, only a few years before, been under the control of the Ottoman Empire and that NO Arab entity, tribal, Arab, or Palestinian held any form of sovereignty over the land. It was British blood, for the most part, that defeated the Ottomans, and Jews played a part in securing that defeat. And the Jews brought money, particularly from the Rothschild family, which provided employment for many Arabs. So do we not need to look at why the Arab "powers that be" of the period were so concerned about Jewish immigration? Was it possible that, in their own struggle for dominance over the territory, that they feared the wealth and modern skills that the Jews were bringing into the territory? Wealth and Skills that they could not compete with? What was the British goal in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire? Was it merely to create a territory that would forever require British treasure to support and protect it? Or was it to create additional wealth and productivity from it by sending undesirable, but skilled and wealthy, European Jews where they wanted to go in the first place? I see a similar situation to the American advance onto Indian lands. The Indians lived there, did not have real concept of property rights, were constantly fighting amongst one another over territory, and were woefully unprepared for the modern technology of White settlers pushing west under "Manifest Destiny". Was it right? Who's to say?... Was the clash inevitable? There is no doubt. Hawk