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Showing posts with label land. Show all posts
Showing posts with label land. Show all posts

Monday, February 24, 2014

Part II When Arabs Came Into Palestine and How They Did It

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                                      Beduin Tent in Palestine 1930

Background:  From 1845 to 1863, a group of prominent Muslim landholding families lived in Jerusalem and used their money to gain control of "all the municipal offices."  They held certain villages or groups of villages in a type of serfdom."  By the end of the 1800s, they held the political power and had names like al-Husayni, al-Khalidi and al-Nashashibi.  They had the lands from the indebtedness of their fellahins, so had huge landholdings which they never sent anyone  to see and never farmed.  Such landowners later sold their land to Jews who had to pay exorbitant prices they had asked for, but they paid as the land meant everything to the Jews. The landowners made out very well and the fellahin wasn't likely to do that  in the first place.

While the first wave of Jewish immigration from Russia took place in 1882 in the 1st Aliyah, the fellahins' travels  had not changed  When debts got too big, the fellah would take his bundle of bedclothes, his cooking pan and water can, a small water jug and his shoes and load them all on his one ass and wife and leave at night when it was dark.  He would cross the Jordan valley until he reached Hauran in Syria or Ajlun in Jordan, where he would find a good place to hide from people he owed money to..  Many became the Bedouin to escape the indebtedness to become a member of a nomadic tribe.  The land was left without owners, workers, and became mahlul, a type of state-owned land.

The Bedouins plundered and and stole whatever they could.  The Ottoman Empire's government was very corrupt along with its feudal system.  A German historian, Doughty, who wrote of his travels in the region, wrote that in 1876,  he had found a desert that was devoid of but a few human lives at the time that the Jews had begun to build their settlements on the semi-abandoned territory where one day the Arab propaganda would claim that Jews had crowded out and displaced  the Arabs,  rendering  the Palestinian Arabs landless, which was just not true to facts at all.

 These Arabs  who roamed in the 1800's were not indigenous to the land and didn't stay on the land, yet they were called the original settled Arabs when the arriving Jewish immigrants united with Jews who never had left their land.

The former Jewish land once called Judah, then Judea, and even later called Palaestina and Southern Syria, a once fertile land that had become barren and swampy,and  laid waste for ages, held a  people who had died off with few recalling the great Jewish history.   Many of these Muslims were imported from Turkey and other lands who the Turks had brought to protect against the wandering Bedouin tribes, like landed pirates who would attack the settled multi-ethnic populace.  Each new conqueror brought his own population with him as a police force while other thousands went in and out from lands as far away as the Caucasus.  Sometimes it was the government who imported immigrants.  For instance, the Circassian and other colonists were planted on the frontier of settlement from 1870 and afterwards.

In 1860 about 200 tents of the Wulda tribe came across the Euphrates River and settled about 30 miles south of Aleppo, Syria.  Kurds, Turkomans, Naim, and others arrived in Palestine around the same time as the Jewish immigration waves began.  18,000 tents of Tartars, the armies of Turks and Kurds, whole villages came in 19th century of Bosnians and Moors and Circassians and Algerians and Egyptians.  It wasn't just the Syrian Arabs entering the land, but the whole surrounding areas looking for jobs and a chance to get rich off of the Jews.

Later, Circassians, who are Muslims,  were hired by the Jews to help guard their land from the nomadic invaders. They were said to be good horsemen.   Circassians and Jews were in my 9th grade English class in Israel.

This whole group which was a mixed bag of nationalities, and were then counted as original settled Muslims in Palestine by the British, when in fact they were new immigrants themselves.  The families would then say they had family ties for thousands of years there. that was historically very inaccurate.

The land called Palestine was never a nation at all and was not these migrants' ancestral homeland.

Resource: From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajlun_Castle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/118238/Circassian

Monday, December 2, 2013

Israel in Bible Days and Today: A Land flowing with Milk and Honey

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Beit She'an Valley, Israel -notice irrigation in background:
This is where Kibbutzx Ein Hanatziv was started in 1946 and where in 1969 Katushas and mortar attacks from Jordan hit. During the Second Intifada, in the 2002 Beit She'an attack, six Israelis were killed and over 30 were injured by two Palestinian militants, who opened fire and threw grenades at a polling station in the center of Bet She'an where party members were voting in the Likud primary. 
                                                                           
In biblical times, the Land of Israel was covered with forests, more like the Pacific Northwest of the USA.  In the centuries that follow, and especially during the Middle Ages, many of the forests were destroyed by nomads and their goats.  Some forests were used as fuel by the Turks for their military trains during the 400 years prior to 1914-1917's WWI.  Of the ancient forests, very few survive but are mainly found in the Galilee.  In 1948 there were 4,388,000 trees in Israel.  By 1970-71, there were 103,000,000 trees which were mostly all planted by the Jewish National Fund.  This is when you paid so much money as a gift in someone's name for a tree that would be planted in Israel.

Today, there are 7,933,200 people living in Israel, a country of 8,000 square miles which is 263 miles long and from 9 to 71 miles wide.  It would take 76 Israels to fit into Iran, or 2 Israels to fit into Switzerland.  
                                                                         
The Land then abounded in wild animals which included lions and bears.  Both are found now only in Israeli zoos.  Hyenas, jackals, wild-cats, lynx, otters, mongoose and the spotted weasel are the main beasts of prey.  There are also wolves and leopards in Galilee.  Gazelles have multiplied, and porcupines are plentiful.  There area 3 species of hedgehogs and several of shrews.  The wild boar is hunted.  400 species of birds are found and Lake Kinneret is rich in fish.

Since Israel was re-established on May 14, 1948, several areas have been set aside as nature reserves.  Most of them are open for hiking and picnicking.  There are 4 zones found in Israel on this tiny speck of land that only amounts to 8,000 square miles, about as big as the state of Rhode Island.    It ranges from semi-arid to temperate, then sub tropical.  There is the coastal plain which is the Valley of Jezreel, the mountains  of the Galilee of the north and Samaria and Judaea in the center, and then the Desert and Jordan Rift Valley. There is also the Negev which is a prairie and has mountains and also the Sinai Desert which separates the Land of Israel from the Land of Egypt.   The largest problem faced is water.

This was the land of wheat and barley and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates, a land of olive-oil and honey, says the Bible.  The Jews have added bananas, oranges and other citrus fruits which grow on the Coastal Plain with irrigation where they receive great soil and sunshine.
                                                                       
                                              Almond tree blossoms 

Deciduous fruit trees grow everywhere and like the cool hills.  You can see dates, bananas, avocados, guavas, mangoes in the hot Jordan Valley and Coastal Plain.  The grains, vegetables grow well along with tobacco, cotton, groundnuts and sugar-beets.  Fruit trees bloom in January, and from then till April the slopes of the Carmel range are a riot of color and perfume.  What I loved were the orange blossoms everywhere.

Indigenous trees like the Jerusalem pine, tamarisk and carob are used in afforestation.  Eucalyptus trees had been planted extensively because they soak up the water in the malaria-filled swamps and helped to make the land more livable.  Pine forests in the mountains and acacias on the Negev dune-lands have been planted.
                                                                         
Grapes have been planted once again for wine.  Israel is now producing many types of wines, both white and red. They are rating as good as any French wines.   Strawberries are sold on the street corners by the kilos.  Hotels feature strawberries and ice cream.

 The land is full of medicinal herbs and wild flowers. In December,  one can see flowers such as hyacinths, crocus and narcissus.  After that come the anemones, tulips, cyclamen, iris, daisies and more.  Hothouses are found in villages supplying the domestic and export markets with millions of blooms.  There are roses, gladioli, tulips, gerbera and chrysanthemums.

Dairy farming has been a major endeavor taken on by many kibbutzim.  Israel produces the best milk products of so many varieties which all beat any I have tasted in the USA.  Their yogurts back in 1980 were outstanding.  They had all types, drinkable and spoon-eaten.  Yes, the land is flowing with milk and honey.  Everything was so natural; so many organic products.
                                                                     
The sabra, which is the fruit of the cactus, has a prickly exterior and the sweetness and savour inside.  It has become the icon of the native-born Israeli.  They are said to be prickly on the outside when you first meet them but oh so sweet when you get to know them.  They have a huge heart.

In the 1880's when the first aliyah of Russians returned to the Holy Land in 1882, they found deserts and swamps.  The land was full of weeds and that was about it;   dust and weeds and camel dung.  It was as if the land was waiting for the last 2,000 years to be taken care of once again.  It was in a horrible state, somewhat like the movies on the history channel of what would happen to the USA if suddenly all the people were gone.  The flora and insects would take over, and that's what happened in the very hot and dry land that used to be Israel and Judah.  The Russian Jews had to be on guard for marauding Arabs that would fire on them.  By 1910, the first kibbutz, Degania Alef was started where they raised wheat, barley and oats.

Resource:  Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://www.freeisraelphotos.com/category/flowers_and_trees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_She'an
http://www.gemsinisrael.com/e_article000065677.htm
http://www.lookisrael.com/files/justbig.php
The Settlers by Meyer Levin, a novel.  set in Palestine from the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration and covers over a quarter of a century; the Jewish pioneers, tyranny of the Turkish overlords, Jew and Arab neighbors with blood feuds and hatreds, WWI, Russian Revolution, with Chaimovitch family who fled Czarist Russia to live on the strange, barren faraway rocky, parched land.

Friday, June 29, 2012

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