Stole land?
Don't you know anything, you dunce?
Both the King of Jordan, and I, call you a lying scum.
One would expect to see commonplace examples of Jews stealing, strong-arming, swindling, blackmailing; basically resorting to any trick up their sleeve to pry land out of Arab hands. In reality, the Jewish technique of accumulating land was simple
... they bought it. Both the concern and the complaints of Jews dispossessing Arabs centered on how much land the Jews were purchasing, not stealing, from land owners:
- The British investigation into the Arab riots during 1936-39 identifies "Arab alarm at the continued Jewish purchase of land"1, not Jewish theft of land, as one of the motivating factors.
- "Conversely, the main Ottoman and Arab complaint against the Zionists was about land sales..."2
- "Meanwhile, Jewish land purchase continued apace, exacerbating Palestinian disquiet."3
- "Arab discontent on account of Jewish immigration and the sale of lands to Jews which has been a permanent feature of political opinion in Palestine for the past ten years, began to show signs of renewed activity from the beginning of 1933, developing in intensity until it reached a climax in the riots of October and November."4
- "In the beginning of the 1930s, the national value of the land and its transfer from one people to the other became one of the main issues in the political conflict between the two communities. The Arabs insisted that His Majesty's Government put an end to land purchase by the Jews, claiming that it threatened their national existence."5
- "Though they had profited from the enhanced trade and employment opportunities generated by the new Jewish settlements, Palestinian Arabs had grown increasingly concerned about the rise of Jewish immigration and land purchases."
6
- "An article published in July 1911 by Mustafa Effendi Tamr, a teacher of mathematics at a Jerusalem school" reads, "You are selling the property of your fathers and grandfathers for a pittance to people who will have no pity on you, to those who will act to expel you and expunge your memory from your habitations and disperse you among the nations. This is a crime that will be recorded in your names in history, a black stain and disgrace that your descendants will bear, which will not be expunged even after years and eras have gone by. ... Opposition to land sales was one of the principal focal points around which the Arab national idea in Palestine coalesced."
7
- "Of course, the Zionists bought the land from Arab landholders, who moved to cities or even left the country. They were all too willing to sell, for the price paid by the purchasers was often many times more than anyone else would or could pay."
32
- King Abdallah of Jordan complains several times in his memoirs about Jews acquiring land in Palestine. Not once does he accuse the Jews of stealing it from the Arabs. Each time he mentions it, the complaint is how much land they are buying:
- "... the fears of the Arab political leaders are supported by the fact that the sale of land continues unrestricted and every day one piece of land after another is torn from the hands of the Arabs.
8
- "According to my information the Jews have requested the continuance of the mandate so that they can buy up more land and bring in additional immigrants. No other country has gone through such a trial as Palestine."
9
- "Or are you among those who believe that there is no harm in continuing the present deleterious mandate despite the Jewish usurpers it has brought and despite the demonstrated inability of those Palestinians now at the political helm to prevent their compatriots from selling their land? Furthermore, it is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping."
10
- "‘Know each of you that in the end every Arab who sells land of the Arab patrimony or who pimps for the Jews will soon receive his due, which is certain death.’ The placards were signed by an organization calling itself ‘Revenge.’ ‘Our problem is the outcome of the sale of our land. The amazing thing is that we sell to the Jews and then scream and wail and ask for the government’s help,’"11
- "The land policy of the Zionist movement in the pre-state era was based on purchase of land on the open market by Jewish institutions (mainly the JNF) and subsequent freezing of the ownership so as to ensure that the purchased land would be in Jewish hands in perpetuity."33
Not only was the land being legally purchased, it was being purchased at drastically inflated prices. Arab land owners were making a killing selling their land during the waves of Jewish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the animosity against selling land to Jews coming from elitist Arabs, it simply made good economic sense for landlords to sell while they could exploit the thriving market Jewish demand was creating. Sometimes the land being purchased was nothing more than sand dune, malarial swamps and marshes, or other unattractive plots of waste. Even so, it was payday for many landlords; a day many hadn't seen in a long time and one that wouldn't come again:
- "Until 1936 ... the Jews acquired about 25,000 dunam in the Beit-Shean Valley ... The soil was of the poorest quality, in scattered parcels of land, and it was impossible to establish even one settlement on it. The Jewish purchasers paid the full price for these lands; in addition the Government compelled them to cover all the outstanding debts that the sellers had accumulated. (In most cases not one penny of these bad debts had been paid for years.)"12
- "The Jewish authorities have nothing with which to reproach themselves in the matter of the Sursock lands. They paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."13
- "He [the Arab] may sell his land for a fantastic price and add to the congestion in the other zones by moving there. An Arab living a short distance away, just across the zone boundary, cannot obtain anything approximating the same sum for land of equal quality.”14
- "The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. “In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."15
- "The settlers were ready to pay much more than the economic value of the land. The same or better land is available a few kilometers to the east or north of the Palestine frontiers at one tenth or less of the Palestinian price."16
- “Between 1880 and 1914 over sixty thousand Jews entered Palestine … Many settled on wasteland, sand-dunes and malarial marsh, which they then drained, irrigated and farmed. In 1909 a group of Jews founded the first entirely Jewish town, Tel Aviv, on the sandhills north of Jaffa. The Jews purchased their land piecemeal, from European, Turkish and (principally) Arab landlords, mostly at extremely high prices.”17
- “By 1925 over 2,600 Jews had settled in the [Jezreel] valley, and 3,000 acres of barren hillside had been afforested. This previously uncultivated land, bought at highly inflated prices, became the pattern of all subsequent Jewish National Fund settlements in Palestine.”18
- "In his 'note of reservations' to the Report of the Woodhead Commission, Sir Alison Russel says: 'It does not appear to me that to permit an Arab to sell his land for three or four times its value, and to go with the money to a different part of the Arab world where land is cheap, can be said to "prejudice" his rights and position.'"19
- "The average price paid by Jews for the rural land they bought in Palestine during 1944 amounted to over $1000 per acre or about $250 per dunam (including the value of buildings, orchards and other improvements). These prices are, of course, highly inflated …"20
- "... land brokers sometimes purchased their shares or parcels at a very low price and sold them at ten and twenty multiples to Jewish buyers. Peasants who were in musha' villages were particularly incensed at landlords, land brokers, or agents after learning that they had been swindled."21
- "Aharon Danin of KKL told of an interesting conversation he had at the beginning of the 1940s with Khaled Zu’bi (brother of Sayf al-Din), who helped him buy land in the Zu’biyya villages east of Nazareth: He [Zu’bi] said, ‘Look, who knows better than me that your work is pure. You pay money for everything, top dollar, many times more than what the land is worth. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are dispossessing us. You are dispossessing us with money, not by force, but the fact is that we are leaving the land.’ I say to him: ‘You are from this Zu’biyya tribe which is located here, in Transjordan, and in Syria, what difference does it make to you where you are, if you are here or if you and your family are there? …’ He said: ‘It’s hard for me to tell you, but in any case the graves of my forefathers are here. I feel that we are leaving this place. It’s our fault and not yours.’"30
Footnotes:
1 Great Britain, and William Robert Wellesley Peel Peel.
Palestine Royal Commission Report. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1937.
2 Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914 - 1958 by D. K. Fieldhouse, Pg. 125
3 Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond by David McDowall, Pg. 23
4 Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations of the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 31 December 1933
5 "The Tenants of Wadi Hawarith: Another View of the Land Question in Palestine" by Raya Adler,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2. (May, 1988), pg. 199.
6 Oren, Michael.
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the PresentPg. 368
7 Cohen, Hillel.
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 45
8 King Abdallah of Jordan,
My Memoirs Completed (Al-Takmilah), Pg. 81. In a letter written to the High Commissioner for Transjordan, Sir Arthur Wauchope on July 25, 1934.
9 King Abdallah of Jordan,
My Memoirs Completed (Al-Takmilah), Pg. 88. In a letter written to 'Abd al-Hamid Sa'id on June 5, 1938.
10 King Abdallah of Jordan,
My Memoirs Completed (Al-Takmilah), Pp. 88-89. In a letter written to 'Abd al-Hamid Sa'id on June 5, 1938.
11 Cohen, Hillel.
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 219-220.
12 Avneri, Aryeh L.
The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-Settlement and the Arabs 1878-1948. Efal, Israel: Yad Tabenkin, 1982. 168.
13 Hope Simpson Report, Pg. 51
14 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Chapter I
15 Bard, Mitchell G.
Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 2006. 19.
16 Jewish Colonisataion and Arab Development in Palestine by David Horowitz, Central Zionist Archives, Record Group S90/File 76, 7 October 1945
17 Gilbert, Martin, and Martin Gilbert.
The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge, 2002. 3.
18 Gilbert, Martin, and Martin Gilbert.
The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge, 2002. 12.
19 Schechtman, Joseph B.
Population Transfers in Asia. New York: Hallsby Press, 1949. 101
20 Schechtman, Joseph B.
Population Transfers in Asia. New York: Hallsby Press, 1949. 112
21 Stein, Kenneth W.
One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. 1991.
22 Stein, Kenneth W.
One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. 1991.
23 Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations of the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 31 December 1933
24 The Tenants of Wadi Hawarith: Another View of the Land Question in Palestine by Raya Adler,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2. (May, 1988), pg. 197.
25 The Tenants of Wadi Hawarith: Another View of the Land Question in Palestine by Raya Adler,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2. (May, 1988), pg. 215.
26 Morris, Benny.
1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008 14
27 Morris, Benny.
1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008 83
28 Cohen, Hillel.
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 225.
29 Cohen, Hillel.
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 173.
30 Cohen, Hillel.
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 200.
Jewish Land Acquisition and Dispossession in Palestine
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