The Claim of Dispossession

Arieh L. Avneri

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351484985
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Categoría: Política

This study of the Israeli-Arab conflict sheds new light on the historic background of the contemporary Palestinian problem. Unlike other books that treat the political issues of this confl ict, this volume traces the spread of Jewish settlements over the seventy year period before the establishment of the State of Israel, in order to see how it affected the existing Arab community's economy and its social and cultural institutions.

Chapter One
The Arab Claim of 1300 Years of Uninterrupted Possession

"Is it in any way just, that the Arabs, who have lived on this land uninterruptedly for 1300 years, and whose lives are rooted in its soil – should be dispossessed by force, should be pushed aside, and should be blackmailed to enable the Zionist Jews to fashion a Jewish National Home on this land. That's the problem..."

(Jamal Husseini at the Round Table Conference, London, February 9, 1939)

Palestine, the land which lies between three continents and borders on the desert, was throughout the ages an arena of conflict between empires and a magnet for invaders and nomads. After the nation of Israel lost its independence, there were many expeditions of conquest, each of which introduced a layer of new settlers into the country's population. The Arab conquest, too, brought new settlers, who imposed the religion of Islam and the Arab language on all the inhabitants.

Throughout history there are many instances of conquests which led, through a process of absorption and assimilation, to the formation of new national entities. Had the Arab conquest led to the formation of a crystallized Arab nation – no matter how small in number – it would have been difficult to contradict the claim of Arab historical continuity in Palestine. But such was not the case.

The few Arabs who lived in Palestine a hundred years ago, when Jewish settlement began, were a tiny remnant of a volatile population, which had been in constant flux, as a result of unending conflicts between local tribes and local despots. Malaria and disease had taken a heavy toll of the inhabitants. The numerous factors responsible for the dire state of the Arab community a century ago will be discussed in the course of this investigation. Social paroxysms, wars and destruction prevented the Arab population in Palestine from striking root and from handing down a tradition of permanent settlement from generation to generation.

Since the breakdown of the Crusader Kingdom and the subsequent conquest by the Mamelukes, the population of Palestine kept dwindling and reached its nadir after the Black Plague. Western Palestine at that time had a total population of between 140,000 and 150,000: Moslems, Christians and Jews. After the Ottoman conquest, the authorities took a census for tax purposes, and tabulated 49,181 heads of families and single men liable to tax.

Professor Roberto Bacchi calculated that in the years 1553–1554 there were 205,000 Moslems, Christians and Jews in Palestine.¹ During the following 250 years the population growth was minimal. In 1800 the total population was 275,000, of whom 246,300 were Moslems and 21,800 Christians.²

In 1890 there were in Palestine 532,000 people: 431,800 Moslems, 57,400 Christians, and 42,900 Jews.³

The Christian population was not all Arab. Thus the Christian-Arab population at the time is estimated at 42,000,⁴and so the total Arab population was about 473,000. From this figure the number of Arabs in Palestine in 1880 can be easily calculated: If we take into account a natural increase in population of between 0.7% and 1% per annum, we find that in 1880, at the beginning of Jewish colonization, there were about 425,000 to 440,000 Arabs in Palestine. Of these, 40,000 to 45,000 were Bedouin nomads.

Egyptian Colonization

The population in Palestine underwent radical changes in the wake of two destructive wars that swept the country – Napoleon's campaign of 1799, and the invasion by the Egyptian army and the subsequent rule of Ibrahim Pasha between the years 1831–1840. The conquest did establish law and order in the country, but the war, the suppression of rebellions and the subsequent withdrawal caused many old inhabitants to flee and new elements to settle in the land.

As a result of the war, the military draft and heavy taxes imposed by the Government, many fellaheen and urban dwellers fled. In addition, the measures taen by the Government to prevent looting and robbery brought about the flight of many Bedouins. The frequent rebellions and their suppression were accompanied by considerable loss of life and flight of large numbers of inhabitants. It was in this period that the Great Earthquake of 1837 occurred, and in its path pestilence and hunger took their toll. On the other hand, there was a limited influx of some thousands of immigrants whom Ibrahim Pasha brought in to settle the empty stretches of the country. Before them, a goodly number of fellaheen had fled Egypt seeking to evade the military draft imposed by Ibrahim Pasha in preparation for the invasion and settled in Palestine. They sought sanctuary with the governor of Akko, Abdullah, who granted it readily. The French scholar, M. Sabry, whose sources were the archives in Cairo writes: "Abdullah, the Governor of Akko, encouraged the migration of fellaheen from Egypt and gave them shelter. Mohammed Ali, the ruler of Egypt, complained to the Porte (the Sultan), who replied that the immigrants were citizens of the Empire and were entitled to settle anywhere they pleased. In 1831, more than six thousand fellaheen crossed the Egyptian border, and Abdullah, in his bountiful mercy, refused to return them (to Egypt)."⁵

After he conquered Palestine, not only did Mohammed Ali refrain from sending back the draft evaders to Egypt, but he sent new settlers to consolidate his rule. The Egyptian settlers scattered to many urban and rural points, appropriated large tracts of land, and lent variety and numbers to the existing population. Some settled in the Hula Valley. They were the Ghawarna tribes, the most disdained and primitive of Bedouin tribes, who suffered greatly from the malaria endemic to the valley. The death rate among their children was so great that the total population diminished from generation to generation. They replenished their ranks by recruiting criminals and army deserters from time to time.⁶ Another Bedouin tribe, Arab ez-Zubeid, (who, in the future, were to sell their lands to the settlers of Yessud-Hama'ala) also came from Egypt, either as refugees or with the encouragement of the Egyptian ruler. In one of the villages of the Hula Valley, Muftahira, the Egyptians established a permanent settlement.⁷ Tristram relates that the inhabitants of one of the villages in the Beit-Shean Valley "are Egyptian immigrants and they are grievously oppressed by the neighbouring Bedouin."⁸The Arab-Hinadi tribe came to the Jordan Valley, and after some years settled in the village of Delhamiya. The village Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley was settled by Egyptians, as was Kafer-Miser,⁹in the vicinity of Kaukab el-Hawa. Many Egyptians also settled in Akko and its suburbs.¹⁰

Members of the Arab el-Ufi tribe settled in Wadi Hawarith. They were Egyptian slaves who had been brought by Ibrahim Pasha.¹¹The Egyptian ruler also brought the Bedouin slave tribe Arab ed-Damair to the vicinity of Hadera. They settled in the nearby swamps.¹²

According to the British Palestine Exploration Fund regional map of Jaffa, most of the city was made up of Egyptian-populated districts. "Saknet el-Mussariya," "Saknet Abu Kebir," "Saknet Hammad" and "Saknet Abu Derwish" were all setled by Egyptians who had accompanied the conquering army.¹³ Another district, "Saknet el-Abid," was settled by freed slaves. The Egyptians settled in the six villages of Fejja, Jaljuliya, Ummlebis, Sumeil, Sheikh-Muwanis and Salame situated on the outskirts of Jaffa, and drove away the indigenous population. A sheikh called Hammed el-Masri occupied a large tract of land by the Yarkon River.¹⁴ Philip Baldensperger states that in 1893 the inhabitants of many villages in the southern part of the country, like Zarnuqa and Kubeiba, were of Egyptian origin; that they were unlike the other Arabs then resident in the country; that the fellaheen used to call them "Masserein"; and that a Palestinian Arab would never give his daughter in marriage to an Egyptian, and would rarely take to wife a woman of Egyptian stock.¹⁵ The dwellers of the village Quttra in the southern part of the country (later the site of Gedera) were originally brought to Palestine from Libya.¹⁶

In a number of villages in Wadi 'Ara – 'Ara, 'Ar'ara and Kafer-Kara – and south of the triangle in the villages Kafer-Qasim, Taiyiba and Qalansawa, there are hundreds of families of Egyptian origin who accompanied the conquering forces of Ibrahim Pasha. According to the tradition among these people, their ancestors were the camel riders for the army of occupation and when the Khedive's troops left they remained and settled there.¹⁷ Similarly, in the cities of Samaria and Judea there are hundreds of families which, to this day, are named Masri. The origin of all of them is traceable to those who left Egypt at the time of Ibrahim Pasha.¹⁸

The Egyptians acquired land in various ways. Jews in Haifa and Jerusalem later negotiated for land with Egyptian landowners – not always successfully.¹⁹ Two thousand dunam of land in Kafer-Miser in Upper Galilee were purchased from the heirs of the Egyptian nobleman Shedid.²⁰

Egyptian laborers emigrated or were brought to the country by different factors. Before the First World War they worked on the reclamation of the swamp-lands of Hadera. The engineer in charge of the reclamation project writes: "In view of the dearth of local laborers, capable of working in water and mud, I imported 150 Egyptians to do the work of digging. They participated in the laying of the railroad tracks from Jerusalem to Jaffa that a Belgian company executed, and thereafter remained in the country."²¹ Many of these Egyptians settled in Hadera and (those who survived the malaria) found work in the citrus groves. Zvi Nadav relates: "In Hadera we worked together with about twenty Arabs, most of them blacks and Egyptians."²²

The Egyptian laborers were skilled in road-building. In 1904, the Jewish Colonization Association (I.C.A.) built a road from Yavne'el to Kinneret to bypass the hostile village of Lubiya. The road was built by Jewish and Egyptian labor.²³

The assimilation of the Egyptians with the indigenous Arab population was a drawn-out process. After his visit to Palestine in 1917, Philip Baldensperger relates that the existing population in Jaffa, though essentially Arab, contained at least twenty-five different nationalities, most of them Palestinian and Egyptian Arabs. The blacks, with Sheikh el-Abid as their leader, generally lived among the Egyptians, although they originated from countries just north of the equator. The black population was made up of former slaves who had fled their masters, or had been legally freed, or had come as pilgrims but could not return to their native lands. The Egyptians lived in separate areas called Saknat, and though they had lived in the country for seventy years, they preserved their distinctive native dress.²⁴ Y. Shimoni writes: "The primary areas of settlement of the Egyptians are in the coastal plain in the south of the country, between Tulkarem and Gaza. The further south one goes, the greater the percentage of Egyptians among the Arab population, both in the villages and the towns. In all the villages in this area, one finds a district, or at the least a family, that is known as el-Musriya, Egyptian. Some villages were actually founded by Egyptian immigrants."²⁵

Moslem Refugees Who Found Asylum

In the middle of the nineteenth century, when whole countries began slipping away from Ottoman rule and falling into the hands of Christian states, the Sultan gave asylum to Moslem refugees who fled their homelands for religious or political reasons. After the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, the Algerians rebelled under the leadership of Abd el-Kader el-Hassani. After a prolonged war the rebellion was put down. Abd el-Kader and many of his followers were captured and imprisoned. In 1856, the French permitted Abd el-Kader to leave Algeria, together with some followers. Some of them went to Syria and others to Palestine. The Algerian Arabs settled in several cities and founded about ten villages. These immigrants, who were called by the natives Mugrabis (Westerners), founded four villages in Lower Galilee – Shara, Ularn, Ma'ader and Kafer-Sabet. They also founded the village Husha, on the site of ancient Usha, near the present Ramat-Yohanan. They established the villages of Delata, 'Alma and Dishon in Upper Galilee, as well as Teleil and Husseiniya on the banks of Lake Hula. The elders of these villages continued to speak the Berber language up to the end of the nineteenth century.²⁶

H,B. Tristram, the devoutly Christian British traveller-scholar, who in 1863/64 travelled up and down the Holy Land in the footsteps of Jesus, found himself at Mais, an Algerian village near Qedesh and he noted in his diary: it is "a colony of Algerian Arabs, refugees, who still wear the Algerian burnous, and build the 'gourbis' of Mount Atlas. They cordially responded to me when addressed in the patois of North Africa."²⁷

Quite a number of Mugrabis settled in Safed, and probably also in Tiberias. We find these facts documented in the reports of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The Mugrabis insulted the members of the Fund delegation, even attacked them, and hindered their work. The delegation sought the intervention of the Emir Abd el-Kader who then resided in Syria. The Emir sent a letter of apology "for the behavior of my people in Safed and Tiberias."²⁸

It would seem that the...