"Who is a Palestinian?" • Chapter 9 • Who does the land belong to?

The right to the Land of Israel

The borders of the "Land of Israel" are not well defined. There are the "boundaries of the promise", there are the boundaries of the "Kingdom of David and Solomon" and there will be many more definitions related to different historical periods.

The question "Who does the land belong to?" It is a difficult question, which has several possible answers.

The divine answer

The land belongs to the Jews, because it was promised to them by God. This is written in the Torah written by God, and who are we to argue with God? It is difficult to argue with those who accept this truth for granted. For him, there is a divine entry in the taboo. I believe that the "divine promise" indeed expresses a deep and ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. I don't agree with the religious explanation simply. Faith can explain anything and its opposite.

Historical answer #1: Who was here before?

Several possible answers:

• The land belongs to the Jews because they established a Jewish state here for the last 80 years
• The land belongs to the Arabs who came to Israel at the end of the 7th century, and since then they have been the majority of the population
• The land belongs to the Jews who were here from the 10th century BC, and made up the majority of the population until the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion in the 2nd century AD.

Where is the point on the timeline that determines ownership of the land determined? To examine this question in an unemotional way, we will examine the question about another territory, which demonstrates the problematic nature of determining belonging according to historical precedence:

Who do the USA and Canada belong to?

• For the Indians, who were the only population there almost until the 17th century?
• Or maybe to the Europeans, who came later and almost completely exterminated the Indians?

It is easy to see that this direction is problematic and does not lead to any constructive solution.

Historical answer #2: Who are the original inhabitants and who are the "colonialists"?

A Palestinian claim that has become common: the Jews are "colonialists" - emissaries of the West who came to seize territories for them in the East and settle in them. The sophistication of this claim is that it tries to make a mental link of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the concept of "colonialism" which in turn is related to the concept of "imperialism".

"Colonialism" is the takeover by a powerful country ("empire"), usually using military force, of territories outside of it and turning them into its colonies ("colonies"). The empires used to send colonists, officials and military force to the colonies to control the native population, and exploit the local natural resources for the benefit of the empire. The annals of colonialism begin in antiquity and continue throughout history.

In today's discourse, when we talk about colonialism, we usually mean the policies of European powers from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. European empires used to take control, usually by force, of parts of the world outside of Europe. The Europeans sent their people to these places to control the indigenous population. They exploited the local resources for the benefit of the overseas empire. This control was done, in many cases, using force and brutal oppression.

Today there is a lot of criticism (mostly justified) about the colonialism of the early 20th century. Among progressive circles, which became fashionable in Western countries, self-flagellation for the sins of the past developed. This sometimes reaches the point of self-hatred, and automatic identification with those who are perceived as victims of "colonialism".

There were colonialists here, but they were not Jews...

The Palestinian propaganda well recognized this direction. She uses it in a subtle way to gain sympathy in the world. The claim attempts to establish a connection between the colonialist control of the European powers in other nations for the purpose of exploiting them, and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But this claim is easy to refute.

• The Jews did not come to this region on the mission of some mother country (empire).
• The goal of Zionism was certainly not the economic exploitation of the land for the benefit of an overseas country.
• There is no doubt about the historical and cultural connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

In the history of the Land of Israel, we can talk about several colonialist waves, among them:

• The Romans who arrived at the end of the first century BC
• The Arabs who broke out of the Arabian Peninsula and arrived at the end of the 7th century
• The Crusaders who arrived at the end of the 11th century
• The Egyptians and the Ottomans alternately from the 13th century to the beginning of the 20th century

Among all these, the most significant colonial project was precisely that of the Arabs in the 7th century. That is, if we want, we can blame the Arabs for "colonialism".

What will these mutual accusations yield?

anything. Beyond increasing hatred and self-righteousness, they will not be useful in resolving the conflict. The simple truth is that history has its own way, and it is impractical to consider historical injustices from many years ago as the sole basis for resolving today's conflicts.

Does anyone expect the Americans to return the rule to the Indians?

In our environment where, in the course of thousands of years, lands have passed from hand to hand, the futility of this direction is obvious. In any case, the "colonialist" accusation against Israel does not hold. It is easier to blame the Arabs for colonialism in the 7th and 19th centuries.

But does it change anything? not.

The modern Arab settlement in Palestine

There are significant differences of opinion about the number of Arabs in Israel in the last quarter of the 19th century. Estimates for 1880 range from less than 100,000 (Professor Moshe Maoz) to about 500,000 (Justin McCarthy). In 1878, a detailed map of Palestine was published byThe British Fund for the Investigation of the Land of Israel" (PEF). The printing of the map took several years. It was the most detailed and accurate map of the Land of Israel. The map shows the size of every settlement in the country at that time, from the Litani River in the north to Beer Sheva in the south.

The map reflects what Mark Twain and many travelers of the time described in their travel books: a rather desolate country, where whole areas are empty of people. The map hints towards the lower estimate. All this, after Ibrahim Pasha from Egypt invaded the country in 1831. He settled here, in a classic colonialist act, tens of thousands of Egyptians, whose descendants today see themselves as Palestinians.

Additional studies show a large emigration from Egypt to Israel with the British army that occupied the country in 1917-1918, and continued until the mid-40s. The Egyptian laborers worked in the service of the British army, and continued with it from Egypt to Israel. The emigration was influenced by the 10-fold increase in Jewish gardening in the 1920s. -1930, and the need for workers. The British army camps that were established also needed workers In the region, Jewish construction, and public works initiated by the mandate government and Jewish institutions.

The Egyptian workers settled in the country in the coastal area. According to Moshe Prof. Brewer, at least a third of the increase in the number of residents in the villages in the area was due to immigration from Egypt. In 1948, there were about 1,200,000 Arabs in Israel. In other words, in less than 70 years, the Arab population probably increased 10 times. This cannot be a natural increase, and most of it can be attributed to immigration (mainly from Egyptians). In those years, by the way, severe restrictions were imposed on Jewish immigration by the mandate authorities.

It was not for nothing that Arab countries insisted on including in UNRA's definition of emissions everyone who lived in Israel in the two years prior to 1948. Here, too, great doubt must be cast on the Palestinian narrative, but does this change the current situation? Not really.

The cognitive answer: Who is more connected as a people to the Land of Israel?

Both nations claim to be connected to Israel.

• The Jews have a strong claim that even during two thousand years of exile, there was a continuity of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, and also that throughout the years of the exile the Jewish people raised their eyes to the Land of Israel and prayed every day to return to it.
• The Palestinians will claim that even in the last 80 years, during which some of them were displaced from their place of residence, they remained in the status of refugees, who dream of returning to their homes.

If we summarize:

• In the perspective of 10,000 years, the Jewish claim seems to be stronger.
• In the perspective of the last 100 years, both sides seem to have a weighty claim.

The legalistic answer

In terms of legitimizing the borders of the Jewish state, the following is the chain of events:

1. In 1915-6, in an exchange of letters between the British governor of Egypt, Henry McMahon, and the Hashemite sheriff Hussein Ben Ali of the Arabian Peninsula, the British promised Hussein a large Arab state ("Greater Syria"), which included almost all of the present-day Arab countries of the Middle East and Palestine .
2. In May 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed between Great Britain and France. The agreement divided the Middle East between the two, and obviously, contradicted the promise to Sharif Hussein.
3. In June 1917, the French diplomat Gilles Cambon stated in a letter to Nahum Sokolov that the French government supports Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.
4. In November 1917, British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour stated that "His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, and will make every effort to facilitate the achievement of this goal." This statement contradicted both the McMahon-Hussein letters, and the Sykes Pico agreements.
5. The Versailles Conference that ended the First World War, went in the direction of Sykes-Picot. At the end of the First World War, five "mandates" were agreed upon in the Middle East to promote self-determination of the peoples in the region. The British and French were supposed to inaugurate the countries on the way. The nations considered entitled to self-determination were Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Turks and Armenians.
   
   The Turks carried out ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Kurds and created for themselves a much larger country than the one they were supposed to win. The French received mandates on the territories that are today Syria and Lebanon, the British received a mandate on the territories of Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine.

The British Mandate in Palestine

The League of Nations entrusted the British with the mandate over Palestine-AI, so that they could realize self-determination for the Jews in Palestine-AI.

The following paragraph was written in the preamble to the mandate letter:

That is, the League of Nations explicitly recognized the ancient connection of the Jewish people to "Palestine". At that time, the concept of "this "Palestine" had not yet been hijacked by the "Palestinians" of today, and it was clear that it came to indicate the territory designated for self-determination for the Jews. In addition, the concept of "re-establishment" further establishes the recognition of this connection and gives confirmation to it that the place historically belongs to the Jewish people. The mandate was given in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration (which he specifically refers to) to establish a national home for the entire Jewish people, and not just for the Jews who lived in Palestine at the time the time

Following the division of the mandates of the League of Nations, countries did indeed begin to emerge: Iraq (1932), Lebanon (1943), Syria (1946), Jordan (1946). The Jewish state, on the other hand, was left behind. Following the severe Arab violence that began in the 1920s, and was directed against the idea of ​​a Jewish state, the British began to retreat and hesitate, and in fact betrayed the mandate given to them by the League of Nations. In the most difficult moments in the history of Judaism, they closed Palestine to Jewish immigration, and sentenced a large number of Jews to genocide in Europe.

division?

The Arab violence paid off to a great extent. The British prevented the Jews of Europe from coming (they did not prevent Westerners from doing so), and the British, who had already torn 80% of the mandate area to the Jewish state and gave it to Jordan (today's Jordan), continued to try and think about further divisions of the mandate area, which would leave the Jews with a tiny part of the original area intended for them. The UNSCOP committee that arrived in Israel in 1947, proposed the partition plan (which eventually passed in a UN resolution).

A look at the partition plan reveals that in general, what the UNSCOP committee marked as the territory of the Jewish state consisted of the Negev desert plus areas that thirty years before were malaria-ridden areas. These areas were land that had nothing to do with it. They were bought by Jews with full money from Arabs who were happy to get rid of them, and human lives and a lot of money were invested in them to make them suitable for settlement.

Not really "usurped territories"...

But the Arabs were not ready to hear about the partition plan. They did not want to accept any plan that would also include a Jewish state.

To summarize: the international community recognized the Jewish people's right to a state, and encouraged its establishment on all Palestinian territory. Britain was given the mandate to do this, but did not live up to it. These are facts that are hard to dispute. Do they change the situation today in a practical way? Not really.

 So what's the answer?

So who really has the right to the land?

The answer is that both peoples have rights in this country. There is justice in the claims of both nations. The reason no solution has been found up to this moment is the inherent conflict that Bevin defined in 1947:

This basic principle has not changed since then and today's problems have only worsened:

• The Palestinians are stuck in the vision of eliminating the State of Israel.
• The public in Israel, which was closer to a compromise, recoiled from the Palestinian behavior and gradually lost its grip on the compromise.