The Question of Palestine
Decades ago the late Palestinian intellectual activist and Columbia professor Edward Said wrote with this title arguing the legitimacy of rights of Palestinians in their homeland.1 Our aim here is to relate this question to the Muslim community at large. Why and how the question of Palestine has become a salient feature of the contemporary Muslim political discourse? Why Muslims all over the world are so attached to the problem of Palestine? We shall address these questions in this chapter.
The presence of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the capital city in Palestine generally draws attention of common Muslims toward Palestine. Al-Aqsa has been mentioned in the Qur’an and Muslims consider this the third most important shrine in the world. In 1931 a conference, attended by Muslim leaders from all over the world, held in Jerusalem expressed in clear terms the Muslim attachment to the territory. In 1969 the OIC was established in response to the ignition of al-Aqsa Mosque by a Zionist youth. In this chapter we shall discuss the background of the Palestinian problem and its relations with the rest of the Muslim world. We shall explain why the question of Palestine is so central to the Muslim mind.
Jews and Muslims have lived peacefully in the area since 7th century CE when Muslims liberated the territory from the Byzantines. Earlier the Jews were expelled from the territory first by the Assyrians, then by the Babylonians, and again by the Romans. But they retained an emotional attachment with the area because of the central role of Jerusalem in their history and Biblical reference to the territory. According to the Bible Jewish leaders David and Solomon (Muslims consider both as prophets of God) established a kingdom in the area around 1000 BC. In the 7th century CE the territory became Muslim majority mainly through conversion: there is no evidence of forced conversion or any substantial migration of population from outside the territory. Under Muslim rule the Jews generally not only enjoyed peace and comfort, they flourished during the early centuries of Islamic civilization. Many of them settled back in Palestine who, according to an Israeli author, were “aged folk, drawn to the Holy Land by promptings of piety, came to prey and to die, to be buried there, rather than to live and work.”2 The Jews suffered along with Muslims when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099; and they were able to return to Jerusalem together with Muslims in 1187 when Salahuddin Ayyubi liberated the city from the Crusaders. About 5,000 Jews lived in Palestine during the Napoleonic invasion to the area at the end of the eighteenth century. Napoleon is reported to have invited the European Jews to settle in Palestine.3 Slowly European Jews began to migrate to Palestine. But it was not because of the migration of these Jews that Israel was born, rather Israel owes its origin to the Zionist Movement which originated in Europe at the end of the 19th century.
Zionism and the Birth of Israel
Zionism was born as an ideology at the end of the 19th century during an European nationalist fervor. Pressed by historical anti-Semitism and growths of various nationalisms, the Jews in Europe began to ponder upon having their own homeland. They began to conceive of a state for Jews in the modern world; and many of them wanted the proposed state to be located in modern Palestine claiming its legitimacy from the Bible. In 1896 a Hungarian Jew, Theodor Herzl, wrote The Jewish State arguing for a Jewish national home in the modern world of nations. A year later World Zionist Organization met in Switzerland and resolved to establish “a homeland for Jews in Palestine.” It is interesting to note that although most indigenous Palestinians were not aware of the Zionist scheme, most religious oriented Jews opposed this idea of a Jewish state in Palestine.4 However, the secular nationalist Jews established Zionist organizations and institutions to promote the idea arguing that this was a humanitarian cause as they believed that the Jews were subject to oppression and persecution in Europe because of their race and religion.
Edward Said has rightly pointed out that, “[t]he first wave of Zionist colonialists reached the shores of Palestine in the early 1880s.”5 This was due to the growth of nationalist fervor in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century; Jews were considered non-nationals in most European countries. The number of Jews in Palestine increased to an estimated 80,000 just before World War I. During the War, however, the number declined to about 55,000 which represented approximately 5 percent of the total population: Muslims constituted 80 percent and Christians 15.
A Jewish Colonization Association was established in 1891 with the help of wealthy Jewish businessmen from all over the world to finance buying land in Palestine. They needed an established government to pursue their agenda, but they had none. The founder of Zionism Theodor Herzl first approached the German monarch Wilhelm II for his consent to establish a Chartered Land Development Company to be operated by the Zionists under German protectorate, but the Kaiser declined. Then he directly approached the Osmanli Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r.1876-1908) with a lucrative offer of buying Palestine for European Jews to settle. Although the Sultan was in desperate need of cash, he declined the offer saying that, “I cannot sell even a foot of land, for it does not belong to me, but to my people.”6 This was a clear indication that the Osmanlis did not consider themselves a colonial power in the area. Then the Zionists turned to the British.
Herzl died in 1904 and the leadership of the movement went to a Russian Jew Chaim Weizmann who had migrated to England the same year. Although by profession a professor of Chemistry, Weizmann was a skillful diplomat. He established personal relationship with most British politicians and as early as 1914 when the Osmanlis joined the Axis he argued that,
… we can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez canal.7
This statement reflects Weizmann’s perception of civilization and the British concern and “white man’s burden” mentality of many British politicians and their colonial interests in the area. He exploited this very effectively in achieving his goal.
In 1917 the British occupied Palestine from the Osmanlis with the help of some local Arab tribes (mainly the Hashemite of Trans Jordan). Soon the Zionists received a pledge in a personal letter written to a wealthy businessman which came to be known as the Balfour Declaration expressing the support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Arthur J. Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary who claimed to have become a Zionist following a discussion with Chaim Weizmann,8 was in no position to announce such a commitment on behalf of the British Empire. He made the declaration as if Palestine was his personal property for which he seemed to have been persuaded by some wealthy British and non-British European Zionists. It is because of such secretive manipulation by the Zionists many people in the Muslim world today believe that the state of Israel came into existence out of a conspiracy. However, at the same time other British officials made similar commitments about the same territory to Sharif Hussein of Hijaz and to the French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The issue was then taken to Paris Peace Conference (1919) where the Zionists had sent a powerful delegation composed of influential individuals mainly from Britain and the USA. It is to be noted that no Palestinian Jew was included in the delegation. The Palestinians had not sent a delegation to the Conference either. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, who was welcomed in Paris as the savior and the prophet of peace, and who was also aware of the Zionist demands for a Jewish state in Palestine, opposed the idea of establishing the state of Israel in Palestine. But incidentally the President fell ill and was not able to pursue his proposals personally. Also because of the defeat of his Democratic Party in the elections, the US refrained from participating from the newly established League of Nations, and no attention was paid to the American proposal on the issue at the conference. In April 1920 the Allied Supreme Council granted mandate over Palestine to Britain and in 1922 the British mandate was confirmed by the League of Nations. This was possible because of the active campaign by international Zionist leaders in favor of Britain. Zionists were also able to secure a fellow Zionist, Herbert Samuel, as the first British High Commissioner of Palestine. Weizmann is reported to have said later that, “I was mainly responsible for the appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel to Palestine. Sir Herbert Samuel is our friend. At our request he accepted that difficult position. We put him in that position. He is our Samuel.”9 The League incorporated most recommendations of the Balfour Declaration, and facilitated Jewish immigration from various parts of the world to Palestine. It also recognized Zionist organizations and institutions as legitimate institutions in achieving this goal. As soon as the indigenous Palestinians realized this Zionist design, and found out that some of the leading British officials, in fact, not only belonged to the Jewish faith – a number of them were totally committed to the Zionist ideology – they began to oppose the Jewish migration from other parts of the world to Palestine. This caused the rise of Palestinian nationalism which we shall describe below. On their part the British authorities, which by then had received the League’s Mandate to administer the land of Palestine, were caught in the middle. Although the British attempted to restrict Jewish migration to Palestine, the indigenous population continued to view the British Mandate Authorities as a party in the conflict that favored the Zionist aspiration. This perception became stronger because some Zionist leaders in Britain were able to achieve many of their objectives through personal contacts with the British leaders.
Meanwhile the Zionists had began to grab lands from the indigenous Palestinians with the support of international Jewish financiers. Soon the Palestinians began to view such mass migration as something being imposed on them by the Mandate authorities at the expense of their fundamental rights, and they began to voice their opposition. This convinced many British politicians and particularly lower ranking officials working in Palestine about the double standard of their government. Yet Zionist leaders were able to continue the migration process through their connection with higher ranking officers and politicians in Britain. By 1930 the number of Jews in Palestine reached to about 156,000. Yet the Zionist extremists were not satisfied with what they perceived as a slow flow of immigration. With the rise of nationalist sentiments in Germany more Jews wanted to migrate out of the country and the pressure on the Mandate authorities increased to allow them to Palestine. A group of Zionists now under the leadership of Vladimir Jabotinsky, a follower of Italy’s Mussolini, formed the New Zionist or Revisionist Organization to promote more Jewish immigration into Palestine. On the one hand these revisionist Jews would provoke the local population to stand against the British, on the other hand they would create pressure on the British to take action against the local population.
In order to create more rooms for the newly arrived Jews, by 1935 the Zionist activists openly resorted to terrorism in Palestine by attacking Palestinian villagers, forcing them to flee and establish Jewish settlements there. They also organized financial and diplomatic support for such activities internationally. Incidentally World War II brought more fortune to the Zionist cause and devastation to the Palestinians. According to an Israeli author, “the world war served the Palestinian Arab cause ill. … Palestinians, having just been crushed, became identified with the Axis cause.”10 Britain allowed the Zionists to establish a regular army battalion for the support of the Allied forces during WW II. As the pressure increased on the Jews in Germany during and immediately after the war, demands were made to allow more Jews in Palestine. When the British troops intervened, the cunning Zionists turned toward the United States for support on humanitarian grounds.11 They induced President Truman join the chorus with an appeal for more Jews be allowed to enter into Palestine. It should be pointed out here that the indigenous peaceful protests against Jewish migration to Palestine were brutally suppressed by the British Mandate administration. With the passage of time the British administration became even more pro-Zionist.
As soon as the war broke out Zionist leader Weizmann expressed the readiness of the Jews to stand by the British and demanded that independent Jewish military units be created as a part of the Allied armies. In principle the British approved the idea, but as benevolent colonial power, it made the offer to Palestinians as well. But for most Palestinians Britain was no more a just and benevolent power; rather it was a European colonial power which was helping European immigrants snatching Palestinian lands. Therefore there was no Palestinian response to the British offer, while the Zionists initially joined the British formations, and by 1944 an independent Jewish brigade was established. This provided the Zionists an opportunity to independently control weapons. With the funding from the international Jewish organizations the Zionists formed armed groups known as Haganah, Irgun, and Stern Gang to terrorize the villagers in various parts of Palestine to make rooms for increasing number of Jewish immigrants mostly from Germany and Eastern Europe. Although the British administration declared these groups illegal, by then the Zionist groups were strong enough to take even the British into task. Their attempt to kill the British High Commissioner failed but they were able to assassinate Lord Moyne, the British Minister for the Middle East.12 This caused enormous strain in the relationship between British Zionists and the British government. As a result leadership of the Zionist movement would now move from Britain to America.
American Zionists began to adopt a higher profile in international Zionism following a meeting of American Zionist Organization in May 1942 which called for the establishment of a Jewish state embracing the whole of Palestine. By 1944 the Zionists were able to table a resolution in both in the US House of Representatives and the Senate calling for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine which would become a “free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.” More Jewish immigration into Palestine was necessary because the number was too low for the Jews to claim the whole of Palestine as their homeland while the Palestinians constituted an overwhelming majority of the population in the territory. Although the Zionist aim failed because of the last minute intervention by then chief of staff General George Marshall, the Zionists continued to maneuver US policies in favor of a Jewish state and unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. In August 1945 the Zionist succeeded in having President Truman appealing to the British prime minister for immediate admission of 100,000 more Jewish refugees into Palestine. But the British reluctance to such an unrealistic and unjustified demand now faced with Zionist anger against the British. In December 1946 at a World Zionist Congress in Basle American Zionists declared the British rule in Palestine illegal. By then Britain had lost power to respond to such an ultimatum.
In 1948 under chaotic circumstances the Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine, and immediately the Zionists – mostly immigrants since 1918 – declared the establishment of the State of Israel. Within hours the United States recognized it although the Secretary of State General George Marshall (founder of the famous Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe) vehemently opposed the idea. Between 1918 and 1948 a significant demographic change had been engineered in Palestine. In 1918 the number of Jews in Palestine was about 55,000, and in 1948 the number increased to about 646,000. In terms of the ratio with the local population they increased from 5% to 31.7%, but in terms of land possession, the Jews increased their portion from 2% to 6.5% during the same period.13 Now that it had the military and political might, Israel started an aggressive campaign against the local population to create more rooms for existing and potential new immigrants. Israeli army simply attacked unarmed Palestinian villagers and forced about 800,000 Palestinians out to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and other neighboring Arab countries. Most famous among these events was Dair Yasin, a village on the outskirt of Jerusalem, committed on the night of April 9, 1948.14
As a result not only the Palestinians became more militant in defending their territory, sympathizers in neighboring countries also joined them. Thus with the establishment of the state of Israel the Palestinian crisis turned very critical for international peace and security. A few neighboring Arab countries declared war against Israel in support of the Palestinian people, but they were no match to the sophisticated well-armed Isreali armed forces. They performed very badly in the war. The issue was now referred to the United Nations. We shall discuss the role of the UN in this crisis, but before that we shall also highlight the growth of Palestinian nationalism during the same period.
Early Development of Palestinian Nationalism
As opposed to most other Afro-Asian and Muslim countries where nationalism emerged in response to European colonialism, nationalism in Palestine developed in response mainly to Zionism and partially in response to British administered League of Nation’s mandate authority. As soon as the Jewish Colonization Association was established to acquire land in Palestine “a group of Muslim and Christian notables cabled Istanbul urging the government to prohibit Jewish immigration and land purchase.”15 Although this particular act had nothing to do with the growth of Palestinian nationalism, such Zionist activities slowly created a Palestinian consciousness among the local population.
Here one must note certain fundamental differences between the newly immigrant Jews and the local Palestinian population. While the Jews were highly organized, western educated, and diplomatically advanced to negotiate with the British, the Palestinians were inefficiently organized, tradition oriented, and politically immature. Nearly 73 percent of the Palestinian population lived in the rural areas. There was no organization or institution such as the World Zionist Organization or the Jewish Agency to support the Palestinians. Also there was no funding for their activities like those of international Jewish financiers who helped founding of Kibbutz and similar other agricultural settlements. Palestinians did not seem to have been concerned about the contradictory British commitments about their territory made to the Zionists (Balfour Declaration), or to Sharif Hussein (Hussein-McMahan Correspondence), or to the French in Sykes-Picot Agreement. However, when the Balfour Declaration was adopted as the official position of the British government and the League of Nations endorsed that position in 1922 the Palestinians were alarmed. They organized protest marches against the move in main cities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa. As Palestinian protests continued the British authorities became concerned noting such a show of national unity. The administration banned protest marches and street demonstrations.
In response to the British action Palestinian leaders responded with a nonviolent, non-confrontational approach: they devoted their energy mainly to educational, humanitarian and social welfare activities and continued to express their voice against Jewish immigration to their homeland. It should be recalled, the Zionists had started such activities in the area much earlier. Native Palestinians noted an increasing divide between themselves and the immigrant Jews. One Palestinian leader, Mufti Amin al-Hussaini, initiated one such program for the Palestinians. According his biographer, he
established a Muslim orphanage of 160 girls and boys, supported schools such as Rawdat al-Ma’arif (which had 250 students with a scout organization attached to it), repaired the Nahawiyya School building within the Haram al-Sharif and established a library and museum there, imported 50, 000 trees to plant on waqf land, expanded welfare and health clinics, and renovated numerous local mosques and other buildings.16
Like the Zionists an international campaign was launched for funds for these projects. The Mufti collected donations from Muslims all over the world including Makkah during the hajj. This was a clear demonstration the attachment of Muslims from other parts of the world for Jerusalem and Palestine. Unfortunately this positive competition between the Palestinians and the Zionists didn’t remain at these humanitarian and educational issues for long. The situation began to change with increased number of immigrants and grabbing of land from the local communities.
Peaceful coexistence does not seem to have been in the agenda of the Zionists: they wanted to change the demographic composition of Palestine by expelling the local population and filling the territory by imported Jews from various parts of the world. This was necessary in order to convert Palestine into a Jewish state, the ideological foundation of Zionism. Therefore, with the aim of making rooms for more immigrants they would provoke the indigenous population to react against the existing immigrants, and as a result the British would take action against the Palestinians, and through cunning and secretive manipulations the top officials in London would be persuaded to allow more immigrants into the territory.17 Interestingly although the British were aware of the injustices committed against the local population, the high level officials would ignore the consequences of such acts, and the lower level officials would be frustrated.18 According to one historian, “Many a British official who initially was not prejudiced against the Jews became anti-Semitic after a tour of duty in Palestine.”19 And to cite an example of the attitude of the high officials, one may cite Arthur Balfour who is quoted to have said, “We had not been honest with either French or Arab … it was now preferable to quarrel with the Arab rather than the French.”20 Following every crisis the British administration in Palestine would establish a commission, usually composed of middle ranking officials, to investigate and prepare a voluminous report only to be rejected because of the manipulations by the Zionists.21 But slowly by the late 1920s the Palestinians began to actively protest against what they perceived as gross injustices committed against them. As a result the Palestinians would be increasingly isolated from a political and negotiated settlement of the issue.
The growth of nationalism in Palestine was also different from such growths in other parts of the colonized territories. Generally British colonial officials patronized the growth of local nationalism as a part of the so-called white man’s burden intricacy.22 But the situation in Palestine was different: it allowed the growth of some institutions, but bunged with others. This made the Palestinian experience unique in British colonial history. Like most colonies Britain allowed Palestinians to establish the Supreme Muslim Council in 1921 to take care of religious schools and courts, mosques, orphanages and similar other organizations and institutions by administering waqf properties in the area. Earlier Istanbul based office of the Shaikh al-Islam was responsible for these institutions. That is why the position of Mufti of Jerusalem became important in Palestinian politics. Initially the British allowed the Supreme Muslim Council and its leader Mufti Amin al-Husseini to serve Palestinian interests, but soon they developed differences as the Mufti began to assert rights of the Palestinian people. As for the Mufti, “the increase in Jewish immigration – 4075 in 1931, 9553 in 1932, 30,327 in 1933, 42,359 in 1934, and 61,854 in 1935 – highlighted the bankruptcy of such moderate methods as petitions, delegations, and demonstrations.”23 Peaceful means to present Palestinian demands were rejected by the British. The Mufti’s proposal for “some form of legislative government” with proportional representation with the veto power of the British High Commissioner was turned down even though similar systems were introduced in other British colonies earlier. The British continued to follow its traditional “divide and rule policy” by creating loyal opposition among the Palestinians.
By mid 1930s a number of political parties emerged claiming to represent Palestinian interests. These parties were: Palestine Arab Party, National Defense Party, Reform Party, National Bloc, Nationalist Youth Congress, and Istiqlal or Independence Party. In 1936 these parties were united under Arab Higher Committee with Mufti as its president, and demanded:
- a complete halt to Jewish immigration;
- prohibition of the transfer of Arab lands to Jews; and
- establishment of a national government.
However, the British seems to have been interested in the colonial divide and rule policy by bribing and creating division among the Palestinians. As a result extremism began to grow among the Palestinians. As the mediating power the British established a number of committees and commissions and issued white papers by defining the roles and sphere of influence of the conflicting parties. But the more concessions that were given to the immigrants, the more they became aggressive to further their demands. And the immigrants were supported by the financial giants of international Zionism. As a result Palestinian leaders such as Mufti Amin al-Husseini, who began his career as a moderate turned out to be an anti-British revolutionary. Some Palestinians had already turned militant. Since the Zionists were using the power of arms to promote and settle immigrants, one Palestinian leader, Izzuddin al-Qassam – “a deeply religious shaykh and a man of integrity, social concern, and eloquence” – called for the Supreme Muslim Council to use the income from waqf properties in arming the Palestinians against the armed Zionists.24 Al-Qassam himself was killed in an operation by the British police, but only to become a symbol of future resistances against Zionism in Palestine.25
In spite of such Palestinian opposition, in 1937 in a new royal commission report the British proposed a partition of Palestine between the Palestinians and the Zionists. This was totally unacceptable to the Palestinians, for they wanted one multi-religious democratic Palestinian nation. It should be noted that the Palestinians didn’t demand expulsion of the Jews who had arrived in Palestine until then; they simply wanted to stop further immigration. However, the Zionists and the Mandate authorities seem to have been working with close cooperation. The Zionist leadership accepted the report immediately (with reservations about the number of Jews to be allowed in Palestine) as the basis for negotiation, and the Palestinians rejected it outright. For Palestinians the establishment of a state in their homeland composed mainly of Europeans constituted robbing of their lands in broad daylight. Palestinians reacted angrily at the partition plan and began to demand complete withdrawal of the British from Palestine. The British, on its part, identified the Palestinian reaction as Arab rebellion and responded not only by removing the Mufti from his position as President of the Supreme Muslim Council; they also issued an arrest warrant against him. Arrest warrants were also issued against a number of other members of Arab Higher Committee. As a result most Palestinian leaders including the Mufti went into exile. On the ground the British authorities continued to suppress the Palestinians. The British also tried to create groups among the Palestinians who would accept the partition plan, but failed. Failing to control the Palestinian uprising Winston Churchill approved a kidnapping and assassination order of the Mufti.26 The British-Zionist coordination now reached to the extent that the British assigned an extremist Zionist terrorist to accomplish this job. Such acts on part of the top British officials turned many middle and lower ranking British officials “anti-Semitic.” The Indian nationalist leader M.K. Gandhi observed these developments in Palestine as follows:
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. … What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct … If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs … As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting in what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the acceptable canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.27
Palestinian militancy against British occupation went into climax by the middle of 1938 when the British struck back with “squadrons of airplanes, the police force, the Trans-Jordanian frontier forces, and 6,000 Jewish auxiliaries,”28 and the so-called Arab rebellion was brought under control. However, like a benevolent colonial power soon the British government issued a White Paper (1939) declaring its intention to create a unified state of Palestine within the next ten years where limited Jewish immigration and transfer of land to Jews would be allowed only in certain designated areas. The White Paper made no mention about the proposed Jewish state. This time the Palestinian leadership accepted proposals of the White Paper immediately, but the Jewish leadership were disappointed with it. For some unknown reasons the then Defense Minister Winston Churchill blocked the White Paper proposals and thus blocking the establishment of the Palestinian state.
The situation changed dramatically during WW II which we have already described while discussing the growth of Zionism and birth of Israel. Failing to control Zionist militancy, a confused British leadership handed over the question of Palestine to the newly formed United Nations. Meanwhile the Arab League (founded in 1945) undertook the responsibility to pursue the Palestinian nationalist cause and formed a committee with the Mufti at its head. We shall describe the role of the Arab League later.
Palestine at the UN
According to an Israeli author the Palestinian question was taken to the UN in February 1947 without stating who took the issue to the world body. He thinks that in accordance to the first article of its Charter the UN was supposed to solve all international crises, and that is why the world body undertook the issue.29 However, under the UN Charter, for such a role the issue must be taken to the UN by a member state, and also it should be noted that in 1947 the conflict was not yet an international one. In 1946 the UN adopted a resolution on the refugee problem in the area without mentioning anything about the organization’s potential role in resolving the conflict. Theoretically with the dissolution of the League of Nations the term of the British Mandate authorities was supposed to be over. But with the increasing number of deliberate attacks on the British troops and on the local population by Jewish militia groups, Britain proposed a joint British-US committee to handle the issue. The US slowly began to get involved on the Palestinian issue. When the committee was formed, a number of its members turned out to be sympathizers of Zionism.30 Then on April 2, 1947 Britain formally requested a General Assembly session to consider the question of Palestine, although in a somewhat similar situation in India around the same time the British decided to divide the country between the conflicting parties.
The UN formed United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to deliberate on the issue: No Arab country was included, only Muslim country – Iran – was in the Committee. When the Committee invited both parties to present their cases head of the Jewish Agency’s office in New York highlighted the Jewish contribution to humanity and civilization and argued for freedom and independence of the Jewish people. Although the Mufti as the Chairman of Arab Higher Committee would have been the most qualified person to represent the Palestinian case, a lawyer from Jerusalem and member of the same committee – Henry Cattan – was selected by UNSCOP to represent the Palestinians. In his argument Henry Cattan emphasized the injustices encountered by the local population in the hands of the British and the Zionists and called for an independent and democratic Palestine. But since the Jewish representative insisted on the establishment of the Jewish state the Committee decided to investigate public opinion in Palestine. It should be noted here that following WW I President Woodrow Wilson had undertaken one such investigation and American King-Crane Commission rejected the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine outright. This time, however, the UNSCOP came up with two plans: one known as the majority plan prepared by mostly European and American countries proposed to divide the land between Jews (over 56% of the territory for 31.7% mostly immigrant population), the Palestinians about 43% and Jerusalem would be a neutral international city under direct supervision of the UN. The other known as the minority plan backed by India, Iran and Yugoslavia advocated a federated state composed of two component states each of them enjoying local autonomy with Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinians somehow reluctantly accepted the minority plan (they wanted a unitary state with democratic rights of every citizen in the territory) while the Zionists, also reluctantly (they wanted the whole of Palestine as a Jewish state), favored the majority plan. However when the proposals were put on the table for discussion the Zionists vigorously embarked on gathering international support for the majority plan. One contemporary American observer describes Zionist activities on the UN resolution as follows:
Rallying a group of influential Americans and selecting their targets with care, they exerted all possible influence – personal suasion, floods of telegrams and letters, political and economic pressure. … Many of the telegrams, particularly, were from Congressmen, and others as well invoked the name and prestige of the United States government. An ex-Governor, a prominent Democrat with White House and other connections, personally telephoned Haiti urging that its delegation be instructed to change its vote.31
According to him the Zionists also targeted Liberia, China, the Philippines, Ethiopia and Greece. In support of this observation one US government report noted the situation as:
The US and USSR played leading roles in bringing about a vote favorable to partition. Without US leadership and the pressures which developed during UN consideration of the question, the necessary two-thirds majority in the General Assembly could not have been obtained … It has been shown that various unauthorized US nationals and organizations, including members of Congress, notably in the closing days of the Assembly, brought pressure bear on various foreign delegates and their home governments to induce them to support the US attitude on the Palestine Question.32
On November 29, 1947 the UN adopted the majority plan to divide Palestine on condition that Israel recognizes the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes and both states maintain an economic union.33 The UN resolution also noted that Britain would withdraw from the country by August 1948 and a five member UN Commission would supervise the division of Palestine. But the Palestinians were extremely disappointed and rejected the plan. The Arab states claimed that the resolution had violated the UN Charter and they also rejected the partition plan.
However as soon as it was clear that the British were leaving the territory Jewish and Palestinian armed groups begun to clash for territories. As a result Britain decided to terminate its mandate and leave Palestine earlier. Britain set May 15 for withdrawal but May 14, a day earlier, a group of Jewish activists in Tel Aviv proclaimed the establishment of Israel in Palestine. Within hours the US and the USSR recognized the new state, and other western countries followed the suit. Muslims on the other hand reacted angrily toward the US.34 In Palestine an all-out war broke out immediately between 75,000 strong Israeli armed forces and the disorganized Palestinian groups. Although volunteers and regular armies from neighboring Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon entered in support of the Palestinians, as mentioned earlier, they were no match to the Israeli troops. The Israelis had acquired arms, munitions and even airplanes from some European countries and had smuggled to Palestine ignoring a UN ban on arms shipment to the region. Israel was also supported by Jewish volunteers, some with military training, from various parts of the world.
Meanwhile the UN continued with its effort to end the violence and on May 20 the Security Council appointed Count Folke Bernadotte, president of the Swedish Red Cross, as UN mediator for Palestine. Bernadotte recommended certain modifications in the UN partition plan by slightly reducing the size of the Jewish occupied territories. The next day on September 17, 1948 he was assassinated by a Jewish terrorist in Jerusalem. This clearly indicated the limitations the UN was going to have in handling the issue. By the middle of 1949 the war stopped, military might determined the future of Palestine. Israel occupied almost 78 percent of historical Palestine, Egypt occupied Gaza and the Trans-Jordanian forces central and eastern parts of Palestine which came to be known as West Bank.
On November 29, 1948 Israel applied for UN membership but was rejected because of Israel’s position on the questions of its boundary, refugees and the status of Jerusalem. When it reapplied in February 1949 the Secretary General held discussions on those questions and after having assurance Israel was granted UN membership on May 11, 1949. The process of Israel’s UN membership differed from all other members of the world body.
Later Developments in Palestinian Nationalism
Palestinian national identity was the prime victim of 1948 war. Most active members of Arab Higher Committee were banned from Palestine since World War II began and therefore there was no formal Palestinian representation inside Palestine. Although the Palestinians generally favored the 1939 White Paper proposals, but because all Palestinian leaders were in exile, following WWII they began to advance their demands through the office of the Arab League. When the war broke out in 1948 the Palestinian leadership was in total disarray and the presence of a number of national armies complicated the issue further. The Mufti was not in favor direct involvement of other Arab armies; he wanted, like the Zionists, financial, military and humanitarian support from other countries. But when the war broke out there was not only no unified command against Israel, Egyptian and the Jordanian governments had their own agenda on the future of the Palestinian territories.
In an attempt to organize the Palestinian efforts, through backing of the Arab League and the Egyptian government in July 1948 an All-Palestine Government was formed in Gaza with an 86-member constituent assembly. But Jordan refused to recognize this new Palestinian government. In the war during the following months, as has been mentioned earlier, Jordanian troops commanded by British officers occupied east and central portions of Jerusalem. Egyptian troops retained control over Gaza and Palestinian forces were totally routed. With it slowly the short lived All Palestine Government also disappeared. Jordan renamed its occupied part of Palestine as the West Bank, and thus term Palestine seemed to have vanished from the political landscape of Middle East. Pro-Israeli journalists and academicians began to argue that Palestinian nation never existed in history and the question of its existence did not arise now. They also argued that the Palestinians should find refuge in Jordan, an artificial state recently created by the British.
Emotional attachment toward Palestinian nationalism resurfaced within a few years because of their strong desire to regain their fundamental right to existence recognized by the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and by international law. Although some neighboring Arab countries attempted to define the Palestinian struggle as Arab nationalist struggle but because many Arab countries existed, with the passage of time Arab nationalist attempts on the issue failed. Palestinian freedom fighters continued with their struggle by attacking Israeli targets from adjacent Gaza and Jordan. But in retaliation to those strikes Israel not only destroyed the Palestinian targets, but also massacred the whole civilian infrastructure and support base of all the Palestinian people in the area. As a result both Jordan and Egypt became increasingly reluctant to allow the Palestinians to continue with their guerilla activities against Israel. Slowly the Palestinians realized the need for more organized effort to achieve their goal. The Arab League had undertaken the responsibility to pursue the Palestinian cause, but because of opposition by some member countries, the Arab League was not able to deliver any positive result. Consequently a number of Palestinians living in Kuwait, inspired by the freedom fighters in Algeria, established Fatah in 1957 with the aim of freeing Palestine from alien occupation. Around the same time some Palestinian students studying at the American University of Beirut founded Arab Nationalist Movement with the same goal. This was followed by the formation of a number of other small organizations with similar objectives.
On May 28, 1964 Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Saiqa – the Army of the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian communities in the Diaspora, and some prominent Palestinians met in Jerusalem and established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). A 430 member Palestine National Council comprising representation of Palestinians of all walks of life was also established. In June 1964 the Arab League recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Thus a new journey for Palestinian nationhood began. Palestinian nationalism received further boost in 1969 when the OIC (see next chapter) was established in response to an arson attack on al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem under Israeli occupation.
Role of the OIC
The OIC declared in its Charter that it would “co-ordinate efforts to safeguard the Holy Places [in Jerusalem] and support the struggle of the people of Palestine and to help them regain their rights and liberate their land (Article II A-5). Israel had occupied Jerusalem in a war in 1967 and the OIC in numerous resolutions expressed its strong resolve to free Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine from alien occupation and adopted a strategy for Israel to implement UN resolutions. The OIC declared jihad against Israel and opened an office in its head quarter in Jeddah35 to coordinate Palestinian military activities against Israel. It also declared jihad in the areas of diplomacy and economy in promoting the Palestinian cause.
In reality, however, the OIC encountered an internal problem in handling the Palestinian question: Since 1967 when Jordan had captured the west bank of Jordan River the Palestinian entity ceased to exist. The historical Palestine was partly occupied by Israel partly by Jordan, and Jordan began to call its part the West Bank. This brought the Palestinian freedom fighters in direct conflict with Jordan. In this context it should be recalled that in 1949 when an All-Palestine Government was formed with blessing of the Arab League, Jordan had strongly opposed the new government. By 1970 the Palestinian forces and the Jordanian armed forces fought a number of skirmishes, and by the end of the year the conflict reached to a new high. It was at this juncture that King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and President Abdul Nasir of Egypt intervened using the platform of the OIC and the Arab League. The conflict was resolved when Jordan renounced its desire to represent the Palestinians and the PLO agreed to move out of Jordan. Palestinian nationalism triumphed and the PLO moved its office to Lebanon. By 1974 the Palestinian National Council began to moot the idea of two-state solution to the Palestinian crisis: they gave up the idea of a democratic Palestine with Christian, Jews and Muslims as their homeland. In fact, the Palestinians indicated that they would be satisfied with the pre-1967 border or only 22 percent of historical Palestine. This was a major concession on the part of the Palestinians: a land they considered their own, now they were prepared to accept only 22 percent of that territory. They confined their demands only to the city of Jerusalem and the right of the refugees to return: two demands generally recognized by the international community and international law. As a result slowly many countries around the world recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and established diplomatic relations with the PLO. The PLO also became an observer at the UN General Assembly.
On its part Israel also was actively involved in its struggle against the Palestinians and to establish Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state in Palestine. In this struggle Israel defeated not only the Palestinians but all OIC countries together. The Palestinian gestures of concessions were totally ignored by the Israelis. OIC’s only success was to get the PLO an observer status at the UN and adopt a number of non-binding resolutions at the UN General Assembly including one of which declared Zionism a racist ideology. But in the struggle between Zionism and the Palestinians, Israel has been able not only to keep the PLO from the lands in Palestine, but also to create division with the OIC circle. Egypt was induced to break with the OIC and the Arab League to establish relations with Israel in 1978. In order to punish Egypt in a statement the OIC declared the agreements between Egypt and Israel as “a blatant departure from the Charter of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and a violation of international law and the United Nations resolutions.” Therefore the OIC decided to “suspend the membership of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and all its agencies and bodies up to the time when the reasons that provoked this suspension are eliminated.”36 The OIC also urged all member states to sever all diplomatic and economic ties with Egypt. Most OIC member countries abided by OIC resolution on the subject.
Within a few years, however, the OIC changed its position and took Egypt back to its fold without providing any explanation. The Egyptian president claimed that his country had always been committed both to OIC Charter and to the Palestinian cause, and was not responsible for Egypt’s expulsion and readmission into the organization.37 In the process the Palestinian cause suffered. The OIC also deceived the Palestinians by pursuing its “jihad” against Israel through establishing the Al-Quds Committee headed by the Moroccan King and deciding to, “undertake in all Islamic countries a psychological mobilization of the people through official, semi-official, and popular uses of the mass media” and inviting member states to open offices for volunteers “wishing to participate in the jihad for the liberation of the holy land.” In reality the Muslim countries left the Palestinians alone to fight Zionism and Israel. When the PLO first launched its struggle against Israel in the1960s, the Egyptian president Abdul Nasir banned its activities from Egyptian territories on the ground that by providing the PLO a home Egypt had become subject to Israeli aggression. Later Anwar al-Sadat completely abandoned the PLO, defied OIC resolutions and signed an agreement with Israel abandoning ideas of Arab and Islamic brotherhood when they clashed with what was perceived by the government as Egyptian national interests. Similarly Jordan sought to get rid of the PLO in 1970. On their part Syria, Libya and Iraq went further in protecting their “national interests” in Middle Eastern politics by creating their own factions within the Palestinians. In short most OIC countries remained unconcerned throughout PLO’s struggle against Israel even at the very critical moment in 1982 when Israel invaded and expelled the PLO out of Lebanon. The PLO Chairman described the situation as saying, “It [PLO] was besieged for 88 days in Beirut while no one extended any help or support. It was then besieged in Tripoli (Lebanon) – a joint Arab-Israeli blockade while neither Arab nor Muslim moved a finger …”38 Yet at the end of the Fourteenth Foreign Ministers Conference of the OIC, held in December 1983, the Chairman of the Conference officially cabled the PLO Chairman saying:
On behalf of the delegates of the 14th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, I wish to reiterate and affirm that the struggle of the Palestinian people is our struggle. We speak with one voice in seeking a just and durable settlement of the Middle East crisis.39
This inconsistency between words and deeds of the OIC leadership had serious consequences on the larger Muslim society. This contributed heavily in the rise of extremism in the Muslim world. Yet most Muslim countries continued with their pro-Palestinian rhetoric. Muslim leadership seemed to have been interested in telling their people that they cared for their Palestinian bothers. We shall analyze this predicament of the Muslim leadership later.
Current Political Situation in Palestine
The OIC duplicity has caused more problems for the Palestinians. The overall situation of the Palestinians living in occupied territories has deteriorated to an un-describable level. It is absolutely impossible for people living outside to even conceive the level of sufferings which include indiscriminate killing of innocent individuals, demolition of houses, restrictions on movements, and lack of supply of essential goods to hospitals. Yet Israel and its international allies have held Palestinians responsible for deteriorating situation in the area. Since 1967 the so-called international community has developed an idea called land for peace but it is difficult to understand what it means in reality. Theoretically the idea has a serious implication: Should the international community allow a country or a group of people to occupy another people’s land by military might and negotiate with the original inhabitants for parts of that land legally? In the case context of the present conflict Israel has never defined its borders and has gradually occupied all of Palestine.
Diplomatically Israel has not stopped its efforts by getting Egypt to recognize the state of Israel; it has also designed a plan to end its international isolation. However, that would be difficult without having lured the Palestinian leadership to the same fold. Meanwhile two significant developments occurred: one, in 1987 a new wave of Palestinian uprising known as intifada (literally shaking off) began; and two, in 1988 the Palestinian National Council adopted a new strategy by accepting UN resolutions on the issue, which recommended a division of Palestine among the immigrant Jews and local Palestinians. Intifada meant Palestinian children throwing stone toward armed Israeli soldiers, armored vehicles and tanks to express their dissatisfaction and disapproval of continued Israeli occupation of their land. Although this sounds ridiculous, yet this mass uprising of the Palestinians shook the foundation of the Israeli regime. With this uprising a new movement called Hamas emerged among the Palestinians.
As for the PLO, its new strategy to permanently give up claims over 78 percent of historical Palestine for the sake of peace got itself recognized as a legitimate political organization by Israel and the US. A process for peace began in 1991 with a European initiative which resulted into a deal in 1993. The European initiative, however, was taken by the US the Clinton administration brought the Palestinian leadership to sign an agreement (known as the Oslo Accord) with Israel. Under the agreement the Palestinians were to be granted self-rule in Gaza strip and Jericho, which would include other Palestinian areas (occupied in 1967) later. It was also agreed that the final status of Jerusalem and “other sensitive issues” including the right of the Palestinians to return to their original homes, would be settled within two years.
In reality the Oslo Agreement brought more suffering for the Palestinians. After six or seven years from signing of the treaty with Israel little changed for them on ground. The Palestinians were allowed to establish a political institution called Palestinian Authority, but were denied the status of statehood. The Palestinian Authority received administrative responsibilities in parts of the territories that claimed to be their own, but Israel maintained the power to enter into those areas at its will. In the name of its security Israel conducted operations in the so-called self-rule territories, and the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of being involved in extra-judicial assassinations. According to one Jewish peace activist and author:
… Oslo had been much more about “process” than about peace. Living conditions and the economy had all seriously deteriorated throughout the Oslo years. Israel’s military occupation had become increasingly harsh – closures preventing Palestinians from entering Israel were expanded to prevent travel within and between the West Bank and Gaza; military checkpoints proliferated throughout the “swiss cheese-style” maze of Israeli and partial Palestinian authority; house demolition continued; and settlement construction nearly doubled throughout the occupied territories since Oslo.40
Oslo Agreement failed because Israel did not fulfill its obligations under the agreement. On the other hand the week Palestinians were expected to keep quiet on however Israel treats them. In August 2000 the Oslo peace process totally collapsed.
On its part, Israel benefited tremendously as a result of the Oslo Agreement which was immediately followed by similar agreements between Israel and Jordan. A number of other OIC countries recognized and established diplomatic and commercial relations with Israel as a result of which Israel witnessed an exceptional and accelerated growth in its economy. This was a major success for Israel: after seventy years from the beginning of Jewish immigration against the will of the local population, at least some Palestinians and many Muslim countries were now willing to share their land, and interact with the Jewish state. But Israel seems to have had a different agenda: It not only created more hardship for the Palestinians; it also imported more Jews from different parts of the world to settle in Palestinian territories. By the end of the year 2000 the number of Jews in Israel increased to more than 4,947,000, while the number of Palestinians in the Diaspora also reached to about 4,900,000. Israel also accused the Palestinians for starting the violence, and claimed that whatever they did was in response to Palestinian actions.41 Whenever the Palestinians demanded the presence of international observers to monitor these acts of violence, Israel opposed such moves. In this Israel received unreserved US support, which encouraged Israel to continue violence. And this angered many people in the Muslim countries and a handful of them turned to be suicide activists: some radical organizations began to claim sponsoring such activities.
As soon as the Oslo process collapsed Israeli leader Ariel Sharon provoked another Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada in September 2000. Apparently for immediate political gains, Sharon entered into the holy sites in al-Aqsa Mosque with armed guard provoking spontaneous Palestinians protests. On the first day of protest 5 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli security guard, the next day 10. Since then 4,379 Palestinians and 1084 Israelis including 836 Palestinian and 122 Israeli children have lost their lives, and.31, 142 Palestinians and 7,633 Israelis have been wounded in the conflict.42 Since then the Palestinians have captured and kept 1 Israeli soldier in their custody and Israelis have detained 9,599 Palestinians. Also since then the Israeli authorities have demolished 4,170 Palestinian houses and built over 60 new Jewish-only settlements in the occupied territories. In response to such Israeli aggressive behavior Palestinians have moved to harden their stand: in the 2005 elections they have abandoned the compromising PLO and elected Hamas, which takes a stronger position in defending the Palestinian rights, to represent them. The conflict continues to deteriorate everyday with reports of killing of Palestinian civilians. An Israeli wall separating Palestinian localities and hundreds of checkpoints have made the life of Palestinians extremely miserable. Almost all recent studies on world situation suggest that the question of Palestine is the most critical one in international politics today.
Is there a Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Problem?
Unfortunately no solution to the problem seems in sight primarily because of Israeli arrogance. No matter what one wants to believe or ancient history of the area may hint, records clearly suggest that Palestinians have been living in the territory in question for over two thousand years. And at the end of the 19th century when the ideology of Zionism was introduced Palestinians constituted more than 95 percent of the total population of Palestine and it is a fact of history that the state of Israel has displaced the total population of Palestine during the past half a century or so. Any solution to the problem must address this question first. Israel at one stage tried to push the Palestinians to Jordan but that has not worked: Palestinian national identity has prevailed. And why should the Palestinians move to another country? After all under the international law Palestinians have every right to claim their homeland.
Whenever the Palestinians have demanded their rights to homeland the Israelis and the mainstream international media have raised the question of Israel’s right to existence as if the Palestinians have denied that right to Israel. Israel is always supported by the mainstream media in accusing Palestinians of denying Israel’s right to existence. But interestingly the Palestinians have only demanded their own right to exist, not destruction of Israel. In reality it is Israel which has denied the Palestinian’s right to existence. This is clearly reflected in the Israeli political rhetoric. Israel has always wanted only Jews to inhabit the country while the Palestinians always demanded a secular state with citizens from all religious affiliations. One international lawyer and author has put the question of Israel’s right to existence as:
“Recognising Israel’s existence” is not logical nonsense and appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgement of a fact of life — like death and taxes. Yet, there are serious practical problems with this formulation. What Israel, within which borders? The 55 per cent of historic Palestine reserved for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78 per cent of historic Palestine occupied by Israel in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as “Israel” or “Israel proper”? The 100 per cent of historic Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as “Israel” on maps in Israeli schoolbooks? Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would, necessarily, place limits on them.43
Israel has also rejected the idea of any international mediation in the conflict. Although Israel has come into existence because of UN resolutions, it has flouted at least 65 or more UN resolutions.
The uncritical US support for Israel is another major obstacle to any solution to the problem. And during the past two decades the US support to Israel has intensified so much that it is very difficult to get any resolution passed in the UN Security Council criticizing Israel: the US has cast at least 39 vetoes on UNSC resolutions criticizing Israel till the end of 2006.
Relevance of the Palestinian Problem to the Muslim world
With the development of global communication facilities the question of Palestine has become more relevant to universal Islamic ummah identity consciousness. There has been a direct relation between Zionist activities and the Muslim quest for unity. The greater the Zionist presence is, the higher the quest for unity among Muslims becomes. In 1931 the second conference of Mu’tamar-i-‘Alam al-Islami was held in Jerusalem in response to a crisis in the Wailing Wall. In 1969 another such conference of Muslim heads of states was held in Rabat, Morocco in response to the ignition to al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem which led to the foundation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Prof. Abdallah Al-Ahsan.
1 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine. New Edition. (London: Vintage, 1992).
2 Jacob Tsur, Zoinism: National Liberation Movement. (Israel: At the Government Printing Press, 1969), 19.
3 Apparently Napoleon wanted to get rid of them from France. For reference, see Mohsen M. Saleh, The Palestinian Issue: Its Background and Development Up To 2000. (Kuala Lumpur: Fajar Ulung, 2001), 22.
4 Jacob H. Schiff, a member of the American Jewish Committee during the War is reported to have said, “I believe that I am not far wrong if I say that from fifty to seventy per cent of the so-called Jewish Nationalists are either atheists or agnostics and that the great majority of the Jewish Nationalist leaders have absolutely no interest in the Jewish religion.” Quoted in George Lenczowski, Middle East in World Affairs. (Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1962), 374-375.
5 Said, xxxvii.
6 Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herz. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), 378.
7 Chiam Weizmann, Trial and Error: the Autobiography of Chiam Weizmann. (New York: Harper, 1949), 149.
8 Meyer W. Weisgal (ed.), Chaim Weizmann, Statesman, Scientist, and Builder of the Jewish Commonwealth. (New Your: Dial Press, 1944), 131. Quoted in Alan R. Taylor, Prelude to Israel: An Analysis of Zionist Diplomacy 1897-1947. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 10.
9 Quoted in Alan R. Taylor, 30.
10 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12. It should be noted that the Zionist leader Jabotinsky was maintaining close contact and receiving assistance form the Italian leader Mussolini.
11 It is interesting to note that many Jews continued to argue that Zionism as an ideology was political, rather than religious. See, Irwin M. Herman, Zionism is Political, not Humanitarian. (New York; The American Council for Judaism, 1962).
12 Among the Zionist terrorists was Menachem Begin, on whose head the Mandate authorities offered 100,000 British pounds, and who later became a democratically elected prime minister of Israel and won the Nobel Prize for peace.
13 These figures have been taken from, Mohsen M. Saleh, 43.
14 According to Jacque de Reynier, the Chief Delegate of the International Red Cross, on this occasion the Irgun led by Menachem Begin, massacred 300 men, women and children “without any military reason or provocation of any kind.” See, Henry Cattan, The Palestine Question. (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 44-45.
15 Ann M. Lesch, “Zionism and its Impact,” in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. See www.wrmea.com/html/focus.htm.
16 Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 29.
17 For the description of one such event, see Ibid, 35-38.
18 The story of the British officials working in Palestine is rather little complex because they developed their opinions based on their specific experiences.
19 Lenczowski, 381.
20 Quoted in Mattar, 15.
21 See, for example, Shaw (1929), Hope-Simon (1930), and Peel (1936) Commission reports.
22 For example Indian National Congress was founded by a British civil servant working in India.
23 Mattar, 64.
24 Ibid, 67.
25 Here one must note that the British failed in curbing militancy among the Zionists in a similar manner.
26 Mattar, 81-82.
27 Quoted in The Origin of the Palestine – Israel Conflict, Originally published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East. (Manila: Federation of Asian Bishops Conference, 2003), 11-12.
28 Ibid, 83.
29 Ilan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1951. (London: I.B.Tauris, 1994), 16
30 See Lenczowski, 390-91.
31 Kermit Roosevelt, “The Partition of Palestine,” in The Middle East Journal. Vol. 2 No. 1 (January 1948), 1-16: 15-16.
32 Quoted in Henry Cattan, The Palestine Question. (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 36.
33 Some influential Jewish leaders such as Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner to Palestine and J. L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem strongly opposed the division plan of Palestine because the Arab part wouldn’t be economically viable.
34 Saudi Arabia, for example, denied a $50 million loan form the US even though the country was in desperate need of cash at that time.
35 The OIC Charter declared its head office to be located in Jerusalem, but since the city was under Israeli occupation, the head office is temporarily located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
36 Ummah or Nation, 114-115.
37 For a detailed discussion on the subject, see Ummah or nation 113-119.
38 Ibid, 117
39 ibid
40 Phyllis Bennis, Understanding the Palestinian – Israeli Conflict. (Orlando, Fl: TARI, 2002), 34.
41 On this subject see a google video documentary titled: Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land.
42 For current statistical and other information, see www.ifamericansknew.org. This site is run by mostly American Jewish peace activists.
43 See, John V. Whitbeck, “Israel’s immoral ‘right to exist’” in http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/825/op14.htm
