In response to STING2
STING2 said:
It is a fact that an area of land that now has over 7 million people only had 400,000 back in 1890. I'm refering to Israel/Palestine. In 1890, Israel/Palestine was OWNED by the Ottoman Empire! The land was over 90% Muslim, but there were significant number of Jews and Christians. The Ottoman Empire approved Jewish emigration all the way until its end in World War I. Going back to the population level in 1890, 400,000, what this means is that most of the land was unoccupied. Certainly a Palestinian, Christian, Jew had a right to their house or business and the land it was on, but what about all that empty land to the south or certain area's on the coast, that would be government land, the government being the Ottoman Empire!
The land was NOT
owned by the Ottoman Empire but rather was under its
jurisdiction . It was privately owned on its most part as a result of the 1858 Ottoman Land Code I'll comment about later. The fact that there were "only" 400,000 inhabitants by 1890 (with a population in its 90% Muslim it makes for 40,000 between Jews and Christians) and therefore a low demographic coefficient resulted, does NOT mean that the land was there for anybody to take. I'm sure you know that the area was mainly rural at the time. People actually lived on it in villages or small farms and cultivated it and even if there might have been areas not permanently occupied but which were actually transitory sites for local nomad tribes, it does not mean that they couldn't be privately owned or that anybody could come in and forward claims on them. Many countries hold thousands of acres of unoccupied land which may be privately or state-owned and nobody in their right mind would deem logical that an alien people could advance a claim on them. OK Palestine was not a country then but the League of Nations' Covenant draft which regulated the future territories formerly under the Ottoman Empire among others is crystal clear: "Certain communities" (Palestine included) "formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where
their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone."
At the end of World War I the Ottoman Empire was no more. Suddenly there was no government or country. Certainly indviduals have a right to the land that live on, where their house or business would be, but most the land in the area was unoccupied land formely owned by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The end of the Ottoman Empire meant that unoccupied formely Ottoman government land became available to ANYONE willing to colonize it.
This is a misconception. As I've already said most of the land was indeed privately owned - this means that even if the entity under whose jurisdiction the land was, ceased to exist - nobody outside Palestine had any right whatsoever to appropriate and much less colonise that land. Military action does not entitle victors to expropriate private property. What may happen after an armed conflict is that the said land passes under the victorious power's
jurisdiction which was NOT the case with Palestine. Palestine did not become part of the British Empire nor it was put under British jurisdiction - it was a declared a
Mandate . The Mandates system was a transitory solution devised at the end of WWI to deal with colonial areas throughout the world and actual portions under the conflict losers' jurisdiction which had been annexed by them at some time or other and were inhabited by distinct ethnical, cultural groups which had a common background and a "national" identity linked to the places they lived in. This was the case of places which later became Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. Since the situation of the latter and that of colonies was not analogous, the Mandates system classified areas as A, B and C-Mandates. A-Mandates were areas which were considered evolved and organised enough to become independent states in the near future. Palestine was classified an A-Mandate. It was clearly specified that the role of the Mandatory power for an A-Mandated area was specifically limited to "the rendering of administrative advice and assistance" in order to help the future nation to organise itself towards independence. This means that the Mandatory power, in this case Great Britain had no right whatsoever to arrogate to itself through the Balfour Declaration, the prerogative to pledge to the Zionist Organisation a land that was not theirs to give away. Furthermore, during the 25-year period in which they acted as Mandatory for Palestine they violated the spirit of their mission which was as I said, exclusively of a supervisory and advisory nature to aid the local population in the constitution of an independent state, in the same manner as it was done with Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, by riding roughshod over the local population's will by encouraging the installation of an alien people in Palestine with the goal of establishing a "Jewish national home". It must be noted that it was explicitly indicated in Article 22 of the League of Nations' Covenant establishing the Mandates system that "the wishes of these communities (those living at the time in the mandated territories) must be a principal consideration". A similar recommendation was present in President Wilson's post-war 14 points.
Furthermore it must be observed that the people in this and other areas under the former Ottoman Empire which later became Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan actually helped the allied powers during WWI against the Ottoman rule since they did not identify themselves as "Turkish" or "Ottoman" even if they had been ruled by them for several hundreds years, but rather as nationals of the areas where they lived. In fact in exchange for their help they were promised independence after the end of the war. Whilst this promise was fulfilled in the cases of the mentioned states it was not in the case of Palestine. BTW the war ended in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration which favoured the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine was drafted the year before when Palestine was still under Turkish occupation and even if the fall of the empire was impending the British had not yet been granted any authority over that land. In fact the Mandates system devised at the League of Nations' Covenant was passed in 1919 and Great Britain was not assigned the Mandate of Palestine until 1920.
The British may not of handled the situation from 1917 to 1947 in the best way, but the fact of the matter is, in the absense of the Ottoman Empire, states had to be formed in this area, and certainly Jews, as well as Muslims and Christians had every right to create their own states based on the land they were living on.
As you say local people had every right to create their own states based on the land they were living on. Jews were a minority in Palestine. In fact the "thousands of Jews" living in Israel at the time of WWI amounted to a bare 10% of the total population of Palestine, as multiple sources report including the officially appointed American King-Crane Commission of 1919 which clearly specifies that
"it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine is nearly nine-tenths of the whole". It is also fact that many of those Jews had cohabited with the Arabs in peace for generations and were not particularly interested in creating a "Jewish independent state" as they did not see any need for it. It is also fact that there was not any movement in Palestine on part of the existent Jewish population to bring up the case for a Jewish State at the end of WWI when the independence of Palestine was a major issue since Palestine had been declared an A-Mandate i.e. candidate for independence in the short-term .
The idea of a Jewish national home was born in the bosom of a non-Palestinian Jewish entity - the Zionist Organisation - which clearly did not represent the will of the Jewry in general. In fact many Jewish people living in different countries around the world who had done so for generations and felt completely integrated in those societies were completely against the idea of the constitution of a Jewish national home since they saw that this initiative might jeopardise their current status in the countries were they lived, as it was possible that with the existence of a Jewish State they could start being considered foreigners in their own countries. This preoccupation was explicitly expressed by Lord Edwin Montagu - a Jewish member of the British Cabinet at the time of the Balfour Declaration. Also many representatives of Jewish religious groups were opposed to the concept of a Jewish state since they believed that it linked their condition of Jews - a status related in their eyes exclusively to faith - with secular motivations they considered extraneous to the Jewish faith.
On another account, regarding the status of the lands, the knowledge of some facts may prove useful. In 1858 the Turkish authorities passed the Ottoman Land Code. This new law indicated that agricultural land under the jurisdiction of the Empire required from that point on registration in the name of individual owners. Most of the land in rural Palestine had never been registered previously since it had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, generally of communal usufruct. Peasants had never held titles to their land, but by the tenure system were implicitly recognised the right to live on them, cultivate and pass them on to their heirs. These provisions were never informed to or at least understood by peasants who had never had the need of holding any title to be able to live and labour on the land. In fact keeping most of the peasantry in the dark was in the interest of the Turkish upper classes since it allowed many of their members, under the provisions of the 1858 law, to register large areas of land as theirs. In any case the situation did not change for the peasants since they were allowed to continue inhabiting and cultivating the lands as they always had. Some other lands were not registered, which does not mean that they were unoccupied but rather that the inhabitants weren't aware of the need of doing so since as I said, it had never been that way. These lands were considered to be owned by "absentee landlords". Towards the end of the XIXth century some of these lands were purchased by incipient Jewish organisations (like ICA headed by Baron Maurice de Hirsch) whose aim was to facilitate the settlement of Jewish autonomous agricultural colonies in different parts of the world. In the case of Palestine this land was bought, with the approval of Turkish authorities, from "absentee landlords" (i. e. the Turkish state who acted "on their behalf") and even from actual Turkish ones. This wouldn't have constituted much of a problem if Jewish settlers hadn't been bound to agree with their mentors that the land they would come into possession of could never be re-sold or even leased to non-Jewish eventual purchasers/lessees and that only Jewish labour had to be employed in those settlements. This implied that Palestinian Arab peasants who had lived in the said land for generations under the tenure system and therefore naturally saw it as their own, were forced to leave. However this late XIXth century event was somewhat isolated in the sense that the idea then was not to expand Jewish establishment in Palestine in particular but rather to grant Jewish families the possibility to start agricultural businesses in the same manner as it was being done in other parts of the world. Furthermore while Turkish authorities had been more than helpful in evicting Palestinian Arab peasants from the purchased lands, they were not too keen on allowing indiscriminate non-Arab immigration.
At the end of the XIXth century the initiative of promoting Jewish settlements all over the world evolved into the idea of creating a Jewish national home under the newly created Zionist Organisation. The alternatives primarily considered by the Zionists as possible "Jewish national homes" were Palestine and Argentina. The latter was soon dropped since there was no possible way to back any claim on Argentinian soil, so their goal became Palestine on the grounds of a "historical connection" which bonded Jews to Palestine since it had been their homeland over 2000 years before, previous to their dispersation or "diaspora". This claim which could have never been given any serious consideration for its lack of any basic logic, however succeeded in prospering because of the sort of endorsement the Zionist Organisation had. In fact it received the support of rich and influential Jews all over the world who even constituted a Jewish National Fund with which to finance the operation of achieving the goal of a Jewish state. The fact that it was backed by influential people allowed Zionist authorities to lobby in favour of their cause at high governmental levels in countries such as France, the US and mainly Great Britain. As a result of this lobbying they obtained in 1917 the Balfour Declaration from the British government which openly favoured the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, an initiative that was to gain foothold in Paris two years later and actual development under the British Mandatory from then on until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The Palestinian Arabs have always made a point regarding this declaration in that Palestine did not belong to the British for them to have any authority to give it away to whom they wished.
As soon as the Mandate for Palestine was established, the British, in compliance with the terms they had agreed upon the Balfour Declaration with the Zionist Organisation, opened the gates of Palestine to massive Jewish immigration against the wishes of the local population. This settlement had a clearly colonisation profile since the idea was to be able to establish, by replacing native people with immigrants, an increasing amount of Jewish population related to the total figures in order to be able to forward in the future a claim for statehood. To this end Jewish organisations busied themselves in the indiscriminate purchase of lands from "absentee landlords" for the settlement of immigrant Jews. This operation actually succeeded in evacuating large portions of Palestinian territory from Arab Palestinians since it pushed Arab inhabitants away from the land they had lived in for over 1200 years with no hope whatsoever of retrieval since the condition of no resale to non-Jewish purchasers held on more strictly than ever and the precise indication that only Jewish labour had to be employed prevented them from at least remaining as employed labourers. As it should be clear by now these lands were certainly not unoccupied, as even official British reports of the time explicitly state (1), but rather were by force with the aid of the Turkish authorities on a first stage and of the British Mandatory soon after WWI until 1948. While it's true that most Jewish immigrants ended up living in urban centres as opposed to rural ones, and therefore it was not explicitly needed for locals to be displaced in order to allow for immigrant establishment, it is noted that certain areas in large cities like Jerusalem, formerly Arab quarters, were torn down by the British Mandatory on the excuse of modernisation and destined later to the building of Jewish quarters as a retaliation technique for the Palestinian uprisings in demand for self-determination. Years later, Zionist terrorist activities performed mainly by the Irgun (attacks which included the ravaging of Palestinian villages during the WWII years and later) succeeded in kicking out more Palestinian Arabs of their lawful property, and literally put them in the condition of refugees unable to return to their property as it ended up being confiscated under the pretext of considering the proprietors "absentee". This is not to mention the hundreds of thousands refugees created after the1948 and 1967 conflicts. The fact that they fled did not entitle Israel to appropriate their lands since military conquest does not abolish private rights to property as a result of which it does not entitle the victor to confiscate the homes, property and personal belongings of the civilian population. It is natural that civilian population may panic during armed conflicts and therefore leave their property in search for safety. When military action subsides it is logical that they are allowed to go back to what is legitimately theirs. This is something Israel had committed to allow back in 1949 at Lausanne and never complied to in the same way that it did not comply to UN Resolution 242 in 1967.
(1) One of Britain's High Commissioners for Palestine during the Mandate, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture on the grounds that "all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators".
Why should any Jew be forced to live in a Muslim state when he has been living on certain land all his life. The UN compromise of 1948 was fair and gave the Jews the land they were living on and the "Palestinians" the land they were living on. The Israely state was cut into 3 parts and the "Palestinian state was fully connected. A fair agreement that Israel accepted. The "Palestinians" and 5 Arab countries did not and brutally invaded Israel to wipe it from the face of the earth on the first day of its independence.
A Muslim state? What else do you expect if the vast majority of the people living there were Muslim? In addition, no-one forced the Jews to go to a place where most of the population was non-Jewish. If they chose to live there they necessarily had to get used to the idea that they were a minority. On what grounds could they demand a separate state? I mean the US is in its majority Judeo-Christian, do you think it would be logical for the Muslim minority in the US to demand a piece of the country because they shouldn't be "forced to live in a Judeo-Christian state"? They chose to go there, they have to abide by the rules of the majority - if they don't like it they are free to go elsewhere.
The Israeli state was not cut into 3 parts - Palestine was. One of the parts became Israel. Re the "fair agreement": The partition of Palestine was already put forward by a British commission led by Sir Robert Peel in 1937 and by 1939 it was the same British government who recognised that it was an impracticable plan not only because Palestinians could never come to accept a proposal that deprived them of part of a land legitimately theirs but also because Zionists were not prepared to accept it either on the grounds that they claimed the whole of Palestine and even more to establish the site for the Jewish State. At this time, after unsuccessfully trying to reach an agreement with both parties, Great Britain drafted a White Paper by which it declared the unworkability of the partition plan and established its future policy in the area which postulated its intention of helping to conform an independent unified Palestine, with a Palestinian Arab majority, in 10 years. The creation of a unified Federative Palestinian State was again brought up at the UN in 1947 but the proposal was overridden by a formula which had been already declared unworkable 8 years before.
Re the "brutal" invasion of Israel in 1948: it is important to put this conflict within its right context. The 1948 conflict was the result of a 30-year policy in the area which systematically made a point of ignoring Palestinian claims to a land legitimately theirs and which instead of being amended in an international forum like the UN ended up by being endorsed even if it was clear that it created an unfair situation for the Palestinian Arabs. In addition, it must be noted that the Zionist forces did call for the conflict when during the period which spanned from the passing of the partition plan in November 1947 until the termination of the British Mandate in May 1948, Jewish paramilitary forces attacked and occupied areas the UN had allotted to the Arabs, as even Israeli sources describe. In fact almost every source describes that these forces, mainly the Irgun, resorted to terrorising tactics which brought about the exodus of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in fear. The intervention in Palestine of five Arab nations (much less equipped and trained than Jewish forces) later on to defend Palestinian Arab rights ended up in Israeli unlawful occupation of territories never assigned to them. In all fairness it has to be said that if the Arab coalition had won this conflict they would have more than probably retaliated on the Jews by expelling them from Palestine, confiscating their property, etc as the antagonism between both people (which stemmed exclusively from this conflict and was not ancestral at all, as both British and American official reports of the 20s and 30s state) was already well installed. In fact after their defeat they proceeded to expel a total of 200,000 Jews from the five individual states combined.
The West Bank and Gaza(taken control of in the 1967 war) are a different story but it should be noted that Israel has agreed to withdraw from these territories once a peace treaty is signed, just like they did with Egypt back in 1979. Israel has NEVER annexed the West Bank and Gaza and has no intention of doing so.
If putting the West Bank and Gaza under the jurisdiction of Israeli law is not annexing those territories I don't know what is. The UN Resolution 242 of 1967 directs Israel to withdraw from those territories and to allow Palestinian refugees back. Israel has ignored this resolution to date.
Israel is a democracy and a country of laws as is the USA. Its this fact about the USA that helped lead the civil rights movement for African Americans to victory in the USA. You think the Palestinians have it rough, think about what African Americans have had to go through to achieve civil rights. Yet, they succeeded in their goals with non-violent action because the US laws, government, and population were suceptible to such action unlike dictatorships. Non-violent action is the only way Palestinians will succeed in their goals as well. Israel is a democracy with a well educated citizenry and would respond in kind to non-violent action and peaceful negotiation, but it does take time and patience, but its the only way Palestinians can achieve their goals.
To judge the current episodes of violence simply as unprovoked "Palestinian violence" is to refuse to acknowledge what triggered them in the first place and to ignore that there also was Israeli violence which was most of the time more akin to offensive than to defensive tactics. In this scenario it is more than obvious that a "passive resistance" in the Luther King pattern would have never worked even if Israel is a democracy. Why? Because in the US neither Republicans nor Democrats were inherently by ideology contrary to granting equal rights to the Afro-Americans. In Israel conversely one of the two main parties, the Likud, has always been, in the spirit of early Zionism, clearly opposed to the existence of a Palestinian Arab State, and it is notorious that its leaders have always entertained the goal of holding the whole of Palestine as Israel's national soil.
As I've already said, even if non-violent action is the logical approach, how do you convince people who have been done away of what was lawfully theirs in the first place, who have been militarily occupied for 35 years, who have been forced to flee from their soil, who have seen Israel ride roughshod over every agreement they signed starting right back in 1949 at Lausanne when they agreed to let Palestinian refugees back and never did, to the 1993 Declaration of Principles which included the passing over to the Palestinian Authority certain territories, the redeployment of Israeli troops, the removal of Israeli settlements from the said areas, the creation of an independent Palestinian State in 1999, etc and most of it was never respected? Maybe if the cause of the present situation was analysed further instead of making judgements on the present results exclusively i.e. putting things into their right context it could help not only to a better understanding of the problem but towards devising more effective solutions.
Just like the claims of a massacre at Jenin were false so are most of these claims of IDF abuses. There were claims by some Muslims and organizations that reached 7,000 dead in Jenin. After a complete investigation it was found that only 48 had died. This would not have happened if the terrorist had 1. given up 2. not decided to base themselves in the center of a refugee camp.
False claims? Children who were found dead under the remnants of bulldozed houses were terrorists? Who bulldozed the houses? The number of 48, which is not proven either since even if the UN settled on that finally inexplicably since Israel did not allow immediate inspections of the area and could have easily cleared away evidence of a greater massacre, is however by no means "small" considering that the deaths were not by accident but inflicted by a deliberate action. There's no doubt that Israel would have raised hell if "only" 48 of its own civilians had died in similar conditions, not to mention that the IDF would have certainly refrained from bulldozing houses where suspect terrorists were inside if the civilians in them had been Israelis held as hostages. There is no way that the IDF's action in this case can be justified under any light since the fact that a particular group should use civilians as shields is no excuse to massacre innocent people.
