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Very informative post someone forwarded to me.
The Origin of the Palestine-Israel
Conflict
Published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East
Jews for Justice has made this excellent resource
available to people around the world. We have converted their booklet to a
more easily copied format. Download it!
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle
East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips
with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if
both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational “terrorists” who
have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the
Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland for over a tho usand years
was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during the creation of
the state of Israel.
And all subsequent crimes — on both sides — inevitably follow from this
original injustice.
Contents:
Introduction
Early His
tory of the Region
The British Mandate Period:
1920-1948
The UN Partition of Palestine
Statehood and Expulsion - 1948
The 1967 War and Israeli
Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
[1973 War (Known in Israel as
the Yom Kippur War) - Addendum by If Americans Knew]
The History of Terrorism in the
Region
Jewish Criticism of Zionism
Zionism and the Holocaust
General Considerations
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
Intifada 2000 And The
"Peace Process"
Views Of The Future
Conclusion I For Jewish Readers
Conclusion II
This paper outlines the history of Palestine
to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the region’s
problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle
East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this
account of the other side of the historical record.
Introduction
The standard Zionist
position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their
ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish
community there. They were met with increasingly vi
olent opposition from the
Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs’ inherent
anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one
form or another, this same situation continues up to today.
The problem with this
explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in
this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement,
from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of
the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was
possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the
Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a
situation which continues to the present).
The Arab community, as it
became increasingly aware of the Zionists’ intentions, strenuously opposed
further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and
imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist
project never could have been realized without the military backing of the
British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh
century A.D. (Over 1200 years)
In short, Zionism was
based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the20rights of the indigenous
inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs’ opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on
anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of
their people.
One further point: being
Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is
in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any
other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a
distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an
understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of
their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as
the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930’s and after, the
actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.
But so were the actions
of the Arabs. The mythic “land without people for a people without land” was
already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the
problem, as we shall see.
Early History of the
Region
Before
the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of Canaan was occupied by
Canaanites.
“Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is
today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those who
remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the=2
0Jews [in the
second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans
and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans,
Greeks and old Canaanite tribes.” Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright,
“Their Promised Land.”
The
present-day Palestinians’ ancestral heritage
“But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were
additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...And that parent tree was
Canaanite...[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.] made Moslem converts
of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with
the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where
the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin.” Illene Beatty, “Arab and
Jew in the Land of Canaan.”
The
Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine
“The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists
base their territoria l demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it
fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the
ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David’s conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the
wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule.”
Illene Beatty, “Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.”
More on
Canaanite civ
ilization
“Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a
big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the
sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites
pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than
imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli
Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites
in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE.” The Jewish Bulletin, July 31st, 1998.
How
long has Palestine been a
specifically Arab country?
“Palestine became a
predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century.
Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics —
including its name in Arabic, Filastin — became known to the entire Islamic
world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious
significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire,
but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty percent of
the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between
townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed
themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that
they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the steady arrival in
Palestine of Jewish colonist
s after 1882, it is important to realize that not
until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the
spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For
example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of
1,033,314.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
How did
land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it
change?
“[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name
of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously
been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional
forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally
masha’a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a
peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held
before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to
his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the provisions of the
1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of
the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process,
registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally
considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased
to be the legal owners only when the land was sold t
o Jewish settlers by an
absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab
cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt
political objectives in Palestine.” Rashid Khalidi, “Blaming The
Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens
Was
Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or
a real sense of danger to their community?
“The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was ‘to redeem the land of Palestine as the
inalienable possession of the Jewish people.’...As early as 1891, Zionist
leader Ahad Ha’am wrote that the Arabs “understood very well what we were
doing and what we were aiming at’...[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism,
stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the
border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it
employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the
removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’...At
various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from
land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at
the Fund’s request, evicted them...Th e indigenous Jews of Palestine also
reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state
in Palestine and did not want
=0
A to exacerbate relations with the Arabs.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge
to Justice.”
Inherent
anti-Semitism? — continued
“Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old
Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political
reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab
population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the
1880’s...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to
dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it.” Don Peretz, “The
Arab-Israeli Dispute.”
Inherent
anti-Semitism? — continued
“[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East
became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and
elsewhere...In the Holy Land...they lived together in [relative] harmony, a
harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was
the ‘rightful’ possession of the ‘Jewish people’ to the exclusion of its
Moslem and Christian inhabitants.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Jews
attitude towards Arabs when reaching Palestine.
“Serfs they (the Jews) were in t he lands of the Diaspora, and
suddenly they find themselves in freedom [in Palestine]; and this
change has awakened in20them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs
with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without
cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this
despicable and dangerous inclination.” Zionist writer Ahad Ha’am, quoted
in Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Proposals
for Arab-Jewish Cooperation
“An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in
1907...called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of
settlement activity...Like Ahad-Ha’am in 1891, Epstein claims that no good
land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession...Epstein’s
solution to the problem, so that a new “Jewish question” may be avoided, is
the creation of a bi-national, non-exclusive program of settlement and
development. Purchasing land should not involve the dispossession of poor
sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming community, where the
Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries should
be non-exclusivist and education bilingual...The vision of non-exclusivist,
peaceful cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few
takers. Epstein was maligned and scorned for his faintheartedness.” Israeli
author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins.”
Was Palestine the o nly, or
even preferred, destination of Jews facing persecut
ion when the Zionist
movement started?
“The pogroms forced many Jews to leave Russia. Societies known
as ‘Lovers of Zion,’ which were forerunners of the Zionist organization,
convinced some of the frightened emigrants to go to Palestine. There, they
argued, Jews would rebuild the ancient Jewish ‘Kingdom of David and Solomon,’
Most Russian Jews ignored their appeal and fled to Europe and the United States. By 1900, almost
a million Jews had settled in the United States alone.” “Our
Roots Are Still Alive” by The People Press Palestine Book
Project.
The British Mandate Period
1920-1948
The Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish
Homeland in Palestine.
“The Balfour Declaration, made in
November 1917 by the British Government...was made a) by a European power, b)
about a non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and
wishes of the native majority resident in t hat territory...[As Balfour
himself wrote in 1919], ‘The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant
(the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former
Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have
their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent
nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in
Palestine we do20not propose even to go through the form of consulting the
wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are
committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is
rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far
profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now
inhabit that ancient land,’” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Wasn’t Palestine a wasteland before the Jews started immigrating
there?
“Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension
of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said
‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession
of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class
of landless Arab cultivators’...The Colonial Office rejected the
recommendation.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Were t he early Zionists planning on living side
by side with Arabs?
In 1919, the American King-Crane
Commission spent six weeks in Syria and Palestine, interviewing delegations and reading
petitions. Their report stated, “The commissioners began their study of
Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor...The fact came out repeatedly in
the Commission’s conferences
with Jewish representatives that the Zionists
looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present
non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase...
“If [the] principle [of
self-determination] is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population
are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be
remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine — nearly nine-tenths
of the whole — are emphatically against the entire Zionist program.. To subject
a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial
and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the
principle just quoted...No British officers, consulted by the Commissioners,
believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of
arms.The officers generally thought that a force of not less than fifty
thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of
itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist
program...The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that
they have a ‘rig ht’ to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years
ago, can barely be seriously considered.” Quoted in “The Israel-Arab
Reader” ed. Laquer and Rubin.
Side by side — continued
“Zionist land poli
cy was
incorporated in the Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine...’land is to be acquired as Jewish property
and..the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the Jewish
National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the inalienable
property of the Jewish people.’ The provision goes to stipulate that ‘the
Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor’...The
effect of this Zionist colonization policy on the Arabs was that land
acquired by Jews became extra-territorialized. It ceased to be land from
which the Arabs could ever hope to gain any advantage...
“The Zionists made no secret of their
intentions, for as early as 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist
Commission, boldly told the Court of Inquiry, ‘there can be only one National
Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership
between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of
the race are sufficiently increased.’ He then asked that only Jews should be
allowed to bear arms.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Given Arab opposition to them, did=2 0the Zionists
support steps towards majority rule in Palestine?
“Clearly, the last thing the
Zionists really wanted was that all the inhabitants of Palestine should have an equal say in running
the
country... [Chaim] Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that representative
government would have spelled the end of the [Jewish] National Home in Palestine... [Churchill declared,] ‘The present form of
government will continue for many years. Step by step we shall develop
representative institutions leading to full self-government, but our
children’s children will have passed away before that is accomplished.’” David
Hirst, “The Gun and the Olive Branch.”
Denial of the Arabs’ right to self-determination
“Even if nobody lost their land,
the [Zionist] program was unjust in principle because it denied majority
political rights... Zionism, in principle, could not allow the natives to
exercise their political rights because it would mean the end of the Zionist
enterprise.” Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins.”
Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism
“In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs
attempted a nationalist revolt... David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist,
recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that ‘in our
political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,’ but he urged,
‘let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.0 The truth was that ‘politically
we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs,
because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come h
ere and settle down, and in
their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still
outside’... The revolt was crushed by the British, with considerable
brutality.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Gandhi on the Palestine conflict — 1938
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in
the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the
French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral
code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography
as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the
British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet
or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is,
they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no
wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen
the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an
unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted
canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in
the face of overwhelming odds.” Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in “A Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr.
Didn’t the Zionists legally buy much of the land
before Israel was established?
0A
“In 1948, at the moment that Israel
declared itself a state, it legally owned a little more than 6 percent of the
land of Palestine...After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted
Jewish land ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to
be illegal buying (and selling) within the 65 percent of the total area
restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was
announced in 1947 it included land held illegally by Jews, which was
incorporated as a fait accompli inside the borders of the Jewish state. And
after Israel announced its statehood, an impressive series
of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land (whose proprietors had
become refugees, and were pronounced ‘absentee landlords’ in order to
expropriate their lands and prevent their return under any circumstances).” Edward
Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
The UN Partition of P alestine
Why did the
UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish
and an Arab state?
“By this time [November 1947] the United
States had emerged
as the most aggressive proponent of partition...The United States got the
General Assembly to delay a vote ‘to gain time to bring certain Latin
American republics into line with its own views.’...Some delegates charged U.S. officials with
‘diplomatic intimidation.0 Without ‘terrific pressure’ from the United
States on
‘governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals,’ said an
anonymous editorial writer, the resolution ‘would never have passed.’” John
Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A
Challenge to Justice.”
Why was this
Truman’s position?
“I
am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are
anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of
Arabs among my constituents.” President Harry Truman, quoted in “Anti
Zionism”, ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the
partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
“Arab
rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish
state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the
Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling=2 0body
— a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest,
to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic
principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to
uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the
Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right
to decide for themselves, the Unit
ed Nations had violated its own charter.” Sami
Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Were the
Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?
“While
the Yishuv’s leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution,
large sections of Israel’s society — including...Ben-Gurion — were opposed to
or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an
ideal opportunity to expand the new state’s borders beyond the UN earmarked
partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians.” Israeli
historian, Benny Morris, in “Tikkun”, March/April 1998.
Public vs
private pronouncements on this question.
“In
internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that ‘after we become a
strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish
partition and expand into the whole of Palestine’...In 1948,
Menachem Begin declared that: ‘The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It
wil l never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of
the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will
forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be
restored to the people of Israel, All of it.
And forever.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
0D
The war
begins
“In
December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948.
Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a
general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem’s
streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out
war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist
military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the
Arab state.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive” by the People Press Palestine Book
Project.
Zionists’
disrespect of partition boundaries
“Before the end of the mandate and, therefore
before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage
of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most
of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on
April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in
the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and
Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the P alestine Arabs did not seize any of
the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition
resolution.” British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The
Arabs and Israel.”
Culpability for
escalation of the fighting
“Menahem Begin,20the Leader of the Irgun, tells
how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive
to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out
successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to
advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’...The Israelis now allege
that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine
after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook
the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that
date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention.” Sami Hadawi,
“Bitter Harvest.”
The Deir Yassin
Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers
“For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and
LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated
fashion...The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls
and shot them,’...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish
and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and
led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over=2 0the
country.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”
Was Deir
Yassin the only act of its kind?
“By
1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend h
imself’ but to commit massive
atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli
army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of
Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as
murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli
military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that
‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’” Norman Finkelstein,
“Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”
Statehood and
Expulsion
1948
What was the
Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of the state of Israel?
“The armies of the Arab states entered the war
immediately after the State20of Israel was founded in May. Fighting
continued, almost all of it within the territory assigned to the Palestinian
state...About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948
conflict.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Was the part of
Palestine assigned to
a Jewish state in mortal danger from the Arab armies?
“The
Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send regular army
troops into Palestine. They were
ordered to secure only the sections of Palestine given to the
Arabs under the partition plan. But these regular armies were
ill equipped
and lacked any central command to coordinate their efforts...[Jordan’s King
Abdullah] promised [the Israelis and the British] that his troops, the Arab
Legion, the only real fighting force among the Arab armies, would avoid
fighting with Jewish settlements...Yet Western historians record this as the
moment when the young state of Israel fought off “the overwhelming hordes’ of
five Arab countries. In reality, the Israeli offensive against the
Palestinians intensified.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive,” by the Peoples
Press Palestine Book Project.
Ethnic
cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
“Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish
National Land Fund...On December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that
there is no room for both peoples in this country...The Zionist enterprise so
far...has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying’
— but this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at
once, in the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic
idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the
neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem,
Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single
tribe’...There were literally hundreds of such statements made by
Zionists.” Edward
Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Ethnic
cleansing — continued
“Following
the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader was able to conceive of
future coexistence without a clear physical separation between the two
peoples — achievable only by transfer and expulsion. Publicly they all
continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence to a small
minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public pose..Ben
Gurion summed up: ‘With compulsory transfer we (would) have
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