89 Years Of Conflict Would Have Been Avoided – OpEd
The Palestine-Zionist wars started with the Great Revolt of the Arabs against the British pro-Zionist Mandate in 1936. It has continued off and on for 89 years.
If the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had taken advantage of the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl’s offer of massive investments into the Ottoman Empire by European Jews like the French and British Rothschilds in return for expanded Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Ottomans would not have joined World War 1, and the Arabs would have fought the Turks for independence.
If the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem had to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence; there would have no British Mcahon-Hussein letters, nor any Balfour Declaration or British Mandate.
European and American Jewish Zionists would have supported the Arabs and Zionists against the Turks; and an independent Jewish Allied state might have become the outcome. Ali Maher Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister and chief adviser to King Farouk said, “in a better atmosphere they (the Zionists) might be able to advance further, not by force, but with Arab goodwill.”
But by 1939 Nationalistic secular politics had made even Arab government rivals; and Hajj Amin Husseini had already poisoned the possibility that Arabs could have offered their well respected traditional welcome of guests, to their cousins who were desperate to return home.
The earlier Ben-Gurion’s meetings with George Antonius and Muse Alami would more likely have led to a more peaceful outcome for both sides. Millions of European Jews would not have died in the Nazi holocaust; and millions of Palestinians would not be living in refugee camps.
The Great Revolt period was between 1936 and 1939, when several thousand Palestinians living under the British Mandate rose up violently against a growing Jewish population and the Brits who were in charge. About 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5-8,000 Arabs died; of whom at least 1,500 fell at the hands of fellow Arabs.
In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, while placing major limits on Jewish immigration. Most Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, felt forced to accept the proposal because of the Nazi danger.
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and de facto leader of the Palestinian community, rejected the idea and called for jihad. He later went to Nazi Germany. The Palestinians emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Since then more than 100-200,000 lives have been lost.
However, they did accomplish their goal of substantially slowing the growth of the Jewish populations. If the Palestinians had accepted Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposal partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, hundreds of thousands of European Jews could have been rescued and brought to the Jewish state in the years preceding the Nazi’s Final Solution.
And the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe)
when they lost the next anti-Zionist war in 1948.
So are the Palestinian Arabs victims of a “settler colonial project,” or their own failed leadership? Can two people share the land, by dividing it? The idea that things could have indeed gone differently, and that they weren’t fated for endless conflict, suggests maybe they still can go differently in the future, unless they want to fight for another 89 years.
What if Herbert Samuel, the Jewish British high commissioner for Palestine, had appointed a moderate Palestinian instead of al-Husseini as grand mufti? What if the two-state solution offered by the Peel Commission report in 1937 had gone through? “Jews would have gotten less than 20% of the country but there would have been no Palestinian refugee crisis. There would have been no Nakhba in 1948 and the Gaza Strip would not be teeming with refugees today.
What would have happened if the religious leaders of Palestine had followed the Qur’an statement that “We made the people who were considered weak (the Jews) to inherit the eastern part of the land (Jordan) and the western part thereof (Israel) which we have blessed. And the fair Word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because of their endurance. And We completely destroyed all the great works and buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected.” (Qur’an 7:137)
This verse is clear that the land was meant for Jews by using the phrase ‘the people who were considered weak’. Most of the interpreters perceive that this phrase refers to the Children of Israel (Al-Razi, Al-Shawkani; Al-Tabari; Al-Zamakhshari). In fact, although it seems implicit at the beginning, the meaning is directly made understood from the later part of the same verse which mentions ‘Children of Israel’ in relation to ‘Pharaoh’.
Like what you read?
Please consider supporting Eurasia Review. Thank you for your consideration!
