by Yoram Ettinger
-- contrary to the myth of the 1948 Arab refugees -- aiming to delegitimize Israel -- Arabs have not been in the land of Israel from time immemorial; no Palestinian people was ever robbed of its land; there is no basis for an Arab "claim of return"
Contrary to conventional "wisdom," most Arabs in British Mandate Palestine -- and most of the 320,000 1948 Arab refugees --
were migrant workers and descendants of 1831-1947 Muslim immigrants
from across the Arab world. At the time, Britain enticed Arab
immigration and blocked Jewish immigration.
Thus, between 1880 and
1919, Haifa's Arab population surged from 6,000 to 80,000, mostly due to
migrant workers. The eruption of World War II accelerated the demand
for Arab manpower by the British Mandate's military and its civilian
authorities.
Moreover, Arab migrant
workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire, and then by the British
Mandate, to work on major civilian and military infrastructure projects.
Legal and illegal Arab migrants were also attracted by economic growth
generated by the Jewish community starting in 1882.
According to a 1937
report by the British Peel Commission (featured in the ground-breaking
book "Palestine Betrayed" by Professor Efraim Karsh), "during 1922
through 1931, the increase of Arab population in the mixed-towns of
Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem was 86%, 62% and 37% respectively, while in
purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7% and a
decrease of 2% in Gaza."
Irrespective of
occasional Arab emigration from British Mandate Palestine -- due to
intra-Arab terrorism, which has been an endemic feature in the Middle
East -- the substantial wave of Arab immigration between 1831 and 1947
triggered dramatic growth of the Arab populations in Jaffa (17 times),
Haifa (12 times) and Ramla (5 times).
According to Joan
Peters' momentous book "From Time Immemorial": "The 1931 census
[documented] at least 23 different languages in use by Muslims plus an
additional 28 in use by Christian Arabs -- a total of 51 languages. The
non-Jews in Palestine listed as their birthplaces at least 24 different
countries."
In 1917, the "Arab"
population of Jaffa included at least 25 nationalities, mostly
Egyptians, but also Syrians, Yemenites, Persians, Afghanis, Indians and
Baluchis. The British Palestine Exploration Fund documented a
proliferation of Egyptian neighborhoods in the Jaffa area: Abu Kabir,
Sumeil, Sheikh Munis, Salame, Fejja, etc. Hundreds of Egyptian families
also settled in the inland, in Arara, Kafr Qasim, Tayibe and
Qalansawe.
The 1831-1840 conquest
of the land of Israel by Egypt's Mohammed Ali was solidified by a flow
of Egyptian and Sudanese migrants settling between Gaza in the south,
Tulkarem in the center and the Hula Valley in the north. They followed
in the footsteps of thousands of Egyptian draft dodgers who fled Egypt
before 1831 and settled in Acre.
In 1865, the British
traveler H.B. Tristram, in "The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in
Palestine," documented Egyptian migrants in the Beit Shean Valley, Acre,
Hadera, Netanya and Jaffa.
According to the August
12, 1934 issue of the Syrian daily La Syrie, "30,000-36,000 Syrian
migrants, from the Hauran region, entered Palestine during the last few
months alone." The role model of Hamas terrorism, Izzedine al-Qassam,
who terrorized Jews in British Mandate Palestine, was Syrian, as was
Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the chief Arab terrorist in British Mandate Palestine
during the 1930s and 1940s.
Libyan migrants settled
in Gedera, south of Tel Aviv. Algerian refugees escaped the French
conquest of 1830 and settled in Safed alongside Syrians and Jordanian
Bedouin in Tiberias. Circassian refugees, fleeing Russian oppression
(1878) and Muslims from Bosnia, Turkmenistan, and Yemen (1908) further
diversified the Arab demography west of the Jordan River.
This unusual
Arab/Muslim demographic diversity is evidenced by popular Israeli Arab
family names, which are a derivative of their countries of origin:
Al-Masri (Egypt), Al-Obeidi (Sudan), Al-Lubnani (Lebanon), Halabi
(Syria), Al-Mughrabi (Morocco), Al-Djazair (Algeria), Al-Yamani (Yemen),
Al-Afghani (Afghanistan), Al-Hindi (India), Al-Hijazi (Saudi Arabia),
Al-Baghdadi (Iraq), Bushnak (Bosnia), Khamis (Bahrain), Turki (Turkey),
etc.
Aryeh Avneri, a
pioneering historian of Arab and Jewish migration, estimated that in
1554 there were 205,000 Muslims, Christians and Jews in Palestine, then
275,000 in 1800 and an unusual surge to 532,000 in 1890, resulting from
accelerated Arab immigration.
In fact, Mark Twain
wrote in 1869: "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, Palestine
must be the prince. ... The hills are barren. ... The valleys are
unsightly deserts. ... Palestine is desolate and unlovely."
Thus, contrary to the
myth of the 1948 Arab refugees -- aiming to delegitimize Israel -- Arabs
have not been in the land of Israel from time immemorial; no
Palestinian people was ever robbed of its land; there is no basis for an
Arab "claim of return"; and most of the 320,000 Arab refugees -- who
were created by the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and their own
collaboration with the invasion -- were recent immigrants and foreign
workers (from neighboring Arab countries) in the land of Israel.
Yoram Ettinger
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16307
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment