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Were
the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine?
by Sheree Roth
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2016 (view PDF)
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The Rape of Palestine, 1st ed. By William Ziff. London: Longmans,
Green and Co., 1938. Reprint. Mansfield Centre, Conn.: Martino Fine
Books, 2010. 630 pp. $60.
A
train of donkeys and Arabs crosses from Transjordan into Palestine on a
bridge over the Jordan River, July 3, 1936. The assertion that
Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous population is central in their
dispute with Israel. But waves of immigration from other Arab countries
brought many to the territory. In 1936, a French high commissioner for
Syria asserted that Arabs were moving from Damascus to Palestine
because of the prosperity there.
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The assertion that Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous population is
central in their dispute with Israel. The message is that Jews stole and
now occupy the land of the indigenous Arab population. Rarely challenged,
the claim is widespread, such as this statement from Henry Cattan, a
Palestinian Christian jurist and writer born in Jerusalem:
The Palestinians are the original and
continuous inhabitants of Palestine from time immemorial.[1]
Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas elaborated this
claim in a recent speech:
Our narrative says that we were in this
land since before Abraham. I am not saying it. The Bible says it. The
Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham.
So why don't you recognize my right?[2]
Saeb Erekat, the PA's chief negotiator, stated:
I am the son of Jericho. ... the proud
son of the Netufians and the Canaanites. I've been there for 5,500 years
before Joshua Bin Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho.[3]
To be sure, some Arabs are descendants of the indigenous occupants.
But waves of immigration into the Holy Land brought Jews, Arabs, and
others to the territories, to the point that most of today's
Arabic-speakers do not trace their roots back for centuries.
A number of analyses address the subject of Arab immigration to
Palestine: Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial,[4] Arieh Avneri's The Claim of
Dispossession,[5]
and Fred M. Gottheil's essay, "The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration
into Palestine, 1922-1931."[6]
But, William B. Ziff's little remembered The Rape of Palestine,
published in 1938, adds an important first-hand source to these recent
studies. None of the modern authors used Ziff as a source, so this is new
information to present-day analysts.
Ziff (1898-1953) was born in Chicago and co-founded the Ziff-Davis
Publishing Company, which specialized in technical magazines in such subject
areas as aviation, radio, and photography. Active in Zionist politics,
his Rape of Palestine was considered by the British Foreign Office
"a violent and offensive book," and for years afterward, the
British monitored the Zionist writings and speeches of this
"unscrupulous gangster," fearful that his audiences were
"lapping this poison up."[7]
The thrust of Ziff's book is on British policy in Palestine during the
mandate period, but what is especially interesting today are his comments
on the migration of Arabs and the squelching of Jewish immigration by the
British. The following extensive quotes show the value of his work.
"Indigenous"
Pre-20th Century Foreigners
In
1830, Egypt's governor Muhammad Ali colonized Jaffa, Nablus, and Beisan
with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies. Fourteen years later,
the nationalities of the inhabitants of Jaffa were estimated at 8,000
Turco-Egyptians, 4,000 Greeks and Armenians, and 1,000 Jews and
Maronites.
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Ziff notes that foreigners already peopled the land:[8]
It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power in
Palestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes. The Fatamids introduced
Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds, and mercenaries of all kinds. The
Mamelukes imported legions of Georgians and Circassians. Each monarch for
his personal safety relied on great levies of slave warriors. Saladin,
hard-pressed by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand
Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon district for their
services.
Out of this human patch-work of Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Kalmucks,
Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sudanese,
Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians, Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers,
ne'er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders, slaves ... was formed that
hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today "Levantine."
...
In the fourteenth century, drought caused the immigration into
Palestine of eighteen thousand "tents" of Yurate Tartars from
the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four
thousand Mongols under Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled
from Jerusalem south. Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their
trail. ...
In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet [Muhammad] Ali colonized Jaffa,
Nablus, and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies.
Fourteen years later, Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand inhabitants
of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand Turco-Egyptians, four thousand
Greeks and Armenians, and one thousand Jews and Maronites. He did not
consider that there were any Arabs at all in that city.[9]
Ziff continues:
One hundred years ago, [Jaffa] had a population of four thousand.
Today it holds seventy thousand, overwhelmingly Arab, who are largely
descendants of the Egyptians and Ethiopians brought in by the conqueror
Ibrahim Pasha [Muhammad Ali's son]. The few thousand Jews who lived here
fled during the 1936 riots, abandoning their shops and property.[10]
Arabs
Attracted to Jewish Settled Areas
Ziff reports that Jews invested large sums of money to
"facilitate" Jewish immigration and encourage Jewish settlement
in Palestine:
The amount of Jewish capital invested in this tiny land is estimated
to total more than £120,000,000. Prior to the recent riots, Jews were
bringing in money at the rate of two to five million dollars a month. In
1934 alone, they are estimated to have invested approximately £10,000,000
in Palestine. Today the productive output of the Jewish community is
placed at £20,000,000 annually.[11]
All the authors mentioned above refer to the Arabs as being attracted
by Jewish economic activity to their settled areas. Ziff describes this
pattern:
Not until the Zionists had arrived in numbers did the Arab population
begin to augment itself. The introduction of European standards of wage
and life acted like a magnet on the entire Near East. Abruptly, Palestine
became an Arab center of attraction. By 1922, after a quarter century of
Jewish colonization, their numbers mushroomed to 488,000. Today they are
over a million.
If the English contention were accurate, we should expect to find an
exodus of Arabs from areas where Jews are settled into purely Arab
regions. But exactly the opposite is true: It is precisely in the
vicinity of these Jewish villages that Arab development is most marked.
Arab Haifa, profiting by the Zionist boom, grew from 1922 to 1936 by
130%, Jaffa by 80%, and Jerusalem by 55%. The Arab rural settlement in
the Tel Aviv district increased by over 135%. The all-Arab city of
Nablus, which held 33,000 before the war, has fallen to less than 12,000.
Safed which had 20,000, dropped to less than 9,000.[12]
Lack of Jobs
for Jews
Palestine skyrocketed along on the
most insane economy modern industry has ever seen.
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Ziff elaborates on Jewish efforts, both from within and from abroad,
to create more jobs for those Jews emigrating to Palestine as well as
those already living there. These efforts spurred significant economic
growth and consequently accomplished the goal of providing employment.
However, British policy resulted in a stream into Palestine of illegal
Arab immigrants who filled these jobs in lieu of the barred Jews. (All of
the above-mentioned modern authors also address the influx of Arabs lured
by the booming economy.)
With feverish energy and determination, the [Jewish] newcomers applied
their money and experience, hoping to create opportunities for their
poverty-stricken brothers in Europe to join them in building the new
nation. Factories and enterprises of all kinds were started. The result
was a critical scarcity of labor in which the entire economy of the
country went lunatic. Workers were drained out of the farms to take the
more lucrative position in the cities. In the towns, the same process
repeated itself in favor of the "boom trades," which could
afford to pay wages far out of line with those of normal occupations.
Employer competed desperately with employer for the available labor
supply. Industries had to curtail their activities; factories shut down
altogether. Palestine skyrocketed along on the most insane economy modern
industry has ever seen.
The condition is partially glimpsed in a semi-official report of
August 27, 1934, admitting that the entire Palestine export trade was at
a standstill due to a shortage of labor. Two-thirds of the workers on
Jewish land, says the report, are now Arabs, "and those Jews
remaining will soon be displaced due to labor scarcity." The problem
became so acute that populations of whole districts, including school children,
had to be mobilized to keep crops from rotting in the fields. While
anxious Jews were being turned away at the docks of Jaffa and Haifa, the
Nesher Cement Works, engaged in a £150,000 expansion in Haifa, announced
November 16, 1933, that it was unable to proceed due to "acute
scarcity of labor." In Tel Aviv, £1,000,000 worth of building had to
be held up for the same reason. The story repeated itself everywhere.[13] ...
The Zionists have been mercilessly jobbed. They choked and spluttered
in amazed exasperation. The incredible posing of "landless
Arabs" in a country suffering from a drastic shortage of workers was
past understanding. So, too, was the Commission's demand that Jewish
capitalists be forced to put all Arab unemployed to work before another
Jew could come in, which meant literally the employment of all the
natives of Northeast Africa and Arabia (since these outsiders were
already flowing into the country in a steady stream).[14] ...
Whole villages in the Hauran have been emptied of their people, who
are drifting into Palestine. Count De Martel, French high commissioner
for Syria, asserted in the summer of 1934 that even Arab merchants were
moving from Damascus to Palestine because of the prosperity there; and in
1936, the head of the Moslem Youth Association at Beirut, Jamil Bek
Basham, wrote that "there is a penetration into Palestine of an army
of Syrian laborers."[15]
British
Obstruction of Jewish, Not Arab, Immigration
The
introduction of European standards of wage and life in Mandate
Palestine acted like a magnet on the entire Near East. Abruptly,
Palestine began attracting Arabs. By 1922, after a quarter century of
Jewish colonization, Arab numbers mushroomed to 488,000. By 1938, the
Arab population had reached over a million.
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Peters and Avneri describe how the British obstructed Jewish
immigration while facilitating or ignoring Arab immigration. Ziff adds
details about immigration certificates, labor visas, taxation, and
Hadassah aliyahs:
As the "absorptive capacity" of the country increased so
tremendously under the stimulus of Jewish investment that any effort to
deny it became ludicrous, the government produced still other cards out
of its sleeve. It announced in 1936 that 70 percent of the thirteen
hundred immigration certificates available for the following six months
were ear-marked for bachelors, ten percent for maidens, and 20 percent
for men with families, thus cutting down immigration without appearing to
do so. Another able device was the refusal to allow the wives and
families of employed residents to enter without the precious labor visas
though in many cases they were an actual charge on these same residents,
who sent money abroad to maintain them.
Such an obvious attempt was made to restrict the entry of women that
the Jewish Agency flatly accused the government in November 1934 of a
mischievous and willful attempt "directed against any considerable
development of the immigration of women into Palestine."
Many of the administration's reasons for refusing entry permits would
do credit to Herr Hitler as witness the refusal to grant a visa to a
refugee Russian rabbi on the excuse that "there were enough rabbis
already in Palestine." Some of the regulations designed to restrict
Jewish immigration are classic. One of these edicts, promulgated November
14, 1933, allowed only 250 immigrants "to enter Palestine from any
one vessel." Its effectiveness rested on the fact that few of the
ships touching Palestine ports could make a payload out of such a small
number of travelers, forcing the cancellation of sailings.
Perhaps the outstanding example of official artifice was the schedule
announced for the period between October 1, 1935, and March 31, 1936.
Four thousand, three hundred and fifty visas were granted ... What was
not mentioned were the following deductions made from this schedule in
advance: 1,000 certificates "advanced" during the previous
six-month period; 250 reserved by the government (for non-Jews); 1,200
taken off to cover "illegal" immigrants who could not be apprehended;
and 1,900 for dependents of employed residents (who in any other country
would have entered as a matter of course). If these deductions are added
up they are found to equal exactly the number of certificates granted; so
that the administration was only perpetrating a crude joke on the
Zionists and in effect issuing no certificates at all.[16] ...
Everything in this business is made subject to cash. Even the boasted
Hadassah aliyahs, by which a few hundred Jewish children were brought in
from Germany, were made conditional on a substantial money deposit, much
as would be charged if the children had entered a boarding school. The
Department of Immigration is a paying business, showing in a typical year
a net income of £333,200 against an expenditure of £209,100.[17] ...
It is by disguising themselves as
Arabs that "illegal" Jews accomplish immigration.
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Lured by stark evidence of labor scarcity and big pay, peoples from
all surrounding states began to drift into Palestine. Though a huge corps
of coast and frontier guards kept vigilant watch to prevent the entry of
"illegal" Jews, Arabs from anywhere entered without even the
gesture of passport investigation. The report of the Peel Commission
admits frankly that the inhabitants of Syria and Transjordan "are
free to enter the corresponding districts in Palestine without special
formality." It is, in fact, by disguising themselves as Arabs that
most "illegal" Jewish immigration is accomplished.
A news item of July 4, 1934, gives the circumstance more lucidly than
pages of reference. It reads: "Five Jewish women coming overland
from Damascus, attired in the traditional costumes of Moslem women,
including the black veils, were apprehended at the border when police saw
through their disguises. They could not answer questions put to them
in Arabic."[18]
Hunting down
Jews
Though
guards kept watch to prevent the entry of "illegal" Jews,
Arabs from anywhere entered without any passport investigation. The
Peel Commission admitted that Arabs from Syria and Transjordan
"are free to enter ... Palestine without special formality."
Illegal Arab immigrants were also known to work on road and house
construction in Petach Tikvah and Haifa.
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Only Ziff mentions the British practice of hunting down
"illegal" Jews:
Coincident with the advent of Hitler, the business assumed the
proportions of an out and out Jew-hunt. In a nice piece of collusion
between the colonial secretary, Sir Phillip Cunliffe-Lister, and an M.P.
named MacDonald, the Government "admitted" that "illegal"
Jewish immigration existed but stated in assurance that "practical
steps would be taken to deal with the matter." The very next day
Cunliffe-Lister announced stringent measures to prevent
"illegal" Jewish immigration into Palestine.
The system of tourist deposits was instituted. Holders of Nansen
[League of Nations] passports, that pitiful army of staatenlos
[stateless] men, were not in future to be granted even tourist visas. An
air-tight frontier control in collaboration with the agreeable French authorities
in Syria was to be put in effect. On the subject of illegal Arab
immigration, the announcement was expressively silent.
Showing the extent of its preorganization, the campaign at once
assumed the proportions of a large-scale pursuit of Jews over the length
and breadth of Palestine. Ironically paid for out of Jewish tax moneys, a
dragnet of airplane and motor boat patrols were detailed along the
borders while British and Arab constables, assisted by organized groups
of fellaheen, enjoyed themselves in scouring the coast-wise territory.
At Beirut and other Syrian cities, British and Arab police questioned
motorbus drivers, asking if Jews were among the passengers, carefully
examining the passports of all suspected of being Jews while others were
as scrupulously ignored.[19]
According to Ziff,
Hunting "illegal" Jews became a major game, with illegal
Arab newcomers enlisting gleefully in the chase. Savage Bedouins joined
in under promise of a reward for any Jewish man, woman, or child they
could catch. Palestine was under a virtual reign of terror. Anyone who
could not immediately prove his citizenship, or produce his or her
certificate of entry, was tracked down, jailed, and brutally beaten. ...
A fair example is the case of a woman and six small children, who had
arrived legally with the proper passport and visa from Turkestan. On the
way, her husband had been killed at a railway station. The whole family
was arrested on the grounds that the passport provided not for a woman
and six children but for a man, a woman and six children. On this
pretext the woman and her children were ordered to prison.[20]
Illegal Arab
Immigration
A
group of Jewish picketers assemble to stage a demonstration in 1934
against the Borovsky House construction site where only Arab workers
were employed. The British authorities arrested fifty-three Jews and
sentenced them to prison. Borovsky eventually conceded and employed
Jewish workers.
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Ziff also writes about futile attempts by Jews to bring the problem of
illegal Arab immigrants to the attention of British authorities:
It is, of course, difficult to attain any adequate idea of the extent
of this flood of non-Jewish immigration since officially it does not
exist. In the absence of accurate canvass, its size must be pieced
together and surmised. Such calculations as are available show an Arab
immigration for the single year 1933 of at least sixty-four thousand
souls. Added to the acknowledged Hauranese infiltration are some two
thousand who arrived from Damascus alone. Mokattan, the leading
Cairo daily, announced that ten thousand Druses had gone to the Holy
Land, and according to al-Jamia al-Islamia, an Arab newspaper of
Jaffa, seventeen thousand Egyptians had come from Sinai Peninsula alone.
To these must be added considerable groups of Numidians and even
Abyssinians, and a vast uncounted army from Transjordan about whose
movement into Palestine not the slightest pretense of legality is
maintained.[21]
Ziff adds:
Exasperated by the government's lack of good faith, which was
illicitly converting the Holy Land into an Arab country, groups of
courageous Jewish youths volunteered in 1934 to point out what apparently
the authorities were unable to see. Fourteen hundred of these illegals
were quickly shown to be working at Petach Tikvah and 1,200 in Haifa on
road and house construction alone. Their probable numbers could be
gathered from a test count of 357 Arab laborers in the buildings material
industry, which showed 273 to be Hauranis illegally in the country. A
check of Arabs employed in Palestine ports on December 23, 1936, showed
that only 50 of the 750 workers were Palestinians. The remainder included
200 Egyptians and 500 Hauranis. Whole hordes of these people were
demonstrated to be in the employ of the government itself.
Without deigning to make a reply, the administration pointedly told
the Jews to mind their own business. When Jews picketed Jewish employers
of this alien labor, the government bared its teeth and sentenced the
demonstrators to six months at hard labor for their pains. Undeterred,
Jews again picketed a Haifa theater being erected by a contractor named
Borovsky where illegal Hauranis were employed. Immediately the
authorities arrested fifty-three Jews and sentenced them to prison terms.[22]
Population
Numbers
Modern authors agree with Ziff that the huge increase in Arab
population numbers cannot be accounted for by natural growth. Ziff does
the math:
Though the government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total Moslem
increase by immigration of only 22,535 since the time of the British
occupation, evidence of a vast influx of desert tribesmen is obvious
everywhere. As early as 1926, Colonial Secretary Amery cautiously
conceded that despite the growth of the Jewish element "the increase
of the Arabs is actually greater than the Jews." Figures presented
before the Peel Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have
more than doubled in fourteen years. This admitted gain in half a
generation must either be attributed to outside immigration or to the
most astonishing philo-progenitiveness in medical history. ...
[T]he government itself acknowledged in 1922 the immigration of whole
tribes "from the Hejaz and southern Transjordan into the Beersheba
area," a fact which in itself must make its estimates of Arab
immigration far-fetched. Other approximate figures are available from
scattered but credible sources. One of these is the statement of the
French governor of the Hauran in Syria, that from his district alone, in
the summer of 1933, thirty-five thousand people had left for Palestine as
a consequence of bad crops.[23]
The native Arab population in
Palestine was small before Jewish settlers made it an attractive and
prosperous place.
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The increase in Arab population due to immigration was no secret.
Another important testimony came from Robert Kennedy, the future U.S.
attorney general, who traveled at age twenty-two in 1948 to Palestine and
reported from there for the Boston Post.He also noted the influx of Arab
immigration into Palestine:
The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the
12 years between 1932 and 1944 came into Palestine to take advantage of
living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only
country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in
existence.[24]
Fred Gottheil summarizes why finding the truth on this topic is
important:
[F]or Arab Palestinians, the character of their demography is at the
heart of their claim to territorial inheritance and national sovereignty.
Their contention, seen by them as being beyond dispute, is that Arab
Palestinians have deep and timeless roots in that geography and that
their own immigration into that geography has at no time been consequential.
To challenge that contention, then, is to challenge their self-selected
criterion for sovereignty.[25]
While Ziff's book has lain dormant, his insights regarding the waves
of Arab immigration into Palestine substantiates the assertions of later
scholars. During the mandate period, Arabs from many lands flowed freely
into Palestine while Jewish immigration was severely limited. The truth
remains that the native Arab population in Palestine was relatively small
before the first
Jewish settlers made it an attractive and prosperous place.
Sheree Roth writes about the
Israel-Arab conflict from Palo Alto, California.
[1] Palestine
and International Law: The Legal Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,
quoted in Alan Hart, Arafat Terrorist or Peacemaker? ( London:
Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984), p. 49.
[2] PA
TV, Mar. 21, 2016, PMW Bulletin, Palestinian Media Watch, June 6,
2016.
[3] The
Times of Israel (Jerusalem), Feb. 12, 2014.
[4] From
Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine
(New York: Harper Collins, 1st ed., 1984).
[5] The
Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers 1982).
[6] Middle
East Quarterly, Winter
2003.
[7]
Rafael Medoff, Militant
Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the
United States, 1926-1948 (Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press,
2002), pp. 39-40.
[8] See
also, Daniel Pipes, "The
11th-Encyclopaedia Britannica on Who Is a Palestinian," Lion's
Den: Daniel Pipes Blog, July 31, 2016.
[9]
Ziff, The Rape of Palestine, pp. 368-9. Italics in original.
[10]
Ibid., p. 185.
[11]
Ibid., pp. 178-9.
[12]
Ibid., pp. 385-6.
[13]
Ibid., pp. 235-6.
[14] Ibid.,
p. 135.
[15]
Ibid., p. 248.
[16]
Ibid., pp. 237-8. Italics in original.
[17]
Ibid., pp. 238-9.
[18]
Ibid., pp. 246-7. Italics in original.
[19]
Ibid., pp. 243-4.
[20]
Ibid., pp. 245-6. Italics in original.
[21]
Ibid., p. 248.
[22]
Ibid., p. 249.
[23]
Ibid., p. 247.
[24]
Robert Kennedy, "British Hated Both
Sides," The Boston Post, June 3, 1948.
[25]
Fred M. Gottheil, "The
Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931," Middle
East Quarterly, Winter 2003, pp. 53-64.
Related
Topics: History, Israel & Zionism,
Palestinians
| Fall 2016 MEQ
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