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| Sunday, 14 July 2002 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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by N.D. Jayaprakash It may not take too much time and effort to understand that it is the call for a Jewish national home in Palestine, the subsequent immigration of Jews into that territory and the resulting coercive displacement of the Palestinian population from their land that has resulted in the Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio. In the latest phase of its history most of Palestine has been under the occupation of the Zionists since their unilateral proclamation of the "State of Israel" on 14th May, 1948, which coincided with the decision of Britain to terminate its mandate over the territory. This precipitate action needlessly aborted the move for a peaceful transition of power as envisaged in the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, which the UN General Assembly had adopted on 29 November, 1947. Imperialist conspiracy It may be recalled that Palestine was placed under the British Mandate in 1922 by application of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Mandate resolution had entrusted Britain with the task of leading the indigenous people of Palestine to full independence. Britain had occupied Palestine on 9 December, 1917, thereby ending Turkish rule over the territory since 1517. The occupation came about as a result of the Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France in 1916, which was part of a policy to divide and rule the Arab world. Even before gaining control of the territory, Britain promised a national home for Jews in Palestine through its infamous Balfour Declaration issued on 2 November, 1917. It thus planted the seeds of an endless conflict in that land. The ravages of World War I and the economic disaster that followed threw up social and political crises in Europe once again. Anti-Semitism was one of the tactics adopted for diverting people's anger and for disrupting their unity in the struggle against those forces that caused these crises. Many such devious means were used to cover up the real motives for unleashing yet another world war: the desperate struggle between imperialist powers to corner markets and to grab new colonies. Modern Zionism effectively began with the holding of the First Zionist Congress on 29 August, 1897 AD at the initiative of Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jew, in Basle, Switzerland. The Zionist Organization emerged out of this Congress. Central to Zionist thought is the concept of the Land of Israel (Palestine) as the birthplace of the Jewish people (a mythical claim invoking the Old Testament) and the belief that Jewish life elsewhere is a life of exile. It is true that the Jews as a community were formally expelled from Palestine in 135 AD - a process that began from as early as 70 AD. But by no stretch of imagination can the Palestinians be blamed for the forced exodus; the decision to expel the Jews was that of the Romans. It was a form of reprisal for revolts by the Jews against the Romans, who had conquered Palestine in 63 BC and made it a province of the Roman Empire. The devotion of Jews to their religion and special forms of worship was used as a pretext for political discrimination against them, and the pent-up anger had led to the revolts. It may be pointed out that the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, the founder of Judaism - the religion of the Jews, was not an original inhabitant of Palestine. According to legend, he is said to have emigrated from Ur in Babylonia (what is now Iraq) some 3700 years ago. On his way to Cannan - or what later came to be called Palestine - he along with his people had to trudge on to Egypt to escape a famine. While he returned to Cannan, his people sojourned in Egypt for 400 years and slaved under the Pharaohs. It was Prophet Moses, the next important figure after Abraham, who led the Hebrew people out of Egyptian bondage around 1300 BC. Moses tried to lead them into Cannan but they were repeatedly turned back by the Cannanites, i.e., Palestinians, until around 1260 BC when finally, under the leadership of Joshua, the Jews succeeded in conquering Cannan. Joshua was followed by a succession of leaders prominent among whom are David and Solomon, whose combined rule lasted for 78 years until 922 BC. It was nearly eight centuries later that the Maccabees, a Jewish family, established themselves as the rulers of Palestine. Their rule lasted from 142 BC to 63 BC, until the Romans took over power. The right of return to Palestine after a long gap may have had some semblance of justness if all the Jews of today were the direct descendants of those who were forced to emigrate from there over 1900 years ago. But that is surely not the case. Of the total Jewish population the world over, direct descendants of the expelled Jews would constitute but a tiny fraction. A slightly larger fraction would be of mixed decent, while the overwhelming majority would consist of those who are Jews by religion but having anthropologically no connection whatsoever with the Jews expelled from Palestine. This is because there have been conversions to Judaism of large numbers whose earliest forefathers were nowhere near Palestine. After their dispersal from Palestine the thing common to all Jews was only their religion. Occupation by force By no stretch of imagination could a separate homeland in Palestine for Jews have been a solution for anti-Semitism. But that was the solution the Zionists prescribed and they went about seeking that goal in a very organised manner. After the First Zionist Congress, the Zionist movement organised itself as a worldwide organisation with permanent institutions. The primary tasks of the Zionist Organisation were to purchase land in Palestine, reclaim unproductive land and to settle immigrating Jews in newly created rural settlements and townships. While the Jews admit owning only 10% of land in Palestine, after usurping power in 1948 they forcibly seized over 77 % of the land although even under the UN Partition Plan they were to get only 56% of it as its share! The Zionists were able to impose their will over the Palestinians only because of their military superiority. Such superiority was achieved through long-team planning. They began by setting up so-called "security organizations", the first of which was founded in 1909 and was called Hashomer. Subsequently, in 1920 an underground organization called Haganah was formed as a "grassroots" armed force (which gradually became the full-fledged military wing of the Zionists) to unleash terror on the Palestinians and to remove all obstacles in their path including those placed by the British. In 1931 a group of Haganah members seceded from the organization and founded the Irgun Tzevai Leumi (National Military Organization) also know by its acronym, Etzel. Etzel advocated a much harsher line of action against the Palestinians and protested the policy of relative restraint adopted by the Haganah. Etzel split in 1940 when a section within it demanded that the military struggle against the British should be continued irrespective of the war against Nazi Germany. The new group which called itself Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for Freedom of Israel) or Lehi for short, was also opposed to enlisting in the British army. Haganah, Etzel and Lehi eventually joined together in November 1945 to form the Hebrew Resistance Movement. It is suspected that the Zionists managed to procure vast quantities of arms from the residue of the US and British military campaigns in the Middle East after World War II. The military co-operation with the British stood them in good stead when British forces departing from Palestine in 1948 reportedly sold arms and ammunition, even tanks and other heavy weapons to the Zionists. The steady flow of military hardware from Czechoslovakia after World War II was what finally helped them a great deal in consolidating their military might. Palestinian resistance Thus, at the time of forcibly establishing the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist had a well-trained and well-armed force, which were at least 65,000 strong. There was little doubt that the number of armed Zionists in the field in 1948 was far greater than the combined strength of the ill-trained, in-disciplined and poorly armed Arab armies from the neighbouring countries that eventually confronted them. The Palestinian peoples' resistance against the disastrous immigration policy, including major revolts in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39, was put down only through intimidation and brute force. While the Zionists immigrated to Palestine in a very organized manner, the Palestinian resistance against it was most disorganized. There were several reasons for it. Family-based political factions, their self-interests and their rivalries frustrated any hope of building a sustained struggle against foreign incursion. The two most important families - the Husseinis and the Nashashibis - fought for primacy and could never get over their rivalry even for the sake of presenting a solid front against British imperialism and Zionism. The First Palestinian National Congress (PNC), which was organized in March 1919 in Jerusalem, sent two memoranda to the Paris Peace Conference (following World War I): one rejecting the Balfour Declaration and the other demanding independence. At the Third PNC, convened in Haifa in December 1920, an Executive Committee was elected that continued to stir the Palestinian movement till about mid-1930s. At the Arab National Conference held on 13 December 1931 in Jerusalem a 'national charter' was chalked out and a new level of activity became evident leading to the founding of the Arab Independence (Istiqlal) Party in 1932. This was the first serious attempt by the rationally thinking Palestinians to pool their anti-British and anti-Zionist zeal on a national plane without constraints of tie-up with the Husseinis or the Nashashibis. Haj Amin's part One of the most influential leaders of the Palestinians was Haj Amin al Husseini who became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (traditional leader of the Palestinian Muslims) in 1921. 'The Istiqlal Party had ceased to be an effective organised force in the latter part of 1933, partly owing to Haj Amin's efforts to sabotage their reputation and position within the national movement'. 'It was a remarkable feat on Haj Amin's part to achieve ascendancy within the national movement in Palestine while maintaining friendly relations with the High Commissioner and a conciliatory attitude towards the British at a time when the contradiction between the two forces was becoming increasingly sharp'. Palestine was an excellent ground in the 1920s and 1930s for a peasant led revolution. Large numbers of absentee landlords (mainly from Lebanon and Syria) were ready to surrender to the temptations of selling their estates at generous prices offered by the Jews. The Jewish campaign of dispossessing the natives in favour of immigrants inevitably created an acute sense of economic outrage and helped politicise the Arab peasantry. The British occupation of Palestine also kindled the passion for national liberation. As a result, the entire objective conditions for a successful peasant revolution existed except one: radical leadership. Istiqlal was an organization that was capable of throwing up such a leadership but the traditional overlords had quickly stepped into stifle its growth. Nevertheless, Sheikh Izzeddin al Qassam, one of those who joined the Istiqlal in 1932, rose to become a national hero in Palestine. Sheikh Izzeddin, a man of immense religious learning, was a Syrian born Arab who came to Palestine in 1921 after the failure of the Syrian revolt against French occupation of which he was a prominent leader. Armed revolt against subservience As an ardent patriot and a fiery orator, he stood up against Zionism and British rule and preached about the necessity of armed revolt against subservience. He succeeded in setting up secret cells among the growing number of land-less peasants, but in a pre-mature encounter with the British forces he and his closest associates attained martyrdom on 19 November 1935. Less than a month after the killing of Sheikh Izzeddin, hostility towards the British government spread to the villages of Palestine where the Sheikh and his followers were held in high esteem. In the major towns radical youth groups began to emerge to replace the discredited older political leadership. The Great Arab Revolt (1936-39) was in effect triggered off by the killing of Sheikh Izzeddin. The overall losses suffered by the Palestinians during 1936-39 - both in terms of lives and property - was quite substantial. Thus, the Zionist were able to ride roughshod over the Palestinians in the 1940s because most of the revolutionary Palestinian cadres were wiped out by then and there was no effective force within Palestine to counter the organized Zionist offensive. According to scholars, between 1882 and 1948 about 600,000 Jews had immigrated to Palestine. Thus, during the period of British occupation, there was an eleven-fold rise in the Jewish population, by 1948 Jews constituted around 33% of a total population of about 2,000,000 in Palestine. This was due to the British administrative and land laws, which facilitated huge wave of Jewish immigration. Almost all the new immigrants were from Europe. The outbreak of World War II and the subsequent decline of Britain as the premier imperial power opened the way for the United States of America to take over Britain's role. |
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