Part I When Syrian Arabs Came Into "Palestine" Before 1948

                                  

Nadene Goldfoot
Setting the Scene:  During World War I of 1914-1918, the Ottoman Empire, who had held Palestine for the past 400 years, entered the war on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and they were defeated.  The Ottomans had carried on Genocide on the Armenians and Assyrians.  This had impacted northern Syria.  In the middle of the war, 2 diplomats, the French Picot and the British Sykes, secretly agreed on the post-war division of the Ottoman Empire in 1916.  For starters, they separated 2 territories by a border running a straight line from Jordan to Iran, but oil was discovered in Mosul just before the end of the war. Mosul lay in northern Iraq.  "The city's fortunes revived with the discovery of oil in the area, from the late 1920s onward. It became a nexus for the movement of oil via truck and pipeline to both Turkey and Syria." Now France decided in 1918 to cede this region to Zone B or the British zone of influence.   When Syria became a League of Nations mandate in 1920 this border was recognized.  The French held the mandate over Syria and Lebanon.  The British had Palestine. 

At the same time in 1920, the independent Kingdom of Syria was established under Faisal I of the Hashemite family, the same family that had Trans-Jordan granted to them by the British out of  the land to be the Jewish Homeland.   Faisal had worked with Chaim Weizmann and had agreed to the idea of a Jewish Homeland, thinking he would get his fair share, too.  After all, he and his men had fought with the British against the Ottoman Empire and helped them as much as the Jews and Chaim Weizmann had, he  figured.  Faisal wasn't as lucky as King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, however, as his rule lasted only a few months.  There was the Battle of Maysalun when the French troops occupied Syria later that year after the San Remo conference (see references below).  That was when it was proposed that the League of Nations put Syria under a French mandate.  That didn't stop Sultan al-Atrash in 1925 who led a revolt that was engulfing the whole of Syria and parts of Lebanon.  He won several battles against the French who sent thousands of troops from Morocco and Senegal until 1927.  The Sultan was sentenced to death but he escaped to Transjordan and was later pardoned.  He returned to Syria in 1937 after signing the Syrian-French Treaty.  Atassi then became the first president elected in September 1936, but the French refused to ratify it.  Then France fell in 1940 during WWII, and Syria came under the control of Vichy France until the British occupied the country in July 1941.  The French finally left in  1946 and Syria was again independent.  
                                                                       

It was Chaim Weizmann and others who finally were able to see that the League of Nations  passed the law of making Palestine the Jewish Homeland  in 1921, and in the Balfour  Doctrine  of 1926  The British held the mandate over Palestine and were given the job of seeing to it that it became as such.  However, suddenly the Arabs from Syria and elsewhere were coming in illegally and the count by the British was not being kept.  The Arab population in "Palestine" had remained static for 200 years and now was suddenly increasing.

In the 1931 "Palestine" census, 23 different languages were reported in use by the Moslems, and most of those plus an additional 28 were in use by Arab Christians-and these plus 28 more were in use by Arab Christians entering Palestine.  The non-Jews in Palestine in 1931 listed their birthplaces in 24 different countries in addition to the Americas and Europe.  Just in Jerusalem, 20 different places of birth outside the Armericas and Europe were listed by the Moslems.  those plus another 4 countries were listed by the Christian Arabs.

The Mandate Commission reported on August 12, 1934, from Tewfik Bey El-Hurani, governor of the Hauran, (Syrians) that in the last few months from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese had entered Palestine and settled there. Syrians from the Hauran district were admitted freely to "Palestine" without any passports or visas from the beginning of the British Mandate after WWI until the 1940's.p. 231   Some Syrians had gone back to Syria  to avoid prosecution for violence in the riotsof 1936.  The British looked away when they entered, and the fact that they managed to settle in the Jewish-settled portions of the country.  One report said, "that more Arabs entered illegally and stayed in Palestine than the total number of Jews for twice that length of time in 1934 who were "approved" to immigrate into their designated "Jewish National Home."  Yet the British report only said that 1934 recorded just 1,784 non-Jews with only about 3,000 as travelers remaining illegally, and those figures supposedly included Arab immigrants from all points into all of Palestine.  False Reporting!!  The Jews, however, had everything about them recorded;  age groups, occupations, amount of capital brought in.  

" Yet, illegal Jewish immigration was fastidiously reported."p. 226.  Being it was to be the Jewish Homeland, I do not see how their entrance could be listed as illegal, but it was, whereas the immigrating Arabs were not listed as illegals.  This showed up when Jews finally tried to enter Palestine through Trans Jordan.  Arabs were coming in that way as well, "but the Arabs were not marked illegal until their detection had become flagrant."

The British Peel Commission report of 1937 said that developing the Jewish National Home had to depend on the rate and volume of Jewish immigration over many years.  The Arabs were watching this immigration and were afraid of being overwhelmed and dominated by the Jewish immigrants.  The British had not made any attempt to count how many Arabs had come into "Palestine" from neighboring Arab lands but they estimated that 9/10s of the growth was due to natural increase and was a growth of over 50% in 17 years.  They realized the the Arab population during the Ottoman Empire of 400 years had remained quite stationary.

In 1938, at the height of the Germans' treatment of their Jewish population as horrific, with all sorts of rules and regulations against them, Palestine would have been the logical place for them to flee.  They couldn't get in.  At first the British blamed the improved health conditions brought by Jews that was extending Arabs' lives, brought on by the appropriation of tax-revenue contributed by the Jews.  They were blaming the increased Arab population on the Jews for helping the indigenous Arabs already existing there.

There had been Arabs going to and from Trans-Jordan.  The Peel report did mention that 4,866 "travellers" who entered Palestine during the year were registered as immigrants.  Of these, 4,114 were Jews and 752 were non-Jews.

By 1939, at the height of German anti-Semitism, when the last ship with Jews left their shores for the USA, leaving many to die soon in the Holocaust, Churchill said, "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population."  Had the British considered the fact that Moslems could have up to 4 wives at the same time?  The Arabs had been hurling out anti-Semitic propaganda, probably hot off the presses from Germany.  The British then came out with their White Paper of 1939 halting Jewish immigration at the time they needed it the most.  Neville Chamberlain made it clear that Britain would only allow 75,000 Jews to enter Palestine over the next 5 years from 1940 to 1944, the height of the Holocaust period.  Even at that, only 10,000 each year would be allowed in, holding 25,000 spaces in abeyance.  It was almost like they were helping Germany exterminate Jews.  
                                                                       

In 1941, the Arab, Haj Amin al Husseini (1897-1974),  the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1948, visited with Hitler in Germany in a meeting of exterminating Jews, thus ending their chances of creating the Jewish Homeland.  He was also on the side of the King Faisal, Hashemite ruler of Syria.  Perhaps that's why his rule ended after a few months.  Husseini was the opposite of Faisal, and was totally against Faisal  making any agreements with Jews.   

Britain left the country when their mandate was up in May 1948, probably glad to get out of there as they felt the Arabs would slaughter the Jews.    David Ben Gurion addressed the world with the voting in the United Nations which said yes to their becoming a state, and minutes later they were attacked by all their Arab neighbors.  The miracle of all miracle happened.  They were able to hear the League of Nations and the new United Nations vote them in as a state, and they won their first of many battles against their Arab neighbors who disagreed with the majority vote.  

When asked who they were, the Arabs would say they were Syrian Arabs.  They never said they were Palestinian Arabs until many wars later in 1967, when they again lost that very serious battle of the Six Day War.  Now the leaders of other Arab nations nudged them to want their own state, after being offered the opportunity since 1947 and many times thereafter, always with the answer of no!  Their leaders were holding out for taking all of Israel.  

Malcolm MacDonald, British secretary of State in 1938 said of the over one million Arabs in Palestine, "The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of their country.  If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe that the Arab population of Palestine today would still have been around about the same figure at which it had been stable under the Turkish rule.
  
In 1934, 42,359 Jews were registered, 1,494 Christians and 290 Muslims.  
In 1938, Britain registered 12,868 Jewish immigrants, 473 Christians and 1,922 Moslems making a total of 15,263.  
In 1939 they registered 16,405 Jewish immigrants, 376 Christians and 1,652 Moslems.  
In 1940, when Jews could not get out of Germany, 4,547 Jews, 390 Christians and 674 Moslems were registered.  .  That's what they showed on the books, but it wasn't the reality at all.  Moslems were getting in illegally without being registered.  1934 was a good example where they only showed 1,784 non Jews entering when they had already listed the 30,000 to 35,000 Hauranis (Syrians) who immigrated to Western Palestine that weren't included in the British calculations.  No wonder so many Arabs, when asked, said they were Syrian Arabs.  They really were!  They were not native Palestinians.  

Folke Bernadotte said in 1950-51, and by then were referring to them all as Palestinians,  "The Palestinian Arabs have at present no will of their own.  Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism...

Resource:  
"From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://www.ifcj.org/site/PageNavigator/sfi_about_war_league
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramallah
Updated: 4/24/14 http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id350.html San Remo Conference

The Balfour Declaration: Why It Was So Important

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

Finally the Jews had the answer they had worked so hard for.  Britain was for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jews.  Arthur James, Lord Balfour (1848-1930) was a British statesman and philosopher who was head of the government with which Herzl negotiated with in 1902-1903.  Later he was very impressed b Chaim Weizmann and his Zionist philosophy.  He was foreign secretary in 1917 when he issued the Balfour Declaration, an official statement from Britain.

                                                                                    Foreign Office
                                 November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
           I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet.

        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.  

       I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

                           Arthur James Balfour

                           The Balfour Declaration

 This statement finally came about as the result of many long negotiations started by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others shortly after the start of World War I.  Supporting this was Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, the Haham Moses Gaster and others.  There was a lot of discussion on two things;  the formula of the Declaration and its timing.    The final decision of the British government was expedited by Balfour's visit to the US  in the spring of 1917 when he met with President Wilson who supported the efforts of the American Zionists who were headed by Brandeis.  

There were British Jews who were afraid that this would endanger the Jews in all countries.  This opposition made the government more cautious, and the wording submitted to recognize Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people and for providing a "Jewish National Colonizing Corporation" for the resettlement and economic development of the country was not accepted.  

When the Declaration had been approved by the British cabinet, it was sent to Lord Walter Rothschild who was asked to take it to the Zionist Federation. On April 24, 1920, it was decided by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers at the conference in San Remo that Britain should administer Palestine and be responsible for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration.  

In 1921, Transjordan was detached from the area covered by the British Mandate for Palestine and made a separate Emirate under Abdullah (1882-1951).  First he was an Emir, and then made himself king of Transjordan.  He was the 2nd son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca, so he was from Saudi Arabia.  It was his support of Britain during WWI that led to his nomination as ruler of Transjordan in 1923.  He was credited with a moderate attitude toward Zionism and had negotiated with Chaim Weizmann in 1922, but invaded Israel in 1948 anyway.  His attempts to reach an understanding with Israel were nullified by the growing influence of the Palestinian Arabs, and he was assassinated in Jerusalem allegedly at the instance of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the person who had gone to Germany and had met with Adolf Hitler.    . 

 It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated into the Mandate in 1922.  According to Article II the Mandatory Power was responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative, and economic conditions as would secure the establishment of the Jewish national home and the development of self-governing institutions;  also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.  

Other articles provided for the facilitation of Jewish immigration by the Mandatory Power, while ensuring the rights and status of the other sections of the community, and for encouraging settlement of the Jews on the land, including unrequired state and wastelands; for enacting a national laws to enable Jews taking up their residence in Palestine to acquire Palestine citizenship;  the recognition of English, Arabic and Hebrew as the official languages of Palestine; and the recognition of the holy days of the respective communities as legal days of rest.  

Article 25 delimits the borders of the country, excluding Transjordan from Palestine. King Abdullah had  renamed it the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.  The Palestine Mandate ended on May 15, 1948 with the withdrawal of the British administration.  This is the day Israel was then declared a state with the blessing of the vote in the United Nations.  Right away King Abdullah fought against the new Israel and took over the Arab area of Palestine which was Judah, Samaria and east Jerusalem.  

What the Arab King Abdullah had taken that was to be part of the Jewish Homeland was lost to Israel by his grandson, Hussein, in the Six Day War when all the Arabs had attacked Israel and lost, much to their surprise.  Hussein, born in 1935, succeeded to the throne in 1952.  He removed British officers from his Arab Legion in 1956 and signed a pact with Egypt and Syria but later refrained from joining the fighting during the Sinai Campaign.  His army had to retreat from Eastern Palestine when defeated in 1967.  Then he was threatened by Arab terrorist organizations with whom he had a major showdown in September 1970 with Black September.  In 1988 he renounced claims to the West Bank in view of Arab decisions that the PLO was the rightful authority.  

Transjordan had been the home of some of the 12 tribes of Israel back in c1200 BCE.   Reuben , Gad and half of Manasseh were cattle-keeping tribes and had settled there.  King David (1010-970 BCE)  later had conquered the whole land of what came to be called Transjordan including the rich copper mines of the Arabah.  His son, King Solomon (961-920 BCE)  had lost them or only held temporarily.  W Ammon was held by a Jewish family, the Tobiads for a time.  Then after the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, it was rebuilt in 538-515 BCE.   The Edomites moved into southern Judah and their place was taken by the Nabateans.   Greek towns were established in hellenistic days. 

In the Byzantine days (70-637 CE) , Transjordan began to decline which was accelerated by the Arab conquest of Mohammad (570-620 CE) .  From the 8th to the 19th centuries, it was mostly left to the Bedouins to occupy except when the crusaders established themselves in Oultre Jourdain.  The first Crusade was in 1096-9.  This is when attacks were made on Jews living in Northern France and especially in the Rhineland where massacres occurred in cites of Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Cologne, etc and other places where Jews had found refuge from the Roman attack in Judah.  Jerusalem was taken by them in 1099 and in that Jews and Karaites were massacred.   Crusades went on with the last being in 1320 with attacks on Jews in southern France and northern Spain.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
update: 11:20am http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/10/still-bickering-over-balfour/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=96e25acaf1-Mosaic_2013_10_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-96e25acaf1-41144429

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

The British 1939 Double Cross

Nadene Goldfoot
Even Churchill had second thoughts on what Britain had done with their mandate in Palestine, though he had helped to draw up the Churchill White Paper of 1922 hindering the Jews in achieving their national home.

   The British  were given the charge to help bring about the Jewish National Home and managed to double cross Chaim Weizmann and the Zionists by reducing the agreed upon allotted land and gave 75% of it to the Arabs instead. The idea that the White Paper tried to induce, that Jews were to be "illegals" in their "Home" was never universally accepted.  This had been about the  White Paper coming down on the Jews' heads keeping them out of the land.  In 1936, Protestant and Catholic leaders in New York said that the British government must uphold its covenanted pledges to the Jewish people and to the world...that the British rescind its illegal, unjust and indefensible partition of Palestine to restore Transjordania to its proper place as part of the Palestine territory and throw it open to Jewish settlement.   Britain disregarded their announcement.  


"I should feel personally embarrassed,"  Churchill said, "in the most acute manner if I lent myself, by silence or inaction, to what I must regard as an act of repudiation."  The breach, he explained, was the 1939 White Paper (McDonald's) declaration drawn up by Britain after the agreement they accepted of taking on the responsibility of the mandate to help bring about the Jewish National Homeland.  

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the USA, questioned the legality of the White Paper's policy, but the State Department supported it.  Later, the State Department acted the same way with Truman.  There was a clique of secret John Foster Dulles supporters inside the administration and were paying more attention to the British views than Truman's.  James  Forrestal, a manic, ambitious and very right-wing investment banker called the "boy wonder" of Wall Street with reservations about Palestine,  lunched with Loy Henderson, his ally and was told about the views of Ernest Bevin, the notoriously anti-Semitic British foreign secretary.  Bevin was out to get arrangements with Washington to keep London's role in the Middle East as the important one.  Bevin had described the president's support for Jewish immigration to Palestine as a "crude desire for votes in New York," and therefore was not one of Harry Truman's favorite people.  They were part of a clique against Truman ever  voting for the Jewish state.

Others shared Churchill's outrage.  A member of Parliament, Herbert Morrison, reminded the government of the aid being given by Hitler and Mussolini to the upper-class Arab leaders in Palestine ever since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had shown his partiality to the Arabs.  The White Paper had the audacity to give the Arabs the veto over Jewish immigration.  This was 1939, when Jews were passionately trying to enter their "Jewish National Homeland."  or die in Europe.  Countries either had small quotas for Jewish immigrants or didn't allow them in their countries at all.  The USA wouldn't even extend their Jewish quotas in this dire time of need.

Morrison begged his colleagues to stop this evil thing being done.  ..I ask them to remember the sufferings of these Jewish people all over the world.  I ask them to remember that Palestine, of all places in the world, was certainly the place where they had some right to expect not to suffer or to have restrictions imposed upon them.  Look at the extent of the country---this little patch of territory.  Transjordan has been taken away.  (Transjordan was included in the Jewish National Homeland but given to the Arabs).  

Nevelle Chamberlain (18 March 1869-9 Nov 1940) should have been thinking about the encroaching  Nazis.   "I believe the persecution arose  of two motives", he wrote to his sister in a letter:  A desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy of their superior cleverness.  No doubt Jews aren't a lovable people;  I don't care about them myself---but that is not sufficient to explain the Pogrom."

Chamberlain believed in appeasement of an enemy.  The White Paper of 1939 reinforced his belief.  A year earlier was the agreement in Munich that sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis to gain "Peace in our time," as he put it.  Perhaps he thought that with the White Paper the Arab Revolt would die down.  Actually it must have encouraged what George Antonius, an Arab writer and representative called a "substantial advance towards the recognition of Arab rights" and what the Jews called "a surrender to Arab terrorism" which I say is still going on today at the UN.

Resource:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, pages 346-349.
The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons p. 161
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_White_Paper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Morrison





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The Big Lie: That Arabs Were Displaced By Israel

                                                     Mandate for Jewish National Home
Nadene Goldfoot
The Jewish Homeland shrunk to less than 20% of its original size which had been decided by the Balfour Doctrine and okayed by the League of Nations.  What became Israel in 1948 was a fraction of Western Palestine where Jews had already settled and had been living.   Immigrant Jews had returned to the land in the 1870's to join the small native Jewish population and until it became a state in 1948, the area of Jewish settlement remained about in the same area.  It had been underpopulated land and had been set upon by Bedouin exploitations, plunder, nomadism , tribal uprisings and natural disaster during the Jews' first aliyah or return to work and reclaiming of  the land.

The major part, 3/4  of the Jewish Homeland, had been taken over by Transjordan, which was land east of the Jordan River.  Yasser Arafat had stated that Jordan is Palestine.  Even King Hussein and Prince Hassan of Jordan have also stated that Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine.  That happened to be a good 80% of land promised to the the Jews. In fact, Palestinian Arabs and Jordan had a battle in 1970-1971 called the "Black September" period, when King Hussein fought against Arafat's PLO forces who had been operating opening in Jordan until then.  It was considered a Civil War and the final crackdown against those of his people who were trying to establish a separate Palestinian state under Arab Palestinian rule instead of his own.

 The king considered them criminals and conspirators using commando movement to disguise their treason and plots to destroy the unity of the Jordanian and Palestinian people. Thousands died, mostly the Palestinians who later retreated to Lebanon.   It was a similar situation to Syria today, only the king was fairly good and not about to be undercut and displaced.  He eventually married a Palestinian girl, born in the USA whose father was from Syria, Queen Noor, one way to keep the peace.  One good thing about him, he kept the peace with Israel.  King Hussein has since died, and his son, King Abdullah II also married a Palestinian girl, Queen Rania, born in 1970 whose father was from Kuwait.

The Jewish National Homeland had been split into 2 separate unequal Palestines:  Eastern Palestine--or the Arab emirate of Transjordan east of the Jordan River and Western Palestine, which was less than 1/4th of the League of Nations Mandate.  Where the Jews actually lived in 1870-1880 was only a segment of the area of Western Palestine.  Transjordan, nearly 38,000 square miles,  had been filched by the Arabs with the British permission and assistance.  Israel got less than 8,000 square miles in the end.

The land of Transjordan had been conqauered by King David.  W Ammon was held for a time by a Jewish family, the Tobiads.  From the 8th century to the 19th century it had been mostly left to the Bedouin except when the Crusaders were there.  In 1921 it was detached from the Jewish Homeland for Abdullah who renamed it the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan in 1946.  In 1948 he took over the Arab area of Palestine which his grandson, Hussein lost to Israel in the 6 Day War.  In 1990 Jordan's population was 3,000,000 of which many were Palestinian Arabs and its capital is Amman.  By 2011 the population of Jordan was 5,568,565 and 95% Sunni Muslim which is their state religion.

The Muslim population in "Palestine around 1917, the time of the Balfour Declaration, was made up of mostly transient and landless nomads.  Sherif Hussein commented in a 1918 article that the native soil of Palestine could not keep the Arabs from " wandering....in every direction."

Palestine did not become Israel.  Israel is but a sliver of what it was to have been.  Palestine was indeed to have become the Jewish Homeland but because of British dealings, it didn't happen.  It should have been the land east and west of the Jordan River from the Mediterranean to Arabia and Iraq, and north and south from Egypt to Lebanon and Syria.

Arnold Toynbee, historian, said in 1918 that the "desolate land which lies east of the Jordan stream was capable of supporting a large population of irrigated and cultivated scientifically.  The Zionists have as much right to this no-man's land as the Arabs, or more."

The land was previously referred to as Palestine, and that was but a small piece of land compared to Arab countries created around it.  It was also called South Syria, or Eastern and Western Palestine, or part of Turkey, but by the international mandate known finally as a Jewish National Home.  The USA mentioned much about it, and said it was to "recognize Palestine as a Jewish state as soon as it is a Jewish state in fact."

So all around it independent Arab statehood arose., but not within Palestine itself, unless you count Transjordan.  After WWI the Arabs in Syria and Iraq had statehood.  Saudi Arabia got about 865,000 square miles of land which was pure Arab land.  Surely the Arab would not begrudge the "small notch" of Palestine east and west of the Jordan River, thought Lord Balfour.  Little did he know his own country and the Arabs.

Britain had to help themselves by recognizing Abdullah and his emirate in the land east of the Jordan River that was to be the Jewish National Home.  He was the royal son of the Hejaz (Saudi Arabia), because the Arabians of the Hejaz had been the biggest helpers against the Turks in WWI.  His brother, Emir Feisal, and Lawrence of Arabia had agreed to abandon all claim of his father to Western Palestine if Feisal got Iraq and Eastern Palestine as Arab territories.  Never mind that Chaim Weizmann had developed chemicals to create bombs that worked for England and with that they would have lost the whole war against Germany and had been promised the land first for the Jews in return for his contribution to the war effort .

So this idea of Jews displacing the Arab is nothing but bunk.  Arabs actually took over land meant for the Jews by taking Transjordan illegally. Folke Bernadotte in 1950-1951 said that "The Palestinian Arabs have at present no will of their own.  Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism...It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Trans-Jordan."

Resource: Book:  From Time Immemorial-the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters p 234-241
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Noor_of_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Rania_of_Jordan

British Plan to Take All of Ottoman Empire

Nadene Goldfoot
Many countries had wanted their own Colonial expansion like England and France.  The Kingdom of Italy's public also wanted their country to expand as well.  Libya was a territory of the Ottoman Empire and the only part of North Africa not already controlled by a European power, so in 1911 Italy demanded that the Ottoman Empire transfer Libya to Italian control. After a guerrilla war, the outbreak went on to the First Balkan War which forced the Ottoman Empire to sue for peace and accept Italian claims over both Libya and the Dodecanese.

World War I started in 1914.  At that time the Ottoman Empire controlled 2.4 million square km (926,645.181 square miles) of territory.  It included all of Turkey and most of the Middle East.  In the land were Arabs, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and other minorities such as the Jews and Christians.  It was ruled by an Islamic Caliphate Sultan, Mehmed V.  It had existed for 400-600 years and the non Muslim subjects suffered from discrimination, and sometimes outright persecutions.  The 10 years before 1914 the empire had many political upheavals so was not in the best position to be in a world war.

 England entered the war with their Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa Empire. They were allied to France and declared war against Germany on August 4th 1914. Germany had invaded Belgium.  Russia was in the war from a treaty to Serbia and Germany was allied to Austria-Hungary and saw the Russians as an act of war against Austria-Hungary.  America was threatened by Germany's submarines so went to war on 6 April 1917.  Italy, at first staying neutral, finally sided with the British.   This "Great War" suffered more casualties than any other war.  37 million people had died, 9 million as soldiers in war. It had started with the assassination of one man, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia. (interesting note is that in Bosnia, Jews are still not permitted to run for elected office who discriminate against Jewish and Roma-Gypsy minorities.  Bosnia was again in a war from 1992-1995) The Great Empires were destroyed.

 A group of senor British officials in Egypt and the Sudan during the early part of WWI had the hair brained idea of bringing the Arab-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire under British control after the war.  Governor General of the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate's words were to have a "federation of semi-independent Arab States under European guidance and supervision...owing spiritual allegiance to a single Arab primate, and looking to Great Britain as its patron and protector."  


Captain Orde Wingate, Sir Reginald's nephew,  came to Haifa in 1937 as being anti-Zionist, and believed as many English did that only Britain stood between these "exploiting Jews and the Backward, unprotected Arabs."  p. 106 Genesis 1948.  In 3 months he was to become a mystical Zionist as extreme as any Jews and more aggressive.  He had informed Ben-Gurion and other Jews that he wanted to devote his life to their cause and fight their battle.   The British sent him away in 1939 because he was good friends with Jews and was later killed in Burma in WWII. 


The Balfour Doctrine published in 1917  caused a problem for the British who had grandiose ideas.  The Arabs, who had fought against the Turks, wanted their own nation as well but didn't have a written doctrine like the Jews had.  So the British, who must have seen their dreams materialize with Arabs at the helm, From 1919 to 1948 tried to appear as honest arbitrators but in reality were active participants in the confrontation against the Jews.  "The Arab attack on Zionism would never have begun had it not been for the British inspiration, tutelage and guidance." p 45. Battleground.  


However, a Jewish state was to be established, not at once, but as soon as the Jewish people immigrated and developed the land to become the majority.  The country had 500,000 Arabs.  That's half-million people.  There were only 90,000 Jews.  The British must have figured that the Jews would never be able to establish their Jewish Homeland.  They saw British control through the granting of a mandate which they obtained.  They saw a group of Arab states in Arabia, Syria and Mesopotamia being semi-independent.  They would be the British mentors and advisers in Jedda, Damascus and Baghdad.  Already they controlled administration in Cairo and Khartoum.  This would be the next feather in their cap, the British Mandatory Administration in Palestine.  Britain would thus have the whole control of the Middle East from the Mediterranean to the borders of India.  


They could not control the Zionist diplomacy to get the consent of France from releasing any control in Palestine.  France had control in Syria.  The French were sensitive to American opinion during WWI and had already acquiesced in the Balfour Declaration by agreeing to waive their claims to Palestine and let Britain have the whole mandate over Palestine.  France had the claim to Transjordan but gave that up as well to Britain.  France had the mandate over Syria and Lebanon.  They already held the protectorate of Morocco from 1912 and didn't give it up until 1956.  


The newspaper, The London Times called for the inclusion of Eastern Palestine as essential to the Jewish state east of the river Jordan (Transjordan).  On September 19, 1919 the paper said, " the Jordan River will not do as Palestine's eastern boundary." It was to be part of the Jewish Homeland and so passed into British control-to be given up later to the Arabs without a fight. Britain had the mandate for 30 years and said good-buy to Palestine on May 14, 1948 when Israel declared it's state.  


The ceremony for the state was to take place at 4pm on Friday, May 14;  8 hours before the mandate would officially end at midnight.  The Sabbath started on Friday night so no Jewish leader would sign the Declaration after sundown.  The Jews had 24 hours to get ready for this momentous occasion.  They wanted this written declaration to show proof that there had been a Jewish State.  Ben Gurion,  first Prime Minister signed the document.  Hatikvah, the Jewish national anthem was played. Gurion declared that Israel was re-born.  30 years before, General Allenby had entered Jerusalem on foot to be welcomed joyously as the liberator of both Arab and Jew from Turkish despotism.  On May 14, 1948 sullen, silent faces bid farewell to the British.  They may have wondered like  Sir Alan Cunningham as to how it was possible to divide this country as they had.   The Arabs attacked quickly .  


Resource:  Book:  Battleground, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitioning_of_the_Ottoman_Empire
Book:  Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_protectorate_of_Morocco

Revealing Facts About Sherif Hussein's Sons' Involvement Against Establishing Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
Sherif Hussein was the father of Abdullah, and Sherif had supported Zionism.  He must not have figured that this would lead to a completely independent Jewish state, though.  However, Abdullah's elder brother Emir Faisal had promised Chaim Weizmann his support in 1918 at the end of World War I. when Weizmann had visited him in his desert camp.  He had told him he would support the Balfour Declaration but did not mention conditions.  He thought Jews were very influential in the world and would help him achieve his coveted goal:  World sanction for an independent Greater Syria which he would head.  

Faisal didn't consider the Balfour Declaration to be the British rejection of earlier promises to the Arabs to support the establishment of an independent Arab world in the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire was gone.  After all, they had supported the British with an Arab military uprising against the Turks.  The promises to the Arabs were in vague terms by the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry MacMahon, in correspondence with Hussein.

Sherif Hussein was the ruler of the Hedjaz area that later became known as Saudi Arabia.  He had assured D.G. Hogarth, a British representative in 1918 that he would support the Balfour Declaration---if it did not mean the establishment of an independent Jewish state. He lost the chance to be king of Arabia to Ibn Saud.

Saudi Arabia had never been as opposed to Zionism as most other Arab states.  Harry St. John Philby, a British adviser to the first king of Saudi Arabia, a Bedouin,  King  Abdulaziz b: 1876-d: 9 November 1953, otherwise known as Ibn Saud, wrote that he suggested to Weizmann a plan where all Palestine would go to the Jews, who would give Saud 20 million pounds to resettle the Palestine Arabs.

Weizmann, in referring to this plan, said that Winston Churchill favored such a solution, under which Saud would become "Lord of the Middle East.'  According to Philby, Saud waited for Churchill and Roosevelt to make the first move, but they didn't.  Then, Saud showed an uncompromising attitude towards the Jews in conversations with Roosevelt following the Yalta conference while on a cruiser on February 4-11, 1945. He had grown afraid of the other Arabs' reactions.    Roosevelt decided then to take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.  When  Truman came into office, this was thrown up to him as a reminder.  He rejected it, and did vote for Israel's statehood.  

Abdullah was in his Amman Shuneh Palace on December 17, 1947 reading a report about the partition plan to divide the 20% that was left of the Jewish Homeland between the Arabs and the Jews.  The Mufti of Jerusalem's plans were to arm his supporters to be ready when the British troops left on May 14, 1948.  They had collected 10,000 rifles and other light arms to give to the Palestine Arabs and were recruiting about 3,000 volunteers ready to be trained and organized.  Abdullah  was against this and wanted the intervention of the regular Arab armies to enter as the Arab Legions was the only modern well-trained regular Arab force.  With them, he could occupy the area allocated by the UN to the Arabs in accordance with his secret proposal to the Jews.

The Muft of Jerusalem, Syrians and Egyptians feared the Arab Legion would then occupy Arab Palestine.  Saudi Arabia was against arming the Palestinians and also bringing in the regular armies.  Iraq's rulers, Hashemites like Abdullah, would not cooperate with Transjordan.  They were trying to get a defense agreement with Britain and wanted to counter protests at home that the government was soft on imperialism and Zionism.  The premiers decided to implement the secret decisions of the Bludan Conference.

June 1946 in Bludan, Syria, the Arab States had up to now paid only lip service to anti-Zionism.  They were too busy in their own problems to move against the Jews of Palestine.  The Anglo-American Commission recommended that 100,000 Jewish refugees be allowed to enter Palestine immediately.  This need was that the Holocaust was over and survivors had no place to go.  They were being placed in detention camps in Cyprus, for one.

These leaders  were eager to see a conflict between Truman of the USA and and the British who were against it.  The British needed "evidence" to show that immigration would lead to bloodshed, so the Arabs called a conference of the Arab League Political Committee in Bludan.  They rejected the American idea of allowing immigration and secretly decided that if the Palestine Arabs went to war, the Arab States would not be able to stop their people from coming to their aid with money, arms and volunteers.

The British were busy instigating Arab rebellion and the British Representatives in Amman asked Abdulla if he would permit volunteers to cross into Palestine from Transjordan.  He was against the crossing himself but agreed.  He could be accused of selling out to the British and Jews.  Bevin himself approved of this idea.  They agreed to have the volunteers pass secretly after midnight so others would think they had infiltrated into Palestine without official Transjordan or British knowledge.  They would move in a group with Arab Legion guards marching to the front and rear until they crossed into Palestine.  They wouldn't stay in Jerusalem, but march to the Nablus area in central Palestine.  It all ended up that Britain would continue to supply arms to Egypt, Iraq and Transjordan.  On January 21, 20 trucks with Syrian license plates carrying over 700 Arab Liberation Army men under Safr Bek, a Syrian officer, raced across the border into Palestine to fight.  However, the British-Iraqi arms agreement was cancelled shortly after it had been drawn up when mobs rioted in Baghdad in protest against British "imperialism."

Resource:  Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

How Jews Acquired Land in Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot
World War I started in July 1914.  At this time the Arab leaders of the Ottoman Empire  joined hands with the Germans against the English, Americans and Western Europeans.  Part of the land in Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, was owned by Arabs living in Cairo, Damascus, Beirut and even in France.  There was really nothing to attract them to this malaria infested swamp and desert.  Of the sparse migrant population living there, 80% were deb-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouin Arabs.

Many Jews returned to their land to join Jewish towns and cities and start new ones in droves in the 1880's and avoided buying land in places where Arabs might be displaced.  Many were interested in agriculture as this was something that they had been denied living in Russia's Pale of Settlement.  They bought land that was uncultivated, swampy, cheap and without anyone living on it.  From 1880 to 1948, 73% of Jewish plots were bought from large landowners, not poor fellahin.   People who sold land to Jews included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa.  As'ad el-Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land.  King Abdullah leased land to the Jews.  Many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, like members of the Muslim supreme Council, sold land to Jews.  In those days, they were just trying to make a living.      

In 1920, David Ben-Gurion, then a Labor Zionist, said he was "concerned about the Arab fellahin, who he felt was the most important asset of te native population."  He said that under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellas or worked by them.  He even advocated helping to liberate them from their oppressors.  Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price, he advocated."  


Jews bought all of the available empty unwanted land.  Then they had no other choice but to buy cultivated land.  They found Arabs willing to sell because of migrating to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.

John Hope Simpson, liberal Parliament member,  came to Palestine in May 1930 and saw that Jews had paid very high prices for the land and also paid people living on the land a lot a money which they were legally not bound to pay.  So in fact they had overpaid to people not holding title to the land.  He authored the Hope Simpson Report in 1930, following the widespread 1929 Palestine riots.  Arabs had slaughtered 133 Jews, and the British security forces wound up killing about 116 Arabs to stop them  Many on both sides were injured.  

Lewis French, the British Director of Development for Palestine, conducted a survey in 1931 of landlessness and finally offered new plots to Arab who had been dispossessed.  3,000 applicants were received by the British, of which 80% were found to be invalid because they were not filed by landless Arabs.  It was a racket.  They found only about 600 landless Arabs, of which 100 accepted the Government land offer.  

Now the German affect on Arab's attitude towards Jews was really taking effect and by April 1936, Arabs were attacking Jews.  They were instigated by Fawzi al Qawukji, a Syrian guerrilla who was close to the Mufti of Jerusalem.  The British sent out a new commission led by Lord Peel to investigate in November.  89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.  The Peel Commission found that the Arab complaints were baseless.

Original land owners who had remained on the land and had sold it  had been without resources or training needed to develop the land.  They saw a good deal and sold it.    Land now turned into orange groves was uncultivated swamp and sand dunes when it was bought by the Jews, but they were prepared to deal with it.  They also found that the Arab population had increased, making available land scarce for anyone to buy.

1938 was the height of the Arab revolt and Arabs were attacking Arabs and Jews.  The British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews just to jack up the prices.  However, there were Arab landowners who had been terrorized by their own people and decided to leave and sell their property to the Jews.

In  1944 Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine for arid or semi-arid land.  That same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.  It was exorbitant and the Jews had been taken, but to them it was worth it.

Come 1947 and Jews owned about 463,000 acres in Palestine.  About 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government.  30,000 were bought from the many churches and 387,500 were bought from Arabs.

King Abdullah of Transjordan had written in his memoirs that "Arabs are as prodigal (reckless, extravagant) in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping."  He was assassinated in 1951 at age 69.


Resource:  Myths and Facts:  a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hope_Simpson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_hope_simpson.php
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_gurion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan

How Britain Took Away the Jewish Homeland

Nadene Goldfoot
The Balfour Doctrine had established the Jewish Homeland perimeters which was coming about at the end of World War I.  Chaim Weizmann had helped the British win the war by his invention in organic chemistry by fermenting acetone-butyl, used in bombs.   Without it, they most likely would have lost.  This is one reason why Britain was going along with the creation of the Homeland in Palestine.

Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill then turned around and rewarded Sherif Hussein's son, Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey in 1921.  Churchill installed him as Emir and took away nearly 4/5 of Palestine, 35,000 square miles, to create Transjordan.  Britain had already given the Hejaz and Arabia to the Saud family, so this was the consolation prize for the Hussein family.  The kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd was unified in Saudi Arabia on 23 Sept, 1932 by King Abdul Aziz al-Saud though he had started to take it in 1902.  Its area is 870,000 square miles.

1922 was the year that 80% of what was the historic land of Palestine and the Jewish National Home as defined by the League of Nations was given away to become Transjordan by the British.

Knowing that the Jews were to establish their homeland, the cold-blooded British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, going against the provision of the Mandate in Article 6 that said, "the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and wastelands not acquired for public purposes." 


By 1949 the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 to Jews.  They had limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.   Less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than six million.  


In 1915 about 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine along with 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs.  The British immigration restrictions on Jews went against the hopes for them while Arabs were allowed to enter freely.  By 1922, the Jewish population was 84,000 while the Arabs numbered 643,000.  In 1935, when conditions started to become bad for German Jews due to Nazis, the British then cut the quota  by 1/3.  


Arab demands were given attention by the White Paper in 1939, the height of Nazi persecution in Germany. This is when my uncle came to New York.  The Paper said that an Arab state would be created within 10 years and Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next 5 years, and then it would stop altogether.  Jews could not buy land in 95% of the territory of Palestine.  Arabs were not about to create their own state, but they were allowed to immigrate without restrictions.   The Hope Simpson Commission from London found that the 1929 Arab riots came from ignoring the illegal Arab immigration from Egypt,.  Transjordan and Syria and that this displaced the Jewish immigrants.  


Jews couldn't enter Palestine for the length of World War II when they were being gassed by Nazis.  Even after the war, the British refused to allow the survivors to find sanctuary in Palestine.  On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British to relieve the suffering of the Jews in displaced persons camps in Europe and accept 100,000 Jewish immigrants.  Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Minister, answered sarcastically that the USA wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine "because they did not want too many of them in New York."  


Some Jews got to Palestine anyway on old leaky ships that the members of the Jewish resistance organizations smuggled in.  Between August 1945 and May 14, 1948, 65 "illegal" immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people arrived from European shores.  The British caught on in August 1946 and caught 50,000 and interned them in camps in Cyprus. 28,000 were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948.   There were 600,000 Jews in Israel by the time  it was again a state in 1948.  


It is truly a shunda that Britain broke their promise to the League of Nations and did not uphold their responsibility of creating the Jewish Homeland, but instead gave most all the land away to the Arabs and kept Jews from entering the country.  There must be a special section in the Book of Life for that.  They could take the responsiblity of the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust along with the Nazis.  


Resource:  Myths and Facts by Mitchell Bard and Joel Himelfarb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-Arabia