The Jews overpaid for land they purchased in Palestine-Israel

The Jews overpaid for land they purchased in Palestine-Israel

Is it true that Israel stole Arab/Palestinian land?

Accusation: Israel stole Arab/Palestinian land to build a Jewish State

[the Muslim Brotherhood will] continue to view the Jews and Zionists as their first and foremost enemies … Jihad means making sacrifices in order to restore what has been stolen [Palestine].

– Mohamed Badie, Supreme Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, January 2010

Fact or fiction: Jews stole Arab/Palestinian land before 1948

From the beginning of World War 1 Arabs were claiming Jews stole Arab/Palestinian land and displaced them. However, the majority of the land in this region was owned by the Ottoman Empire (subsequently the British) and absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. During this period 80 percent of the Arab/Palestinians were impoverished peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins… not wealthy landowners.1

The region was severely underpopulated which meant the Jews were able to avoid buying land in areas where Arabs might be displaced, which they did. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, sandy, and most importantly, without tenants. In 1920, David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellaheen (peasants), whom he viewed as “the most important asset of the native population” he said “under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them”. He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. “Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement,” Ben-Gurion added, “should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.” 2

The Jews overpaid for land they purchase

When British MP John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930 to report on Arab-Jewish violence and discovered the Jews were purchasing land at exorbitant rates: “They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.” 3

In 1937 the British Government published the Peel Commission which found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased. . . . there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was “due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population”.The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities. 4

It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping

— Transjordan’s King Abdullah, My Memoirs Completed, p88-89

As the violence escalated Arabs continued to sell land to Jews at outrageous prices, usually for tiny tracts of arid land. “In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.” 5

Land ownership from 1945-1947

In 1945 the British commissioned a survey of land ownership in Mandatory Palestine for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. This survey was the research that the UN relied upon when suggesting how the region could be partitioned. The illustration below is a visual representation of this survey. It clearly shows that the the UN’s suggested Jewish state was in the areas with heavy Jewish ownership or state ownership (such as the barren Negev Desert). While the proposed Arab state was in the regions with heavy Arab ownership. The claim that Jews stole Palestinian land is factually incorrect.6

Jewish Land ownership from 1945-1947

By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine aka The Land of Israel amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin. 7 Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As’ad el–Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews. 8

Fact or fiction: Israel stole Arab/Palestinian land in the 1948 war?

As soon as Israel declared independence eight Arab nations invaded. With the battle cry of the Grand Mufti ringing in their ears, “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all”,9 the Arab armies, with the help of Palestinian militias, attempted their genocide against the Jews.

By some miracle, the Jews repelled the invaders and in defeating the Arab armies captured more land than that allotted in the UN (non-binding) partition. Much of this land had sizable Jewish populations and much more defensible borders. Israel took the decision to retain this land to assure the safety of its citizens. It is this new border that most people refer to when they speak of the Pre-67 Lines (or the 49 Armistice Lines).

The Arabs also captured land. Egyptians conquered Gaza, while the Jordanians usurped the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria. Unlike Israel, this was not for the safety of their citizens, but to increase their own territory. By the end of the war, according to Morris, the “Arab war Plan changed . . . into a multinational land grab focusing on the Arab areas of the country. The evolving Arab ‘plans’ failed to assign any of these whatsoever to the Palestinians or to consider their political aspirations.”10

Fact or fiction: Israel stole Arab/Palestinian after 1948?

While Arab leaders boasted “strike the enemy’s settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews”,11 their genocidal intentions were repeatedly crushed, often leaving Israel with even greater territory. Despite these gains, Israel had no intention of keeping the land – it always intended to return the land in exchange for peace.

In 1974 Israel returned territories to Syria that it had captured and liberated in 1967 and 1973. Again in 1979 they returned the entire Sinai Peninsula, a mass of land rich in oil, with Jewish settlements and three times the size of pre-67 Israel.

In September 1983, Israel withdrew from large areas of Lebanon to positions south of the Awali River. In 1985, it completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, except for a narrow security zone just north of the Israeli border. That too was abandoned, unilaterally, in 2000.

After signing peace agreements with the Arab/Palestinians, and a treaty with Jordan, Israel agreed to withdraw from most of the territory in the West Bank captured from Jordan in 1967. A small area was returned to Jordan, and more than 40 percent was ceded to the Arab/Palestinian Authority.

Finally in 2005, all Israeli troops and civilians were evacuated from the Gaza Strip and the territory was turned over to the control of the Arab/Palestinian Authority. In addition, four communities in the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria that covered an area larger than the entire Gaza Strip were also evacuated as part of the disengagement plan. As a result, Israel has now withdrawn from approximately 94 percent of the territory it captured and liberated in 1967.

Israel has captured and liberated its territory from those that wage war against the tiny state, but each time it returns the land in a heartbeat in exchange for peace.

Fact or fiction: Israel stole Arab/Palestinian land to build settlements?

From ancient times Jews have lived in the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria, the only time they did not was in recent decades when Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews from the region between 1948 to 1967. When Israel captured and liberated its territory from the Jordanians, following Jordan’s attack on Israel in the combined Arab attack of 67, Israel allowed Jews to move back to some select locations.

Numerous experts in international law believe that these Jewish communities and settlements are not illegal. Stephen Schwebel, formerly President of the International Court of Justice, notes that a country acting in self defense may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself. Schwebel also observes that a state may require, as a condition for its withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory. 12 In the seventies Israel made thousands of its citizens homeless when it returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, it did so on the condition Egypt would make peace with the Jewish State – just as Schwebel described.

When Israel constructs its communities and settlements it does not requisition private land for their establishment. Housing construction is only permitted on private land where the rights of others have not been violated. The vast majority of settlements have been built in uninhabited areas and even the handful established in or near Arab towns did not displace or steal land. In instances where it had been that settlements had been built on stolen land, the previous Arab owners took their case to the Supreme Israeli Court which ruled if the settlements needed to be dismantled.

Jewish communities and settlements

In the images below we can see Jewish settlements built in uninhabited areas, this was the pattern for the overwhelming majority of West Bank aka Judea and Samaria settlements.

Arab settlements

What many people do not realize is that the majority of Arab/Palestinian urban areas are in fact modern settlements that did not exist a century ago.

Summary

• The claim that Jews stole Arab/Palestinian land is a lie.
• The UN proposal awarded the land where Jewish ownership was high to Israel and where Arab ownership was high to a future Arab/Palestinian state
• Jews massively overpaid for the land they acquired
• Israel has captured land in defensive battles, but has always exchanged it for peace with the previous

Was there ever a Arab/Palestinian people?

Now in this respect I want to say that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of Palestine. They are descendants of the Semitic tribes that came and inhabited Palestinian territory since thousands and thousands of years, certainly long before Abraham set foot on the Palestinian territory.

– Haider Abdel Shafi, head of the Arab/Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference of 1991.

Who were the original Palestinians?

The Philistines were an Aegean (Cypriot) people that died out almost 3,000 years ago. There is absolutely no connection between this tribe and the modern day Arabs that identify as Palestinian. Even the land the two people dwelled in was different, Philistine was a tiny stretch of land in the same location as Gaza. At this time the much larger area of Israel and the West Bank was almost exclusively inhabited by Jews. To suggest the Palestinians descend from this tiny tribe is positively absurd – they were a different ethnicity, with a different language and no traces of their culture exists in Palestinian culture today. This people became extinct 3,000 years ago, they are not the Palestinians.

The word Philistine stems from a hebrew word “Pilishtim” which was the Biblical name of this tribe. It is a hebrew (Jewish) word which translates to invaders, as the Philistines were not indigenous.

Where was Syria-Palestina?

When the Romans crushed the Jewish revolt of 132 CE they attempted to discourage patriotism and renamed the region Syria-Palaestina (exiling many of the Jews at the same time). Syria-Palestina stretched from Egypt to Turkey and from Israel to Jordan, it had a diverse demography but the majority population was Phoenician, Greek and Roman.

Syria-Palestina was a foreign name forced upon a region that had never been unified. The Romans chose to name it after two ancient kingdoms Assyria and Philistine, both of which had long ago died out. This Roman province had nothing to do with the modern day Palestinian state, either geographically or ethnically.

So who are the Palestinians?

The Palestinians are a mixed people and while the majority descend from recent economic migrants, who flocked to the area between 1850 and 1950. A few Muslim families trace their history to the Arab conquest of Jerusalem and some Jewish and Christian families go even back further. However, very few Palestinian Arabs are indigenous 1 – Arabs are not indigenous to the Levant (unsurprisingly they originate from Arabia, they arrived in the Levant with the Muslim conquests of the 7th century).

A Hamas leader explains how most Palestinians are not indigenous to “Palestine”.

At the beginning of the 20th century a number of Levantine Arabs reacted to Zionism by creating a nationalist movement of their own, who like the Zionists demanded the right for self-determination. The problem with creating this non-Jewish nationalist movement was that the inhabitants of the region were incredibly diverse. There were Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, Kurds, Europeans, Arameans, Christians, Muslims, etc. and ‘not being Jewish’ was the only thing these people had in common. They had no language, culture or religion to make them distinct from Jordanians or Syrians and the only thing that seemed to unify them was geography.

Since the end of Jewish sovereignty in the region, Israel remained a tiny province in much larger empires. Some of these conquerors referred to the area by the Roman name of Palestine (Philistia, Palestina, Mandatory Palestine, etc.) – but this always denoted a place and not a people. Irrespective of this fact, the Arab nationalists chose to name the nation they coveted “Filastin”, probably because this was the only consistently used name for the region that did not have strong Jewish associations.

Before Britain relinquished control of the Mandate the inhabitants of the Mandatory Palestine had mixed loyalties, some supported a Jewish homeland, some remained impartial, a minority supported an Arab homeland and a larger number supported the notion of pan-Arabism (which unified all Arab peoples – not just one small province). It was pan-Arabism that had the support of the surrounding Arab states, while powerful local clans like the Husaynis and Nashashibis fought for Palestinian self-determination.

In truth Palestinian nationalism was a minority position, one powerful Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, declared “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”2

When Syrian President Hafez Assad addressed, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by saying, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people.”3

Arafat was in no place to rebuke him as a few years earlier, he himself had declared…

The question of borders doesn’t interest us… From the Arab standpoint, we mustn’t talk about borders. Palestine is nothing but a drop in an enormous ocean. Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it… The PLO. is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call “Jordan” is nothing more than Palestine.

– Yasser Arafat 3

And it wasn’t just the Palestinians and Syrians saying this…

The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan

– King Hussein of Jordan 4

In 1948 Jordan invaded and conquered the West Bank usurping the territory. They forbade Jews from living there and granted all non-Jews Jordanian citizenship… the local “Palestinians” embraced their new nationality without objection. There was no rejection of this new identity as Jordanians and Palestinians are identical, it was only because of British interference that they were artificially separated in to two people.

Most Arabs of this period subscribed to an ideology called pan-Arabism that espoused the unification of Arab countries (an entity many Arab rulers dreamed of leading). King Abdullah of Jordan was no different, he usurped the West Bank as he’d long dreamt of ruling a pan-Arab empire called “Greater Syria”. To his dismay the Israelis shattered his dream in 1967 when they repelled a Jordanian attack on Israel – driving them out of the West Bank. Almost overnight his vision of a Greater Syria crumbled.

Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?

– Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist

With pan-Arabism on its knees, the Arabs attempted a different strategy to destroy Israel – Palestinian independence. Up until this point Palestinian nationalism had been supported by a small minority, but every attempt to unify the people behind this cause had failed. For example the Grand Mufti attempted to establish the All-Palestine Government in Gaza, but it was defeated due to lack of power and public support. In the sixties this changed, pan-Arabism was in its death throes and Palestinian statehood emerged as its successor . The Palestinian Liberation Organisation, headed by Arafat and supported by the Arab League, effectively gave birth to the Palestinian people, they fabricated a history and unity amongst the people that had never existed.

[T]he Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.

– Yasser Arafat 5

They created a flag (which was all but identical to their brothers in Jordan) and fabricated a history supporting their claim for sovereignty over all of the land, including Israel.

 
The majority of Arabs were not indigenous, nor were they distinct from other Arabs of that region and while today they define themselves as one people (and no-one has the right to deny them of this). We must not be fooled into believing this is an ancient people, or even a people with ancient claims to the land.

Two hundreds years ago there were no Palestinians, while there was a multitude of mixed ethnicities living in the land they did not identify as a collective people. Nor is there any evidence of a Palestinian people every existing. There has never been a Palestinian monarch, a Palestinian language and all Palestinian art and culture is a construct of modernity. In contrast there the Jews are an identifiable people with a shared history, monarchs and language in the land of Israel.

Jewish use of the word Palestine

Though the nationalists chose to identify as “Filastin”, it was the Jews that first took on this name calling their newspapers, charities, and organizations such names as the “Palestine Post” and the “United Palestine Appeal,” while the Arabs eschewed the term as being “Jewish” and “Zionist.” For them, they were Muslims first, and “Southern Syrians” second.

Summary

If Palestine were a “Sovereign” or “Independent” country at some point in history (or as some suggest, one that spans most of recorded history), then it would be easy to answer these questions:

• When was it founded and by whom?
• What were its borders?
• Who was the ruler?
• What constituted the basis of its economy?
• Who was the Palestinian leader before the Grand Mufti?
• Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
• What was the language of the country of Palestine?
• What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
• And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

These questions cannot be answered as the “Palestinians” are modern people and Palestinian nationalism is actually younger than Zionism. They are not indigenous to the land, the majority are recent migrants attracted by economic opportunities created by the Zionists. Even those that pre-date the Zionists are on the whole migrants to the land attracted at different times, during different conquests and for different reasons.

It is not our aim to deny this people of their recently found unity, we believe all people have the right to self-identity and self-determination. But this must not come at the expense of Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

Was the UN Partition Plan unfair to the Arab/Palestinian majority?

The original 1947 UN (non-binding) partition plan for Palestine was grossly unfair because it awarded more than half the country to the Jewish minority which, at the time, numbered no more than one-third of the total population.

– Ali Hasan Abunimah 1

How was the land divided?

In 1946 one year before the UN partition proposal there were twice as many Arabs living in British Mandatory Palestine (608,000 Jews and 1,237,000 Arabs), however looking only at these numbers paints an inaccurate picture as Jews they formed the majority in the area allotted to the, (498,000 Jews and 407,000 Arabs).2

The land wasn’t just divided along population lines, but land ownership was also considered. In 1945 the British commissioned a survey of land ownership in Mandatory Palestine for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. The illustration below is a visual representation of this survey which clearly shows the proposed Jewish state included the areas with heavy Jewish land ownership, while Arab state was formed from of the regions where Arabs owned the majority of land. 3

To further compound this the Jews never had a chance of reaching a majority because of the restrictive immigration policy of the British. By contrast, Palestine’s Arab population, which had been declining prior to the Mandate in 1922, grew exponentially as hundreds of thousands of Arabs from all the surrounding countries flocked into the land to advantage of the rapid economic development created by Zionist enterprise.

Why should the Jews have been awarded a state?

The decision to partition Palestine was not just determined by demographics and land ownership. Jews and Arabs had been fighting over the land for decades – both making irreconcilable territorial claims to the land… partition seemed the only viable solution.

Ironically, in that same year the British were involved was another partition, which has left tenfold more dead, displaced many more millions and has locked two nations in conflict to this day. Unlike the Israel/Palestine partition this one was accepted by the Arab members of the United Nations and the new predominantly Muslim state of Pakistan was born.

Partition and state creation was incredibly common during this period, just one hundred years ago none of the states surrounding Israel today existed as independent countries (Jordan, Syria or Lebanon and Egypt), they were all created by European colonial powers in the twentieth century. By drawing up borders that in most instances had never existed the Europeans thrust a diverse mixture of ethnicity's and religions together under a forced national identity. As a result these countries have remained fragmented and frequently slip into civil war.

The principles of self-determination guided the colonial powers – a belief that people have the right to determine their own political status and independence. The Jews were one of the largest ethnic groups in the region and they were to be awarded a tiny strip of land in their ancestral homeland – yet the Arabs rejected this tiniest concession. In contrast the land the Jews were forced to leave in Arab countries has been estimated at 120,000 square kilometers – four times the size of the State of Israel (valued today at about 15 trillion dollars). 4 While the Arabs came to control over thirteen million square kilometers (22 countries in total), they couldn’t bring themselves to give up 0.15% to their Jewish neighbors.

On top of the Jewish ancestral claim, and the claim of self-determination that was granted to other ethnic groups of that era. The Jewish state was also born out of necessity, the Holocaust had seen six million Jews slaughtered throughout Europe and massacres were occurring throughout the Arab world (thousands of Jews were murdered in Muslim lands in the period between the holocaust and establishment of Israel).5 The Jewish people needed a refuge where they could escape centuries of persecution.

Faced with all of these claims, the Arabs rejected the two state solution and have waged war on the tiny Jewish State ever since.

Summary

• Jews formed a majority in the region that the United Nations proposed as a Jewish homeland
• The UN proposed Arab homeland contained the areas where Arab land ownership was highest
• All of the states that border Israel are modern creations, but their ‘fairness’ is rarely questioned
• Israel is 0.15% of the land controlled by 22 Arab states, but even this is too much for the Arab world to accept
• Jewish refugees from Arab lands were forced to leave land four times the size of Israel
• Jews needed a state to escape centuries of persecution from Arab and European nations

Is it true that Britain created Israel?

Accusation: Britain created Israel out of Palestinian aka The Land of Israel land that they had no right to give away.

[The Balfour] Declaration was made (a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in a flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group so that this foreign group might quite literally make this territory a national home for the Jewish people…. Balfour’s statements in the declaration take for granted the higher right of a colonial power to dispose of a territory as it saw fit.

– Edward Said

Overview of the whether “Britain created Israel”

It is incorrect to say that Britain created Israel. Instead, Britain spent years actively working to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. What confuses people is that Britain changed tack. In Zionism’s early years Britain looked favorably upon the creation of a Jewish National. This stance changed once they became the sovereign power in British Mandatory Palestine.

Britain’s positive position reached its peak in 1917 when the British government issued a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild. The letter, now known as the “Balfour Declaration” which emulated Napoleon's letter to the Jewish community in Palestine in 1799, instructed Baron Rothschild to inform the Zionist Federation that the British Government “view[ed] with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. At that the time of the declaration the number of Jews living in Israel was between 80,000 and 90,000. What most people don’t know is that these Jews had already established a de facto Jewish National Home.

The Jews, some of whom had lived in the land for centuries, had established this de facto state without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. Instead, they relied on their own hard work, building infrastructure and cultivating land they’d legally purchased.

The Balfour Declaration did not establish a Jewish state. It was an endorsement by the British government of a Jewish protectorate. An endorsement they abandoned upon taking control of the land. They then began doing everything they could to prevent the establishment of a Jewish State.

A timeline of British opposition to a Jewish state

• 1903 – Britain proposes the Jews establish a British protectorate in Kenya. Herzl had proposed a settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. Lord Cromer counter proposed with Kenya, this was rejected by the Zionists as unlike the Egyptian suggestion (which was once part of King David’s Israel) as the Jews had no ancestral claim to Kenya.
• 1917 – Britain drafts the Balfour Declaration, recognizing the right of the Jews to a “National Home” in their ancestral land. The language of the declaration inferred a British protectorate, rather than a Jewish State, which they would only support if the Jews outgrew the Arab population. Something the British consistently tried to prevent.
• 1920 – After defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War I the region lacked a sovereign power. The Sans Remo conference awarded the British control of the land on the condition they honour the Balfour Declaration and create a Jewish National Home.
• 1920– Col. Waters-Taylor, British Field-marshal Allenby’s Chief of Staff, met with Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseinu a few weeks before Easter. He told Al-Husseini “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home.”
• 1921 – Britain reneges on the San Remo deal and gives converts three quarters of Mandatory Palestine to the Arab emirate of Transjordan. Transjordan was then to remain under auspices of the British.
• 1921 – Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.”
• 1922 – Britain is granted Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, until such time as the inhabitants of the land are able to stand alone. The awarding of the land was always on the condition they create a Jewish State. The “Jewish National Home” is not created, instead some Jews are granted permission to apply for citizenship of Mandatory Palestine.
• 1937 – The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden ferociously campaigns to block Jewish sovereignty, on 26 November 1937 he told the British Ambassador in Washington he was looking for a solution “which would not give Jews any territory exclusively for their use.”
• 1938 – The British government declares that its proposal (in the Peel and Woodhead Commission) to divide Mandatory Palestine into two states is untenable.
• 1939 – While unfettered Arab immigration swells, made possible by Britain’s unrestricted immigration policy for Arabs to Mandatory Palestine. Britain issue the White Paper, a policy paper which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. At the time this paper was issued Jews were being subject to Nazi persecution in Europe (Britain kept these quotas in place throughout the holocaust. If they had lifted them millions of Jews could have potentially found refuge there).
• 1946 – Britain creates internment camps in Cyprus to imprison Jews attempting enter Mandatory Palestine. Over 53,000 Jews are held captive and 400 die, many of whom had just escaped the Nazi death camps.
• 1946 – Britain puts the entire city of Tel Aviv, 200,00 Jewish residents, under house arrest.
• 1946 – British antisemitism is rife. The then British Palestine Commander, Lt. General Evelyn Barker, issued an order banning British troops from socializing with Jews. He went on to say, “[We] will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them”.1 In a letter to a lover he wrote “Yes I loathe the lot – whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them. Its time this damned race knew what we think of them – loathsome people” 2
• 1947 – The British government requests France and Italy prevent Jews from embarking for Palestine.
• 1947 – The British ask the American government to ban fundraising for Israel, the Truman administration capitulates.
• 1947 – In a United Nations vote on the partition of Mandatory Palestine, 72% voted for the creation of Jewish and Arab states. Britain was one of two Western nations that refused to vote.
• 1948/9 – After Israel had been established. Britain again refused to vote in favor of admitting Israel to the United Nations (on both occasions Israel sought admission).

It should be noted that not all Britons were against the Zionist ideal. People like Orde Wingate, Winston Churchill, Lord Balfour, Herbert Samuel and many other pro-Zionist individuals contributed to laying the foundations that Jewish Statehood was later built upon. This British support was short lived. In the early 1920’s oil was discovered in the British Mandate of Iraq. The lure of oil money was too strong and British foreign policy took a u-turn, shifting their allegiances from supporting a Jewish State to Arab nationalism.

Jewish protectorate in Kenya – the Uganda Plan

In October 1902 British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, met with the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl to discuss the idea a Jewish homeland. At the time Israel was under Ottoman rule, but its neighbor Egypt was a protectorate of Britain. Herzl proposed the idea of a settlement in the Egypt’s Sinai peninsula – near the borders of Israel. Though Chamberlain entertained the idea, the British government later rejected it.

A year later, following a brutal massacre of Jews in Kishinev, Chamberlain offered Herzl a British protectorate consisting of 5,000 square miles in an isolated area of Kenya. This became known as the Uganda Plan. Desperate to create a refuge for Jews fleeing anti-semitism the Zionist Congress sent a delegation to Kenya to review its suitability as an interim solution, until the re-establishment of Israel had been achieved. The delegation returned with a negative report and the proposal was rejected. This sequence of events was the first time Britain prevented a Jewish State in the Middle East.

The Balfour Declaration

A few years later in 1906, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with Lord Arthur Balfour who’d been the British Prime Minister that authorized the Uganda Plan. Balfour asked why Weizmann had turned down a Jewish homeland in Kenya in favor of Palestine. Weizmann explained that Jews yearned to return to their ancestral land and escape thousands of years of persecution. These words stuck with Balfour and the two struck up a close relationship.3

As Europe was plunged into the horrors of World War I, the question of a Jewish homeland arose again. Two month’s after Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire, British politician and secular Jew, Herbert Samuel suggested in a governmental memorandum that if Palestine were conquered Britain should establish a home for the Jewish people under British Rule.4

In May 1916 the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Russia signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which defined how Western Asia should be divided if the Ottoman Empire were defeated. As Samuel had proposed the agreement placed Palestine under British rule.

The following year, influenced by Herbert Samuel’s memorandum and his own encounters with Chaim Weizmann, Balfour wrote a letter to the Zionist Federation (via Baron Rothschild) stating that Britain viewed favorably a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. This letter became known as the Balfour declaration.

However, the declaration didn’t describe a Jewish state but “a national home for the Jewish people” – the wording was intentional. While some within the British Cabinet supported the Zionist program (Chamberlain, Samuel, et al), there were others who were strongly opposed to it and to this faction the idea of Britain renouncing sovereignty over Palestine and creating a Jewish state was intolerable.

Leopold Amery, one of the Secretaries to the British War Cabinet of 1917–18 later testified under oath that from his personal knowledge “The phrase ‘the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people’ was intended and understood by all concerned to mean at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Palestine would ultimately become a ‘Jewish Commonwealth’ or a ‘Jewish State’, if only Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers.“. 5

This distinction was to shape future immigration policy as Britain did many things that prevented a Jewish majority from forming.

Mandatory Palestine

A de facto Jewish homeland already existed in parts of Palestine, and its recognition by the Balfour Declaration became a matter of binding international law when Britain was granted Mandate of Palestine on 24 July 1922 by the fifty one member states of the League of Nations.

In the lead up to the Mandate being awarded, President Woodrow Wilson famously declared that the principle of self-determination should govern any postwar reorganization of territories that were formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Against this ideal Britain was granted the Mandate on the condition they re-establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.

… Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour Declaration] and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

…

Article 7: The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.

The Mandate stopped short of granting Jews sovereignty over the land, though it was understood that sovereignty would be granted if the Jews reached majority. 5 The only chance Britain had of denying sovereignty would be if they prevented the Jews from reaching a majority. For this reason, while many civil functions were placed under the autonomy of the Jews; immigration policy was not and Article 7 of the Mandate placed it firmly in the hands of the British.

Creation of Jordan

Shortly after the mandate, in September 1922, the League of Nations and Great Britain decided that the provisions for setting up a Jewish National Home would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River (which constituted three quarters of the territory included in the Mandate). This region would be awarded to the Arabs and later become Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The original Mandate made no mention of an Arab National Home, but 90% of the population of Mandatory Palestine (Israel, Jordan and the disputed territories) was Arab 6, so it came as no surprise that the Arabs were awarded 75% of the land.

For the next 15 years Arab hostility to a Jewish National Home increased and hundreds of Jews and Britons were murdered by Arab Nationalists. Faced with mounting violence, the British commissioned two enquiries (Peel and Woodhead) both of which suggested land partitions. The Jews were willingly to negotiate the borders of both proposals, but the Arabs rejected them outright. Refusing accept even the tiniest of Jewish states in the region.

The British in-turn declared that none of the partition plans were tenable.

Jewish immigration restrictions to Palestine and British hostility to Zionism

Having given away most of the land to the Arabs and unable or unwilling to establish a Jewish National Home. The British entered a period of extreme hostility towards Zionism.

In 1939, a year after rejecting the commission’s partition plans, Britain introduced one of its most brutal policies. During this period Jews across Europe were being murdered and interned in ghettos by the Nazis. Against this backdrop Britain released a White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. 7

In 1942 British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden famously confirmed in Parliament that the Nazis were exterminating Europe’s Jews, adding that Britain could do nothing to thwart the genocide other than winning the war. The very next year Eden personally blocked a request from the Bulgarian authorities to aid with deporting part of the Jewish population from newly acquired Bulgarian territories to British controlled Palestine. After his refusal, those Jews were transported to Poland.

While Arab migration swelled, attracted by the economic opportunities Zionism created. Jews seeking refuge from the Nazi horrors were refused entry and locked in detention centres. This provoked a strong reaction and Zionist paramilitary groups began using force to change immigration policy to save their Jewish brethren from the holocaust.

In one infamous attack the Irgun bombed the British military headquarters which was stationed in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. Several warning calls were placed – but ignored by the British. When the bomb e lost their lives (including 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews).8
In one infamous attack the Irgun bombed the British military headquarters which was stationed in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. Several warning calls were placed – but ignored by the British. When the bomb exploded 91 people lost their lives (including 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews).8

As more Jews attempted to migrate to Mandatory Palestine British Government interned more and more of them in camps in Cyprus. The majority of these refugees were weak and disheveled having just escaped the Nazi death camps of Europe. In a cruel twist of fate, they now found themselves imprisoned behind the wire fences of another European superpower. Hundreds died and 53,000 refugees were held captive. 9
In another instance three Jews smuggling arms into Israel (for defense against Arab attacks) were sentenced to death by the British. The Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants in retaliation and warned if the Jews were executed the British soldiers would meet the same fate. The three Jews were executed on 29 July, and two days later the bodies of the soldiers were discovered hanged – their bodies booby-trapped. This caused a wave of anti-Jewish rioting throughout Britain and one London synagogue was burned to the ground.
As violence spiraled out of control the British handed the problem over to the United Nations, relinquishing its control and responsibility over the region.

Refusing to vote for the creation of Israel

If there was one moment in history that definitively captured Britain’s position on Jewish sovereignty, it was the 1947 United Nations partition vote. 72% of the nations taking part in the partition vote, voted for the creation of Jewish and Arab states. Greece and Britain were only Western nations that did not vote in favor of creating Israel.

Summary

It is factually wrong to say Britain created Israel, they certainly played a part in the creation of Israel, but the Jewish State was created by Zionists who purchased and settled the land. Nor, did the UN create Israel, they simply recognized it at a later date which was recorded in UN Resolution 181.

At times Britain went to great lengths to prevent a sovereign Jewish state in their ancestral homeland:

• Britain gave away the vast majority of Mandatory Palestine to the Arabs with the creation of Mandate Trans-Jordan.
• Britain went to huge lengths to prevent Jews from settling in their ancestral homeland, while it opened the gates for Arab migrants
• Britain refused to vote for a sovereign Jewish state
• However, it should be noted that there were also British governments and politicians that were favorable to Zionism (such as those involved in the Balfour declaration). The purpose of this article is to document the efforts Britain made to block the Jewish state, which primarily evolved in the late 1930's and 1940's.

Learn more about how Israel as recreated:

• Did Israel get all of the good land?
• Did America create Israel?
• Is it true that Israel stole Arab/Palestinian land?
• Was there ever a Palestinian people?
• Was there ever a country called Palestine?
• Was the Zionist movement a plot to colonize the Middle East?
• Were the Jews unwilling to share Palestine aka The Land of Israel?
• Was the UN Partition Plan (non-binding) unfair to the Arab/Palestinian majority?
• Are Israel’s borders expanding?
• Is it true that Britain created Israel?
• Why should the Arab/Palestinians pay for Europe's wrongs during the Holocaust?

Sources

1. Moshe Aumann, Land Ownership in Palestine 1880–1948, (Jerusalem: Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1976), pp. 8–9
2. Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 32.
3. Hope Simpson Report, p. 51
4. Palestine Royal Commission Report (1937)
5. Moshe Aumann, Land Ownership in Palestine 1880–1948, (Jerusalem: Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1976), p13
6. Spreadsheet which contains village statistics
7. Abraham Granott, The Land System in Palestine, (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952), p. 278
8. Avneri, pp. 179–180, 224–225, 232–234; Porath (77), pp. 72–73; See also Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2008).
9. Quoted in “Myths and facts 1982; a Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Leonard J. Davis and M. Decter, p199″
10. Righteous Victims, Benny Morris, p221
11. Hafez al-Assad, Prime Minister of Syria, Quoted in “Six Days of War, Michael B. Oren, p293″
12. American Journal of International Law, (April, 1970), pp. 345–46.