UNM Israel Alliance

By Ami Isserhoff Zionism-Israel.com

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was to have been accompanied by creation of an independent Arab Palestinian state. Instead, a war broke out, and at the end of the war, between 600,000 and 711,000 Arab Palestinians had left their homes and were refugees. The defeat of the Arab Palestinians and the creation of the refugee problem is called the “disaster” (Nakba) by pro-Palestinians, and it is blamed on a supposed Zionist conspiracy to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine, and supposed forced expulsion of the Arabs from their homes.

Nakba: Arab Palestinian Refugees

It cannot be disputed that a large number of Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the Israel war of Independence. Their suffering is real. It cannot be disputed that the Jews (and later the IDF) carried out violent acts, often targeting civilians. The Irgun rolled barrels of explosives out of the backs of trucks in the Old City of Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the Haganah and Irgun attacked villages in various reprisal raids. They did it because the Arabs were terrorizing the Jews, attacking Jewish transportation and murdering people in ambushes. Reprisals were thought to discourage further attacks, and sometimes removing a hostile population was the only way to open roads or stop repeated attacks. It is equally true that the Arab Palestinians committed atrocities against the Jews. They bombed Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, murdered people in Kfar Etzion and attacked the Jews of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The Arabs however, were acting in defiance of a UN resolution, and their leadership announced the express aim of exterminating the Jews of Palestine. The Arabs left Palestine in large numbers, whereas, despite large massacres and a bitter siege in Jerusalem, the Jews did not leave. The fact that the Arabs left can be attributed to response to Jewish violence, poor social organization, to exaggeration of Jewish atrocities and also to the circumstance that they lost the war. However, the Arabs began leaving Palestine fairly early in the conflict, when most of them believed they would win the war, and when the capacity of the Jews to exert physical coercion was limited by the presence of the British. Exaggerated atrocity stories about Deir Yassin and other real or alleged massacres may have prompted some to leave, but the Jews had quite real atrocity stories of Arab massacres of Jews, that were documented by eye-witnesses, yet they did not flee.

Those who favor the Nakba “narrative” point to the massacre committed by the Irgun and Lehi in Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948 and to the Haganah Plan Dalet (Plan D), which they claim was a plan for “ethnically cleansing” of Palestine. The can also point to forced expulsion of Arabs in Lod and Ramle and a number of other real or alleged “massacres.”

Arab Attack on a Jewish convoy, 1948

Those who deny this narrative can point out that the Irgun and Lehi were dissident organizations. They did not plan a massacre, and in any case their attack in Deir Yassin was not a part of Plan Dalet. Plan Dalet did not call for ethnic cleansing. It did call for holding and clearing villages that were occupied by Arab irregular troops and used as bases to attack transportation. These attacks had produced the total isolation of Jerusalem, which was held under siege.

In Haifa and Jaffo, the Jewish and British authorities pleaded with Arabs to stay. In numerous other places the Arabs fled of their own accords when the town was captured by the Jews. Lod and Ramle are situated close to Tel Aviv, to the international airport, and to the main road between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. The Arabs of Lod and Ramle, who had played an incorrigible part in sabotaging Jewish transportation, were expelled later in the war, when it had become obvious that coexistence was virtually impossible. It is easy to read back into this expulsion the act of a cruel enemy that had planned a campaign of ethnic cleansing, especially in the light of subsequent Israeli military prowess. At the time, the entire southern half of Israel was still occupied by the Egyptian army, and the survival of the state was uncertain.

The issue has been the subject of a long controversy beginning with allegations by Joseph Weitz that the Arabs themselves had initiated the flight. Weitz’s allegations are suspect, because Weitz was an avid advocate of transferring Arabs out of Palestine and had been so since 1940 or 1941. In a 1948 report to the Israel government, Weitz wrote that “the migration of the Arabs of the Land of Israel was not caused by persecution, violence, expulsion…”. According to Weitz, the flight was “deliberately organized by the Arab leaders in order to arouse Arab feelings of revenge, to artificially create an Arab refugee problem…and to prepare the ground for the invasion of Palestine by the Arab States who could then appear as saviors of their brother Arabs”.

Jon Kimche, Joseph Schechtman and Professor Leo Kohn continued this line of advocacy, while Rashid Khalidi, , Erskine Childers, Ilan Pappe, and Christopher Hitchens insisted that the exodus of Palestinian refugees was due only to Zionist violence, and that insinuated or stated that the violence was part of a planned policy to evict the Arabs of Palestine. A large number of quotes and documents have been doctored or fabricated and advanced by either side as “evidence.” Some of these can be verified. Others appear with different dates in different places and are suspicious. None of them provide conclusive proof.

The issues surrounding “what happened” have been systematically confuted with the issues of “who bears responsibility” and “what should be done about the refugee problem.

Benny Morris on the Palestinian Arab Nakba

In his books and articles about the subject, Israeli historian Benny Morris has long equivocated and often contradicted his own conclusions. Thus, different advocates could draw any lessons they desired from much of Morris’s writing: there was a plan to expel Arabs, there was no plan, the exodus was the work of transfer advocates, the exodus was due to fear in the Arab population, the exodus was due to breakdown of social structures among the Arabs. He has often been quoted in support of the claim that the Arabs of Palestine were expelled by the Zionists according to a pre-arranged plan.

In a letter to the Irish Times of February 21, 2008, Benny Morris makes his current views on the refugee problem quite clear however.

Madam, – Israel-haters are fond of citing – and more often, mis-citing – my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections.

The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible “in some bizarre way” (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple.

In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes.

It is true, as Erskine Childers pointed out long ago, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Arabs to flee en masse; indeed, there were broadcasts by several Arab radio stations urging them to stay put. But, on the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities, as occurred in Haifa in late April, 1948. And Haifa’s Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, did, on April 22nd, plead with them to stay, to no avail.

Most of Palestine’s 700,000 “refugees” fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became “refugees” – and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) – was not a “racist crime” (David Landy, January 24th) but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.

There was no Zionist “plan” or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of “ethnic cleansing”. Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 10th, 1948 (it is open and available for all to read in the IDF Archive and in various publications), was the master plan of the Haganah – the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) – to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. That’s what it explicitly states and that’s what it was. And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq duly occurred, on May 15th.

It is true that Plan D gave the regional commanders carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front lines and the anticipated Arab armies’ invasion routes. And it is also true that mid-way in the 1948 war the Israeli leaders decided to bar the return of the “refugees” (those “refugees” who had just assaulted the Jewish community), viewing them as a potential fifth column and threat to the Jewish state’s existence. I for one cannot fault their fears or logic.

The demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies – much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two….

Morris had made similar statements previously in interviews and articles, surprising many who had used his writings in support of Arab Palestinian claims.

Ethnic Cleansing in the Palestinian Nakba

Palestine Refugees – Palestinian Jews of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City being expelled

Indeed, there were instances of ethnic cleansing in the Israeli-Arab war of 1948, and of planned massacres. There were two irrefutable, uncontestable and unchallenged instances of ethnic cleansing in the Israei war of independence . The first occurred when the Arab Legion, under British officers, conquered Gush Etzion. Following a massacre of defenders, the remaining inhabitants were expelled and ethnically cleansed, the four kibbutzim were looted thoroughly. The looting started before the fighting had finished. The second instance of ethnic cleansing occurred in the old city of Jerusalem, at the end of May in 1948. Again the culprit was the British officered Legion, by now called the “Jordan Legion” to free the British from any association with its war crimes. The British officers were now officially “volunteers.” Under the watchful eyes of the soldiers of the Legion, the entire remnant of the Jewish population of the old city of Jerusalem, about 1,700 people who had remained there despite repeated pogroms, were ethnically cleaned (See The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem ).

There were also a number of intentional massacres in Palestine that can be proven. Most of them were committed by Arabs. The smaller actions consisted of ambushes on isolated settlements and persons, murder of the victims and mutilation of the corpses. This practice had been going on for several years, and the photos of the mutilated corpses were preserved by British Palestine police. The most infamous massacre however, occurred with the willing assent of the British. This war crime was the planned targeting of a convoy of medical personnel and patients bound for Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. About 80 persons, doctors and nurses and patients, including the director of the hospital, were murdered in cold blood on April 13, 1948. (see The Hadassah Convoy Massacre )

Palestinian Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al Husseini (Hussayni) with Nazi Troops: Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini featured on the cover of Vienna Illustrated (Wiener Illustrierte) magazine under the Nazi regime.

The Jews had every reason to fear that the Arabs would massacre them en masse, since that is what Arab leaders promised. The leader of the Palestinian Arabs was the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, an escaped Nazi war criminal. His rival, the leader of the Arab Liberation Army, Fawzi Al Qaukji was likewise a product of the Nazi war machine. The Mufti, who spent the war years in Germany recruiting SS troops for the Nazis, had told the British that he planned for the Jews of Palestine, the same solution as had been adopted for the Jews of Europe: extermination.

The Arabs of Palestine, instigated by the Mufti, had a history of pogroms against the Jewish communities in 1920, 1921, 1929 and in the so called Arab Uprising of 1936-1939. On the eve of the war, Palestinian and other Arab leaders had issued blood curdling calls to murder the Jews, along with calling on the Arabs of the Palestine mandate to leave their homes and allow Arab armies to finish the work of conquering the land.

The Palestine Nakba – First Stage

The Arab Israeli war of 1948 took place in two stages. During the first stage the British were in the country. It was not physically possible for the Jews to expel Arabs by force. Jewish forces were weak and the British would prevent massive operations. Nonetheless, between 100,000 and 300,000 refugees had fled by May 15, 1948, before the British left Palestine.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly had voted to partition the British Mandate territory known as Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, implementing the provisions of international law embodied in the League of Nations British Mandate for Palestine. (See UN Resolution 181: Palestine Partition.). The Arabs opposed the UN decision and the creation of the Jewish state . The Arab League Secretary, Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, said after the UN vote, “The partition line will be nothing but a line of fire and blood.” (Bregman Ahron and El-Tahri, Jihan, Israel and the Arabs, TVbooks, N.Y. 1998 p. 28).

The Arab League League considered plans for massive persecution of Jews, which were eventually implemented and resulted in massive expulsion of the Jews of Arab countries. The Arabs began rioting in Jerusalem, attacking Jewish towns and transportation, while the British looked on. The Jews counter attacked, and Arabs began leaving Palestine, as their disorganized leadership crumbled. As early as January 30, 1948, The Jaffa newspaper, As Sha’ab warned, “The first of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere….At the first signs of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.”

The warning was to no avail. The exodus of Arab refugees continued. In the largest cities, Haifa and Yaffo-Tel-Aviv, Arab attacks on Jewish neighborhoods were met by more effective Jewish counterattacks. At the end of April, Arabs fled Yaffo and Haifa en masse, despite the pleas of the British and of Israeli authorities.

According to the US Consul in Haifa, “. . . local mufti-dominated Arab leaders” were urging “all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.” (Aubrey Lippincott, U.S. Consul General in Haifa, April 22, 1948 )

Likewise, Jamal Husseini, the nephew of Grand Mufti Hajj Amin El Husseini, reported to the UN that, ”

“The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce; they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did.” ( Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, speaking to the United Nations Security Council. UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14. )

Time Magazine of May 3, 1948, reported of Haifa:

“The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. More than pride and defiance was behind the Arab orders. By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa. Jewish leaders said wishfully: “They’ll be back in a few days. Already some are returning.”

The London Times of May 5, 1948 reported:

“The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, evidently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa.”

Palestine Nakba Second Stage

Despite Arab opposition, on May 14 1948, as the British were leaving Palestine, David Ben Gurion declared the independent state of Israel. The Israel Declaration of Independence stated in part:

In the midst of wanton aggression, we still call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions – provisional or permanent.

We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.

The reaction of the Arab states was quite different. On May 15, in defiance of the U.N. the Arab states attacked Israel. According to the Egyptian newspaper, Akbar al Youm of October 12, 1963, on May 15, 1948, ” the Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab countries were about to enter and fight in their stead.”

According to the New York Times of May 16, 1948, The Arab League Secretary, Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha stated, “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

According to Palestinian Nimr al Hawari, in his book, Sir Am Nakba (the Secret of the Nakba) published in Nazareth in 1965, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as Said stated,

“We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”

This would seem to be fairly unequivocal proof that the Arabs began the war, and moreover, that Arab leaders actually encouraged the flight of the refugees at the start of the war.

The Egyptians invaded Gaza and Israel, and bombed Tel Aviv. The Jordanians invaded Jerusalem, the To justify their aggression, the Arab League issued a declaration that stated in part:

The Governments of the Arab States emphasize, on this occasion, what they have already declared before the London Conference and the United Nations, that the only solution of the Palestine problem is the establishment of a unitary Palestinian State… (whereby) the holy places will be preserved and the rights of access thereto guaranteed.

Eighth:

The Arab States most emphatically declare that (their) intervention in Palestine was due only to these considerations and objectives, and that they aim at nothing more than to put an end to the prevailing conditions in (Palestine). For this reason, they have great confidence that their action will have the support of the United Nations; (that it will be) considered as an action aiming at the realization of its aims and at promoting its principles, as provided for in its Charter.

The Arabs were “confident” that the UN would assist them in defying a resolution of the UN! The declaration also stated that:

The Zionist aggression resulted in the exodus of more than a quarter of a million of its Arab inhabitants from their homes and in taking refuge in the neighbouring Arab countries. The events which have taken place in Palestine have unmasked the aggressive intentions and the imperialist designs of the Zionists, including the atrocities committed by them against the peace-loving Arab inhabitants, especially in Dayr Yasin, Tiberias and others.

According to all accounts, no atrocities were committed in Tiberias. The Haganah reacted to Arab attacks on Jews, and the Arabs left voluntarily. The revelation that a quarter of a million Arabs had already fled Palestine while the British were still in control is a clear indication that the flight of the refugees was not due to forcible expulsion, since the “force” available to the underground Jewish armies was negligible while there were 100,000 British troops in Palestine

Palestine Refugee Nakba Retrospectives

By August of 1948, the situation had clearly changed. The Arab countries now had large numbers of refugees, it was obvious they would not win the war, and the alarming problem was evident to all.
John Bagot Glubb (“Glubb Pasha”), the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, was quoted in the London Daily Mail of August 12, 1948. as admitting,

“Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war”

Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee, was quoted in the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub of August 16, 1948 as saying:

“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two.

Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ‘Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”

Hakim later denied he had made the statement.

Just after the war, and even later, the problem, and whose fault it was, was abundantly clear to the Arabs as well as the Jews. Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph published on Sept. 6, 1949, stated:

” The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”

Following a visit to refugees in Gaza in June 1949, British diplomat Sir John Troutbeck reported the following

‘But while they express no bitterness against the Jews…they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: ‘We know who our enemies are,’ they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes.” (recorded in British FO document #371/75342/XC/A/4991

A report by Habib Issa in the Lebanese newspaper, Al Hoda of June 8, 1951, stated:

“The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean.

Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

Al Difaa, Jordan, of September 6, 1954 quoted a refugee as saying:

“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in,” one refugee said. “So we got out, but they did not get in.”

The Jordanian daily Al Urdun of April 9, 1953, quoted Yunes Ahmed Assad, a refugee from Deir Yassin, as saying:

“The Arab Exodus was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by the Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews. For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs … By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy.”

Sometimes, the admissions of Arab commentators were also tempered by reference to the real or imagined Zionist atrocities. Edward Atiyah, who was London Secretary of The Arab League, wrote in his book, “The Arabs” London: Penguin Books 1955, p.183.

“This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could only be a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country. But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin.”.

Khaled al ‘Azm, Syrian Prime Minister during the war, wrote in his memoirs:

[among the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948 was] “the call by the Arab Governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and to leave for the bordering Arab countries, after having sown terror among them…Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave…We have brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees, by calling upon them and pleading with them to leave their land, their homes, their work and business…” . Khaled al-`Azm, Memoirs. Beirut 1973. Part 1, pp. 386-387

The above quotes are remarkable for the fact that most of them are based on “after the fact” retrospectives, and for that fact that they all came from Arab sources. It was the Arabs, and particularly the Arabs of Palestine, who insisted that the Nakba was caused by the pleas of Arab leaders. We cannot say if these were fabrications due to inter-Arab rivalry, or just selective memory, but the accounts are not just those of Zionist sympathizers and did not originate with Zionists as the pro-Palestinian “debunkers” insist. Apparently, however, there were such calls to leave Palestine in May of 1945 by the Mufti and by Nuri as Said at least.

It is true that many of the quotes regarding voluntary departure of the refugees relate to Haifa and Jaffo. However, these massive flights of tens of thousands occurred early in the fighting. The Deir Yassin massacre is cited as a “pivotal” event, but it involved about 100 people in a single village. The massive flights from Haifa and Yaffo could not fail to have served as examples for further flights later in the war. Safed was likewise captured on May 10, 1948, before Israeli independence. The Arabs of Safed fled before the Hagannah entered the town. The same pattern was repeated in other large towns in the south, when the Egyptians withdrew: Beersheba, Isdood (Ashdod) and Majdal (Ashkelon) were almost totally empty of Arab inhabitants. Beersheba and Isdood were captured in October of 1948, and Majdal was captured on November 6. By then it was not possible that the inhabitants thought that they were leaving their homes for only a few days.

The Perpetuation of the Nakba Tragedy

The Jewish refugees in Israel, and those who became refugees from Arab countries, were absorbed into Israeli society. In two or three years, Israel absorbed a population of refugees equivalent to the entire Jewish population of Palestine in 1948. By 1950, the Jewish population of Israel had approximately doubled.

By the end of the war, however, the Arab states had decided to make return of the refugees the centerpiece of their campaign against Israel, and to use it as a device for destroying Israel. They convinced Falke Bernadotte to include return of the refugees as a demand in his last report. When Bernadotte was assassinated, the Arab states and their supporters attempted to pass a UN resolution that would mandate both return of the refugees and removal of the Negev from Israel, as Bernadotte had recommended. The US scuttled the demand for detaching the Negev from Israel. By this time, the Israelis had dislodged the Egyptians from the northern Negev and opened the road south. But UN Resolution 194 did call for return of refugees who wished to “live in peace with their neighbors.” The resolution did not specify Arab refugees only, and it did not specify that to “live in peace with their neighbors” included acceptance of UN resolution 181, which had called for creation of Jewish and Arab states.

The birth of the Palestine Nakba mythology

The Arab states and the supporters of the Palestinian Arabs gradually developed the myth that the Jews had conspired to expel the Arabs of Palestine, and that this expulsion had been the plan of the Jewish leadership in 1948, and even a plan of the Zionists beginning with Theodor Herzl. After visiting Turkish ruled Jerusalem, Herzl had written the novel Altneuland, which envisioned a mulipluralistic Jewish state in which Arabs and Jews had equal rights. Early Zionists had insisted on safeguarding the rights of the Arabs of Palestine. But reality did not interfere with such fantasies.

Erskine Childers and the Palestinian Nakba Myth

In the 1960s, Erskine Childers published the results of a “study” he had done that purportedly “proved” that the Arab refugees had not been urged by their leaders to leave Palestine. In a May 12, 1961 article in the Spectator (on the Web here: users.cloud9.net/~recross/israel-watch/ErskinChilders.html) he popularized his results. This article is cited by numerous Nakba enthusiasts to “prove” that “Zionists” fabricated history. Childers alleged that only Zionists claimed that the Arab leaders had asked Arabs to leave Palestine. He claimed that the only proof of these calls offered by Israelis was in a single issue of the Economist of October 1948. He ignored the New York Times, Time magazine, and most other Arab sources cited above. He He ignored the statements of the Arab Higher Committee representatives, the Prime Minister of Iraq, the Prime Minister of Syria and the Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini. As we have seen, it was the Arabs themselves who insisted that Arab leaders urged the Arabs of Palestine to leave. Childers wrote:

As none of the other stock quotations in Israeli propaganda are worth comment, I next decided to test the undocumented charge that the Arab evacuation orders were broadcast by Arab radio.

The idea of examining radio broadcasts was apparently originated by Childers. In later years however, it was alleged that it was “Zionists” who spread the story of these broadcasts. Childers claimed to have read all the transcripts of every Arab broadcast in the Middle East in that period, and claimed that they had all been monitored by the British and Americans. His claim is itself is somewhat tenuous. The period covers almost a year. He would have had to have read every word of every broadcast on every station in the Middle East from January to August 1948 at least. Thousands of hours of broadcasting from numerous stations. Even today, the BBC monitoring service and the US FBIS do not claim to record every word of every broadcast. Childers claimed that he had read the records of all these broadcasts and that they were complete, and that in all these broadcasts there was no evidence that Arab leaders asked the Arab population of Palestine to leave.

The quality of Childers’ scholarship and objectivity can be assessed from this statement in the article:

More than 80 per cent of the entire land area of Israel is land abandoned by the Arab refugees.

The above figure is absurd. 55% of the land area of green line Israel is Negev desert. In 1945, this land was estimated to contain at most 50,000 nomadic Bedouin, and almost none of the Negev land was registered to any owner. About 48% of the land of the Palestine mandate was government owned. Of the arable land, about 6 or 8 million dunam, the Zionists had reclaimed 1 million dunam from swampland. How could 80% of the land of Israel be land that was abandoned by Arab refugees?

There is a conspicuous absence from Childers’ account, that has never been challenged. Both Arab and Zionist sources directly or indirectly quote statements by the Mufti, by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as Said and Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League calling on Arabs to leave Palestine on or about May 15, 1948. Childers does not mention any such statements on May 15, or at the time that the partition resolution was passed. He does mention calls by local leaders and media for Arabs to stay put, but he doesn’t tell us what the major leaders said in full. Surely it would be incredible if these leaders, and other Arab leaders, had said nothing at all on the eve of the war, besides, perhaps, counseling Arab Palestinians to stay put. They must have said something. It would be equally incredible if no radio station and no Arab newspaper had found anything that Arab leaders said on this occasion to be noteworthy. Did they forecast a difficult war or an easy one? Did they promise a future of bright cooperation to the Jews of the Palestine mandate? Did the counsel moderation? Childers doesn’t explain. According to his account, it seems that the leaders in question had no opinions at all regarding the war, or else none of the radio stations and media in the entire Middle East thought that it might be important to record those opinions.

Israeli contribution to the Palestinian Nakba

The biggest boost to the Palestinian “narrative” of expulsion came from Israeli historians. The “new historians,” angry at the occupation and their exclusion from power, developed the thesis that the forcible transfer of Arabs from Palestine was an integral part of Zionist ideology, using distorted and sometimes totally incorrect quotes of Ben Gurion and others, tendentious logic, fabricated “evidence” and one-sided narratives.

Ilan Pappe and others furthered the idea that “the Zionists” had plotted the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On more than one occasion, Pappe has explained that in his view facts don’t matter, as only pedants concern themselves with facts. In one case, he backed an MA student who falsified data to “prove” that Israeli troops of the Alexandroni brigade had perpetrated a massacre in a place called Tantura. Even after his student, Teddy Katz, had retracted his claims after being confronted with evidence of tampering with the data, Pappe continued to defend him. In military Hebrew, the phrases for moping up snipers and stragglers after a military operation are “tihur hashetach” and “nikui hashetach.” Literally translated, these phrases mean “purification of the area” and “cleaning of the area.” Pappe and others persuaded their audiences that these phrases, which appear in numerous military communications, are codes for “ethnic cleansing.”

The behavior of Israel in refusing to allow return of the refugees was made to seem monstrous by distorting the facts of 1948. Accounts of the Nakba never mention the Nazi ideology of the Grand Mufti. They never mention the vows of Arab leaders to destroy Israel, or the crucial strategic role that the “innocent civilians” of the Arab towns and villages played in attacking Jewish transportation and harboring the volunteer forces of the Mufti and the ALA of Kaukji.

It is also easy to project the values and reality of the twenty-first century back onto 1948. The name of “Israel” today conjures up in the mind’s eye a nuclear power, the state with the most powerful army in the Middle East. It is difficult for people to imagine today that Israel was once a totally helpless state with virtually no army, no tanks, no artillery and no air force. For today’s audiences, the Nakba narrative of 1948 can be made to appear like an older version of the news photos of Israeli tanks in Gaza and the West Bank today.

In 1945, Germany had lost World War II. The Sudetens Germans, who had agitated for the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, were expelled, and their land and property were confiscated by the Czech state. Similarly, a large swath of East Germany, including Silesia and the free city of Danzig, now Gdansk, became a part of Poland. Germans lost property and were expelled. Nobody claims that they must be repatriated or that this “ethnic cleansing” must be reversed. The birth of India and Pakistan in 1947, was also accompanied by massive population exchanges. Again, nobody claims that these “refugees” must be “returned” to their homes after half a century or given compensation in order to allow a peace settlement. But such transfers, perfectly respectable as late as 1945, are considered taboo when in the case of the Palestinian Arab ‘Nakba.’

A second boost was given to the myth of ethnic cleansing and transfer by right wing Zionists, likewise inspired by the situation created by the occupation. In order to legitimize their own racist ideas of expelling Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza, some of them have tried to rewrite Zionist history to show that transfer was always a legitimate Zionist idea, that use of force was always part of Zionism, and that the Arab flight of 1948 was due to a deliberate plan of expulsion. If it was justified then, they argue, then it is justified now.

In truth, there were advocates of voluntary transfer in the Zionist movement and others who accepted it, however reluctantly, when it became apparent that there might be no other way to obtain a Jewish state. In a few cases, the notion of “voluntary” became very elastic. Joseph Weitz was an ardent advocate of transfer beginning in 1941. He didn’t seem to be too worried about the question of whether or not this transfer was voluntary or the people received compensation. However, there is no evidence that his ideas became official policy prior to the Israel war of Independence. He was put in charge of making use of abandoned Arab villages and lands, but there is nothing to suggest that he was allowed to “encourage” Arabs to abandons their lands.

The pro-Palestinian advocates of the “ethnic cleansing” thesis would have us believe that the Jewish community in Palestine, which numbered half as many people as the Arabs, and which was surrounded by large Arab countries, planned and instigated a genocidal war even though they had virtually no weapons and were not allowed to obtain weapons under the mandatory authorities, and even though the record clearly shows that it was the Arabs of Palestine who instigated the violence, and the Arab states that had invaded Israel.

Right of Return and Abuse of the Nakba

The issue of how the Arabs of Palestine came to refugees is not directly relevant to the claimed “right of return” to Israel, though it has been abused by both sides for this purpose. UN General Assembly resolution 194 is not binding in international law. The right of return, wherever it has been exercised, is not granted to enemy belligerents in an aggressive war. It is granted to persons who want to return to their homeland and live there as loyal citizens. However the overriding concern is self determination. The partition resolution called for two states for two peoples, and that the League of Nations mandate had already recognized the right of the Jewish people to self determination. Self-Determination is Jus Cogens, that takes precedence over other claims in international law. Return of the Arab Palestinian refugees, or rather, return of their numerous descendants to Israel, would make the Jews a minority in Israel and void the Jewish right to self determination (see Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees in International Law ).

The real Palestinian Arab Nakba

A Palestinian Arab state could have absorbed the refugees of 1948, just as Israel absorbed refugees from Europe and the Arab world, but the Arab states made no serious moves to implement a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza, though rival Palestinian governments were set up briefly by Jordan in the West Bank and by Egypt in Gaza.

Instead, the Arabs of Palestine were kept in camps. The Arabs sought to use the issue as a lever for the destruction of Israel, but had no intention of allowing an independent Palestinian Arab state. Rather, “Palestine” was always part of the general cause of Arab nationalism. The issue at stake was never the “loss” of self-determination of the Palestinian Arabs, since the Arabs had never had self rule and did not want self rule until the Zionists had come to the land.

The UN set up a special mechanism, the UNRWA, to provide emergency services for the refugees. The “emergency” has lasted about 60 years. The refugee population, swelled by a prodigious birth rate as well as fraud, has reached many millions. If 100,000 refugees were repatriated each year forever, the population of Arab Palestinian refugees would still keep growing, yet Arab opposition to a humane solution is so stalwart that nobody dares to suggest seriously that the UNRWA should be dissolved or that alternative solutions should be sought for the Arab Palestinian refugees. The perpetuation of the refugee problem for political reasons is the real and enduring Nakba, the disastrous tragedy of the Arabs of Palestine.

The Palestinian Nakba, Peace and Justice for Palestine

There is no way of ever obtaining total and complete justice in the real world. Those who insist on “Peace with Justice” should take care of what they wish for. The Nazi Grand Mufti of Jerusalem escaped punishment at Nuremberg because he was freed by the French, apparently in order to interfere with British policy in Palestine. He died in his bed. The tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Jews who were killed by the Nazis because of the Mufti are never going to get justice. The Jewish refugees from Arab lands are probably never going to be compensated for the properties they lost, or for centuries of humiliation under Muslim rule. The Jews of Jerusalem who died in the siege of hunger, disease or enemy bombs and bullets will not get justice. The innocent Arabs, and there were undoubtedly innocents, who died or were expelled in 1948 are not going to get justice. The Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks and British who invaded and held the land of Israel are never going to face justice either. The great injustice that is being done to the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Palestine is perpetuation of the conflict and the hatred in the name of impossible and reprehensible goals.

Some related materials: 1948 Israel War of Independence (Arab-Israeli war) Timeline (Chronology) Israel War of Independence

Published online by Zionism-Israel, Ami Isserhoff

HIDDEN HISTORY, SECRET PRESENT: THE ORIGINS AND STATUS OF AFRICAN PALESTINIANS

By Susan Beckerleg, translated by Salah Al Zaroo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project was made possible by a Nuffield Foundation, Social Science Award, administered by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

I wish to thank my colleagues working on European Union Avicenne Initiative Projects for their advice and support, in particular Salah Al Zaroo and Gillian Hundt. My husband Abudi Kibwana Sizi assisted during two visits to the Palestine. In the Nagab and Gaza many people helped to put me in touch with colleagues, neighbours and friends of African descent. They include Ibrahim Abu Jaffar, Adnan El Sanne, Fatme Kassim, and Shahada Ebbweini.
Last but not least, I wish to thank all the people of African descent who talked with me in Jeruslaem, Gaza and the Nagab. They are not named so that their privacy can be maintained.

INTRODUCTION

This report summarises the findings of a project has addressed a neglected and sensitive area of research about the history of Palestine. The history of the region has been turbulent and has involved the settlement of peoples from Asia, Africa and Europe. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, Palestinians have had little time or inclination to study their origins prior to settlement in Palestine. Indeed, such studies could be counter-productive as they might pander to Israeli views that Palestinians are migrants to the region. In recent years, much international attention has focused on the Ethiopian Jews and their position within Israeli society. However, although peoples of African origin other than the Ethiopian Jews have been in Palestine for far longer, there are virtually no accounts of how they arrived in the region or their position and role within Middle Eastern society.

Interviews with black (sumr) Palestinians were conducted in Gaza, the Nagab and Jerusalem between September 1995 and January 1998. Contact, through introductions, was sought and people were interviewed informally in their homes in either English or Arabic. At the start of the project the ‘peace process’ under the Oslo Accords was in its early stages and many Palestinians were optimistic. However, as the political situation worsened it became more difficult to talk to people about the highly sensitive and political issues of ethnic origin, the legacy of slavery and their current status as Palestinian or Israeli citizens.

This study was made possible by the kind co-operation of Palestinians living in Jerusalem, Gaza and the Nagab. People of African descent told me what they knew of their parents and grandparents and their lives in Palestine. Some older people I spoke to Jerusalem had been born in Africa, while others in the Nagab and Gaza told me what they knew of how their ancestors came to Palestine. For many other people the link with Africa had been lost and all but forgotten. In London I searched libraries for historical accounts of the links between Africa and Palestine. I did not find much. This shortage of historical documentation makes the accounts of the people I spoke to all the more important.

EARLY CONTACT BETWEEN AFRICA AND ARABIA

Palestine lies at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe. For thousands of years spices have passed along trade routes through Palestine. Ambergris and frankincense were brought from Somalia and Ethiopia. As well as trade, war, colonisation and pilgrimage all ensured that the peoples and cultures of north-eastern Africa and Arabia mingled.

In the seventh century there were Africans living in Arabia, and Mohammed’s trusted companion, Bilal was an Ethiopian freed slave. Many, but not all, the Africans in Arabia were slaves. It is often forgotten that there were slaves from many parts of the world in the Middle East. For example Circassian people from the Asia Minor to the north were prized as slaves. Black male slaves were often soldiers or government administrators and some achieved high rank. Black women worked as household slaves or were the concubines of wealthy high status men. The children born to concubines were not slaves, and some with fathers of high rank became leaders.

With the spread of Islam and the conversion of Africans in Africa, more and more black people participated in the Haj. However there were also migrations from Araba to Africa and later back to Arabia to perform the Haj. The Palestinian historian Arif El-Arif reports that some people trace the historical roots of contemporary Africans in Jerusalem back to Arabia:

‘The origins of the African community go back to pure Arabic roots. The majority of the members are derived from the Arab Muslim tribe called Al Salamat. This tribe was living in Jeddah, Hijaz (now in Saudi Arabia), and then migrated to Chad and Sudan and other African countries. However, members of the tribe kept up contact with Hijaz, especially Mecca and Medina for the Haj, and after the pilgrimage they went to Jerusalem to continue their worship in al Aqsa mosque, the place of the nocturnal journey of the prophet Mohammed to the Seven Heavens. So some of these visitors loved Jerusalem and stayed in it.’ (Arif el-Arif, address given in Jerusalem in 1971)

GUARDIANS OF THE HOLY PLACES

European writers and travellers tell a different story and report that slaves of African origin guarded the Haram As-Sharif in Jerusalem. According to these accounts Africans were deployed by Mamluke and then Ottoman rulers to guard the holy places of Islam. Similar guards also existed in Mecca and Medina. Although they were slaves, they were respected, trusted and sometimes quite powerful.

The following information on the history of African Palestinians in Jerusalem is taken from their own account entitled ‘The Palestinian Africans in Jerusalem: Between their Miserable Reality and Hopes for the Future’.

The Africans living in Jerusalem are proud of their historic role as guardians of the Islamic holy places since the time of the Mamluk in the thirteenth century. They occupy the Mamluk buildings on either side of Al’a Ad-Deen Street leading to Al Aqsa mosque. On one side are the Al’a Ad-Deen Busari buildings, completed in 1267 and named after the Mamluke founder of the quarter. On the other side are the Al Mansouri buildings which were completed in 1282. Originally the two Ribat were hostels for pilgrims worshipping at Al Asqa Mosque.

During the Ottoman period the Ribats were occupied by Africans who worked as guards of the mosque and waqf properties. Because of their honesty these Africans held keys to the gates of the mosque and were responsible for preventing non-Muslims from entering the mosque area. Towards the end of the Ottoman era the Ribats were converted into prisons: Ribat Ad-Deen bacame Habs Ad -Dam, while Ribat Mansouri became Habs Ar-Ribat. This situation continued until 1914.

After the British took over Palestine in 1918 the prisons were closed and responsibility for the buildings was returned to the waqf authorities who used the buildings for temporary housing for the poor, including Africans. When Imam Hussein, Al Mufti, who led the struggle against the British and Jews until 1948, took charge of the waqf in Jerusalem he rented the two Ribats to the Africans at a nominal rate. Some of the Africans continued their traditions and worked as bodyguards to the Mufti himself. The descendants of the Africans still live in the two Ribat, today.

In 1971 the care of the tomb of the founder of the quarter, Al’a Ad-Deen Al Busari, restored by the African community, was entrusted to them in a ceremony led by the ex-mayor of Jerusalem and historian, Arif el-Arif. In his speech he stated that:

‘Members of the African community were devoted guards of Al Aqsa mosque. The African community is steadfast in Jerusalem and they did not leave even in crisis situations.’

CONTEMPORAY AFRICANS IN JERUSALEM
During interviews with members of the African community in Jerusalem I learnt of the recent history of Palestinians of African origin. Their written account, mentioned above, ‘The African Palestinians in Jerusalem’, provided more details.

Most contemporary members of the African community came to Jerusalem as pilgrims and workers under the British Mandate of Palestine (1917-1948). They came mostly from Senegal, Chad, Nigeria and Sudan. They regard themselves as Palestinian and played an active role in the Intifada. Some of the Africans arrived as part of the Egyptian led ‘Salvation Army’ which aimed to liberate the Palestinian areas held by Jews in 1948. After the defeat of that army and its retreat to Egypt many Africans returned to their original countries, while others preferred to stay in Palestine.

El Haj Jeddeh, who was born in Chad but traces his family origins to Jeddah in the Hijaz, is the Mukhtar of the African community and some other Arabs living in the vicinity. He has served under the British, the Jordanians and now the Israelis. In addition, he also takes care of the tomb of Al’a Ad-Deen Busari and acts as a spiritual leader to his community.

Men who came from Africa to Jerusalem during this century married local women, many of whom were of African descent themselves. Ties with Jericho, where many black Palestinians live, are particularly strong. Others married Palestinian women who have no ties with Africa.

In their account of their history ‘The Palestinian Africans in Jerusalem’ they explain how when Israel occupied the West Bank many Africans were forced to become refugees in surrounding countries’ leading to a 25% reduction of the numbers of African Palestinians living in Jerusalem. African Palestinians were particularly active during the Intifada and many confrontations with Israeli troops took place. One day the Israelis arrested all males aged between 10 and 45 years and insulted them telling them ‘you are Africans, you have nothing to do with Palestine’.

MEMORIES OF SLAVERY IN BEDOUIN SOCIETY

Although Africans have been in Palestine for centuries, most people know little about this migration. For centuries, under the Ottoman Empire and before, slaves were brought from Africa. Some older people today remember stories told by their parents or grandparents of how they came to be in Palestine. Therefore it is possible to discover something of the later history of slavery. Several people mentioned that they had heard that there was a big slave market in Egypt and one ‘white’ Bedouin told me that his grandfather had been a slave trader who travelled regularly to Egypt. Most people with any idea of where their ancestors came from mention Sudan or Ethiopia. Sometimes they know the name of the town. Indeed, it is probable that many Africans came from these countries as they are near to Palestine. However, one woman I spoke to pointed out that ‘we just say Sudan because we do not know and because the name means ‘place of black people. It could just as easily have been Congo!’ According to history books, slave traders and owners used to make a distinction between Ethiopians (Habash) and other Africans such as the Zanj from the East African Coast. In their racist way of thinking, they considered the Ethiopians to be superior to the other Africans.

In Gaza I spoke to people of Bedouin origin who had been living in the Nagab prior to 1948. In the Nagab I spoke with Bedouin of African descent who had stayed in the area after 1948. In Gaza, I also encountered black people of the Al Rubayn ashira who were settled Bedouin living around the area of Jaffa, before being driven from their villages as refugees in 1948. They said that they were unconnected to the Nagab Bedouin. Their name derived from Nabi Rubooyn who thousands of years ago used a well near their home area.

These people of Bedouin origin currently resident in Gaza and the Nagab recall being told by their elders how children were kidnapped or bought in slave markets and brought, sometimes carried in the camel saddle-bags, to live with important Bedouin families. This occurred in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The children were often the only Africans living with the family. They looked after animals, grew wheat and barley and performed household tasks. People told me that the Bedouin did not use the girls as concubines, although in the West Bank they did ‘marry’ female slaves. Only big wealthy families owned and traded in slaves. Black people were scattered throughout Palestine living with white families who ‘owned’ them. However, some families needed slaves to help in self- defence when they were weak in number. It is possible that within the twentieth century adults were also brought from Africa and sold as slaves. One elderly man reported that in his youth he had come across African men who were strong, bore tribal scars on their faces and spoke little Arabic.

One ‘white’ Bedouin man told me that slaves used to be branded like animals, but that there were no papers concerning ownership or origins. In the family unit, there were sometimes also other slaves who were white, or low status dependants, such as hamran. But one man told me that a white slave would never have answered to a black slave.

Some African children were educated along with the other, free, children of the family. Once the children grew up their masters arranged for them to be married. They never married white people, even if they were also slaves. As there were not many Africans around, marriage often meant that girls moved away from the master’s family. People also reported that, upon becoming adults, slaves could choose to take their chances with freedom or to remain attached to a family who would arrange marriage. This probably only occurred towards the end of the institution of slavery, during the British period, when it had already begun to fade away.

In the Nagab the Bedouin had a three tier social and political system. Sheikhs were drawn from the Samran, the original Bedouin. Attached to them as clients were the Hamran, families who were originally felaheen, but required protection and/or land from Samran families. The Abed, the slaves, were on the bottom tier and did not have the same rights or status as free people.

Slaves did not count in blood feuds between families. Several people told me that if a black man killed a white man, the death of that black man would not count. Payment (sulha) could be made in money or by the giving of a slave of a certain height. If a black man kills a white, the family of the deceased may kill the ‘owners’ of the black man. Recently, in Rahat in the Nagab, a black boy eloped with a white girl. They were discovered and the girl killed by her family. However, the boy survived and subsequently married a black girl.

Under the old system slaves could not sit in the shig at the same level as their masters. In some places this is still observed, with the role of the black people being to serve tea and coffee to the white people. One man told me that there were some shig that he would not go to because they would ask him who he ‘belonged to’. But in other shig this no longer happens and black and whites sit happily together. In one shig in Gaza, the black sheikh presides, while white people take responsibility for serving tea and coffee.

CHANGES BEFORE AND AFTER 1948

Slavery appears to have been an active institution under Ottoman rule. The British Mandate of Palestine was established in 1917. Slaves were not given release papers and there appears that the British made little formal effort to end the system of slavery in Palestine. Rather, as economic and social conditions changed, the institution faded away in some areas, but still operated other areas until the 1950s.

The groups of black people living in the Nagab and as refugees in Gaza today are the descendants of slaves of the Bedouin. As the peoples of Gaza and the Nagab have only been separated by frequently closed borders since 1948 (when Israel was established and the majority of the Nagab Bedouin became refugees in Gaza and Jordan), the various communities retain kin ties.

Prior to 1948 a political and social system of tribal affiliation operated in the Nagab. There were four gabail: the Gdarat, the Azazme, the Turabeen and the Dlam. Of these, the Tarabeen probably had the most black slaves. Each Gabila was sub-divided in ashira or hamula, and these were, in turn, divided into extended families (‘ayla). Within each ‘ayla were individual families (asira).

Jama’an Abu Jurmi, of the Tarabeen, was a powerful black Sheikh to whom all black people could turn. However, during the war of 1948 the hamula of Abu Jurmi was dispersed and is now in Sinai, or possibly Jordan or Gaza.

Many black people in the Nagab are now affiliated to the Abu Bilal. There is some confusion amongst many Bedouin as to the origins of the Abu Bilal: some people say that the Israelis invented the Abu Bilal to represent all black Bedouin, and named the hamula after Bilal, the Ethiopian companion of the Prophet Mohammed, because he was black. However, the son of the current Sheikh of the Abu Bilal tells a different story. Five or six generations ago a child, Bilal, was stolen from Africa and taken to Sinai. The boy became a slave of the family who purchased him, and although his own family found him and asked him to come home, he was used to his new life and refused. He married and had descendants, and up to now, the Abu Bilal have land in Sinai. However, the descendants moved to the Nagab.

Bilal’s grandson, Sulemain was very clever and a natural leader. During and after the war of 1948 he was appointed as a Sheikh by the Israelis and negotiated with the Israeli Military Authority and many poor people, both black and white, asked him to speak on their behalf. This was a time when all Bedouin had to be affiliated with a Sheikh in order to get rations and travel permits. After 1950 Sheikhs, such as Sulemian, were formally appointed by the Israelis. In 1952, when a census was carried out, many black people registered as Abu Bilal, despite the fact that they had been attached to other families.

For example, one elderly man told me how he took the opportunity of registering as a member of Abu Bilal as a means of disassociating himself from the descendants of his grandfather’s masters who had anyway lost their land. He explained: ‘Sulemain Abu Bilal was a very clever and strong man, although he could not read and write. Many went to join him. Before 1948 Abu Bilal was a family. Bilal was a slave living in Sinai.’ The elderly man told me that he and his family had lived a nomadic existence in the West Bank with the Abu Bilal for about 10 years. That way of life ended with the war of 1967.

In some areas slavery as a way of life appears to have continued into the 1950s. One black (sumr) man who came to Palestine as a migrant worker from Egypt and was caught up in the war of 1948 recalls life for black people attached to the Al Huzail. He had been working in the orchards near Rishon with black people of the Abu Barakat. When war broke out they fled back to their home area of the Al Huzail where Rahat has now been constructed. When the Egyptian man arrived there he found black people growing wheat for Al Huzail. They were given food and, if they requested it for a special purpose, money. Slaves and masters lived separately in black tents. There was no intermarriage and no concubinage. The Egyptian man slept in the Sheikh’s shig and worked as a shepherd, but received no wages. The Sheikh arranged his marriage to a white girl from Gaza. However, after 1952 under the Israelis, when the census was taken, slavery as an institution faded away.

After 1948 the most of the Nagab Bedouin lost their land and those who had not left the area to become refugees in Gaza and Jordan, were confined to a small military zone around Beersheba. Many Bedouin, including black families appear to have moved around working in the orchards to the north around Rishon, Rehovot and ‘Atir or labouring or herding animals in the West Bank. One family, now resident in Rahat told me that they had moved nine times between 1956 and 1958. After the 1967 war it became much harder to move around.

In the late 1960s the Israelis started developing planned settlements to house the Nagab Bedouin. Currently, about half the Nagab Bedouin live in these towns, while the other half have resisted moving and remain in shanty settlements or in emcampments. Many black families moved into the planned towns, the biggest of which is Rahat. Of about 30,000 people who live in Rahat, about a third are black (sumr) and are concentrated in three areas of the town. Many, but not all, of these families are registered as Abu Bilal.

MARRIAGE

Everybody I spoke to stressed that they had been told that in the past marriage between black and white slaves was not permitted. In addition, there seemed to be no evidence that slave owners took black women as concubines. Rather black slaves were married to other black slaves belonging to other families. Nevertheless, not all blacks were slaves and most people of African origin living in Palestine have some white ancestry. Family histories reveal intermarriage for several generations, at least, between people of African origin and other Palestinians.

In the twentieth century, particularly after 1948, there were changes. Black men of slave descent married white women from fellahen backgrounds from the West Bank, Gaza or Galilee, but never Bedouin women. Rarely a white Bedouin man might marry a black Bedouin woman. Hence, most people who are considered black are of mixed descent. The male line is all-important in reckoning descent. I met one man of black African appearance in Gaza. His family had come from the Nagab after 1948. However, he claimed that technically he was white, because his father’s father had been white. Conversely, I met a man of white appearance in Rahat, who was black because his father was black, although his mother was white.

Black Bedouin also continued to marry other black Bedouin, usually within the ashira, thereby conforming to the cultural preference in Arab society to marry relatives. One man told me that cousin marriage is becoming more common among black Bedouin. However, after 1956 it became relatively easy for black Nagab Bedouin men to arrange marriages with white fellahen women. One result was that left some women without husbands. Therefore black Bedouin have recently started marrying between ashira, for example between Abu Rqaiq and Abu Bilal.

Although the African Palestinians of Jeruslaem are a separate community from the black Bedouin, some intermarriage occurs. For example, one of the wives of a man of I met in Jerusalem was from a family of Nagab Bedouin originally from Beersheba, but now living in a refugee camp in Bethlehem.
However, many of the Jerusalem community have intermarried with families from Jericho, some of whom are clearly of African origin, although few people seem to know when or how Africans came to Jericho. Several people told me that Jericho suited black people because the weather was hot!

THE STATUS AND IDENTITY OF PALESTINIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT

As the Bedouin of African descent have been geographically dispersed and caught up as individuals and families in the enormous political changes affecting the region, there has been little opportunity to develop a sense of identity as Africans. Some are Israeli or Jordanian citizens while others are registered as Palestinian refugees and hold UNRWA papers. Others were dispersed to Lebanon and Tunisia and have achieved military rank in the PLO. Many families are dispersed and may not be able to meet often separated as they are by frequently closed borders.

Living within such a complex political and daily reality, where ethnic identity and citizenship are so important it is hardly surprising that most black people do not have a developed sense of being of African descent. Those still living in the Nagab spoke of a changing sense of identity from being Bedouin to being Arab and /or Palestinian. Although they were also Israeli citizens, many said that there was little room for them within the Jewish state.

Many Palestinians of African descent are poor and disadvantaged, even compared with other Palestinians. However, some black people (Sumr) have achieved leadership roles. The roles of Al Hajj Jeddeh in Jeruslaem and the Sheikh of the Abu Bilal have already been discussed. In Gaza I also encountered, several people of African/ Nagab Bedouin or Al Rubayn descent who were prominent local leaders. For example, one elderly Bedouin Sheikh hears cases and settles disputes for both black and white people from his shig in Zuwaida. His wife hears cases concerning women. Until closures made movement difficult, the Sheikh returned to Tel Sabaa in the Nagab to hear cases. He said that his family had played an important role in dispute settlement since the days of the British. His work is recognised by the Palestinian Authority and since 1995 he has been registered under the Bedouin Association. Another black local leader, I was told about but did not meet, is the Mukhtar who lives in the Yaramouk area of Gaza who settles disputes within the Al Rubayn community. In addition, many black Palestinians of Bedouin origin, in Gaza and in Jordan, continue the military tradition of people of African descent serving in the armed forces and police.

Over and beyond citizenship and rights, many black people associated with the Bedouin talked about the strong affinity and sense of common roots they felt with black people they encountered or saw on television. Indeed, in the Nagab and Gaza it is common for all black men to refer to each other as khali, or my mother’s brother. One woman explained that the term khal indicated respect and affection. If somebody was referred as ‘am (father’s brother) it was a sign that the speaker wanted something because there were obligations between these categories of kin that did not exist between maternal uncle and nephew. The term is used to address all black people and is recognition of shared ancestry and common roots. People told me that the term is used in relation to the Black Hebrews, who migrated from the USA to live in Dimona as a Jewish group. However, ‘khali’ would not be used to address Ethiopian Jews, who, although clearly African, were more closely associated with the state of Israel.

Black people in the Nagab, Gaza and Jerusalem refer to themselves as the sumr. This is stark contrast to many other Palestinians who persist in referring to all black people as abed, a term that is synonmous with ‘slaves’. In addition, some older black people still use the term ‘abed’ as a means of self referral, while younger people avoid the term. Indeed, many younger people know little or nothing of their history. One young woman upon hearing from her grandmother tales of slavery was shocked and asked for reassurance that such things only happened centuries ago.

Although some white Palestinians claim that ‘abed’ is not an abusive name and that any connotations with slavery have been lost, others are embarrassed to even hear the word mentioned. Clearly the issue of the origins, identity and terminology used to describe people of African origin is a highly sensitive one. When I spoke to some white Palestinians they denied that black people were ever slaves in the region, and said that rather they had been soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. When I pointed out that this was not the case, one man almost whispered to me ‘we never talk about it’. Yet, white Palestinians by persisting in calling people of African origin ‘abed, perpetuate discrimination.

The African Palestinians living in Jerusalem told me that they would fight with anybody who referred to them as ‘abed’. They added that this does not often happen as their place within Palestinian society and their role in the struggle is generally acknowledged by the citizens of Jerusalem. They also clearly identify themselves as African and Palestinian. However, they have different problems in establishing their identity, particularly when applying for travel documents. Unlike other Palestinians in the West Bank, the Jordanian government does not recognise the African Palestinians as Jordanian citizens. They cannot obtain Palestinian passports because they live in Jerusalem which is excluded from the Oslo Agreement. As a result, the majority of Africans living in Jerusalem have no passports, and the only option for overseas travel is to obtain Israeli documents. The majority refuse this option.

DISSEMINATION OF FINDINGS

It is hoped that this document will be of interest to individuals and community groups in the Nagab, Gaza and Jerusalem that it will engender a strengthened sense of identity and community so that they will be encouraged to renew and strengthen contacts between themselves.

If anybody wishes to correct or add to any of the contents of this document please write to:

Dr Susan Beckerleg
Health Promotion Research Unit
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Keppel Street

E mail : s.beckerleg@lshtm.ac.uk

Source

The Arab League and the anti-Israel left wing activists in the US, Europe and Israel commonly claim that any Jewish building outside of the 1949 Armistice lines is illegal and contravenes international law. They fail to point out what provision of which international law is violated, but they point out that most of the members of the United Nations are against Israeli building. Evidently they consider majority opinion to be international law. However, that isn’t actually international law. Then what is international law? Aren’t UN resolutions international law, and so can’t it be said that majority opinion and political pressure is international law?

General Assembly resolutions are commonly cited as international law, but in practice, they are not treated as and international law, but only international suggestions. UN Security Council resolutions carry much more weight, but they are frequently ignored by nations around the world and are only partially enforceable. Membership in the UN is voluntary, as is acceptance of UN decisions. Any nation may withdraw from the UN, and any nation may reject UN determinations and resolutions, as the Islamic nations aligned against Israel and some African nations regularly do, for example, or as Germany, Italy, Great Britain, China, North Korea, the USSR, the US and most other countries have done. UN organizations themselves frequently break the UN resolutions they were set up to monitor. These resolutions cannot be called binding or have the status of international law, since they are not enforced except for political reasons and are not made with the agreement of the affected nations. They are simply statements and demands, perhaps to be honored and perhaps not.

But if UN resolutions are rejected as binding international law, what is international law? The only real basis of international law are those conventions and treaties that are signed by two or more nations. The signatory nations are considered to be bound by the agreements they signed. Israel has signed many such agreements and can be said to be bound by them. The Arab nations have likewise signed many and are bound by them. The Arab terrorist groups who were given the status of legitimate government in Israel and membership in the UN in 1993 have signed few agreements and have reneged on all of them.

What conventions, treaties and agreements apply to the larger issue of whether Jews may live and build in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem, or as the Arabs and their left-wing allies like to call them, the “occupied territories”? Is it reasonable to call Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem “occupied territories”? That’s a very basic question, and other issues that build upon that issue can’t be settled until this most basic issue is settled. There are even more basic issues that disputed such as Israel’s right to exist and Israel’s right to be a Jewish state. However, this article is dealing with the issues of territory. It’s necessary to understand what documents legally define Israel’s borders. The theoretical no-man’s land that is legally neither Israel’s, Egypt’s nor Jordan’s is commonly called “Palestinian”. That non-Israeli Arabs have any claim to any part of Israel is also a matter that can be reasonably disputed, and the two issues are tied together. The issue of Arab claims to Israel and the Arab “right of return” is discussed in an earlier posting.

The first document that applies to the establishment of a Jewish Homeland and its location is the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Great Britain, which gained control of what is today Jordan and Israel, agreed that Palestine should be set aside for the purpose of Jewish settlement, as the “Jewish Homeland”. This decision was confirmed and ratified in the Paris Peace Conference of 1920, which called for a Jewish national homeland to be established in Palestine. Palestine was a region, not a nation, that was part of the lands vacated by the Ottoman empire after its defeat. This establishment of a Jewish Homeland was specifically to be done according to the principal of the Balfour Declaration, and it was authorized by the San Remo Resolution, and written into the Treaty of San Sevres. The treaty of San Sevres was superceded by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 with Turkey, after Attaturk came to power in Turkey. In that treaty the area known as Palestine was released by Turkey and turned over to the allied powers of WWI. In turn, the former Ottoman territories that were not already absorbed into other countries were divided into “mandates” by the League of Nations with the goal of developing these areas so that they could become independent nations. Consequently, a Jewish homeland in area known as Palestine was established by international law. It is interesting that liberal academics, Arab nations and liberation theology Christians like to refer to this establishing of new nations from mandates as colonialism, when in fact it was planned as the purposeful end of colonialism. The majority of the Arab nations came into existance because of the Paris Peace Conference, the Lausanne Treaty and the League of Nation mandates.

All of Palestine, which includes what today is Israel and Jordan, was given to the jurisdiction of Great Britain as the “British Mandate” of 1922. In the British Mandate, Britain’s responsibility as a trustee of Palestine was spelled out in considerable detail, and it’s responsibility to encourage and facilitate Jewish settlement in Palestine, for the purpose of creating an independent Jewish Homeland was listed in direct terms. Almost immediately Britain acceded to Arab demands that Muslim Arabs be given the greater part of Palestine, all of the territory east of the Jordan River and Dead Sea. The region of Transjordan was formed and documented in the Churchill White Paper of June, 1922. The British zionist ideas behind the Balfour document reversed in post WWI times, as is documented in the Passfield White Paper of 1930 and the Peel Whitepaper of 1939, both of which limited Jewish movement and settlement in Palestine and limited Jewish land ownership, in contradiction of its mandated responsibilities in Palestine. This is even more serious given the backdrop of events at the time. In 1929 for example, widespread Arab riots, which were encouraged by Muslim religious leaders and treated lightly by the British, led to the massacre of the Jews of Hebron and the occupation of their property by the Arabs in the town, as well as Arab attacks on Jews in other areas. In Europe, Hitler was coming to power and by 1939 had begun his persecution of Jews in Germany and Poland. Jews in Europe had begun to try to escape to Palestine and other countries, and Britain, the US and many other nations were purposefully blocking their escape. At that same time in Palestine, Arabs started another round of murderous rioting against Jews, and Britain was enforcing the restrictions it had imposed on the Jewish population in Palestine. That is when the Peel Whitepaper limiting Jewish immigration to the “Jewish Homeland” was written, in direct contradiction British responsibilities to international law and human decency.

Immediately after WWII, Trans-Jordan gained its independence by UN resolution in 1946, and became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Syria and Egypt likewise had gained their independence without controversy. Lebanon had gained its independence from the French mandate earlier. That left the land on the west side of the Jordan River and Dead Sea for the Jews. There were no further legal divisions of the British Mandated lands. In 1947, the boundaries of Israel were defined by the boundaries of the adjacent nations.

In November, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed UN Resolution 181, which specified the establishment of a Jewish state in areas currently settled by Jews, an Arab state in areas currently settled by Arabs, and international jurisdiction over Jerusalem and other religious sites in Israel. In actuality this plan abrogated the terms of the Mandate of 1922 and earlier agreements and resolutions regarding Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, and was not valid. However, Israel accepted the terms, realizing that was the best they would get in the UN. However, the Arab nations and their allies from other parts of the world rejected the partition plan, because they wanted no Jewish state at all for ethnic and religious reasons, and consequently this resolution, the Partition Plan, never went into effect legally. Arab nations attacked Israel en masse as soon as it had declared itself as a state in May, 1948.

The background for the passing of UN Resolution 181 was that Britain had requested to be relieved of its duties in the British Mandate. Britain found that it was not able to fulfill its mandated duties. The rosy idea of Jews and Arab Muslims living side by side in peace and tranquility was turning out to be impossible. Giving 75% of the mandate to Muslims did not satisfy them, because their goal was 100% of the Palestinian mandate with no Jews. British anti-semitism and desire for good relations with Arab states did not make their job any easier, since they were charged with doing what neither they nor their desired allies wanted: to provide for the establishment of a Jewish State on the historical Jewish territory. In the meantime, Jewish Freedom Fighters and Militants fought the British regularly, and there was even less love lost between Palestinian Jews and the British government. The British wanted out as soon as possible, and could not fulfill the terms of their mandate. Consequently the UN General Assembly met to decide how to solve the problem. The most honest, courageous and effective method would have been to assign all the remaining area of the Mandate for the Jewish Homeland, as was originally intended. Instead, in deference to Arab threats and pressure and their own collective mixed feelings about Jews and a Jewish Homeleand, they attempted a territorial and political compromise. The compromise failed, as these compromises still do today, because they do not take into account the unchanging Arab/Muslim goal of having no Jewish State in existence.

Anthony D’Amato believes that the British Mandate was a sacred trust, even though it was in many ways abrogated by the British. He says that Britain had the sole decision making authority for its mandate, in the role of a trustee, and when Britain withdrew from its position of trustee and handed the matter to the UN, the UN resolution dividing the remainder of Palestine between Arab and Jewish jurisdictions, the boundaries they defined and the condition of having Jerusalem be an internationally administered area was binding and is still in effect today. He believes that no other agreements, not even treaties, invasions, armistices and agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority supercede the boundaries of Resolution 181, even though D’Amato states that General Assembly resolutions are not international law, this one was because it was the settlement of the issue of the British Mandate. For D’Amato’s theory and the following discussion, see his online symposium.

In answer to that I would say that the General Assembly is not given the authority to rule on these issues, nor to set boundaries for territories or nations, and his argument isn’t valid, but appears to politically motivated, judging by the Arab propaganda terms he uses in his argument, and his hostility towards responders who give good arguments for the opposing view. The UN charter has a trustee framework set up, and if the British Mandate were to be transferred to the UN, it should have been passed to the UN trustee framework, not to the General Assembly. As the General Assembly had no authority in this particular matter, has no general authority to establish boundaries, and their resolutions are not considered international law, and the resolution was not even accepted by all the parties involved as a viable framework for future agreements, it cannot be considered binding, and is certainly not the last word on Israel’s boundaries.

As stated many times by Arab nations and the leadership of the Arab factions that seek to make a claim on the former British Mandate, the Arab factions, whether religious or secular, do not want any non-Muslim state in the Mideast, and especially not a Jewish state. This is the real basis of their objection to the State of Israe, and their continued military, political and economic agression against Israel. The idea that only Muslim Arab states may be established in the Mideast is a racist concept, and the Arab reaction to the establishment of Israel was definitely racist and genocidal, which contravenes international law. The UN and Great Britain, in unilaterally taking more land out of the specified Jewish homeland for the purpose of establishing an Arab state was also breaking international law. Israel was not breaking international law in declaring itself to be a nation, in not allowing all Arabs who had deserted Israel at its creation to come back, or in re-taking the mandated land that had been occupied by Arab armies since 1949.

The war continued into 1949, with Israel surviving, but being unable to drive the invading armies out of its territory. Jordan occupied the eastern side of Israel, in what is now called the “West Bank”, and the eastern part of Jerusalem. Jordan slaughtered hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem, destroyed synagogues and other Jewish property, held control of the Temple Mount, not allowing access to Jews or Christians, and its armies occupied the the towns of the “West Bank”. Syria and Lebanon occupied Mandate territory on the northern side, and Egypt occupied Gaza and large parts of the Negev. This was in direct opposition to international law, UN Security Council resolutions and the UN charter.

In 1949 Armistices were signed between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Armistice lines were determined at the point where troops were at the time of the armistice. The point was to bring a quick stop to the fighting, not to establish national boundaries. Consequently the Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian armies were allowed to occupy large parts of the land granted to Israel, and UN troops were stationed in the Sinai until 1956. These are the 1949 lines that anti-Israel goups refer to as if they were national boundaries. They are specifically described as NOT being boundaries, but only temporary cease fire lines. Jordan had annexed the west bank territory, but that annexation was not recognized because Jordan had no prior claim of any kind to the land on the west side of the Jordan River, and was strictly based on its military occupation of those lands.

In 1967 the neighboring Arab states, except for Lebanon, again invaded Israel in a joint effort to destroy the Jewish state. This time, Israel drove the invading armies completely back to the national borders of the invading nations, and in the case of Egypt, beyond. Israel held all of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, all of Judea and Samaria, Gaza and a large portion of the Sinai. Israel later gave up the land it took in the Sinai, in the peace negotiations with Egypt, but kept control of all of its land in Israel until the Oslo Nakba of 1993. At this point Israel did not occupy those areas, since those areas were part of the land originally granted to it by the League of Nations, and it had a reasonable claim to that territory. If it had been any nation but Israel, this would have been acceptable according to international law and world opinion. Israel annexed the Golan and East Jerusalem, but did not annex the area known as the West Bank, in deference to international politics. The area annexed as Jerusalem was the area defined as Jerusalem in Article 8 of UN Security Council resolution 194:

Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions, the Jerusalem area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem, the most western, Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu’fat, should be accorded special and separate treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed under effective United Nations control;

In 1973 the nearby Arab nations except for Lebanon and Jordan again invaded Israel, with the help of the USSR and other nations, in an attempt to destroy Israel. Again Israel forced them out, and this war did not result in changes to who controlled the various regions of Israel. As in 1967, the UN ordered all sides to quit fighting, but as usual, did not censure the attacking Arab nations for invading a UN member state, nor attempt any sort of discipline or sanctions on those nations.

The politics of the years between 1967 and 1975 was extremely complicated and volatile. There was the rise of OPEC, the oil embargos on western nations who supported Israel during the Arab attacks on Israel, shifts in international alliances, major economic changes with western nations leaving the gold standard, Viet Nam, energy politics, radical Communist ideologies, detente, two wars in Israel, the rise to prominence of several Arab terrorist groups, the rise of some nations to political power and the falling back of others, the instability and changes of government in South and Central America and Africa, the changing economic forces world wide…all of these things had a great effect on issues relating to Israel and international support. However, as long as the “rule of law” has any pretence of importance in the UN and international thinking, the hot issue of the boundaries and jurisdiction of the State of Israel would best be considered objectively through the criteria of applicable law and documents, and not of international politics.

International politics cares only for international law when it appears to suit the goals of the players, which is to say international politics tends towards agression, whether political, economic or military. However, even at its most idealistic and chastened moments, such as during the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations after WWI and WWII, the international community is a political and ruthless beast, as it always has been. The new world order of the UN is a realignment of the world order, not a reform. International law is applied as a tool of international politics, and so loses its standing as a fair arbiter of international disuputes.

If international law could be applied justly in the sensitive matter of Israel, and if nations of the world could discipline themselves to abiding by true and objective international law, it could prove itself as a viable means to achieving world peace. However, if international law and the UN continues to be a tool of international political alignments, the international body of the UN and pretenses of international law will not lead to peace, but to a war which will be worse than any that came before.

In 1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat met at Camp David with Jimmy Carter to work out the first Camp David Accords, and in March, 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. The treaty required Israel to give up all of its holdings in the Sinai, including towns, roads, utilities and oil fields. An international border was agreed upon between Israel and Egypt, and the Sinai was demilitarized. Anwar Sadat was assasinated two years later, in 1981 by a group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian terrorist groups because of the treaty. Both Israel and Egypt have so far kept substantially to the treaty, and it may be said that both sides have benefitted from it. The treaty gave the first direct delineaton of a part of Israel’s national boundaries, the southern border.

In 1987 the first intifada broke out in Israel, among the Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The violence was incited by Muslim clerics in Israel, and orchestrated throughout by Marwan Barghuti, and Yasser Arafat with the PLO in Tunis, Tunisia. The violence of the intifada brought an attempt by the world community, led by the US and supported by the USSR and other nations, to broker peace in the region, as had successfully been done between Israel and Egypt in the Camp David Accords.

A series of conferences were held, starting with the Madrid conference, which sought to work out a framework for implementing the “two state” solution in Israel between the Arab terrorist factions that ruled the Palestinian Arabs, especially Yasser Arafat and his PLO/Fatah gang, and Israel. In 1993, following secret negotiations after the Madrid conference, the PLO and Israel worked out a “declaration of principles” at a conference in Oslo, Norway, known as the Oslo Accords, and had a public signing in Washington DC between Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, witnessed by the US and Russia.

The Oslo Accords did not change or establish any boundaries. The issue of final borders was left to “final status” negotiations to occur at an unspecified time in the future, after the other parts of the accords had been done.
In the Oslo accords Israel agreed to withdraw from Jericho and Gaza and to turn over civil control of Arab areas to Palestinian control, but does not prohibit Israel from building suburbs, buildings, roads or other infrastructure in Jewish areas anywhere in Israel. There is no prohibition against “settlements” or expansion in the Oslo Accords. The main feature of the Oslo Accords was the promise of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel, and intentions to cooperate on many joint projects towards normalization of relations between Palestinian Arabs under the leadership of the PLO and Israel, and improvement of Palestinian areas so that they could act as an orderly self governing group. Also prominent were agreements to settle all disputes peacefully and directly, by negotiation and arbitration, without outside interference.

Inspired by the peace treaty with Egypt and the Oslo Accords, Jordan and Israel negotiated and signed a peace treaty in 1994. This treaty fixed Israel’s eastern border with Jordan, based on the border established in the British mandate, with some adjustment for overlapping private ownership in two areas.

In 1995 Israel and the PLO, under the benign eye of the US, the USSR, Japan and the EU signed the Interim Agreement for the West Bank and Gaza that were the continuation of the 1993 Oslo Accords. This agreement did not fix any boundaries and the jurisdictional areas defined in this document were not to be considered even preliminary boundaries. That was to be held until bilateral “Final Status” negotiations. However, the jurisdictional boundaries and arrangements were used as practical boundaries, even if not final boundaries, and the Arab dominated UN General Assembly passed a series of resolutions against Israel demanding withdrawal from “occupied territories”, the Golan and so on, to the point that the US reprimanded the General Assembly for its detrimental interference in the “peace process”.

In August, 1999 the Arab aligned block of the UN, in another “emergency” session called for a Fourth Geneva Convention, boycotted by Israel and the US, much like the infamous Durban conference on racism in 2001. A resolution was passed unanimously, declaring that the fourth article of the 1949 Geneva convention applies to the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. The more serious and more deadly issues of religious and ethnic strife and genocide in several Muslim and allied countries, such as Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, the Sudan, Somalia, Russia and so on were of course not considered at this convention.

This bears on the matter of international law, because the UN is acting as both judge and prosecutor in regards to Israel, and controlling blocks of the UN obviously have idealogical, political and financial interests that cause the UN as a body to set aside its mandate of bringing world peace and being an objective world arbitrator in favor of acting on the desires of the majority political alignment. Consequently the UN is compromised and unable to fulfill its duties as an international arbiter. The judging body has serious conflicts of interest in the case it is hearing, and if it were ethical it would recuse itself. If the judge is shown to be compromised, his decisions are invalid.

The Oslo process broke down during the years between 1995 and 1998 due to Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, Hizbullah attacks in northern Israel, Israel’s crossing into Lebanon to stop Hizbullah, and the artificial issue of Israeli building in Jerusalem and Jewish areas the West Bank. During these years there was no change or further establishment of Israeli borders except in regard to Jordan.

In 1998 the US attempted to revive the “peace process” with the Wye River Accords, and again in 2000 with a second round of negotiations at Camp David. In 2001 Israel and the PA met at Taba, Egypt for discussions after the second intifada, but the situation didn’t change and the “final status” negotiations of the Oslo process never came near, although both sides implemented many of the steps. In 2002 Saudi Arabia proposed a peace plan, and in 2003 the US introduced the “Roadmap”, which was similar to the Saudi Arabian plan. These plans require Israel to retire to the 1949 Armistice lines and give the rest of the land to the Palestinians in return for “normalization” of relations with Arab nations. Essentially this plan is a forced surrender, since there is no legal reason for Israel to give up all land that it holds now, that it didn’t hold in 1949, and there is no reason aside from racism and religious hatred for Arab nations not to have “normal” relations with Israel since its founding.

As of 2007, the borders of Israel remain essentially the remainder of the British Mandate, after with the removal of Jordan from the mandate. The last legal delineation of Israeli boundaries was in 1996, based on its peace treaty with Jordan, and the Oslo process begun in 1993 has had no binding effect on those boundaries. These agreements establish rules for relations between Israel and the Palestinians, but in no way establish boundaries. The Palestinian Authority has no legal boundaries, although it has the practical boundaries established by Israeli-Palestinian agreements and the “facts on the ground” that both Israel and the PA have worked to achieve in order to influence the outcome of whatever negotiations may be forced on Israel in the future.

In August, 2005 Israel forcibly removed all Israelis from Jewish towns in Gaza and three towns in northern Samaria. Their property, businesses and synagogues were turned over to the PA and generally destroyed in Gaza, in complete violation of the various peace agreements. They did not receive adequate or timely reparation, their deeds and mortgages were not settled, even though they could not enjoy their property, and in many cases they received no reparation for their losses, either from the Israeli government, the PA, the UN, or any of the overseers of the “peace process”. This was done in accordance with the Oslo Accords, which called for Israel to withdraw from Gaza, although it was done on the initiative of Ariel Sharon and out of sequence.

Despite the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and PA and Hamas control of the region, the withdrawal did not change the legal boundaries of Israel in regard to Gaza, as no treaty or other binding agreement was made about that boundary. If Israel re-took Gaza, its status would be the same as was established in 1979, with the Egyptian peace treaty, and if Israel does not re-take Gaza, the boundary remains the same.

This is the history and chain of title of Israel in modern times, and left-wing and Arab claims of “Palestinian Land” and “occupied territories” are false and groundless.