Basic HTML Version
this foreign policy, a con–
flict started to develop be–
tween Arabs and Jews.
The Jewish community in
Palestine by the end of the
war in 1918, constituted
only 17 percent of the pop–
ulation- 83 percent being
Arabs.
Jews and Arabs lived for
ages together. And 1 must
stress that the Jews lived
with the Arab Muslims
much better than they
lived with Christians in
Europe. The Jews con–
tributed to our [lslamic
Arabic) civilization in
many places, simply be–
cause Islam takes more
from Judaism than it takes from
Christianity. A big percentage of our
holy book is about Judaism.
The Jews were not our enemy
when the Islamic Empire started to
expand. Our enemies in the Middle
Ages were Christian Europeans,
Byzantines, and not Jews. So J ews
were with us. And Jews suffered like
we did in Spain when the Spaniards
expelled the Arabs from Spain by
the end of the 15th century. Both the
Jews and the Arabs suffered because
the Jews cooperated with the Arabs
in occupying and in developing
Spain. So there is, in history, a big
area of cooperation between Arab
Muslims and Jews.
With the British in Palestine, with
their policies starting to materialize
on the ground, Palestine Arabs began
to realize that they were facing
something new. The British govern–
ment was trying to impose upon
them the other community with
which they had been coexisting for a
long time.
As a result of that, in the '20s and
the '30s many clashes took place be–
tween Arabs and the British. In 1936
an Arab rebell io n erupted in
Palestine, and it continued for three
years till the beginning of World
War 11. The British in 1939 were
smart enough to know how to put an
end to this revolution by various
means: by giving promises to the
Arabs oo one hand, and by dividing
them on the other hand. So tbe re–
bellion was quelled. And we wit–
nessed in the region World War
U .
The war was not fought on our land
[on Arab soil], but we received sorne
32
of its effects and its impact in our
land.
Now we come to more recent
events in history, the pogroms and
the Holocaust of World War II.
Nazism was cruel, inhuman. Nazis
killed many civilians in Europe, and
in particular, the Jewish community.
That was bound to create a very hu–
man sympathy and attachment to the
Jewish cause in Europe and in the
world.
But nobody thought of who was
going to pay the price at that time.
The Zionist leaders were, as always,
very smart and they made use of
sympathy. "You see our plight in
Europe. You see how the Jews are
suffering," they said. With that they
started to promote the urgency for
building a Jewish state in Palestine.
To do that during the war, the
Allies, who were fighting the Nazis,
helped Jews in Easter;n Europe and
Western Europe to escape to
Palestine. So during the early '40s,
we witnessed in Palestine the illegal
immigration of Jews from Europe.
fn 1948, when the British mandate
carne to an end, Palestine had two
big communities: Arabs, who were
one million, and Jews, who at that
time were about 600,000. Once again
the Jews and their friends in the
world pushed their cause and asked
for the establishment of a national
Jewish home. The world believed the
Jewish people suffered enough.
Their suffering should be stopped.
The answer: a state.
The war ended in 1945. In 1947
the United Nations took, or adopted,
what is known in the history of the
Palestinian question as the partition–
ing plan which envisaged two states:
a Jewish state and an Arab state,
with Jerusalem and the area around
it
corpus separatum.
That is a Latín
phrase meaning something separate,
or having its own status.
Another problem started. In 1947,
when the United Nations adopted
the partitioning plan, the Jews in
Palestine owned only 5.6 percent of
Palestinian territory. The Palestinian
Arabs owned between 92-93 percent.
And the other property was owned
by foreigners-the Church of Rus–
sia, for example. Just imagine two
communities. One is one million, and
the other is 600,000. The one million
own 92 percent of the territory; the
others own 5.6 percent of the terri–
tory. Yet the partitioning plan allo–
cated the Jews 54 percent of
Palestine, and the rest was allocated
for the Arabs!
That, by itself, created a very im–
balanced position, a very unfair posi–
tion, which drove the Arabs to refuse
this partitioning plan.
lt
was a very
unfair deal. They couldn't bear it.
They thought that they should hold
to their territory to secure their
rights even if they had to fight for
that.
When they went to fighting, the
Arab states sided with the Palestin–
ians. That was the war of 1948, the
result of which was the establish–
ment of the state of Israel on a land
much larger than what the partition–
ing plan gave the Jews in Palestine.
As a result of the war they got 76
percent of the land. So in almost nine
months the Jewish community in
Palestine, previously having 5.6 per–
cent of the land, got 76 percent of
the land.
And here the conflict takes an–
other turn. The state of Israel is es–
tablished. The Arabs are unhappy
with this fact. The Palestinians are
now in the diaspora! For the first
time we have Palestinians switching
places with Jews-Jews coming from
the diaspora to a state, Palestinians
getting out of their country to the
diaspora. As a result of the war an
armistice agreement was reached be–
tween the belligerents.
Then the conflict took another
turn. The lsraelis adopted a position
of calling for peace with the Arabs in
the '50s. The Arabs said, "No,
be–
cause you have taken our land. Give
The
PLAIN TRUTH