Chapter 1. Staking Claims: The Historical Background

Palestine was never recognised as an independent region under Ottoman Rule

"But neither before the twelth-century defeat of the crusaders at the hands of the Muslim general Saladin nor after it was Palestine administered or recognised as a distinct and seperate province by any of its muslim rulers. The Ottoman Empire, which controlled the area from the early sixteenth century, divided Palestine into two or three subdistricts (sanjaks) that were ruled from the provincial capital of Damascus. From the 1860's, the southern half of Palestine, from a line just north of Jaffa and Jerusalem southward, was constituted as an independent sanjak (or mustasaraflik) and ruled from Istanbul, while the northern parts of the country, the sanjaks of Nablus and Acre were ruled from the provincial capitals of Damascus and, from the 1880's Beirut."

Palestinians were considered Arabs

"For most of Palestine's impoverished, illiterate inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century, "nationalism" was an alien, meaningless concept. They identified themselves simultaneously as subjects of the (multinational) Ottoman Empire and as part of the (multinational) community of Islam; as Arabs, in terms of geography, culture, and language; as inhabitants of this or that region and village o a vaguely defined Palestine; and as members of this or that clan or family. There was no Arab national movement and not even a hint, in 1881, of a separate Palestinian Arab nationalism."

Opposition began early

"Indeed, by 1899 the Mufti of Jerusalem, Taher al-husseini, was proposing that all Jews who had settled the country after 1891 be harrassed into leaving or expelled."

Some Arabs recognised the right to the land of the Jews

"In this sense, Yusuf Dia al-Khalidi, Jerusalems Mayor, was highly unusual. In a letter to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France, he wrote that the Zionist idea was , in theory, "natural, fine and just... Who can challenge the rights of the Jews to Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country."

King Faisal endorsed Zionism

"Moreover, the primary agents of Arab independence during the war, the Hashemite leaders of the desert revolt, appeared not to be averse to Jewish rule over Palestine. When Weizmann met Faisal...in 1918, the two men got on famously - and Faisal, interest in Zionist support for Hashemite ambitions, endorsed Zionist colonisation of Palestine."

Arab Christians and Muslims divided on nationalism

"Palestines Arabs exhibited little "national" solidarity, neither in 1920 nor in 1947. In the years between, few Palestinians proved eager, or even willing, to sacrifice life or purse for the national cause...Muslims suspected Christians of collaborating with the "enemy" and secretly hoping for continued (Christian) British rule or even Zionist victory. The suspicions were expressed in slogans, popular during the revolt, such as "After saturday, Sunday" - that is, that the muslims would take care of the Christians after they had "sorted out" the Jews. This probably further alienated the Christians from Muslims political aspirations, though many, to be sure, kept up nationalist appearances. "The Christians had participated in the 1936-1937 disturbances under duress and out of fear of the Muslims. The Christian's hearts now and generally are not with the rioting," reported the Haganah Intelligence Service (HIS). A Haganah list from the mid-1940s of Arabs with a "tendency to cooperation with the Jews" included "many...Christians" but few muslims.

Arabs more than willing to sell land - Stopped due to lack of money

"Throughout the Mandate, the leading Arab families, including Husseinis and Opposition figures, sold land to the Zionists, despite their nationalist professions. Jewish landholding increased between 1920 and 1947 from about 456,000 dunams to about 1.4 million dunams. The main brake on Jewish land purchases, at least during the 1920's and 1930's, was lack of funds, not any Arab indisposition to sell"

Arabs preferred to be poor than allow a Jewish state which develops the economy

"Ben-Gurion argued that the Jewish influx would better the condition of the Arabs as well as the Jews. Musa al-'Alami, a leading Palestinian moderate and assistant Mandate attorney general, countered: "I would prefer that the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years, until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own."'"

Jews developed economically and developed democratic institutions

"The net domestic product of the Palestine Arab community in 1922 had been 6.6 million pounds sterling; in 1947 it was 32.3 million. During the same period, the Yishuv's had rocketed from 1.7 million pounds sterling to 38.5 million. The net product of the Jewish community in the manufacturing sector had jumped from 491,000 pounds sterling in 1922 to 31 million in 1947 (the Palestinian Arab equivalent was 539,000 pounds sterling to 6.7 million in 1945).

...Perhaps most significantly, the Jews managed to forge internal, democractic governing institutions, which in 1947-1948 converted more or less smoothly into the agencies of the new state of Israel...In 1925 - with a population of about 150,000 - the Jews established their first university,, the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. By comparison, Palestine's Arabs established universities (in the west bank and the gaza strip) only in the 1970's (ironically, while under Israeli military occupation)."

Population transfer recognised as legitimate strategy by Jews, Arabs, and Brits in Peel Commission meetings

"Interestingly, senior British officials and Arab leaders, including Emir 'Abdullah and Nuri Sa'id, Iraq's premier politician, (the same Nuri Sa'id who in July 1939 called for the destruction of Zionism), shared this view. All understood that for a partition settlement to work and last, the emergent Jewish state would have to be ridded of its large and potentially or actively hostile Arab minority. As 'Abdullah's Prime Minister, Ibrahim Pasha Hashim, put it in 1946: "The only just and permanent solution lay in absolute partition with an exchange of populations; to leave the Jews in an Arab state or Arabs in a Jewish state would lead inevitably to further trouble between the two peoples"

Arabs reject 1939 white paper, despite promise of independent state and limit of Jewish immigration

"Simply put, London sought to appease the Arabs to assure quiet in the Middle East...In May 1939 Whitehall issued a new paper. It promised Palestine's inhabitants statehood and independence within ten years; severely curtailed Jewish immigration, limiting it to fifteen thousand entry certificates per year for five years, with all further Jewish immigration conditional on Arab approval...and significantly limited Jewish land purchase.

...The Palestinian street was overjoyed. But al-Husseini - as was the Palestinian's wont - managed to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of welcoming the British move...al-Husseini and his colleagues rejected the white paper. They flatly demanded full cessation of Jewish immigration, immediate British withdrawal, and immediate independence."

Arab public opinion in favour of Nazi's

"One of the first public opinion polls in Palestine, conducted by al-Sakini's son, Sari Sakakini, on behalf of the American consulate in Jerusalem, in February 1941 found that 88 percent of the Palestinian Arabs favored Germany and only 9 percent Britain."

Truman did not support Jews

"In 1944, Truman had pointedly declined to support his party's pro-zionist platform. And he reportedly told his cabinet in July 1946 that he had "no use for them (the Jews) and didn't care what happened to them.""

Arabs manipulation Palestinian cause

"The establishment of the Arab League at once strengthened the Palestinian cause and weakened the voice of Palestinian nationalism. On one hand, the Arab states collectively weighed in behind Palestinian Arab demands. But at the same time, the pact gave the member states the right to select who would represent the Palestinian Arabs in their councils, so long as Palestine was not independent. Couple with the continued factional deadlock within Arab Palestine, this assured, in the words of one historian, that "the initiative in Palestine Arab politics thus passed to the heads of the Arab states" and "major political decisions on the organisation of Arab resistance to Zionism were thereafter taken not at Jerusalem but at Cairo"

Number of soldiers in Haganah

"...in mid 1942, SIME, the Middle Eastern arm of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had estimated, fairly accurately, that the Haganah had thirty thousand members, with arms for 50-70 percent of them. The IZL could field another thousand trained men, with several thousand supporters."

Irgun and Stern Gang revolts

"The LHI...continued to view the British, not the Germans, as the Jewish people's main enemy; it was the British who were preventing Jews from escaping Europe, reaching Palestine, and attaining independence."

"The LHI's minute size, Haganah and IZL tip-offs, and effective British clampdowns saw to that. LHI operations were limited almost completely to thefts of weaponry and bank robberies. In one payroll heist, in January 1942, LHI gunmen shot dead two Histadrut officials."

"The mainstream Zionist leadership and press roundly condemned the dissidents' attacks. The Irgun members were labeled "misguided terrorists," "young fanatics crazed by the sufferings of their people into believing that destruction will bring healing." Under Zionist mainstream pressure, the LHI suspended its attacks in November 1944"

"The Haganah declared an "open hunting season" against the IZL, and Haganah intelligence and Palmah teams systematically assaulted and incarcerated IZL members, confiscated their weapons caches, and occasionally handed them or their names and addresses to the British."

Anglo-American Committee

"The committee found that the displaced Jews in Poland lived in an "atmosphere of terror," with "Pogroms...an everyday occurence." (Indeed some fifteen hundred Jews were slaughtered by anti-Semitic Poles in the year following the end of World War II.)"

"At Riyadh, King Ibn Sa'ud told them: "The Jews are our enemies everywhere. Wherever they are found, they intrigue and work against us...We drove the Romans out of Palestine...How, after all this sacrifice, would a merchant (that is, Jew) come and take Palestine out of our hands for money?"

"The contrary realities of Zionist and Arab existence left an abiding impression. After visiting Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek, at the western edge of the Jezreel Valley, Crossman wrote: "I've never met a nicer community anywhere." By contrast, two hundred yards down the road, he later reported, was "the stenchiest Arab village I have ever seen."

"And Aydelotte later wrote: "I left Washington pretty strongly anti-Zionist...but when you see at first hand what these Jews have done in Palestine...the greatest creative effort in the modern world. The Arabs are not equal to anything like it and would destroy all that the Jews have done... This we must not let them do."

"The Arabs rejected everything. They demanded immediate independence for an Arab-ruled Palestine, not "binationalism," whatever that might mean, and called for an immediate cessation of immigration. One Foreign Office cable, in the wake of the report, spoke of Arab hatred of Jews as being greater than that of the Nazis...In a follow-up interview with British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham, Husseini declared his willingness "to die" for the cause. When Cunningham responded that this didn't really trouble him and that what worried him was the welfare of "the ordinary Arab population," Husseini rejoined that "they were prepared to die too."

"At least one Baghdad newspaper called for Jihad: "The Arabs must proclaim a crusade to save the Holy Land from western gangs which understands only the language of force." Another called on the Arabs to "annihilate all European Jews in Palestine."

IZL Terrorism

"In a repeat of the “whipping” cycle (when the IZL had flogged a British officer after the British had flogged several IZL men), on 12 July the IZL abducted two British sergeants and threatened to hang them if the British hanged the IZL men. The British—despite a widespread dragnet and Haganah help—failed to locate the sergeants and went ahead with the hangings, on 29 July. The IZL hanged the sergeants the next day—and boobytrapped their bodies. A British captain was injured when they were cut down."

Chapter 2. The United Nations Steps In UNSCOP and the Partition Resolution