IF tommorow the Palestinian people peacably protested in the street+did so for month

[Harel]

Originally posted by Ned

7. The hostility to Jewish immigration began after Faisal learned of the Sykes-Pirot agreement, and really took off when the French deposed Faisal as King of Syria. This indicates that Zionism is not the source of Arab hostility to Jewish presence in Palestine. It is rather based on British betrayal.

This is an intresting view point, and probably has some merits. The british certainly did play both sides against each other and tried to juggle with them - the later terrorists attacks against them is how it backfired.
Something worth thinking about.

[Ned]

Here is a link to a article whose author comes to the same conclusions that I have concerning Hussein-McMahon.

http://www.omanforum.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/CFB/1/Tid/138031/DoOnePage/Yes.cfm

The author also cites a British report dated 1915 that concluded that Britain needed to control Iraqi oil, the port of Haifa and the territory in between for a pipeline. One can see all British policy thereafter devoted to this or consitent with this "plan."

"DeBunsen Report (1915):

Britain had historically backed Turkish control of the Arab world. Now it began to reconsider that policy. The DeBunsen report suggested that Britain should seize Ottoman territory in the Arab world after the war. British interests in India made the Persian Gulf and Iraq prime targets. Iraq was the most valuable place in the region with water, rich soil, and strategic location (also Iraqi oil had just been discovered). From Iraq, there were two ways to reach the sea--the Basra-Kuwait port area and across land to Palestine (particularly the port at Haifa). Britain concluded that these two areas had to be under their control if they were to control Iraq. Other places--such as Lebanon and Syria--were recommended for takeover but were less significant."

[Ned]

Originally posted by Edan


Huh. I don't know if that map is accurate or not, but if it is, I hadn't been aware that the Golan Heights had been part of the (original) British Mandate, and then given to Syria in 1923, which might (better) explain the lake decision discussed earlier.

There is a lot of information about this on the Web. Apparently the British swapped the Golan for a small strip of land elsewhere. The problem was, a good portion of the Golan was actually owned by Jews. They were forced to leave. I don't know if they were paid for their land.

Here is one quote I was able to find:

"In 1920 the League of Nations included the Golan Heights into the original British Mandate for Palestine. The territory of the Mandate, where "the close settlement by Jews on the land" was encouraged, was tailored on the geographical borders of Eretz Yisrael; therefore, the Bashan region (the biblical name of the Golan Heights) was an inherent part of the Mandate. Although the terms of the Mandate were confirmed on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations, and the mandate was supposed to come into operation in September 1923, the British, in violation of the Mandate, gave the Heights to France in March 1923, and they became a part of the French Mandate of Syria-Lebanon.

The Golan fell under Syria's jurisdiction only in 1944 upon the termination of the French mandate. ...Syria controlled the Golan for 23 years and Israel ...for 32 years.... [A] big part of the Golan legally belongs to the state of Israel.

'In 1892, Baron Edmond de Rothschild bought 80,000 dunam of the Golan Heights from the Arabs. . In 1957 [he] transferred the deeds to the land to the Jewish national Fund (Keren Kaemet) and from there to the Land Office of Israel and to the Government of Israel. All deeds and other documents were transferred to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs through an irrevocable power of attorney.'"

[S. Kroeze]

This ancient post by me is still relevant to the debate:

Perhaps European and American Jews are/were superior to Palestinian Jews?

"Before the mass immigration of European Jews to Palestine, small clusters of Jews had for centuries lived in their recognized quarters in the towns of Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron, where patriarchs, sages, and saints were buried, and in the holy city of Jerusalem, site of the ancient Temple, the symbol of Jewish national unity and redemption. Years of loss had produced a ritualized memory of Jerusalem and a yearning for restoration to the city and the land. The religiously orthodox looked to God to bring the New Jerusalem into being. So long as these Jews comprised small, pious communities in a handful of towns, so long as they paid their taxes, deferred to Muslim authority, and made no show of their religion, they were tolerated and protected, if not always treated decently by Muslim governors and religious officials. That was to change when a "new kind" of Jew began arriving in numbers in the opening decades of the twentieth century."

"When the Zionist movement was founded in 1897 there were already 50,000 Jews in Palestine and 18 modern settlements of Hovevei Zion.(33) By 1914, on the eve of World War I, there were 40 to 50 Jewish agricultural settlements, and the total number of Jews was estimated at 80,000 to 90,000, or about 14 percent of a Palestinian population of between 600,000 and 700,000, overwhelmingly Muslim.

The Orthodox Jewish pietists of the Old Yishuv, living on haluka, predominated in Palestine until after World War I, when Zionist-sponsored immigration created a majority of the New Yishuv. Whenever they arrived, Jewish immigrants were not met with an easy life in Palestine. Between 1881 and 1914 as many as 50,000, one of two, left Palestine for the West. Despite these departures, Jewish population increase had a dramatic effect on Jerusalem. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Jews achieved a majority there, in 1914 numbering 45,000 in a city of 80,000.(34)

From its inception the Zionist movement in Palestine exacerbated relations among Jews in the country. Traditional tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and between Hasidim and Perushim continued. But now there was a new layer of contention. Orthodox pietists opposed the often outspoken secular nationalist ideology of Hovevei Zion. In 1888-1889 the pietists tried unsuccesfully to force the Zionist agricultural pioneers to observe the biblical edict of Shemmitah, which allows the earth to lie fallow every seventh, sabbatical year. The pioneers resisted religious pressure, knowing that observance of Shemmitah meant the ruin of their farms.(35)

The gulf between religious and secular Jews widened further when Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the architect of the modern Hebrew language, criticized traditional Ashkenazi-Sephardi factionalism for undermining Jewish national unity. The pietists struck back by slandering Ben-Yehuda as a revolutionary and in 1894 arranging his imprisonment by Turkish authorities. Ben-Yehuda took sweet revenge by using his time in prison to begin writing the first comprehensive dictionary of the modern Hebrew language, one of the major achievements of the Zionist movement.(36)

The main Zionist-sponsored settlement of the land occurred on the coastline and in the lower Galilee, not in Zion itself or in Jerusalem, a stronghold of pious orthodoxy. The factional strife between Orthodox Jewry and secular Zionists continued through the twentieth century and abated only when both sides faced a common Arab threat."

(33) Neville J.Mandel, "Ottoman Practice as Regards Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1881-1908," Middle Eastern Studies, 11 (1975), 38

(34) Israel Kolatt, "The Organization of the Jewish Population of Palestine and the Development of Its Political Consciousness Before World War II," in Ma'oz, Studies on Palestine, 221

(35) Ibid., 219. Also see Abramov's account in Perpetual Dilemma.

(36) Kolatt, "Organization"

"Allenby's entrance into Jerusalem(1917) was welcomed by Jerusalem's local church prelates -Greeks, Latins, Russians, Syrians, and Armenians- who were gladdened at the sight of the first Christian ruler to enter Jerusalem since the medieval Crusaders. But Sephardic Jews, who spoke Arabic and got along with the Turks, were none too pleased to see the passing of the old order. Their contentious brethren, the Ashkenazim, were of two minds: they could not cheer the arrival of a new gentile conqueror, but had not this conqueror defeated the wicked empire of Turkey, thus hastening (as the Prophet Daniel foretold) the day of the Messianic Redemption? The more secular-minded Zionists were, of course, elated by Allenby's entrance. News traveled fast among Jews. They had been led to believe that with the publication of Balfour's letter, Britain intended to establish a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.

Muslims were cautious. Many were thankful to be rid of the imperious and venal Turks. The country had been bled white by the war. Much was expected from the British, who were known for their generosity. To those who had long memories, the sight of the British military was a reminder of the coming and going of conquerors. The British too would go in time. This land was not theirs. Muslims would tolerate Britain's trusteeship of the land as long as it served a useful purpose and as long as their own sense of ownership was not violated."

"London politicians had decreed their pro-Zionist policy, but the military officers in Palestine, responsible for administering that policy, determined that vigorous support of Jewish immigration and land purchase would only inflame Arab passions and make the job of government more difficult. They knew that resentment of Zionist activity predated the Balfour Declaration. In the late 1870s Arab villagers had complained about the new Jewish agricultural settlers who purchased land at high prices, evicted Arab peasants, refused to allow free grazing on their land, kept to themselves, and generally acted as if the country belonged to them.

When asked about their tensions with the Jews, Arabs were quick to point out that they had no quarrel with the community of traditionalist Jews which had lived in Palestine for generations; their concern was rather with the new Jews who had begun to immigrate to Palestine under later Turkish rule. The Balfour Declaration fueled existing tensions, giving them a more specifically political character. Certainly relationship between Arabs and Jews were not helped by one of Weizmann's statements, often quoted in the Arab press, that Zionism aimed to make "Palestine as Jewish as England is English"."

"Ben-Gurion may have believed that the Jewish national home could be developed without harming a single Arab child; but others, a small minority, took the view that Jewish immigration, land purchase, and national independence inevitably would lead to domination of the Arab society. The most prominent of these Jews was Zev Jabotinsky, firebrand of the Revisionist party, established in 1925. Jabotinsky made no secret of his ambitions to see a powerful Jewish majority ruling over an Arab minority, not just in Palestine but in Transjordan as well. The Revisionists were so called because they insisted on reinterpreting the original resolution of the First Zionist Congress, which called for the establishment of "a Jewish home in Palestine secured by public law." To the Revisionists, the word Palestine had to apply to Transjordan, because the Biblical patrimony from the time of King David extended eastward of the Jordan River, and because the British mandate included Transjordan as well as western Palestine. Thus Jews had every right and obligation to settle in Transjordan. The sharp difference between the General Zionists and Revisionists is seen in their attitudes toward the British decision in 1922 to cede Transjordan to the Emir Abdullah. For reasons of politics, the General Zionists acquiesced; for reasons of principle, the Revisionists organized in opposition.

If the Revisionists were on the far right of the yishuv's ideology of nationalism, the far left was held by the small party called Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace), also established in 1925. Composed mainly of Jewish intellectuals, Brit Shalom, while endorsing the Zionist axioms of immigration and national independence, worried that Zionist development might lead to Arab dislocation. Believing that a Jewish state could not be imposed on an unwilling Arab majority, adherents of the party took the position that only a single, bi-national Arab-Jewish state was justifiable in Palestine. Criticizing Weizmann and his colleagues for overdependence on the British, Brit Shalom ideologues stressed the priority of Jewish-Arab relations. Better an Arab friend than a British patron was the right attitude. Unfortunately, save for a few farsighted Arab intellectuals, Brit Shalom found few supporters of binationalism among the Arab ruling elite.

On the margins of this dispute were the few thousand pietistic Jews, descendants of the Hasidim and Perushim who had immigrated to Palestine in the nineteenth century. Theologically they opposed the Zionists and the idea of the secular-based Jewish state, believing that the only true Jewish state would be brought into being by God in the day of the messianic redemption. Awaiting that blessed event, ultra-Orthodox Jews kept Zionism at arm's length but also depended on them for protection against Arab rioters."

"Jews too were wary of Samuel's efforts to promote Arab and Jewish self-government. As a tiny minority, they were anxious about being overwhelmed in a democratically based assembly or legislature. Jabotinsky declared candidly that if there were a democratic institution of self-government responsible to the "majority", the Jews themselves would either be prevented from entering the country or evicted from it. So it came as some relief to the Zionists that not they but the Arab leaders formally rejected Samuel's proposals for self-government."

(source: Thomas A.Idinopulos: "Weathered by Miracles",1998)

So let's just agree to disagree. But just let me say that after our conversation, I more firmly believe than ever in the so-called right of self-determination. One people should not be forced to live under the rule of a completely different people. They should be given self government. They should be given their freedom, the famous last words of William Wallace.

This sounds most sympathetic, BUT

• Muslim Arabs living in Palestine did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be expelled from their land
• Christian Arabs living in Palestine did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be expelled from their land
• Jewish Arabs -the Sephardim- living in Palestine since time immemorial did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be forced to live in a secular state controlled by Europeans
• Other Orthodox Jews -Hasidim and Perushim- living in Palestine since the nineteenth century did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be forced to live in a secular state controlled by Europeans
• Jews in Europe did NOT determine to be persecuted and murdered or to flee to a desertlike war zone
• Instead decisions were taken by the British, U.S. and other European governments -ALL dominated by Christians- and by a small, well-educated, secular European-Jewish minority that legitimized their conquest of Palestine on some ancient book they had brushed aside themselves

What would happen when some 200 million people would migrate to the USA within one decade?

[Az]

errm, hovevei zion were zionist as well, you know.
Most of the Sephardi jews arrived with the establishment of the state of Israel, after some hot luving by arab states.

[GePap]

Ned:

On the issue of the Golan:

Sadly, none of what you wrote is legally relevant anymore. The League of nations no longer exists, its the UN and its charter that matters, and when Syria was reconized as a member of the UN in 1945, the Golan was part of it, and when Israel cam in, the Golan was not. The UN is the modern legal authority when it comes to these issues. So while everything you have written is probably true, it no longer has any legal standing on the world stage.

[Az]

but we keep the water.

Seriously, GePap, The UN is a lost organization, that doesn't represent wrong or right. For now, might is right, and statewise, there is a complete anarachy. f.e. if a huge arab army would amass, and conquer all of Israel, I doubt if someone would try to reclaim it.

[Ned]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze

This sounds most sympathetic, BUT

• Muslim Arabs living in Palestine did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be expelled from their land
• Christian Arabs living in Palestine did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be expelled from their land
• Jewish Arabs -the Sephardim- living in Palestine since time immemorial did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be forced to live in a secular state controlled by Europeans
• Other Orthodox Jews -Hasidim and Perushim- living in Palestine since the nineteenth century did NOT determine to be overrun by mass immigration of Europeans and to be forced to live in a secular state controlled by Europeans
• Jews in Europe did NOT determine to be persecuted and murdered or to flee to a desertlike war zone
• Instead decisions were taken by the British, U.S. and other European governments -ALL dominated by Christians- and by a small, well-educated, secular European-Jewish minority that legitimized their conquest of Palestine on some ancient book they had brushed aside themselves

What would happen when some 200 million people would migrate to the USA within one decade?

Kroeze, Your summary and conclusions do not follow from the preceding paragraphs of quoted material. "Overrun" and "evicted" are nowhere mentioned in the quoted material except when Jews purchased Arab land at excessive prices. Immigration does not equate to conquest.

If you have a chance, go see the new movie "Gangs of New York." It is set in the 1846-1862 timeframe in New York. The premise is that the local Americans are being "overrun" by a flood of Irish immigrants. Their resistance is violent. It reminded me a lot of what happened in Palestine in first half of the last century.

However, there was never any question that the Irish would conquer the US. They were able to elect local New York officials because of their local majorities. The local "indigenous" Americans were seriously unhappy with this and revolted.

Now if New York were a separate nation, it may have been overrun with Irish "invader-"immigrants. But New York was not a nation. It was part of the United states. The Irish could not overrun the United States.

Palestine is like New York. It never was a separate nation. It never existed in that form. It was always part of a much larger empire, first the Romans, then the Arabs, then Turks, Christians, and then Turks again. In the early 1900's, Palestine was part of the Vilayet of Damascus and part of greater Syria. At the close of the war, Syria was "supposed" to be part of the larger Arab Caliphate. In fact, the Arabs of Palestine voted to elected Faisal their King.

While the Jews may have been able to achieve local majorities in certain areas of Syria if one were to draw small enough maps, there never was a question of the Jews becoming a majority in the larger Syria or, for that matter the much larger, Arab Caliphate. The the anology to the Irish immigration into NY is therefore apt.

What changed everything, of course, was not the Zionists, but the British. When they carved Palestine from the rest of "Arabia," the Arabs revolted. Until then, their leadership was largely in favor of large scale Jewish immigration.

But your article mentions none of this.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
Ned:

On the issue of the Golan:

Sadly, none of what you wrote is legally relevant anymore. The League of nations no longer exists, its the UN and its charter that matters, and when Syria was reconized as a member of the UN in 1945, the Golan was part of it, and when Israel cam in, the Golan was not. The UN is the modern legal authority when it comes to these issues. So while everything you have written is probably true, it no longer has any legal standing on the world stage.

GePap, I'm not so sure you are right on the relationship between the League of Nations and the United Nations. But the history does show that Israel has more right to the Golan Heights than just by conquest. It has a legal claim as well.

[Edan]

Originally posted by GePap
On the issue of the Golan:

When I (re)brought up the issue of the Golan Heights, I was refering to the decision to put the lake entirely within Israel's border - as apparently, it had been so before the british and french intervened - so it wasn't a "pro-israeli" decision as someone believed.

[gsmoove23]

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAG007r0

Whoa, just got back from a long absence but I had to respond here. The above map does not show the entire Golan Heights within palestine but a small part of it. The Golan territory currently in Israeli possession goes a lot deeper into Syrian territory and a great part of it stretches further south to the east of lake Tiberias. The Sykes-Picot thingy still was drawn with the lake fully within Palestine placing a ridiculous and completely unmanageable 10 meter wide strip of Palestinian territory on the eastern shore of Tiberias.
Below is a map of the occupied Golan Heights, compare.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/golan_92.jpg

[Ned]

gsmoove, you seem to be right. The problem does still appear to be that the portion of the Golan Heights taken from Syria is where the water in the lake (Tiberias) comes from. It is therefore strategic to the very existence of Israel.

Here is a link to a site concerning international water rights. It has a whole section on treaties between Israel and Jordan and the PA.

http://www.internationalwaterlaw.org/

If Syria and Israel could agree on a water rights treaty for the Golan, it just might be possible for Israel to give the Golan back to Syria.

[Vesayen]

COME ON PEOPLE!! Only 8 more posts after this one and this thread hits 500 posts!!!

[Edan]

Again, I only pointed it out to discuss the decision of putting Lake Tibberius with Israel's boundaries - not the post-67 Golan Heights.

It might also be worth pointing out that Israel returned the portions of the Golan Height that were captured in 1973 - with nothing in return to show for it.

If Syria and Israel could agree on a water rights treaty for the Golan, it just might be possible for Israel to give the Golan back to Syria.

And agree not to shell Israel. And agree not to send armed troops into Israel.

Until Syria recognizes and makes peace with Israel, why should Israel give Syria any more of the Golan Heights?

Of course, I only posted this to make Vesayan happy.

[Ned]

Edan, of course a water rights treaty would be part of a comprehensive peace agreement with Syria. Otherwise it would not make any sense.

I was just trying to point out that the solution to the Golan Heights is a water rights treaty. If that can be worked out, peace with Syria might be just around the corner.