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'TRANSFER' Looms - Deep Roots in Zionist Ideology and Planning(fwd)



For those of you in my oil class who may not be too familiar with the
Palestinian Israeli problem, "transfer" means Israeli packing many
Palestinians out of their homes in the territories occupied by Israel in
the 1967 war, to give way to Jewish settlers. This is ethnic cleansing
and of course the prospect incenses the whole Arab world, including those
oil producing regions you study. American perceived complicity with
Israel (in that we don't just crack down and order Israel out of the
occupied territories in accord with plans agreed in 1993) does not help US
relations with the Arab world, over Iraq or any other issues.

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 08:41:46 -0400
From: Mid-East Realities <MERL@middleeast.org>
To: MER <MER@middleeast.org>
Subject: 'TRANSFER' Looms - Deep Roots in Zionist Ideology and Planning

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READER'S COMMENT
"Thanks to your MER programme, I can keep track of the truth
concerning the many disturbing events in this world.
Congratulations and keep up the good work"
Maureen Whitmore
Australia - 20 Oct


MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 20 October 2002:
A reader rightly writes: "What really surprises me is that Benny Morris, a highly respected historian who helped expose the truth about the Israeli lie that Palestinian refugees were self-created, now seems comfortable with the idea of ethnic cleansing. This is proof to me that this option is becoming more and more accepting among the
Israeli Jews. I fear that Israel may use the opportunity to implement such a tactic during the campaign against Iraq, when Israel's actions will not be the focus of world attention."
Indeed, with Ariel Sharon Prime Minister of Israel, George Bush President of the United States, a historic regional war already underway throughout the Middle East and spreading worldwide, and the near-starvation Palestinian population everywhere surrounded by Israeli troops armed and supported by the CIA and Pentagon,
the stage is now set for a historic expulsion. Indeed, they've already sanitized the wording to 'transfer' and with articles of this kind are preparing their arguments and justifications.


A NEW EXODUS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST?

Rightwing Israelis are talking about 'transfer' - the expulsion of all Arabs.
Shocking as it sounds, the idea once had support from British and Arab
officials, reveals distinguished Israeli historian Benny Morris. And,
continuing our series on the Arab-Israeli conflict, he argues the Middle East
might now be at peace if Israel's first leader had driven out all the
Palestinians in 1948

[The Guardian - 3 October 2002]:
Once again, "transfer" is in the air - the idea of helping resolve the
Israeli-Arab conflict by transferring or expelling some or all of the Arabs
from Palestine. During recent weeks Israeli newspapers published an interview
with Shmuel Eliahu, the chief rabbi of Safad and the son of Israel's former
chief Sephardi rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, in which he called for the transfer, to
"Jordan, the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union, or Canada," of Arabs
who are unwilling to accept Israel as a Jewish state; and a large
advertisement, by Gush Shalom (the Peace Bloc), a coalition of ultra-left
groups, warning that prime minister Ariel Sharon is pressing the US to attack
Iraq and intends to exploit the chaos that will follow "to carry out his old
plan to expel the Palestinians from the whole country ("Transfer")."

The idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its
evolution and praxis during the past century. And driving it was an iron logic:
There could be no viable Jewish state in all or part of Palestine unless there
was a mass displacement of Arab inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and
would constitute an active or potential fifth column in its midst. This logic
was understood, and enunciated, before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and
British leaders and officials.

As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the prophet and founder of Zionism, wrote in
his diary in anticipation of the establishment of the Jewish state: "We shall
try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring
employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in
our country ... The removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and
circumspectly."

By the 1930s, matters had crystallised, with Arab gunmen attacking the British
Mandate authorities and the Zionist settlers. The Arab Revolt (1936-39) aimed
to force an end to Jewish immigration to Palestine and to eject the Jews'
British protectors. Whitehall sent out a royal commission, chaired by Lord
Peel, to investigate. It published its report in July 1937. Peel was unable to
avoid the logic of transfer: The commission recommended that Palestine be
partitioned between its Jewish and Arab inhabitants - and that 225,000 Arabs be
transferred out of the 20% of the country it earmarked for Jewish sovereignty
(and the handful of Jews, some 1,250, living in the Arab areas be transferred
to the Jewish state). A "clean and final" solution of the Palestine problem
necessitated transfer, the commission ruled.

Both David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement and Israel's first
prime minister, and Chaim Weizmann, the movement's elder statesman, supported
transfer. The background was the Arab revolt and the growing anti-semitic
persecutions in Europe which heralded the Holocaust; the need for a safe haven
for the Jews in Palestine had become acute just as Arab violence was pushing
the British into closing the doors to immigration.

Ben-Gurion hailed Lord Peel's recommendations: "The compulsory transfer of the
Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something
which we never had ... during the days of the First and Second Temples ... an
opportunity which we never dared to dream in our wildest imaginings." In August
1937 he told the emergency 20th Zionist Congress, convened in Zurich: "We do
not want to dispossess, [but piecemeal] transfer of population [through Jewish
purchase and the removal of Arab tenant farmers] occurred previously, in the
[Jezreel] Valley, in the Sharon and in other places ... Now a transfer of a
completely different scope will have to be carried out ... Transfer is what
will make possible a comprehensive [Jewish] settlement programme. Thankfully,
the Arab people have vast empty areas [in Transjordan and Iraq]. Jewish power,
which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the
transfer on a large scale."

Weizmann also supported a transfer scheme and in 1941 told Ivan Maiskii, the
Soviet ambassador in London (according to the envoy's own account): "If half a
million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews [ie, Jewish immigrants]
could be put in their place. That, of course, would be a first instalment ..."
According to Maiskii, Weizmann had proposed "to move a million Arabs ... to
Iraq, and to settle four or five million Jews from Poland and other countries
on the land where these Arabs were" When Maiskii queried how 4-5 million Jews
could be expected to settle on lands previously inhabited by only 1 million
Arabs, Weizmann replied: "The Arab is often called the son of the desert. It
would be truer to call him the father of the desert. His laziness and
primitivism turn a flourishing garden into a desert.'

But it was not only the Zionist leaders who believed transfer was the solution
to the problem of Palestine and its successful partition. In July 1948, midway
in the first Arab-Israeli war, by which time about 400,000 Arabs had been
displaced from their homes, Britain's foreign secretary (and no Zionist),
Ernest Bevin, wrote: "On a long-term view ... there may be something to be said
for an exchange of population between the areas assigned to the Arabs and the
Jews respectively ...." And he added, in explication: "It might be argued that
the flight of large numbers of Arabs from the territory under Jewish
administration had simplified the task of arriving at a stable settlement in
Palestine since some transfers of population seems [sic] to be an essential
condition for such a settlement."

A few days later, London's central intelligence office in the area, the British
Middle East Office, chimed in: "The panic flight of Arabs from the Jewish
occupied areas of Palestine has presented a very serious immediate problem but
may possibly point the way to a long-term solution of one of the greatest
difficulties in the way of a satisfactory implementation of partition, namely
the existence in the Jewish state of an Arab community very nearly equal in
numbers to the Jewish one." It went on: "Now that the initial difficulty of
persuading the Arabs of Palestine to leave their homes has been overcome ... it
seems possible that the solution may lie in their transference to Iraq and
Syria."

By the end of the 1948 war, some 700,000 Arabs had been displaced - to become
"refugees", in the jargon of the day. Most came to rest elsewhere in Palestine,
in those parts today called the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. According to the
UN, there are today close to 4 million Palestinian "refugees", meaning those
driven out in 1948 and their descendants - and they constitute the single most
difficult and vexing component of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

But Bevin's and the BMEO's understanding that this massive transfer pointed the
way to a "solution" of the Palestine problem was by no means a surprising
mid-war discovery. Already in the early and mid-1940s Arab leaders and senior
British officials understood that transfer (as an accompaniment of partition)
offered a way out of the impasse.

In April 1944 the executive of Britain's Labour party published its platform
for a postwar settlement. It included full-throated endorsement of the transfer
of the Arabs out of Palestine and, indeed, the expansion of the mandatory
borders to facilitate the absorption of large waves of Jewish immigrants. The
relevant paragraph was formulated by Hugh Dalton, the chancellor of the
exchequer.

Earlier, in January 1943, an under-secretary of state at the Colonial Office,
the Duke of Devonshire, proposed that Britain set up an independent Arab state
in Libya and that, in exchange, the Arabs acquiesce in the establishment of a
Jewish state "in Palestine". He added: "The Arab population in Palestine might
be dealt with by an offer of assistance to migrate to Libya for those families
who find conditions in Palestine unendurable."

General John Glubb, the British commander (1939-56) of Transjordan's army, the
Arab Legion, thought there was no evading a partition solution - and that the
Arab population in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood were best
transferred to the Arab areas or out of Palestine altogether. In July 1946 he
penned "A Note on Partition as a Solution to the Palestine Problem". He wrote:
"The best course will probably be to allow a time limit during which persons
who find themselves in one or other state against their wishes, will be able to
opt for citizenship of the other state ... It is not, of course, intended to
move Arab[s] ... by force, but merely so to arrange that when these persons
find themselves left behind in the Jewish state, well paid jobs and good
prospects should be simultaneously open for them in the Arab state ..."

Glubb seemed to be speaking here of a "voluntary" transfer. But in a follow-up
note, written a few weeks later, he moved toward the acceptance of some measure
of compulsion as well: "When the undoubtedly Arab and undoubtedly Jewish areas
had been cleared of all members of the other community ... every effort would
be made [in the frontier areas] to arrange exchanges of land and population so
as to leave as few people as possible to be compensated for cash." Glubb, of
course, envisaged a population "exchange" involving the movement of hundreds of
thousands of Arabs and only a few thousand Jews - in effect, a transfer of
Arabs.

In his support of partition and transfer, Glubb faithfully mirrored the
thinking of Transjordan's and Iraq's leaders. In December 1944, Nuri Said,
Iraq's senior politician, told a British interlocutor that if the British
imposed a partition solution for Palestine, there would be a "necessity of
removing the Arabs from the Jewish state ..." Iraq's foreign minister, Arshad
al-Umari, "repeated what Nuri had said ... [regarding] probable [Arab] reaction
[to partition] and also the necessity of removing the Arabs from the Jewish
state," according to another British official.

Lord Moyne, the British minister resident in the Middle East, a few weeks
earlier reported that both Tewfiq Abul Huda, Transjordan's prime minister, and
Mustafa Nahas Pasha, Egypt's prime minister, similarly believed that "a final
settlement can only be reached by means of partition". Two years later, in July
1946, Alec Kirkbride, Britain's well-informed representative in Amman, reported
that Abul Huda's successor, Ibrahim Pasha Hashim, and King Abdullah of
Transjordan both supported partition: "[Hashim added that] the only just and
permanent solution lay in absolute partition with an exchange of populations;
to leave Jews in an Arab state or Arabs in a Jewish state would lead inevitably
to further trouble ... Ibrahim Pasha admitted that he would not be able to
express this idea in public for fear of being called a traitor."

A month later, Kirkbride reported: "King Abdullah and prime minister of Jordan
consider that partition followed by an exchange of populations is only
practical solution to the Palestine problem. They do not feel able to express
this view publicly ..." As all involved understood, "exchange of populations"
was a euphemism for transferring the Arabs out of the area of the Jewish
state-to-be.

In May 1944, the director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, Moshe
Sharett, hesitantly predicted that "once the Jewish state is established - it
is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs." In the 1948 war,
which the Palestinian Arabs and the neighbouring Arab states initiated, a
transfer of 700,000 of Palestine's 1.25 million Arab inhabitants duly took
place.

Both before and during 1948 all understood the logic of transfer: Given Arab
opposition to the very idea and existence of a Jewish state, it could not and
would not be established, as a viable, lasting entity, without the displacement
of the bulk of its Arab inhabitants. But the transfer of 1948 was incomplete:
The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people, both local inhabitants and
refugees, remained in Palestine, many of them in poverty, a quarter of a
million in the Gaza Strip, some half a million in the West Bank, and 150,000 in
Israel proper. These populations today stand at 1 million, 2 million and 1.2
million respectively.

In 1967 Israel, provoked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, occupied the West Bank and
Gaza Strip and today, directly and indirectly, rules over more than 4 million
Arabs (alongside the country's 5 million Jews). And the basic problems remain:
Infinitely higher Arab birthrates; an intermixed population that cannot live in
peace in one multi-ethnic state; and Palestinian opposition both to the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to Israel's very existence (vide what
is taught Palestinian children in West Bank and Gaza schools and statements by
even so-called Palestinian moderates, such as Marwan Barghouti and Faisal
Husseini, not to mention the oft-publicised views of Islamist leaders such as
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin). When Israeli rightwingers today speak of "transfer", they
think in terms not of facilitating a partition of historic Palestine but of
making a clean sweep and ridding the country of its Arab inhabitants.

The Palestinian Arab strategy of suicide bombings and the tone of rejectionism
that characterises much Palestinian rhetoric, from Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority radio and TV stations downwards during the past two years fuels such
thinking. Israel's extreme right, which wants the "whole Land of Israel" for
the Jews, ultimately posits transfer as a counterweight to this mainstream
rejectionism - which, in effect, endorses a transfer of the Jews out of
Palestine, or "throwing the Jews into the sea", as the phrase goes.

One wonders what Ben-Gurion - who probably could have engineered a
comprehensive rather than a partial transfer in 1948, but refrained - would
have made of all this, were he somehow resurrected. Perhaps he would now regret
his restraint. Perhaps, had he gone the whole hog, today's Middle East would be
a healthier, less violent place, with a Jewish state between Jordan and the
Mediterranean and a Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan. Alternatively, Arab
success in the 1948 war, with the Jews driven into the sea, would have obtained
the same, historically calming result. Perhaps it was the very indecisiveness
of the geographical and demographic outcome of 1948 that underlies the
persisting tragedy of Palestine.

· This article is based partly on material published in The Road to Jerusalem:
Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews (IB Tauris, London, 2002).

Note: The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections
and Clarifications column, Monday October 7 2002

In Benny Morris's article on the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel, a
number of quotes were removed when the piece was edited to fit the available
space. Mr Morris believes that the comments were significant because they
revealed that some Arab leaders supported the idea of moving the Palestinians
from the Jewish state during the 1940s. The following passage was cut from the
piece: "Nuri Said, Iraq's senior politician, told a British interlocutor that
if the British imposed a partition solution for Palestine, there would be a
'necessity of removing the Arabs from the Jewish state...' Lord Moyne, the
British minister resident in the Middle East, reported that both Tewfiq Abul
Huda, Transjordan's prime minister, and Mustafa Nahas Pasha, Egypt's prime
minister, similarly believed that 'a final settlement can only be reached by
means of partition'. Two years later, in 1946, Alec Kirkbride, Britain's
knowledgeable representative in Amman, reported that 'King Abdullah and prime
minister [Ibrahim Hashim] of Jordan consider that partition followed by an
exchange of populations is the only practical solution to the Palestine
problem. They do not feel able to express this view publicly.' Hashim 'thought
that to leave Jews in an Arab state or Arabs in a Jewish state would lead
inevitably to further trouble'."


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