THEY COME WITHOUT INVITATION
The Palestine press reports a constant influx of illegal Arab immigrants from neighboring lands.
"Zionist menace" notwithstanding, Palestine's higher wage level and general development attract citizens of the large and decidedly underpopulated Arab states. It is significant that King Abdullah of Transjordan is reported by a Palestine Arab paper to have issued an order permitting free immigration of Arabs, particularly Bedouin tribes, with a view to overcoming the present sparsity of population. Palestine apparently has no need to issue orders permitting free Arab immigration.
Approximately 100,000 illegal Arab immigrants to Palestine also fled, but were not accepted by their countries of origin and have now joined the ranks of the bona fide refugees..
One of the key Arab arguments today against Israel is their claim that the West had "given" the Jews Palestine, a so-called Arab country, by supporting the UN resolution of November 1947 to divide the country in two. This was done, they say, as a sop for their consciences over the slaughter of 6 million Jews in Europe by the Nazis, but was unfair to the Arabs, who had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
I believe the Palestinian Arabs are more culpable in the extermination of the Jews of Europe than is generally known, and that furthermore to their complicity in this crime, they inherited it as well.
(1) In 1939, in the wake of the Munich sell-out of Czechoslovakia, the British, reneging on their solemn commitment under the League of Nations mandate for Palestine to encourage the Jewish National Home in Palestine, published a "White Paper" sharply restricting future Jewish immigration into Palestine. This was meant to appease the Arabs of Palestine, the great majority of whom were themselves immigrants or sons and grandsons of immigrants who came to partake of the newly- engendered prosperity the Jews had brought that benighted land.
While the gates were kept shut in the faces of the Jews desperately trying to save themselves from Nazi barbarism, the Palestinian Arabs' recognized leader, Haj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was doing his part.
He spent World War II in Nazi Germany, propagandizing, raising bosnian SS divisions, and hob-nobbing.. And what did he demand, and get? That Germany "do all that is necessary to prohibit the emigration of Jews to Palestine" (letter to Heinrich Himmler). There is evidence that he even visited Auschwitz, to enjoy the sights. At the same time, innumerable non- Palestinian Arabs immigrated without hindrance to Palestine to work at the docks, oil refinery, etc. I suppose that many of them are today "Palestinian refugees." If only a small percentage of those doomed European Jews had found succor in Palestine, they would have become a majority, as the League of Nations Mandate had envisaged.
(2) Murderous pogroms against helpless Jews were carried out during World War II in such Arab countries as Libya and Iraq. We can well ask just how it was to be a Jew in an Arab land, when we realize that more Jews from Arab lands fled to fledgling Israel than came from Europe, and. that they were more numerous than the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948 (whose brethren consistently refused to help them financially).
(3) Many Arabs actively supported the Nazi effort in the Middle East. A pro-Nazi coup was foiled in Iraq in 1941, and Sadat of Egypt was imprisoned as a Nazi collaborator. An extremely high percentage of Palestinian Jews joined the British army.
An extremely high percentage of Palestinian Jews joined the British Army. The ironic rewards: today there are a score of independent Arab nations, with over 5 million square miles, whereas the Jews have had to fight alone for 30 continuous years to hold on to its tiny land.
(4) The West did not give the Jews Israel. When the Arabs rejected the UN partition resolution, the Jews literally had to fight for physical survival no less than to keep their new country alive.
The titular head of the Arab world at the time, Azzam Posha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, told the press, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres"; and this, less than three years after the crematoria of Auschwitz had stopped belching their horrid smoke!
American Zionists were correct that Jewish development of Palestine was benefitting Arabs as well as Jews ; the large influx of illegal Arab immigrants was proof of that.
During the period of the mandate, the country had absorbed an estimated 100,000 legal and illegal Arab immigrants and their offspring
Indeed, Shertok argued that the British had created an artificial labor shortage in Palestine that could be solved only by employing Arab labor.” In turn, the higher standard of living that Palestine's Arab population enjoyed attracted large numbers of illegal Arab immigrants.
... The trouble was certainly due, in part, to the hundreds of 'illegal' Arab immigrants who had poured into Palestine in 1935..
Even so, Bachi, using official records, reports that the Palestinian police actually discovered and expelled nine hundred illegal Arab immigrants per year during the years 1931–45.
The Palestinian National Movement and its Palestine Authority aim to rewrite the history of the Land of Israel. They have developed several agendas about the history of the country.
One agenda claims that they are the ancient population of the country they call Falstin (Palestine). The other claims said they settled in the country in 640; they have a history of 1,381 years...
But the historical facts tell a different story. This book is the second volume of When and How the Arabs and Muslims Immigrated to the Land of Israel. The first volume deals with 640–1914 and brings evidence that most Palestinians are descendants of immigrants who came to the country from Arab and Muslim countries in small numbers during a slow process over hundreds of years; and between the end of the nineteenth century and First World War, their number grew by immigrant workers.
This volume brings evidence that under the British Mandate rule (1918–1948), waves of Arab/Muslim immigrant workers entered the country illegally because of the British policy to ignore illegal immigration. The British mandate government actually ordered the Transjordan army responsible for controlling the borders to ignore illegal immigration.
Also, the British Army brought Arab workers from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to build and work in their camps. The economic and employment opportunities created by the Zionist Movement, Jewish investors and immigrants, Christian organizations, and the British Mandate in the Land of Israel drew an increasing number of Arab immigrant workers. These opportunities were much better than those they had in their home countries.
Already wide evidence exists of tens of thousands of illegal Arab immigrants into the country , who are aided and sheltered by the Arab citizens of Israel. Therefore, any solution of the Palestinian problem ...-- ongoing problem..)
In the end this is all academic. Whatever was the nature of the founding of the State of Israel, it is now a fact and is not going anywhere. Likewise, it is also a fact that in the territories controlled by Israel nearly half the population is Arab and it, too, is not going anywhere.
The reality is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians are operating under the same assumption: that they have the sole legitimate claim to the territory. The dream of either side of the ethnic cleansing of the territory is not going to happen. Neither will the Jews be driven into the sea nor will the Arabs be driven across the Jordan. Both sides need to accept the reality that the territory is occupied by a mixed Jewish and Arab population.
I can see only three possible solutions: 1) two states with one for the Jewish population and one for the Arab, 2) a single state with equal rights for both populations, or 3) the Swiss model of a single state as a confederation of cantons for each population. I will not opine which would be best. This needs to be worked out between the parties. But the present status quo is unjust to the Arab population and is unstable. The Israelis need to give up the idea that they can have the land without the people; and the Arabs need to give up the idea that they can go back to the status quo ante of an overwhelming Arab majority over the whole land.