The Israel Palestine Project
"a common history, an extraordinary future"
|
The Narrative |
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NARRATIVES ©
It is our opinion, and spoken by many leaders in Israel and Palestine, that the source of this 120 year-old conflict lies in the conflicting narratives developed over time, and that inform the actions taken by both sides. These leaders have also expressed that there is a need for a common historical narrative.
The created common historical narrative, when accepted by the mainstream populations of Israel and Palestine, will transform the very source of the conflict. The Israel Palestine Project is committed to this transformation and the possibility that will be present for an equitable and enduring peace in the Holy Land.
The following pages presented here are in two sections. The first section contains the opposite and mutually contradictory national historical narratives of the Jewish Israeli and the Arab Palestinian peoples. No such account can accurately reflect all of the strands of thought existing in either peoples. Our attempt was to represent , as accurately as possible, the dominant and mainstream stories that are held in the consciousness of each side. The first eight sections are complete and edited. There are 21 sections in total. The remaining thirteen sections are in rough unedited form and not presented here.
The second section contains the common historical narrative.
In both cases, all of the texts were developed in dialogue between a major in the Israeli army and a Palestinian journalist, each representing their respective mainstream populations. The dialogues occurred over the space of a year in weekly conversations recorded by a member of a four-person international support team. The two authors have approved the resulting edited text.
The common narrative was approved, with minor changes, by the Israeli historian, Moshe Ma’oz at Harvard University and the Palestinian historian, Dr. Adel Yahya in Jerusalem. Both indicated that the common narrative is acceptable, in their opinion, to their mainstream populations.
You will likely experience being moved by one side or the other and may find your sympathies shift on occasion. We request that you stay with the seeming intransigent positions expressed in the first section and continue to the common narrative, which follows.
Jack Berriault
Executive Director
The Israel Palestine Project
“a common history, an extraordinary future”
The San Pablo Town Center #327
San Pablo, CA 94806 USA
510 593 5322
THE CONFLICTING NATIONAL HISTORICAL NARRATIVES ©
1. Why are there Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land?
Jewish Israeli
The Holy Land was always the land of the Jewish people. We were forcibly expelled by Roman occupying forces 2000 years ago to the Diaspora. Jewish “immigration” is simply the exercise of the right of the Jews to return to their homeland. The Hebrew word for this “migration”is Alliya, which means returning to our Holy Land, from which we were forcibly evicted, a whole and sovereign people, having lived there without interruption since our beginnings. This is the land of David and Solomon, the land where Jewish life and culture came into existence.
Jewish “immigrants” (returnees) were refugees from the last and most horrible instance of 2000 years of relentless anti-semitism that Jews experienced in the Diaspora. We needed no further justification and we didn't care who was there. It was our natural right to go back to our land when it became possible.
Arab Palestinian
Arab Palestinians were living and continue to live in Palestine since the very beginning to this day. We refer our origins to the Canaanites, a great civilization that existed 5,000 years ago. Many external incursions, invasions and colonialist adventures deprived the Palestinians throughout the centuries of their independence and freedom, the most important being the Crusades. The Zionists came to Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, stole our wealth and subjugated and exploited our sons and daughters. And when we had almost freed ourselves from this, then came the British Mandate, in which someone promised something that they didn't own, to someone else who didn't deserve it. It was part of an international conspiracy, having nothing to do with doing right by anybody.
We completely deny the ancient and ongoing presence of the Jews in this land. The presence of Jews in Palestine is a myth. Jerusalem is a Muslim/Christian city, there were never any Jews involved here.
2. Zionism Early Waves of Jews
Jewish Israel
The Zionist Movement is the national Liberation Movement of the Jewish people. It aimed to restore Jewish life in the homeland that they had been cruelly pushed out of. The Zionist movement was the mechanism the Jewish people chose to implement their right of return and it was recognized by the whole world.
Jews had always had Zion in their prayers and dreams, but there had been no opportunity to fulfill those dreams. The international community helped us get our rights back after the devastation of WWII. They had no choice and we had no choice; there was no where else to go. The anti-semitism wasn't stopping, even after WWII was over. The Jewish people sincerely believed that much of the land was vacant, and they believed in the slogan of the day, “A land without people for people without land.”
Naturally the Zionists cooperated with the superpowers, especially the British, to help them establish a foothold in what was their rightful place in the world. They had every right to do so.
Arab Palestinian
Zionism is a racist movement that concentrates the interest of it's people for (and sometimes against) colonialist expansion. They exclude and ignore the existence of the Palestinian people and its culture. It is not sufficient for Zionism to have Palestine. They also want to possess all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. This movement could not and cannot ever achieve democracy with Zionism at it's heart.
The British used the war and the Holocaust as an excuse to dump the Jews in Palestine for their own purposes. The Jews were to be used as the knife to be stabbed in the Arab heart. The British and the Zionists used every vicious measure possible, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, terrorism, and brute force, to get what they wanted: total control over the land of Palestine.
3. Balfour Declaration
Jewish Israeli
Israel honors Lord Balfour as the man who recognized the need of the Jews to have their homeland given back to them. The Balfour Declaration was the historical document that was the cornerstone of building the Jewish homeland in the land of Zion. It prepared the way for us to get our legitimate rights to a national homeland and make it into a reality.
Arab Palestinian
The Balfour Declaration was part of the international imperialistic plot to deprive the Palestinians of their rights for British strategic purposes. The British wanted to secure the region and their interests in the Suez Canal and beyond. The best way to accomplish that was to establish a state in the region that was unfriendly to the Arabs. It was an extension of European Colonialism. Zionism solved two British problems at the same time: what to do with the Jews, and how to secure British interests in the Middle East.
The British certainly knew that the country was full of Arabs, but they still thought that the area of Palestine would be an excellent setting for it's political machinations within this international context. The British didn't want another Ottoman Empire after they just finished demolishing the one that existed. They did not want a united Arab world that would disrupt their interests, so they injected this representative of Western hegemony into the mix. In promising Palestine to the Jews the British gave something they did not own to one who did not deserve it. In addition, they made conflicting promises, promising the land to both us and the Jews at the same time, which was impossible.
4. Hebron Massacre
( Editorial Note: The Hebron massacre took place during the Arab revolt of 1929 when feelings, fears and accusations were running high. At that time Jewish immigrants were arriving in Palestine in increasing numbers further exacerbating the already existing Arab-Jewish conflict. One source says that three Jews and three Arabs were killed in fighting that took place after a Muslim prayer service on the Temple Mount /Al Aqsa plaza. Al Aqsa Plaza and the Wall beneath it is a place of special reverence of both Arabs and to Jews. The Jewish people believe the massive retaining wall that supports the Al Aqsa Plaza/Temple Mount, is the remaining western wall of the second temple, and the Arab people believe it is where Mohammed tied his horse (Al Burak) before ascending to heaven. The fighting and deaths at this flashpoint appear to have triggered the unfortunate events in Hebron.)
Jewish Israeli
Hebron is a holy place for the Jews, it is where Abraham buried his family, who are the fathers and the mothers of the Jewish nation. A Jewish community had existed in Hebron for many generations. The Palestinians did not want to live in peaceful co-existence with the Jews so they took the opportunity to massacre them. Arabs, on August 23, 1929 descended on the town and massacred innocent civilians in retaliation for the Jews exercising their right to pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the only remaining part of the second temple that was built upon the Temple Mount.
The Hebron Massacre shows the nature of the Palestinian people as murderers, and people with whom it is impossible to live in peaceful co-existence. If they are capable of murdering their neighbors of centuries, we cannot live with them.
The events at Hebron came to represent the key lesson the Jews learned from Hebron: never trust an Arab Palestinian.
Arab Palestinian
This event came as a spontaneous reaction to the targeted killing of civilians at the holy Al Burak. The Arabs involved in the incident came from the villages surrounding Hebron. During the massacre Arab neighbors brought most of the Jews to safety.
Hebron is a symbol of Abraham, and traditionally Arabs relate to Abraham as the father of Islam. So here the Jews wanted to get control of the symbol of Islam.
Al Burak was a wall that Mohamed tied his horse of the same name, before he ascended to Heaven.
5. Arab Revolt
Jewish Israeli
The Arab revolt was an organized attack on peaceful Jewish settlements, by Arabs who showed their violent nature and their hatred toward the Jews by conducting viscous attacks on innocent Jewish civilians. Israelis wanted to live in peace and quiet and the Arabs used all possible means to take away our livelihood and destroy the peace.
Arab Palestinian
After decades of peaceful struggle to regain independence and re-establish our nation and state, Palestinians found out the only way to achieve their goals was to fight not only against Jews that were lying, stealing, cheating, exploiting and murdering, but also the people who were behind the scenes. Rebellion was the answer to the state of an oppressed people who were seeking freedom and independence. This came from a shift in perception of the struggle on the part of the Palestinians, who realized that the Jews could do nothing without the British. The revolt was partly to undermine the British support.
We sacrificed in those three
years 6 % of our population . We were, and are,
an
oppressed people. We sacrificed the gold of our women to purchase weapons to
fight for our freedom, and then sacrificed our lives in the fighting. The
whole time we only wanted the natural, normal right to rule ourselves, while the
British wanted the Jews to rule us so that the British could rule us indirectly
for their own purposes.
6. The Peel Commission
Jewish Israeli
All the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, with some parts of the Eastern Bank are the historical Jewish land of Israel. In the context of realpolitik the Israeli leaders agreed to split the land, and accept less than that to which they were historically entitled.
The Peel Commission, which was essentially a gratuitous renunciation of the Balfour Declaration, was denounced by the Jewish people as a betrayal of Jewish interests, a capitulation and a conciliatory gesture to the rioting Arabs. The British were preparing themselves for a war with Hitler, and had other things to worry about without having to deal with problems in Palestine. Therefore they chose the most expedient route, that of pandering to the Arabs by canceling the Balfour declaration. The British were completely indifferent to Jewish rights.
Arab Palestinian
Although the Peel Commission was originally constituted to appease the Arabs, in the end we found ourselves betrayed again. We had great expectations from Mr. Peel. We were cheering for him, and singing what eventually became a popular song, “Welcome Mr. Peel, it could be solved by your hand.” (Editorial Note: Rhymes in Arabic)
The Commission betrayed the Arabs because it included “ethnic transfer” (forcible displacement and land transfer) and recognition of a Jewish entity that would continue in the same direction of annexing land and abusing the rights of the Palestinians. The imperialistic plans for the region actually continued, though perhaps a little more slowly for awhile.
7. The Holocaust
Jewish Israeli
Jews had been suffering horribly from anti-semitism for over 100 generations because they had no home; they were strangers everywhere in the world. Hitler was raised on this theme and when he came to power he implemented the most horrible form of anti-semitism that the world had ever seen. Six million Jews were slaughtered in his gas chambers, by starvation, and other means. The Jews, as well as the rest of the world, came to the logical conclusion that the only way to prevent such an event in the future was to let the Jews have their own nation-state (as did all other peoples) within the Holy Land which had been our dream for 2000 years. It was universally recognized that such a state was the best place of refuge for the Jewish people after the Holocaust, and to prevent future holocausts against them. The decision by the international community to create a state of Israel after the Holocaust was the only right one, both morally and practically.
Arab Palestinian
The Jews manipulated what was called the Holocaust for their benefit and for the advancement of Zionism by exaggerating the numbers. Even now the Jews and Zionists continue to exploit this event and extract money, guilt and sympathy from the whole world, especially the Germans. They elicit sympathy for Israel even when it commits atrocities of its own.
Zionism was not interested even in saving Jews from the Holocaust. They concentrated on bringing Jews to Palestine to fulfill their dream of a Jewish state. There were cases where they could have rescued Jews from Hitler and other anti-Semites, but didn't, because those Jews didn't want to go to Palestine.
Were Jews killed in WWII? Of course. Jews were among the 50 million people killed in World War II. There were probably somewhere between 300,000 to a maximum of 1 million Jews killed in the camps, but 6 million is just a story. The myth of the 6 million is one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of the Zionist imperialistic drive for domination of the region. Pervasive Jewish control of the media and the US Congress, makes it easy for Zionists to keep using this issue for promoting the Jewish/Zionist agenda.
8. The Deir Yassin Massacre
Jewish Israeli
The operation at Dier Yassin was a part of the campaign for securing the area. Palestinian gunmen used civilian houses as shelters. Unfortunately therefore, Palestinian civilians were killed. The Jewish forces did not systematically kill women and children, as in the stories told by Arabs. The Arabs exaggerated the numbers of deaths, and made up stories of rapes that never occurred. The exaggerations were used by the Palestinians in order to gain attention and sympathy for their cause.
These exaggerations by Palestinians caused local Palestinians to abandon many other villages on their own initiative. Many Palestinians also left their homes because the leaders left first and asked others to leave in order to leave the battlefield empty for Arab battle troops to be successful.
This is the outcome of the war that was initiated by the Arabs and we had to fight to defend ourselves. The refugee problem that resulted is not our fault. The blame is with the Palestinians. They simply ran away and didn't remain in their homes. A war is a war, and in every war, one side wins and the other side loses and the loser pays the price. We won that war because justice was on our side.
Arab Palestinian
Dier Yassin was a particularly calm village where the Arabs agreed with their Jewish neighbors not to let armed Palestinians use the village or stay in the village. But this did not exempt the village from violent attacks where Jewish Israeli thugs abused, tortured and raped. Some pregnant women were stabbed in the bellies. Some children were massacred and buried in mass graves.
Some 250 people were killed that day. The brutal actions spread throughout the country. Some people from other villages fled when they heard that the gangs were on the way to visit their brand of ethnic cleansing on them, so that the Jews could get as much of the land as possible while leaving no Arabs living there. Dier Yassin was only one of the many atrocities in hundreds of villages all around the country. Many people were killed in some of them. The Zionists took care not only to expel people from their homes, but also demolished the villages behind them. It was pure bloodthirsty opportunism at its worst, and it was the beginning of the end of Palestinian hopes for justice. From this came Manachim Begin's famous quote, “Without Dier Yassin the state of Israel would not exist.”
A COMMON HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ©
1. Why are Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jews living in the Holy Land?
Palestinians were always there living on the land ... a land attractive to waves of immigration throughout history especially from surrounding Arab lands. At the beginning of the 20th century most of the inhabitants of the Holy Land were Moslems with a large minority of Christians and a smaller minority of Jews. These Christians and Jews were considered by Moslems to be “The People of the Book” (The Bible) Ahluth-Thima. Palestinians consider themselves to be the sons of the soil.
The Jews made a claim to Palestine as their homeland referring to Biblical and/or historical conventions.
The earliest Jewish immigrants came to Palestine in small numbers under existing Ottoman law. The later immigrants came under the protection of the British mandate. That is when larger numbers came to Palestine. After 1918, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, this immigration became a co-operation between the British Empire and the Zionist Movement.
The Jews bought lands under existing Ottoman and then British law. The result of which displaced the Palestinian peasants. The displacement of the Palestinian Arab peasants was the beginning of the conflict.
2. Zionism, Early Waves of Jewish Immigration into the Holy Land and the Impact on the Local Palestinian People (till WW1).
The reality that most European Jews had to live with in the late nineteenth century was unrelenting anti-semitism, discrimination, and exclusion. While some had achieved a measure of assimilation, others lived in perpetual fear of the cycles of virulent anti-semitism and fierce pogroms especially in Eastern Europe. For some the solution was emigration and many eventually departed for America. Others began to dream of safety, security and dignity on a land and a country of their own. Palestine was the most appealing destination for many Jews because of the historical presence of Jewish life in the Holy Land prior to the Roman Empire.
Hovevi Zion, the Lovers of Zion, started in 1881 in a number of Russian cities, as a response to on-going persecution. This organization and others like it, promoted immigration and settlement in the Holy Land. The first wave of Russian Jewish immigrants, 35,000 of them, arrived in Palestine, between 1880 and 1903. They began purchasing land from non-resident Arab landlords. A second wave of immigration began in 1905; a response to a number of extensive and violent pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine, and 40,000 more settlers arrived in Palestine.
This wave of immigrants, many of them young and idealistic, were imbued with the fervor of creating a socialist society. They characterized themselves as pioneers and were intent on creating a new kind of society in the Holy Land.
Influenced by the prevailing European political trends that were sweeping through Europe, including nationalism, socialism and colonialism, which were perceived idealistically at the time, Zionism as a political movement was born at the first Zionist Congress, held in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897 and as it grew, shifted its focus to gaining support for the creation of a Jewish homeland from the great world powers. After the first Zionist Congress, the rabbis of Vienna decided to explore the ideas that the founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl, had expounded at that Congress and in his book Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State. Two representatives went on a fact-finding mission to Palestine and sent a cable home: “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” This attempt to alert the political leaders to the stark reality of the massive Arab population already living on the land was largely ignored. While subsequent Zionist Congresses explored the possibility of creating a Jewish homeland in other parts of the world---Uganda, Argentina, even Texas!—none of these explorations bore fruit and the focus on settlement in Palestine continued.
A Zionist catchphrase, which eventually grew into a myth, arose: “A land without a people for a people without a land". This slogan was repeated often and with such fervor that many settlers, upon their first arrival in the Holy Land, were surprised to find the land inhabited by Arab people, and replete with fields and orchards carefully tended and well-cultivated. Most of the Palestinian people that the newcomers encountered lived in and tilled fields, orchards and gardens in hundreds of cities, towns and villages that dotted the Holy Land, a land with a vibrant culture. The export of agricultural products to Europe, particularly oranges, was common and some industry was beginning. The Zionist settlers, following European custom, purchased land and expected the previous tenants to depart without complaint. Displaced and evicted by Ottoman police (and later by British police), the Arab farmers living on those lands, were dismayed, angry and disturbed by the advent of people speaking a different language and coming from a radically different culture. What about their needs? Their children? Their dreams for a prosperous future? These Jews were regarded trespassers, many felt, on their sacred lands, and had no right to be there.
While the political leaders of the Zionist movement in Palestine were well aware of the large numbers of Arab peoples already living there, their exclusive focus was on meeting the needs of arriving Jewish settlers. In their eagerness to care for their own, they ended up adopting policies that conflicted with the needs and interests of the indigenous population. If they could create a prosperous Jewish society, the benefits of this would accrue to all eventually and someday things would work out between the Palestinian people and the newcomers. The net effect, intended or not, was to exclude the native Palestinian population, from the economic benefits the Jewish settlers were bringing to the land.
The clashes that planted the seeds for what eventually became the Israeli-Palestinian conflict occurred in the first difficult encounters between the indigenous peoples who had lived on the lands for hundreds of years and the zealous newcomers.
Confrontation became more and more common during the first decades of the twentieth century and mutual feelings of separation, resentment and rejection. Palestinians voiced their fear about possible loss of their land and way of life in media outlets and other venues. Voices of rage and protest were also raised to an unresponsive Ottoman government (and later to the British government). Nothing seemed to stem the tide of ever more Jewish settlers arriving. Two peoples were separated by culture, religion, education and world view, and they did not have a common language with which to talk to each other about the grave conflict which was growing daily in their midst. Violent eruptions began to break out sporadically; a sign perhaps, of what was to come.
3. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 & The British Mandate
The Balfour Declaration came about by the British Empire’s desire to safeguard its strategic, military and commercial interest in the Middle East, Far East including the Suez Canal.
The Jews in Europe represented by the prominent politicians and wealthy distinguished British Jews led by Weizman, Rothschild, Baron Hirsch lobbied for the declaration on behalf of the Zionist movement to implement the Jewish interests in having a homeland in Palestine. They solicited Lord Balfour to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine by using arguments that would be in line with British interests to strengthen its influence in the Middle East. The Jewish homeland in Palestine - Eretz Israel would be pro-British.
Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jewish diplomat, was appointed by British Govt as High Commissioner according to a mandate given by the League of Nations. The Palestinians see the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration in a negative viewpoint because it was imposed on them and interfered/prevented their self-determination and ambitions to statehood.
The indigenous Palestinians saw the Jewish immigrants had a completely different culture as changing the face of their land. Jewish capital was used for sake of the Jewish immigrants. In general, Palestinians were not part of the new industry and the new job markets created. The local people were displaced by Jewish capital buying land. Until 1948, the Jewish people owned 6% of Palestine. These were some of the reasons for the eruption of the first Palestinian Revolution in 1936-1939.
Extract from the Balfour Declaration: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
The British Mandate of Palestine was passed by the League of Nations to implement the Balfour Declaration including "securing the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine".
4. The Hebron Massacre - 1929
The Hebron Massacre was part of the riots that broke out in the holy land on the issue of use of the Western Wall or Al Buraq, believed by Jews to be part of the Temple and by Arabs the place Mohammad tied his horse before ascending to Heaven. The riots spread from Jerusalem to the whole country. In Hebron the rioting was especially brutal.
Some Arab rioters killed 67-69 Jews in Hebron and wounded 60 others. Some 435 Jews survived by hiding with their Arab neighbours. 28 Arab families risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbours. Most of the attackers came from Palestinian villagers from outside of Hebron. The Hebron massacre had a huge impact on Jewish society in the holy land and it brought many to believe that peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Jews was not feasible.
The roots of the conflict lay deeper in Arab fears of the Zionist movement. The graveness of the traumatic event which happened in Hebron revealed a kind of existential fear that brought some people to the verge of insanity implied in such an act
5. The Arab Revolt - 1936-1939
The Arab revolt, known by the Arab world as "The Great Uprising", occurred between 1936 and 1939. By the year 1936, the conflict in the Holy Land was coming to the point in which the Arabs who rejected the Jewish immigration and the British Mandate reached a moment of decision and sought total control over their land and fate.
This revolt was triggered by the further acceleration of Jewish immigration in the 1930s, and the ever-worsening economic conditions, much of which was caused by the global economic depression, but which the Palestinians still experienced as being part of the same problem. Part of the revolution was internal subversion against local leadership. Traditional Arab leadership sought a partnership with the British. The peaceful alliance with the British, however, was not effective in stopping the Zionist project from being implemented. A new leadership with a new vision was emerged, represented by Sheik Iz id-Din Al Qasam who felt that the real enemy was the British and must be countered by armed struggle.
Palestinians began a civil disobedience campaign, went on strike from their jobs, stopped paying their taxes, boycotted the British Mandate administration, sabotaged British military and industrial equipment and infrastructure, and attacked Jewish settlements and Arabs viewed as collaborators.
The British did everything possible to suppress the revolt with fierce brutality. The Jewish Yeshuv (community) which felt targeted was mobilized within this effort to end up the revolt. Kanafani, a Palestinian scholar and novelist estimated the killing of a 6% of the Palestinian population during this period. Many Palestinian Arab leaders were killed or assassinated, leaving Palestinians with no coherently organized leadership.
With the coming war on the horizon, the British felt that a political end of the revolt could be achieved by reconciliating the Arabs. The result was the British White Paper of 1939, which essentially repudiated British support for a Jewish state, called for an independent Palestinian state within ten years to be jointly administered by Arabs and Jews, and severely limited Jewish immigration. This deeply embittered the Zionist movement, especially later, when so many of the Jews trapped in Europe needed a safe refuge from the Holocaust.
6. The Peel Commission
Following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt, a Royal Commission chaired by Earl Peel was appointed in August 1936 by the British government to examine the Palestine problem and to propose changes to the Mandate for Palestine.
In their Report of July of 1937, the Peel Commission attributed the underlying cause of the Arab revolt to the desire of the Arabs for national independence and their hatred and fear of the establishment of a National Jewish Home. The Commission recommended freezing Jewish immigration at 12,000 per year for five years, that a plan for partition of the land be developed and population transfer.
With regard to partition, the Peel Commission advised the partition of Palestine into a Jewish State (along part of the coastal plain, to include the Jezreel valley - Marj Ibn Amer and most of the Galilee) and an Arab State - to include most of the remaining territory as well as Transjordan - and a British controlled corridor from Jerusalem to the coast at Jaffa.
As a method of dealing with the delicate population balance between Jews and Arabs in the proposed Jewish state, the commission recommended the idea of population transfer. The population exchange, if carried out, would have involved the transfer of approximately 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews.
The Arabs, who had great hope that their grievances would come to their end, for they even composed verses that show their hope in Peel to solve their problem, were disappointed. The Arab leadership rejected the plan] as keeping the process of colonialization of their land, depriving them from a precious part of it, and deepening their grievances by large population transfer. On the other hand, the Jewish opinion remained heatedly divided. After considerable debate, the Zionist executive accepted the Peel plan, despite the small size of the state on offered, because of the urgent need, that was felt even then, to provide a haven for the Jews of Europe.
Despite strong objections to the Plan raised in the Zionist executive because of doubts about the morality of transfer, influential leaders of the leading Mapai party such as Berl Katznelson favored transfer, including "compulsory" transfer saying: "My conscience is absolutely clear in this respect. A remote neighbour is better than a close enemy". Ben-Gurion too wrote in its favor: "The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us … an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imagination. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty---this is a national consolidation in a free homeland"
Deliberation over the plan continued in different manners and forums. Following the recommendation of the Woodhead Commission that partition was impracticable and the failure of the St. James Palace round table conference held in February-March 1939, a new British policy for Palestine was issued in the form of what was known as the MacDonald White Paper. The paper proposed the creation within ten years of a unitary Palestine state, with its borders from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. The Paper also outlined a five year plan for the immigration of seventy-five thousand Jews (ten thousand per annum and a further twenty-five thousand refugees) -- but thereafter no further immigration without Arab consent.
The publication of the White Paper should be understood within the wider context of the escalation of hostilities possibly threatening the Middle East corridor to India, and the essential source of oil, it was clear to foreign policy experts that it would not be in Britain's interests to offend the sensibilities of the Arab and Muslim world.
The systematic execution of Six million European Jews in gas chambers was a sophisticated killing machine produced, enhanced and executed by the Nazi party and its leader Adolph Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945.
In his book "Mein Kampf", the Nazis' Manifesto, Hitler composed the most fierce racist ideas that praises the superiority of the Aryan race over all others and denounces the Semitics especially the Jews as the source of evil in the world. A "final Solution" of the Jewish problem was proposed.
The Nazis gained power during Germany's period of crisis after World War I. They used propaganda and charismatic oratory, emphasizing nationalism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Communism. After restructuring the economy and rearming the military, a totalitarian dictatorship based around the "Führer", the almighty leader, was established, and gave a push to a fierce campaign against all opponents, adopted a harsh discrimination policy that targeted all those who were considered inferior, different or in a word not superior like the Aryans.
With the Rise of Hitler to power, especially after what was known as the night of crystal, (Leil ha Bdolah in Hebrew) in which Jewish homes and shops were attacked, it became clear that the Jews were left with no choice but to leave Germany, and other surrounding European countries.
The Final Solution plan was the extermination of the Jews, based on Hitler's racist ideas. Adolph Eichmann, who was appointed a minister to his cabinet, created a wide, sophisticated and very efficient system, comprised of ghettoes, transportation lines and special trains to take the Jews from their homes to concentration camps, in which men, women, children, sick and elderly were forced to work up to exhaustion and then face their bitter fate in gas chambers with zyklon B gas, other deaths were caused by systematic starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and cruel medical experiments.
During WWII, that was principally initiated by Hitler, the final solution for the "Jewish problem" became possible not only in Germany but throughout Europe especially in Poland in which the killing machine worked around the clock. The gas furnaces in the concentration camps, among which Auschwitz was the most prominent, worked twenty four hours a day under the misleading and seemingly innocent slogan on its front entrance: Labor Liberates. In Poland, seventy percent of the Jews who were 10 percent of the whole population perished in the Holocaust. Poland alone suffered a loss of as many as 3 millions Jews. Between 1941 and 1944, the Nazi exterminating machine was able to kill six million Jews, over a third of the Jewish world population at the time. Gypsies, handicapped people, homosexuals, and many other groups considered "non-Aryan" in Nazi ideology were exterminated also. The one million remaining in Poland experienced a pogrom in Kaltze, in 1946 one year after the war. This made it untenable for Jews to stay or go back to Poland.
By the end of the war, Hitler's policies of territorial conquest and racial subjugation had brought death and destruction to around tens of millions of people, including the genocide of some six million Jews in what is now known as the Holocaust. The international community and its leaders were fighting the Nazis in a total and comprehensive war in which around 50 million were killed. However they did not act directly to stop the genocide against Jews and others by the Nazis. For although the Allies, (United States, The Soviet Union, Britain and France) fought the Nazi military in Europe and North Africa, and there was talk of bombing the gas chambers where the mass of people were killed, no bombings were made and the military campaigns had little effect, if any, on the death camps. Only when the war ended in 1945 and British, American and Russian troops entered the concentration camps, a clear picture of the horrible acts in those camps became known.
The whole world was shocked, horrified, traumatized and outraged by this grave revelation, and became full of guilt for not stopping it. Awareness of the magnitude of the Holocaust and the sense of guilt that followed it enabled the Zionist movement and its prominent leaders of the time, Weismann, Ben Gurion and others to bring the idea of establishing the state of Israel to become an acceptable idea to most of the Western world.
The Zionist movement which had already established a consolidated civil and economic infrastructure with hundreds of thousands of people in the Holy Land became stronger, and the idea of making Palestine a natural outlet for many of the Holocaust's refugees was more convincing.
For the Palestinians, the genocide was not widely known and the reports of the killing of 6 million Jewish people seemed unbelievable. Yet many regarded it as a real and tragic event, but used politically to justify the Zionist colonizing of Palestine, their own displacement and the denial of their legitimate rights for self determination and independence. In later stages, the average Arab and Moslem saw The Holocaust as a fabrication to gain support for Jews as victims and give them the right to claim ultimate victim status that justified the actions of land confiscation, extension of settlements and appropriation of rights to water by Israel.
The Holocaust became a rallying point for support for the creation of the Jewish State, among the group of Western nations, eventually culminating in the UN declaration 181. In later stages, Palestinians feel their own tragedy of the Naqbah is minimized or denied while the Holocaust is given full attention.
However, the Holocaust made the Jews feel at the end of the day that they have nowhere to go but to consolidate themselves in what became their renewed homeland.
8. The Deir Yassin Massacre – a triggering action of the Palestinian Catastrophe – The " Nakba"
On 9th April 1948 forces from the militant Etzel group and Lehi led by Menachim Begin and Yair Stern entered the village of Deir Yassin, southwest of Jerusalem. They intentionally, systematically and fiercely killed 120 villagers including men, women, children and the elderly. Some women were reported raped before being killed. Torturing, looting actions and intentional killing of some prisoners in the quarry site outside the village were also reported and well documented. The remaining villagers who did not flee during the night or killed during the raid were loaded on open trucks and were paraded in the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem before being driven out to east Jerusalem.
Several days after the horrific events at Deir Yassin, the New York Times (April 13, 1948) reported that 254 people had been killed there and that women had been raped. The Times report, and others like it with exaggerated numbers, were based on the desire of both sides to intentionally inflate or minimize the numbers killed for their own purposes. The exact death toll remained unclear for decades, until Palestinian scholars revealed the actual facts, forever ending the debate about what happened at Deir Yassin.
The Jewish command, in the actual period, wanted to intensify the effect of the event, to instill fear in Arab population and drive them off their lands and cause them to flee away for their lives to avoid a similar fate. Arab and Palestinian leadership wanted to excuse its defeat and explain the loss of the land by the argument that they were concerned with ensuring safety of their families and the sanctity of their women. Later, the Jews denied it and either minimize the numbers or tried to claim the action as being from a dissident group that did not represent the Jewish community. As for the Arabs, in later stages of the conflict, they used Deir Yassin and its horrific events to denounce the Jews as killers and rapists.
According to UN Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 partitioning Mandatory Palestine into two states, an Arab state and a Jewish state, almost half a million Arabs (49 per cent of the total population) were allotted in the Jewish State. Within the context of the Jews trying to clear up their state and enlarge it gaining more territory with less Arab people, the Zionist mainstream devised Plan D to expel the Arabs. The Jewish military groups took the initiative in the ensuing actions that would lead the Arabs to believe they were no longer safe in their villages because of Deir Yassin.
Plan D for the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland that was for a long time denied by Israel, was a strategic plan that was implemented by several military operations, such as Nahshon and others, launched in March 1948 by the Haganah, the military power of the mainstream in the "Yeshuv", the Jewish community. Quoting from Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, and Wounds of Peace: " English edition... “the Haganah would now respond to Arab attacks with decisive blows against Arab villages and with the expulsion of their residents...". Ben Ami adds saying: "for Plan D went beyond just securing the boundaries of the Jewish state as defined in Resolution 181. The initiative was taken to target Arab villages and cities ..."
The Massacre and the whole expelling and displacement process was controversial even among Israeli historians. Those historians who revealed the plans for cleansing Palestine from its Palestinian inhabitants recognized later on that despite the moral challenge of that act, it was in fact a necessary price to be paid for the establishment of Israel, underlining what Menachim Begin himself said earlier that "without Deir Yassin the state of Israel would not exist".
The Killing and murders in Deir Yassin and other villages that occurred in different places in Palestine demoralized the Arab population. Villagers fled for their lives and for the sanctity of their women. In effect, this massacre was the trigger to the displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians before and after the end of the British Mandate on May the 15th 1948. This also marks the beginning of what was known later as the 1948 war, and the demolition of some 412 Palestinian villages. It also marks the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem that still exists, and which causes an ongoing suffering, a major condition that provides a source for the conflict which continues from generation to generation.
DO NOT COPY OR DISTRIBUTE
