Repeatedly, Israel preemptively bombs, shells, and inflicts other forms of lawless violence on Gazans, bogusly claiming self-defense.When they respond, Israel calls it terrorism, claiming justification for greater attacks in “self-defense,” what international law prohibits.
In fact, UN Charter Article 2(4) says:
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Only two exceptions apply. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may authorize force to restore peace. Individual states must abide by Chapter VII, Article 51 stating:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
In addition, individual states may use defensive force against armed attacks until the Security Council acts. No other exceptions apply, including armed reprisals. Calling them unlawful, the General Assembly said all states must refrain from using them.
The right of self-defense is limited solely to deterring armed attacks, preventing future ones after initial assaults, or reversing the consequences of enemy aggression, such as ending an illegal occupation.
Even then, however, force must conform to the principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality.
Necessity permits only attacking military targets.
Distinction pertains to distinguishing between civilian and military ones.
Proportionality prohibits disproportionate force likely to damage nonmilitary sites and/or harm civilian lives.
Moreover, a fourth consideration requires preventing unnecessary suffering, especially affecting noncombatant civilians.
If these objective aren’t possible, attacks are prohibited.
Moreover, to a limited degree, anticipatory self-defense is permitted when compelling evidence shows likely imminent threats or further attacks after initial ones.
However, attackers bear burden of proof responsibility, most often failing the test as America always did post-WW II. Israel also, without exception, since its preemptive 1947-48 “war of independence.”
In fact, it was naked aggression against another country, stealing 78% of it from its citizens, the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan notwithstanding, granting 56% of historic Palestine to Jews, as well as designating Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council.
The UN Charter also explains under what conditions intervention, violence and coercion are justified. None exist in Palestine now or ever. Claiming an “inherent right” is also bogus under international law.
In addition, Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlements of international disputes, not preemptive attacks. Article 2(4), in fact, prohibits force or its threatened use, including violent interventions of any kind.
Further, Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit instigating any unilateral or other external threat or use of force not specifically allowed under Article 51 or otherwise authorized by the Security Council. Doing so is naked aggression.
America and Israel are serial offenders. In response, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, Somalis, Yemenis, and Palestinians may legally respond defensively to preemptive armed aggression.
When done, however, it’s called terrorism. Aggressors make their own rules. Targeted states are doubly victimized, suffering armed attack effects, then vilified for defending themselves. It amounts to a shocking damned if you do or don’t fate.
The 1947 UN GA proposed partition plan of Palestine is often used by Israelis and Zionists to obscure facts from those new to the argument. As demonstrated below, the myth has been concocted to legitimize Israel in the eyes of many Jews and Western people. It should be noted that each of the facts below can be independently verified either from the Zionist archives in Jerusalem, or from the British Mandate books.
The best way to present the facts concerning this question is by asking the following questions:
Are you aware that Palestine’s Jewish population was under 8% of the total population as of 1914? (Righteous Victims, p. 83) It should be noted that the mass majority of the Jews residing in Palestine were not citizens of the country, but they recently fled anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia.
Are you aware that in 1914 Jewish land ownership in Palestine was under 2%?
Despite the active British assistance to establish a “Jewish National home” in Palestine (based on the British commitment in theBalfour Declaration), Palestine’s Jewish population in 1947 was increased to 33% of its total population. (Righteous Victims, p. 83).Click herefor a map illustrating Palestine’s population distribution per district as of 1946. Again, prior to the 1948 war less than one third of the Jews in Palestine were recognized as legal citizens by the Government of Palestine (Survey of PalestineP. 208), however, they mostly maintained citizenship of their respective countries, such as Russian, Polish, Romanian, and Germany citizenships. It’s worth noting that even after five decades of ethnic cleansing, occupation, and dispossession, the demographic ratio between Palestinians (8.5 million) and Israeli Jews (4.5-5 million) is still the same as it was in December 1947, which was (and still is) 2 to 1 in favor of the Palestinian people. However, for Israel to maintain its democratic “Jewish state”, and above all its”Jewish character”, it opted toETHNICALLY CLEANSE80% of the Palestinian people out of their homes, farms, businesses.
Are you aware that Jewish land ownership in Palestine was under 7% as of 1947? (Benny Morris, p. 170)Click herefor a map illustrating Palestine’s land ownership per district as of 1945.
Are you aware that the 20th Zionist Congress, which convened in Zurich in August 1937, almostUNANIMOUSLY REJECTEDthe British proposed partition plan of Palestine (which became known as the Peel Commission Partition plan)? (Israel: A History, p. 88, andOne Palestine Complete, p. 414).
(READ MORE HERE) Finally, it’s hypocritical when on one hand Zionists use UN GA partition plan as a pretext to legitimizeIsrael’sexistence, while they’ve rejected almost every other UN resolution sinceIsrael’screation, chief among them UN GA resolution 194 that called for the immediate return to all Palestinian refugees to their homes inIsrael. To suit Zionists’ political agenda, they have deliberately chosen to ignore most, if not all, of UN resolutions concerning Palestine and its people, of course with the exception of withdrawing from occupied southern Lebanon in May 2000. Sadly, Israel has accepted that UN resolution not because it was influenced by a UN, a U.S., or even a European diplomatic pressure, but because it was compelled to do so by the heroic Lebanese resistance.
For the moment, let’s assume that the Palestinian people should not have a country of their own because they have never had a state, then why should the peoples of Salvador, Guatemala, Congo, Algeria, … etc. have the right of self determination?
It should be noted that none of these countries had a state prior to gaining independence, nor a distinct language or culture that set them apart from their neighboring states. In other words, even if it’s true that the Palestinian people had neither a state, nor a distinct culture or language:
Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and businesses?
Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country in which they were born?
According to historical facts, Zionism, as an ideology, evolved in response to the rise of Europe’s nationalism and anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, especially in Tsarist Russia (Pale States), France during the Dreyfus affair, and Germany after WW I.
Similarly, Palestinian nationalism evolved in response to the presence of Zionism in Palestine, and most importantly because of the British intention to turn Palestine into a “Jewish National Home,” see theBalfour Declaration for further details. These central facts were well articulated byDavid Ben-Gurion (Israel’s 1st Prime Minister) andMoshe Sharett(Israel’s 1st Foreign Minister) on many occasions. For example:
A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in early 1919, Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion of future Jewish and Arab relations:
“Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there’s no solution to it. There is no solution! … The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don’t know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours—-even if we learn Arabic …and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don’t see why ‘Mustafa’ should learn Hebrew… . There’s a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs.” (One Palestine Complete, p. 116)
On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the “Arab question” is a
“tragic question of fate” that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a “question of Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality.” In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface)
As the number of Jews in Palestine (Yishuv) doubled between 1931-1935, the Palestinian people became threatened with being dispossessed and for Jews becoming their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a “turning point” important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades:
“… they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed … this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke the respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)
But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian people were incapable by themselves of developing Palestine, and they had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. He argued in 1918, that Jews’ rights sprang not only from the past, but also from the future. In 1924 he declared:
“We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders.” In 1928 he pronounced that “the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?”; and in 1930, “The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes.” (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38) In other words, the Palestinian people are entitled to no political rights whatsoever, and if they have any rights to begin with, these rights are confined to their places of residence. Ironically, this statement was written when the Palestinian people constituted 85% of Palestine’s population, and owned and operated over 97% of its lands!
In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the brink of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated:
“The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country … because they live here, and not because they are Arabs … The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews.” (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170)
In 1936 (soon after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada),Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary:
“The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Arabs] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn’t matter whether or not their view is correct…. They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale …. they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ….. [Arabs are] fighting dispossession … The fear is not of losing the land, but of losing homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ….. By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement.” (Righteous Victims, p.136)
In 1938,Ben-Gurionalso stated against the backdrop of the First Palestinian Intifada:
“When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves —— that is ONLY half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves… . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.” (Righteous Victims, p. 652)
In 1936,Moshe Sharettspoke in a similar vein: “Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics… . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews’ entry into Palestine.” (Righteous Victims, p.136)
So if the causes of Zionism had not risen, meaning European anti-Semitism, then Palestinian nationalism might not have evolved into what it is today. It’s worth noting that the Palestinian people, prior to WW I, always identified themselves as being part of “The Great Syria” (Suriyya al-Kubra), however, that drastically changed when Britain intended to turn Palestine into a “Jewish National Home”, see theBalfour Declaration for more details.
This declaration, which was made to the Zionist Movement in 1917, signaled the future dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people because it did not address their political rights. On the other hand, the declaration recognized the political rights of the “Jewish people” around the world, despite the fact that the Jews in Palestine were under 8% of the total population as of 1914 (Righteous Victims, p. 83). In that respect, Lord Balfour, who was the British Foreign Secretary and a self-professed Christian Zionist, stated in 1919:
“Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land.” (Righteous Victims, p. 75)
In response to this declaration, the Palestinian people started to collectively oppose the British Mandate, Jewish immigration, and land sales to the Zionist movement.
Rather than dealing directly with the issues, sadly many Israelis and Zionists have chosen to ignore the existence of the Palestinians as a people. It should be emphasized that the hawk of all Israeli hawks, Ariel Sharon, has accepted the existence of a Palestinian state, in principle, in a portion of historic Palestine. Whether Israelis and Zionists like it or not, Palestine now exists as a postal code, international calling code, internet domain name, …etc. in the heart of “Eretz Yisrael”. The 8.5 million Palestinians are not going away, and the sooner Israelis and Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they shall start dealing with core issues of the conflict in a pragmatic way.
Finally, applying such logic is very dangerous since it would eliminate half United Nations’ members overnight. It is simply not just to suppress the political, economic, and civil rights of the Palestinian people by claiming that they never previously had a state, distinct language, and distinct culture. Ironically, the Zionist movement has been encouraging Jews from all corners of the world to emigrate to “Eretz Yisrael”, so that there is no real common denominator between all of these immigrants such as a common language, culture, country of origin, or even a unified interpretation of “who is a Jew”.
After doing lots of research on the internet, I was shocked to find that the most candid answer to this question comes from Israelis; most importantly from Israeli leaders who gained political notoriety as a result of crushing Palestinians. This question started to interest me several years ago when I read a eulogy written by Moshe Dayan(a former Israeli Defense Minister) to his Israeli friend who was killed by a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip in 1955:
“… Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.
We should demand his blood not from the [Palestinian] Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves… . Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house… . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.” (Iron Wall, p. 101)
Similarly, Ehud Barak (the current Israeli Defense Minister) was asked this question, and his reply was:
“If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I’d eventually join one of the terrorist organizations.” (interviewed by Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy in March 1998)
Here in America, we’re a brought up to believe in our sacred right to bear arms because the right of self-defense is enshrined in our American constitution. As an American, I have the right to defend my home and family here in Chicago by all possible means, even if my defense results in the death or injury of the assailant. However, as a Palestinian defending my home and family in Palestine, that makes me automatically the“terrorist”in the eyes of many in the Western world. It should be noted that when Palestinians rocket Israeli towns, they are rocketing their own homes and farms which have been usurped by Jews who recently escaped European anti-Semitism and pogroms, here are the names of a few of the usurped Palestinian towns which are located in what is now southern Israel: al-Majdal ,Asqalan, Faluja, Yibna, Huj & Najd.
The more I research Israeli history, the more I discover that Israelis have a hidden empathy to what Palestinians have experienced for the past 63 years. In my opinion, this is a proof that this conflict isn’t only a colonial conflict over lands, but most importantly it’s a conflict about the national identity which is connected to the land. Deep at heart, every Israeli Jew suspects that the Zionist narrative to be farce. However, because Israel was created by usurping Palestinian rights, Israelis and most Jews find it necessary to deny Palestinians of their national rights and identity. This Israeli insecurity (or paranoia) increases whenever Palestinians assert their national identity (i.e. resistance to colonialism, demanding the right of return, ..etc) because it reaffirms that this is a conflict that will transcend generations.
Our DATE is 63 years LATE, God willing sooner or later we shall return.
The land and people of Palestine were transformed during the thirty years of British rule. The systematic colonization undertaken by the Zionist movement enabled the Jewish community to establish separate and virtually autonomous political, economic, social, cultural, and military institutions. A state within a state was in place by the time the movement launched its drive for independence. The legal underpinnings for the autonomous Jewish community were provided by the British Mandate. The establishment of a Jewish state was first proposed by the British Royal Commission in July 1937 and then endorsed by the UNITED NATIONS in November 1947.
That drive for statehood IGNORED the presence of a Palestinian majority with its own national aspirations. The right to create a Jewish state-and the overwhelming need for such a state-were perceived as overriding Palestinian counterclaims. Few members of the yishuv supported the idea of binationalism. Rather, territorial partition was seen by most Zionist leaders as the way to gain statehood while according certain national rights to the Palestinians. TRANSFER of Palestinians to neighboring Arab states was also envisaged as a means to ensure the formation of a homogeneous Jewish territory. The implementation of those approaches led to the formation of independent Israel, at the cost of dismembering the Palestinian community and fostering long-term hostility with the Arab world.
In order to realize the aims of Zionism and build the Jewish national home, the Zionist movement undertook the following practical steps. They:
Built political structures that could assume state functions
Created a military force.
Promoted large-scale immigration.
Acquired land as the inalienable property of the Jewish people
Established monopolistic concessions. The labor federation, Histadrut, tried to force Jewish enterprises to hire only Jewish labor
Setting up an autonomous Hebrew-language educational system.
These measures created a self-contained national entity on Palestinian soil that was ENTIRELY SEPARATE from the Arab community.
The yishuv established an elected community council, executive body, administrative departments, and religious courts soon after the British assumed control over Palestine. When the PALESTINE MANDATE was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, the World Zionist Organization gained the responsibility to advise and cooperate with the British administration not only on economic and social matters affecting the Jewish national home but also on issues involving the general development of the country. Although the British rejected pressure to give the World Zionist Organization an equal share in administration and control over immigration and land transfers, the yishuv did gain a privileged advisory position.
The Zionists were strongly critical of British efforts to establish a LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL in 1923, 1930, and 1936. They realized that Palestinians’ demands for a legislature with a Palestinian majority ran counter to their own need to delay establishing representative bodies until the Jewish community was much larger. In 1923, the Jewish residents did participate in the elections for a Legislative Council, but they were relieved that the Palestinians’ boycott compelled the British to cancel the results. In 1930 and 1936 the World Zionist Organization vigorously opposed British proposals for a legislature, fearing that, if the Palestinians received the majority status that proportional representation would require, then they would try to block Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by Zionist companies. Zionist opposition was couched indirectly in the assertion that Palestine was not ripe for self-rule, a code for not until there’s a Jewish majority. To bolster this position, the yishuv formed defense forces (Haganah) in March 1920. They were preceded by the establishment of guards (hashomer) in Jewish rural settlements in the 1900s and the formation of a Jewish Legion in World War I. However, the British disbanded the Jewish Legion and allowed only sealed armories in the settlements and mixed Jewish-British area defense committees.
Despite its illegal status, the Haganah expanded to number 10,000 trained and mobilized men, and 40,000 reservists by 1936. During the 1937-38 Arab revolt, the Haganah engaged in active defense against Arab insurgents and cooperated with the British to guard railway lines, the oil pipeline to Haifa, and border fences. This cooperation deepened during World War II, when 18,800 Jewish volunteers joined the British forces. Haganah’s special Palmach units served as scouts and sappers for the British army in Lebanon in 1941-42. This wartime experience helped to transform the Haganah into a regular fighting force. When Ben-Gurion became the World Zionist Organization’s secretary of defense in June 1947, he accelerated mobilization as well as arms buying in the United States and Europe. As a result, mobilization leaped to 30,000 by May 1948, when statehood was proclaimed, and then doubled to 60,000 by mid-July-twice the number serving in the Arab forces arrayed against Israel.
A principal means for building up the national home was the promotion of large-scale immigration from Europe. Estimates of the Palestinian population demonstrate the dramatic impact of immigration. The first British census (December 31, 1922) counted 757,182 residents, of whom 83,794 were Jewish. The second census (December 31, 1931) enumerated 1,035,821, including 174,006 Jews. Thus, the absolute number of Jews had doubled and the relative number had increased from 11 percent to 17 percent. Two-thirds of this growth could be attributed to net immigration, and one third to natural increase. Two-thirds of the yishuv was concentrated in Jerusalem andJaffa and Tel Aviv, with most of the remainder in the north, including the towns of HAIFA, SAFAD, and Tiberias.
The Mandate specified that the rate of immigration should accord with the economic capacity of the country to absorb the immigrants. In 1931, the British government reinterpreted this to take into account only the Jewish sector of the economy, excluding the Palestinian sector, which was suffering from heavy unemployment. As a result, the pace of immigration accelerated in 1932 and peaked in 1935-36. In other words, the absolute number of Jewish residents doubled in the five years from 1931 to 1936 to 370,000, so that they constituted 28 percent of the total population. Not until 1939 did the British impose a severe quota on Jewish immigrants. That restriction was resisted by the yishuv with a sense of desperation, since it blocked access to a key haven for the Jews whom Hitler was persecuting and exterminating in Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe. Net immigration was limited during the war years in the 1940s, but the government estimated in 1946 that there were about 583,000 Jews of nearly 1,888,000 residents, or 31 percent of the total Seventy percent of them were urban, and they continued to be overwhelmingly concentrated in Jerusalem (100,000) the Haifa area (119,000), and the JAFFA and RAMLA districts (327,000) (click here for a map illustrating Palestine’s population distribution in 1946) . The remaining 43,000 were largely in Galilee, with a scattering in the Negev and almost none in the central highlands.
The World Zionist Organization’s purchasing agencies launched large-scale land purchases in order to found rural settlements and stake territorial claims. In 1920 the Zionists held about 650,000 dunums (one dunum equals approximately one-quarter of an acre). By 1930, the amount had expanded to 1,164,000 dunums and by 1936 to 1,400,000 dunums. The major purchasing agent (the Palestine Land Development Company) estimated that, by 1936, 89 percent had been bought from large landowners (primarily absentee owners from Beirut) and only 11 percent from peasants. By 1947, the yishuv held 1.9 million dunums. Nevertheless, this represented only 7 percent of the total land surface or 10 to 12 percent of the cultivable land (click here for a map illustrating Palestine’s landownership distribution in 1946).
According to Article 3 of the Constitution of the Jewish Agency, the land was held by the Jewish National Fund as the inalienable property of the Jewish people; ONLY Jewish labor could be employed in the settlements, Palestinians protested bitterly against this inalienability clause. The moderate National Defense Party , for example, petitioned the British in 1935 to prevent further land sales, arguing that it was a: life and death for the Arabs, in that it resulted in the transfer of their country to other hands and the loss of their nationality.
The placement of Jewish settlements was often based on political considerations. The Palestine Land Development Company had four criteria for land purchase:
The economic suitability of the tract
Its contribution to forming a solid block of Jewish territory.
The prevention of isolation of settlements
The impact of the purchase on the political-territorial claims of the Zionists.
The stockade and watchtower settlements constructed in 1937, for example, were designed to secure control over key parts of Galilee for the yishuv in case the British implemented the PEEL PARTITION PLAN. Similarly, eleven settlements were hastily erected in the Negev in late 1946 in an attempt to stake a political claim in that entirely Palestinian-populated territory.
In addition to making these land purchases, prominent Jewish businessmen won monopolistic concessions from the British government that gave the Zionist movement an important role in the development of Palestine’s natural resources. In 1921, Pinhas Rutenberg’s Palestine Electric Company acquired the right to electrify all of Palestine except Jerusalem. Moshe Novomeysky received the concession to develop the minerals in the Dead Sea in 1927. And the Palestine Land Development Company gained the concession to drain the Hula marshes, north of the Sea of Galilee, in 1934. In each case, the concession was contested by other serious non-Jewish claimants; Palestinian politicians argued that the government should retain control itself in order to develop the resources for the benefit of the entire country.
The inalienability clause in the Jewish National Fund contracts included provision that ONLY JEWS could work on Jewish agricultural settlements. The concepts of manual labor and the return to the soil were key to the Zionist enterprise. This Jewish labor policy was enforced by the General Foundation of Jewish Labor (Histadrut), founded in 1920 and headed by David Ben-Gurion. Since some Jewish builders and citrus growers hired Arabs, who worked for lower wages than Jews, the Histadrut launched a campaign in 1933 to remove those Arab workers. Histadrut organizers picketed citrus groves and evicted Arab workers from construction sites and factories in the cities. The strident propaganda by the Histradut increased the Arabs’ fears for the future. George Mansur, a Palestinian labor leader, wrote angrily in 1937:
“The Histadrut’s fundamental aim is ‘the conquest of labor’ …No matter how many Arab workers are unemployed, they have no right to take any job which a possible immigrant might occupy. No Arab has the right to work in Jewish undertakings.”
Finally, the establishment of an all-Jewish, Hebrew-language educational system was an essential component of building the Jewish national home. It helped to create a cohesive national ethos and a lingua franca among the diverse immigrants. However, it also entirely separated Jewish children from Palestinian children, who attended the governmental schools. The policy widened the linguistic and cultural gap between the two peoples. In addition, there was a stark contrast in their literacy levels. In 1931:
93 percent of Jewish males (above age seven) were literate
71 percent of Christian males were literate
Only 25 percent of Muslim males were literate.
Overall, Palestinian literacy increased from 19 percent in 1931 to 27 percent by 1940, but only 30 percent of Palestinian children could be accommodated in government and private schools.
The practical policies of the Zionist movement created a compact and well-rooted community by the late 1940s. The yishuv had its own political, educational, economic, and military institutions, parallel to the governmental system. Jews minimized their contact with the Arab community and outnumbered the Arabs in certain key respects. Jewish urban dwellers, for example, greatly exceeded Arab urbanites, even though Jews constituted but one-third of the population. Many more Jewish children attended school than did Arab children, and Jewish firms employed seven times as many workers as Arab firms.
Thus the relative weight and autonomy of the yishuv were much greater than sheer numbers would suggest. The transition to statehood was facilitated by the existence of the proto state institutions and a mobilized, literate public. But separation from the Palestinian residents was exacerbated by these autarchic policies.
The dispossession and expulsion of a majority of Palestinians were the result of Zionist policies planned over a thirty-year period. fundamentally, Zionism focused on two needs:
to attain a Jewish majority in Palestine
to acquire statehood
irrespective of the wishes of the indigenous population. Non-recognition of the political and national rights of the Palestinian people was a KEY Zionist policy.
Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, placed maximalist demands before the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919. He stated that he expected 70,000 to 80,000 Jewish immigrants to arrive each year in Palestine. When they became the majority, they would form an independent government and Palestine and would become: “as Jewish as England is English”. Weizmann proposed that the boundaries should be the Mediterranean Sea on the west; Sidon, the Litani River, and Mount Hermon on the north; all of Transjordan west of the Hijaz railway on the east; and a line across Sinai from Aqaba to al-Arish on the south. He argued that:
“the boundaries above outlined are what we consider essential for the economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have its natural outlet to the sea and control of its rivers and their headwaters. The boundaries are sketched with the general economic needs and historic traditions of the country in mind.”
Weizmann offered the Arab countries a free zone in Haifa and a joint port at Aqaba.
Weizmann’s policy was basically in accord with that of the leaders of the yishuv, who held a conference in December 1918 in which they formulated their own demands for the peace conference. The yishuv plan stressed that they must control appointments to the administrative services and that the British must actively assist their program to transform Palestine into a democratic Jewish state in which the Arabs would have minority rights. Although the peace conference did not explicitly allocate such extensive territories to the Jewish national home and did not support the goal of transforming all of Palestine into a Jewish state, it opened the door to such a possibility. More important, Weizmann’s presentation stated clearly and forcefully the long-term aims of the movement.
These aims were based on certain fundamental tenets of Zionism:
This is what David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldman before he died:
“I don’t understand your optimism.,” Ben-Gurion declared. “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipes us out”.
“But how can you sleep with that prospect in mind,” I broke in, “and be Prime Minister of Israel too?”
Who says I sleep? he answered simply. (The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldman, p. 99)
