BRITAIN IN PALESTINE
Send the Palestinians to Mesopotamia, says Lawrence of Arabia
Major Rothschild … suggested that it would be well if his Majesty's government would … consider whether some comprehensive emigration scheme to the south (Egypt) as well as to the north (Damascus) could not be arranged for the Arab Palestinian peasantry in conjunction with schemes for the immigration of the Jews. Miss Bell and Colonel Lawrence agreed and Miss bell added that there was scope in Mesopotamia for such immigrants. It was pointed out that it was not impossible to move Arab peasantry from their lands as had been shown when the original Zionist colonies were established.
MINUTES OF AN INFORMAL MEETING held on 21st March 1919 to discuss the proposals presented at the peace conference by the Zionist Organisation and certain questions connected therewith.
While the victorious Allies were dividing up the post-World War 1 world between themselves, the Emir Feisal was a lone Arab voice on the fringes of the Peace Conference. In speech to the Big Four statement who represented the Allies, Feisal said:
“We believe that Syria [which included Palestine], an agricultural and industrial area thickly peopled with sedentary classes, is sufficiently advanced politically to manage her own internal affairs.
Arabia and Iraq are two huge provinces made up of three civilised towns, divided by large wastes thinly peopled by semi-nomadic tribes. The main duty of the Arab Government there would be to oversee the educational processes which are to advance the tribes to the moral level of the towns.
In Palestine the enormous majority of the people are Arabs. The Jews are very
close to the Arabs in blood, and there is no conflict of character between the two races. In principles we are absolutely at one. The powers will, I hope, find better means to give fuller effect to the aims of our national movement. The Arabs expect the powers to think of them as one potential people, jealous of their language and liberty, and ask that no step be taken inconsistent with the prospect of an eventual union of these areas under one sovereign government.
In our opinion, if our independence be conceded and our local competence
established, the natural influences of race, language, and interest will soon draw us together into one people; but for this the Great Powers will have to ensure us open internal frontiers, common railways and telegraphs, and uniform systems of education. To achieve this they must lay aside the thought of individual profits, and their old jealousies. In a word, we ask you not to force your whole civilisation upon us, but to help us to pick out what serves us from your experience. In return we can offer you little but gratitude.”
October 1882: Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, two of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:
“There are now only five hundred thousand Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through
stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones.”
MORRIS, BENNY. RIGHTEOUS VICTIMS: A HISTORY OF THE ZIONIST-ARAB CONFLICT, 1881-2001. VINTAGE BOOKS, 2001, P. 49
1930 – when Jews formed less than 20% of the population - Menahem Ussishkin, one of the leading figures of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Arab-majority Palestine,long the chairman of the Jewish National Fund and a member of the Jewish Agency Executive, publicly called for the transfer of the Palestinians to other parts of the Middle East. In an address to journalists in Jerusalem on 28 April 1930, he stated:
“We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a greater and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of Arab fellahin.”
NUR MASALHA, EXPULSION OF THE PALESTINIANS, INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES, 1992, p 37
1930-40s – Jews made no attempt to assimilate
"The Jews made no effort to bring European culture to the Arab masses, nor to adapt themselves to those aspects of oriental life which would have enriched their own cultural pattern and at the same time made them appear less provocatively alien to the country. They did not learn from the Arabs to build cool and spacious houses which would fit the climate and landscape; they brought with them their architecture of the Polish small town and of German functionalism of the 'twenties. Their dress, food, manners and general way of life were transplanted like a prefabricated pattern from their lands of origin. Some of these were improvements in the country's way of life; others unfitting and in bad taste. There was no cultural symbiosis between the two races. The Jews came as conquerors. ”
ARTHUR KOESTLER, Promise and Fulfilment: Palestine 1917-1949 (1949), PP 34-35
