When Jews Offered the Moon to Arabs and It Wasn't Enough

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

                                                  Chaim Weizmann, 1st President of Israel

Back around 1920, our harassed Zionist leaders made so many concessions in the hope of appeasing the Arabs that it caused an argument between the Zionist schools of Chaim Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky. 

Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky (1880-August 4, 1940) was a Revisionist Zionist" who were in opposition to the official Zionism.  He along with Joseph Trumpeldor had founded the Jewish Legion of the British Army in WWI.  He established the Zion Mule Corps.   He favored political cooperation with the British.  One of his accomplishments was to organize the Irgun, Beitar and Hatzohar groups.  He must have changed his opinion of the British by 1923 when he resigned from the Zionist Executive board because they failed to oppose the British policy with enough vigor. That was probably due to his imprisonment by the British because he fought against the Arabs in their 1920 attack on Jewish communities.  It was then that he had organized the first Jewish self-defense group which he led.  He did his best to get Polish Jews out of Europe in the 1930's and could see what was happening to Jews and how important a Jewish state was. According to historian Benny Morris, however, documents show that all Zionist leaders of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, including Jabotinsky, favored the transfer of Arab populations if required for establishing a (still-proposed) Jewish state."

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) was a Jewish scientist who assisted all the allies and especially Great Britain to win WWI with his scientific achievement of improving weapons use.  He brought about the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 in which Britain made the commitment to establish a Jewish Home out of Palestine, the land The Brits held the mandate on.  He had successful meetings with Emir Feisal,  son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca who was the head leader of all the Arabs.  They had an agreement to create an Arab and a Jewish state.   

Weizmann's ideas had prevailed.   Chaim was chosen to be Israel's first president.  Feisal changed his mind about Israel  when he realized that Great Britain had given  more land than he had expected to the Jews.

Both of these Zionist leaders, Jabotinsky and Weizmann, were Russian Jews  who were tired of pogroms and restrictions on Jews and saw the perils their people were facing, but didn't imagine such a thing as the future Holocaust that would wipe out 6 million of their people.    Their future was bleak and about to become extinct as they saw it in the 20's.  .  

It was the Arab leaders' antagonism which was  inspired, organized  and financed by the British Authority  that did the undoing of cooperation between the Jews and the Arabs.  The Jewish leaders knew how contrived and unrealistic the pretensions of the Arab national movement was.  They knew that there wasn't any burning desire to have their own country when they met them back in the 1880's.  Arabs just wanted jobs.                                                                

                                                    Emir Feisal Ibn ul Hussein, King of Iraq

Concession after concession was proposed to the Arabs.  In the early 1930's the Zionists  offered the Arabs political recognition which would have jeopardized the very foundation of their own independence, but it wasn't accepted.  Parity was the offer made.  This is  constitutional equality regardless of majority and minority,  "the quality or state of being equal or equivalent."   If they disagreed, the vote was to be cast by the British government which the Jews still trusted in those days.  "No reasoned reply was ever made to this offer;  it died in the flames of the pan-Arab attack of 1936.

The next year in 1937, the Zionist leaders made the decision for the sake of peace to share the country with the Arabs by dividing what remained of the original mandated territory of Palestine  after eastern Palestine had been given to the Arabs by the British.  This was a partition scheme proposed by the British Royal Commission and the Jews accepted it even though the  proposed  miniature Jewish state would have been completely indefensible.  They must have been desperate to do that as they saw what was happening in Europe to the Jews.  Our  higher power must have been protecting the Jews from such a bad decision as the Arabs rejected the plan and the British government buried it!  The proposed Israel would have been extinguished faster than the blink of an eye since the Arabs were already meeting with Hitler and plotting the end of the Jews.
                                                                   

A 3rd proposal was made in 1947 after WWII when Hitler was dead.  The Jewish underground had finally forced the British to give up their hold on Palestine.  Their mandate was running out of time anyway as it was up in 1948.  The Zionist leaders announced that they were willing to accept a plan of partition as a way of putting an end to the conflict they were experiencing.  They accepted the UN partition proposal which still included a  ludicrously vulnerable Jewish state by telling themselves again that a heavy sacrifice would win the heart of the Arabs.

Of course it was just an illusion and this acceptance was met with bloodshed. and destruction.  The Arabs of Palestine were in an uproar and the Arab League invaded in 1948 when Israel was declared a state on May 14th.  Still, the Zionist leaders refrained from using their military advantage gained from all the past fighting they had been enduring.   Some feel they could have restored all of western Palestine, but instead they accepted a compromise which left Palestine partitioned and Israel with improved but still strategically weak frontiers.  Israel signed the Armistice agreements with the Arab government counting on peace with their neighbors who breached each clause, one by one.

There hadn't been any movement from the Arabs of Judea and Samaria to make peace with Israel in the cramped lines of the 1949 Armistice.  They continued to think of themselves as people wanting to eliminate Israel.  In May of 1967,  just before the Six Day War that started on June 5th, outbursts of joyful participation could be heard in their general pan-Arab plotting

The Palestinian Arabs have had a very short modern history as they were people who had emigrated to Israel from neighboring states seeking jobs and better living conditions in the 1880's.  Only a few could qualify as native-born Arabs.  Many landowners had long since left and had sold their land to the Jews as they were able to receive very high inflated prices for worn-out land no one wanted except the Jews.  The Arabs leaders who were now dickering for all the land were following the lead from outsiders.  There was no base to them needing or even thinking about having their own state.  "It is no accident nor the result of any overwhelming pressure that they did not establish a state of their own even when it was offered to them on a silver platter by the United Nations."  They said no to an agreement for their own state in 1949 when the war ended.  The Armistice had been signed by Israel, and the Arab army of Transjordan was occupying Judea and Samaria.  What more did they want?

Nineteen years later in 1967, the Arabs hadn't shown any desire for independence nor taken any action to get their own state.   King  Abdullah had created Transjordan in 1946 and made it an independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.  He had formally announced the annexation of Judea and Samaria to his kingdom during the 1948-1949 War and the Palestinian Arabs said nothing.  The king renamed the land "Jordan."  The Arabs living there suddenly became Jordanians or even called themselves "West Bankers" and no one complained. There are more "Palestinian Arabs" living there than the original Hashemites.  In reality, this is the Arab "Palestine."   They found out that this move angered other Arab states, but Great Britain and Pakistan recognized this move.

There never was a nation called Palestine.  It was the former Jewish land of Israel and Judah renamed by the Romans.  Arabs living in what was called Palestine were always a fragment of the large Arab world.  The inner desire, and spiritual feeling, the passion of creating a nation hasn't been there without the egging on of the Brits and their Arab brothers of the surrounding nations. They always had thought of themselves as Syrians.   They have really been treated as pawns in a game of chess with the goal of taking over all of Israel from the dhimmis of the past, the Jews.  Their national character has been turned into terrorists who have constantly attacked Jews.  Deep inside of each Arab is more of an attachment to their family, clan, village and city.  Most haven't changed from the people TE Lawrence found in 1918 except for one way;  they are now ready to sacrifice their children's lives to gain the upper hand.

It's been 65 years since Israel was re-established on May 14, 1948.  Israel's heart has been hardened by all wars they have had to fight to keep their tiny country which is only 8,000 square miles.They have lost their naivety.   There needs to be another Emir Feisal to come along and make a peace that both Israel and the Arabs can live with.  Third parties may have their heart in the right place but not their souls.  This must be between the people who must live together.  Israel has continued to offer them the olive branch. Either the Arabs are ready to live as others do, in peace, or not.  The choice is theirs.

Resource:  Battleground-fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz p. 220-225.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsky
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/weizmann.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan

There Goes the Neighborhood When the Jews Move In: Or-What Arabs Experienced

Nadene Goldfoot

The Arabs were not dispossessed from their land in Palestine.  Land was bought by Jews from Arabs.  Britain had given away large tracts of land to Arabs, including absentee landlords in Egypt and Syria when they sold their parcels to the Zionists.  Only 9% of land for Israel was received by concession from the government.  The Arabs selling land exploited Jews as the market was a closed one and the Jewish buyers were most eager.  The price for land kept rising so by 1944 Jews paid Arab sellers $1,100 per acre for arid or semiarid land that had lain fallow for hundreds if not thousands of years.  This was when rich soil in Iowa sold for about $100 per acre.  When Israel was established, 70% of all her land was from her allotment from the Mandate, and the British in turn had inherited it from the Ottoman regime.  The League of Nations had decided on the tract that was to become the Jewish Homeland and Britain was expected to carry out the decree. 

Arabs had been moving out of the area.  After all, what was there to keep them?  Mosquitoes, Malaria, flies, swamps or deserts and extreme heat or cold.    You could take your pick.  Very few Arabs really lived there.

Jews coming into the neighborhood were developers and brought the promise of jobs, causing a reversal of Arab migration.  The Zionists had been transforming the wasteland into farms and cities.  This resulted in modern health and sanitation.  The Arab death rate dropped.  Jewish methods of agriculture were adopted by the Arabs and their yields increased.  The standard of living was greatly improved.  No wonder the Arab potentates were alarmed.  Their citizens would clamor for such a change as well! 

After 1967 Judea, Samaria and Gaza fell into Israel's hands.  Jews  moved into these areas as well.  This land was loaded with ancient Jewish history.  The occupation has been extremely benevolent.  Israel established the principle of not interfering with the life of the Arab population except in education.  They insisted on replacing school texts containing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonology and justification of genocide with the textbooks they had.  Unfortunately,  the Arabs  have been replacing acceptable material with their own hateful propaganda.  The second thing Israel  did was to try to improve the Arab's economic situation with their own money.  Teams were sent to teach farmers modern methods and how to use modern equipment.  They loaned them money for new industrial plants or improvement of existing plants.  They opened up vocational centers.  Besides this, they opened the gates to Arab workers from Judea, Samaria and Gaza.  40,000 Arab workers came into Israel by 1972 to work.  The Arabs  were then able to sell  their products across the river  Jordan.  Thus unemployment was combatted, even for those living in refugee camps in Gaza.

In a few cases of an Arab preaching violence against Israel, the usual punishment was banishment into Jordan.  However, if somebody has given shelter to terrorists, the result is the destruction of their houses after due warning.   Israel has had the position of occupying a hostile conquered population and has had to take steps such as this to preserve law and order for both Arabs and Jews.  It's better than execution. 

Even when the cease-fire was not honored by the Arabs, when terrorists infiltrated, Israel kept the bridges open across the Jordan.  Arabs could visit their relatives and friends.  Students were allowed to go abroad to study in Cairo and other Arab universities.  Thousands of Arabs in Jordan cross the river each summer to visit relatives in Judea and Samaria.  In 1971 and 1972 Arabs at war with Israel and Arabs from Judea and Samaria went to the beaches in Israel for a holiday.  One Arab writer, Atallah Mansour, described his summer as "taking a vacation in the Zionist hell."  (Haaretz, July 30, 1971).  Life had been good for Arabs who had remained in Israel at the birth of its creation May 14, 1948.  These Arabs of Gaza, Judea and Samaria were discoving how the Arab citizens had been faring. 

Zionism has taught a positive Jewish patriotism.  It has aimed at fostering love:  love of the Jewish people, love of the country, and has never taught to hate.  It has constantly sought ways and means to have relaxed relations with Arabs.  Zeev Jabotinsky strove for a peaceful Israel enjoying a happy and prosperous coexistence of Jews, Christians and Muslims.  The knesset has had Arab members and since 1971 had an Arab deputy minister in the government. 

But the Arabs have had no clone of Jabotinsky and probably the history about Emir Feisal has been erased from their records, a man who welcomed Jews into the neighborhood. Now,  after constant warring from Gaza, the Arabs of Gaza, Judea and Samaria are seeking their own  creation of a state of Palestine while still being in a state of war with Israel.  Their idea of a state is to have Judea and Samaria all Arab, so will no doubt want to kick out all the Jews.  Their charter has not changed.  They wish to do away with Israel.  They refuse to  recognize Israel as a Jewish state. 

Jews are an ancient people who established the world's first laws of common decency in relationships with other people.  Up to this time, the world was a pretty savage place.  Treating people decently is part and parcel to the Jewish religion and culture.  It's in their soul.  The last thing they would ever do is to treat people inhumanely, even though they have been treated that way themselves.  It's even more reason to bend over backwards and treat others well.  They have done their best to win over the Palestinian heart.  Only time can tell if they ever succeeded.  They've gone the mile to gain an inch. 

Resource: Battleground: Fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz