Have Jews and Arabs always fought over Palestine?
This article contains excerpts from the June 11, 1948 edition of the U.S. News & World Report. The article referenced, ABC’s of Jewish-Arab Struggle, is found on pages 23-24 of the magazine. The piece was written in a question / answer format with a supplementary titled Timetable of Palestine Dispute.
The opening paragraph of the article titled ABC’s of Jewish-Arab Struggle was prophetic.
Conflict between Arabs and Jews over tiny Palestine is turning world politics upside down. A truce, even a lasting truce, is not a permanent peace. There is more trouble ahead.
Seventy-five years have passed since Jews from around the world created their state within Palestine. What benefit this has had for the rest of the world depends on who you ask. One thing is absolutely certain though: the struggle in Palestine, created by the desire of Jews to create their own state within that ancient land, has most certainly seized the world’s attention, repeatedly.
Please remember, this information was reported on June 11, 1948. Little has changed in the struggle for land in Palestine.
Who are the Palestinians?
There are 1,700,000 Muslim Arabs and 700,000 Jews and 140,000 Christians in Palestine today.
Have Jews and Arabs always fought over Palestine?
No. Before World War I, when there were about 600,000 Arabs and 60,000 Jews in the country, there was little conflict. But as the Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers, Arab opposition increased.
Why do the Arabs object to Jewish immigration?
The Arabs feel that the Jews are trying to shoulder into Arab lands. They fear that a Jewish state in Palestine will soon try to expand at the expense of neighboring Arab states. Arab population of Palestine has more than doubled in 30 years, largely because of high birth rate, but the Jewish population, as a result of immigration, is about twelve times as large as it was 30 years ago.
History proves the fears of the Arabs were and remain well-founded. The Jews have not only shouldered into Arab lands, but in many instances, the Arab land has been confiscated at gunpoint, with the owners and dwellers of the confiscated lands displaced. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are an example.
Who supports Palestine?
American contributors and investors have put about $700,000,000 into Jewish settlements in Palestine since 1914. Great Britain has spent about $400,000,000 in the country since the end of World War II, but most of Britain’s money went for upkeep of British troops in Palestine.
How did Britain get into Palestine?
British troops took Palestine from Turkey during World War I. Since then, Britain has held the country as trustee under a mandate for the League of Nations and, after World War II, for the United Nations. At the start, Britain promised to permit the Jews to establish a Jewish “national home” in Palestine.
What follows is some additional background on the Jewish “national home” in Palestine.
In the 1890’s Theodor Herzel, a Jewish journalist living in Austria, advocated reestablishing a Jewish state in Palestine. Herzel believed Zionism (the reuniting of Jewish people in Palestine) would match ‘a people without a land with a land without people.’ This quote from Herzel is disturbing because Palestine was not a ‘land without people’. It had many people – Arab people, living in Palestine already.
With the defeat of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire in World War I (1914-1918), control of Palestine shifted from Muslim to Western powers. In return for their help in the war Britain had promised autonomy to both Zionists and Arabs. In a series of letters known as the Husein-McMahon Correspondence, the Arabs were promised the right to a new Arab nation in Palestine. The promise to the Jews came in the form of the Balfour Declaration. Issued by the British in 1917, it read:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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.
~ Balfour Declaration
Just take a look at Gaza and the West Bank today. The non-Jews who live in these areas lack freedom of movement. Israel has the ability to shut off all utilities to these areas as it did a few days ago to Gaza. Check points are a way of life for Palestinians passing from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, into Israel. Large concrete walls and barbed wire are used to keep the Palestinians in their place and out of Jewish space. It’s humiliating for proud people who believe the land on the other side of those walls belongs to them. The Israelis maintain they must control the Palestinians in this way because when they do not, terrorists kill Jews whenever they get a chance. There are plenty of cases of blown-up buses and random stabbings of Jews to support Israel’s position that it has no choice if it wants to protect Jews trying to live peacefully in the Promised Land.
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Why are the British getting out?
Cost of policing the country is high and British manpower is needed by industry at home. In addition, Britain’s Palestine policies have brought frequent criticism from America.
What is the “partition plan”?
The “partition plan” called for the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Both Arabs and Jews rejected the idea in 1937.
This is a clear indication that neither side of the Arab-Jewish Conflict ever intended to live in peace with one another as neighboring states. Unfortunately for the Arab Palestinians, the Zionist State emerged in 1948 as a direct result of American funding. Since that time, the United States taxpayer, unbeknownst to most, has paid enormously to create an Israeli Defense Force, with an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
What is Israel?
Israel is a republic created by the Jews within Palestine on May 15, 1948. It now contains about 700,000 Jews and 200,000 Arabs. (figures from 1948)
Recall that before World War I, there were about 600,000 Arabs and 60,000 Jews in the country, and there was little conflict. How did the Zionists dispose of 400,000 Arabs in 35 years?
Have the Jews of Israel always lived there?
There have always been some Jews living in the territory now governed by Israel, but more than 90 percent of the present Jewish population was born outside Palestine.
Where did they come from?
A majority of the Jews of Israel came from Eastern Europe – Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. Before the Nazis took power in Germany, few Jewish immigrants to Palestine came from Germany, but in the two years before World War II, German Jews made up more than 50 percent of the total number of immigrants to Palestine.
Do Arabs have a state in Palestine?
No. Arab leadership is in the hands of the Arab League.
Are Arabs united on Palestine?
No. They all are opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine, but cannot agree on what should be done with the country. Some want it to be an independent Arab state; others like Trans-Jordan want to annex all or part of Palestine.
It is shortsighted to look back at the military actions of Israel in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank, or the response to those actions by militant groups like Hamas and Hezzbolah, and generalize the sum as a nation defending itself from terrorism. Millions of Arabs people remain outraged that the State of Israel exists within the area known as Palestine. Israelis point to the West Bank and Gaza as evidence that they share the land, and would be even more open to coexistence if Arabs wouldn’t commit atrocities against the Jewish people.
There seems to be no end in sight to this conflict. The poor people living in those Israeli controlled zones have no autonomy whatsoever. If separate but equal was the original intent – the equal part has not materialized. And make no mistake about it; the original goal for Palestine was two equal, sovereign states – one Arab, one Jew. Today, one state exists – the Jewish State of Israel. There is little doubt that if the Palestinians gained the upper hand, the Jews would be behind the walls and barbed wire.
Today we are witnessing a greater number of Americans than ever before demanding that the U.S. Congress take a more evenhanded approach towards Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many on the left are calling on the United States to start treating the Israelis and Palestinians as equals instead of catering to one while kicking the other. Jews have the right to live free from persecution. So do the Palestinians. All people do. Despite what people on either side of the walls say about each other, there are non-violent people on both sides who love more than hate and would much rather live in peace.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews over tiny Palestine (Approximately 1/5th the size of New York State) will continue turning world politics upside down. A truce, even a lasting truce, will not produce a permanent peace. There will be more trouble ahead.
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