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BALFOUR’S ODYSSEY
From Betrayal to Expulsion and
Quest for Return
12-13 November 2005
Salman Abu Sitta
In my day dreams, I often imagine sitting among the audience in
a huge court-room, watching Balfour in the dock, hearing a
recital of a long list of charges against him. Indeed for
almost a century, eighty-eight years to be exact, Palestine and
beyond have been the scene of 5 major wars and hundreds of air,
land and sea raids. It had witnessed destruction of its towns
and villages, untold suffering by 6 million Palestinian
refugees, at least half a million killed or injured, many
millions outside Palestine dispersed in war years in Sinai, Suez
Canal, Golan and Lebanon. All this is topped by the longest and
most brutal occupation in the world today.
Above all, Balfour has the dubious distinction of being the
first to set the policy for what became the biggest planned
ethnic cleansing operation in modern history.
How else can you describe Balfour’s Legacy? Of course, there
have been many instances in history, particularly European, when
foreign settlers descended upon a far away territory, killed or
enslaved its hapless inhabitants. But never before, as in
Palestine, a carefully considered policy was established and
approved, even by the so-called League of Nations, to implant
new people in another territory and replace the rightful
inhabitants of the Holy Land.
The great British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said 35 years
ago,
The tragedy
of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by
a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new
state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of
innocent people were made permanently homeless…It is abundantly
clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from
which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the
heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the
world would accept being expelled en masse from their country;
how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a
punishment which nobody else would tolerate?
This ethnic cleansing policy was implemented relentlessly for
about 30 years, the total life of British occupation of
Palestine and the British Mandate. Thereafter, it was followed
openly through Israeli occupation of all of Palestine.
This then is neither an accident of war, nor the excess of a
racist 19th century Europe. It was a deliberate plan
to destroy a nation and its people and replace them with foreign
European immigrants.
Balfour was fully aware of this outcome. When challenged in
November 1918 about the injustice of his declaration, he said:
For in
Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of
consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the
country…The four great powers are committed to Zionism and
Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old
tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder
impact than the desires and prejudices [not the rights]
of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land.
On another occasion he described these Arabs as, “wholly
barbarous, undeveloped and unorganized black tribes”.
In saying so, Balfour learnt well the teachings of his tutor and
friend, Haim Weizmann. Here in the Scottish Record Office in
Edinburgh, you will find a letter from Weizmann to Balfour
telling him on 30 May 1918 that,
The Arab is
treacherous…superficially clever, worships one thing only: power
and success…dishonest, uneducated, greedy, inefficient, shifty…
These racist remarks are the stuff which made people like
Balfour and Weizmann.
Balfour himself is not free from a hint of anti-Semitic
feelings, not only towards the Arabs, but towards the Jews too.
He wrote in the Introduction to Sokolov’s History of Zionism,
[It is] a
serious endeavor to mitigate the age-long miseries created for
Western civilization by the presence in its midst…of an alien
and hostile Body [i.e. Jews], [it is] unable to
expel or absorb.
Those who wished to get rid of European Jews found a solution.
They conspired to plant them in Palestine and make the
Palestinians pay dearly for this case of double anti-Semitism.
George Bush: take notice, Palestinians are ahead of you. 88
years before your fancy campaign the Palestinians sent petitions
and delegations since 1917 and thereafter demanding democracy
and people’s presentation.
Here is what Weizmann told Balfour about democracy in his
letter,
The brutal
numbers operate against us, for there are five Arabs to one Jew
[a lie. True 9:1]…This system does not take account of
the fact there is a fundamental qualitative difference
between Arab and Jew.
This is the same Weizmann who went round meeting Arab leaders
preaching co-existence and bountiful goods coming out of Jewish
industry and wealth, if only they were allowed in Palestine. He
told them,
…not a hair
on the Arabs’ heads will be touched…never it is our objective to
turn anyone out of his property…
Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, told the Zionist first High
Commissioner to Palestine, Herbert Samuel, when the latter
reported the Palestinian agitation for freedom and democracy,
Tell them
what you like…but never mention the word: presentation or
representative council…
Churchill told a Palestinian delegation in Jerusalem in 1921
when they asked for democratic institutions,
Step by step
we shall develop representative institutions leading to full
self-government but our children’s children will have passed
away before that is accomplished…
Ironically Sharon is carrying on with the same false mission
today. He says he is trying hard to build a democratic
Palestinian state, presumably behind the Apartheid wall and
within the Palestinian concentration camps he created in the
West Bank.
On this bed of racism and cynical disregard for human values,
was the British policy based, as initiated by Balfour and
followed thereafter by others. Not much has changed today, only
lip service by politicians here and there. Palestinians, the
victims of this policy, are asked to accept this as their fate.
They will never do that. Here is why.
First a brief review.
Slide 1 (1917)
This is Palestine as Allenby found it in 1917, at the same month
Balfour issued his infamous letter.
The Jews were only 9% of the population. Their land ownership
was only 1.7% of Palestine..
Slide 2 (Revolts)
When Balfour declaration became known and the British Mandate
appointed a Zionist as High Commissioner of Palestine in 1920,
the Palestinian population agitated and revolted against the
intrusion of foreign immigrants.
But it is within the tenure of Herbert Samuel (1920-1925) that
the foundation for the state of Israel was established.
During Samuel’s tenure, a pseudo government in the name of the
Jewish Agency was established. Hebrew language was introduced
as one of three official languages. Ministries nuclei were
formed: Rutenberg for power, Mekorot for water, Histadrut for
labour. Separate Jewish education and banking systems were
authorized. Most importantly a new Jewish army, with the
innocent name of ‘settlement watchmen’ was trained and armed.
Over 100 ordinances were hurriedly promulgated to facilitate the
acquisition of Palestinian land by Jewish immigrants. It was a
virtual take over of Palestine.
The Palestinians revolted in 1921, 1929, but the biggest revolt
was in 1936-1939. The last was triggered off by a massive
Jewish immigration from Europe in the mid 1930’s. By 1939,
Jewish immigrants increased 8 times from 1917, the year of
British occupation of Palestine. In 1939 they constituted 30%
of the total population (445,000 out of a total of 1,501,000).
It is in this period, just before WWII, that the British Mandate
government physically destroyed the fabric of the Palestinian
society, and made it an easy prey for the Israeli conquest of
Palestine that was to come in 1948. It dissolved all
Palestinian political parties. Its leaders were either
imprisoned or have fled the country. New British army
reinforcements were brought in. RAF showered bombs on
villages. Collective punishment was applied. Houses were
demolished. Provisions were destroyed. Able-bodied men were
rounded up and put in cages. Summary trials led to quick
execution. Possession of a simple pistol led to death sentence
and possession of a knife led to life imprisonment. The
Palestinian society was utterly devastated. All the while, the
Zionists were watching the British do their bidding while they
were building their army to 20,000 soldiers, soon to increase 5
times. The scene for al Nakba was set. The Zionists were ready
to bounce.
During WWII, Palestine was quiet. Britain retracted some of its
hostile policies towards the Arabs. The Jews strongly
objected. In Biltmore conference, they planned to take over all
of Palestine.
In 1946 (Slide 3) the situation was like this. The
Jewish immigrants acquired 5.3% of Palestine area. The Jewish
immigrants were still 30% of the population at a total of
600,000 Jewish immigrants.
Then Britain dumped Palestine into the lap of the UN, the
successor to the League of Nations.
The ‘Sacred Trust of Civilization’ which was handed over to
Britain, according to article 22 of the League of Nations
Covenant, to assist Palestinians to obtain their freedom and
self-government, was translated by Balfour and his successors
into transforming Palestinian Palestine to a Jewish-dominated
Israel with the Palestinian national majority shattered and
defenseless.
Britain betrayed the very Mandate clauses which it drafted.
Contrary to Clause 10 of the Mandate, it did not “safeguard the
interest of the community”. It decimated Palestinian society by
brutal military action. Land laws were promulgated which were
against the interests of the community. In the last 6 months of
the Mandate the British did not interfere to protect civilians
when Israeli terrorists committed massacres in Palestinian
villages. Dayr Yassin was within 2 miles from the High
Commissioner’s office. His chief of Police said “it is not
my business”.
Two hundred and fifty villages were depopulated by Zionist
forces while the British were looking on. That is half of the
total refugees today. Under the Mandate, the British were
obliged to protect them.
Contrary to Clause 5 of the Mandate, the integrity of Palestine
territory was not respected. It was devoured by the wolves, the
Israeli wolf chief among them.
Contrary to the practice in other Mandates, as in Cyprus for
example, the Palestinians were not handed over their government
offices, their infrastructure, their cultural and religious
places, their records of health, education and land registry.
There was nothing of the customary colonial decorum of handing
over the trust held by Palestine’s British warden. They slipped
at night, unceremoniously, leaving the civilian population to
fend for themselves.
By default, frequently by design and occasionally by corrupt
practices, the British abandoned, or handed over, the property
of the Palestinian people to the Zionists: a complete
infrastructure they needed to build an instant state: 1700
public buildings, 497 police and post offices, hospitals and
schools, 3000 km first class roads, 1000 km railway lines, 41
railway stations, 2 ports, 31 airfields and 37 stacked military
camps.
Balfour issued the birth certificate for Israel and the death
certificate for Palestine. Samuel created the laws for it and
imported immigrants to be the new citizens for the state. The
British Mandate saw the young baby to adulthood and supplied it
with all the necessary physical infrastructure.
The ‘Palestine Question’ was put before the UN in order to give
a legal fig-leaf to this insidious dismembership of Palestine by
the international i.e. Western community at the UN, exactly as
Balfour sought European blessings in the League of Nations for
his declaration 30 years ago. Hence, partition of Palestine was
put to vote in the UN.
Slide 4
The proposed Partition by the UN was a farce, a thinly-disguised
plan to give respectability to the Jewish take over of
Palestine. Jewish immigrants who controlled 5% of Palestine
were allocated 54% of the country. Half of the population in
this would-be Jewish state were Palestinians who suddenly found
themselves under the sovereignty of foreign immigrants.
The consequences were predictable. The Palestinians were not
ready to give up over half of their country. Ben Gurion knew
this. He set his Plan Dalet in motion. Over 65,000 trained
Zionist soldiers, later increased to 120,000, moved to conquer
Palestine.
Here you shall see an animated sequence of al Nakba in steps of
15 days from March 1948, the onset of Plan Dalet to April 1949
when Jordan signed the Armistice Agreement.
Slide 5 (animation – 1 minute)
The blue is the Jewish land during the Mandate. The red is the
occupied Palestinian land. The flashing yellow is the incidence
of massacres. At bottom, you see three columns: the rising
count of depopulated villages, the expelled refugees and the
occupied land.
The main observation is that, until 15 May 1948, while Palestine
was under the British Mandate, half the total refugees were
expelled and 41 massacres were committed.
On that date Israel was declared on 13% of Palestine.
At the end of the Mandate, Arab regular forces came to rescue
what was left of Palestine but failed.
Israel broke 2 Truces and occupied southern and northern
Palestine and established a bridge heading to Jerusalem contrary
to the Partition Plan.
After signing Armistice Agreement with Egypt, Israel occupied
all Negev and reached the Gulf of Aqaba. The Zionists conquered
78% of Palestine and called it Israel.
Slide 6
Thus life was snuffed out of 675 towns and villages. 85% of the
Palestinians in the part of Palestine that became Israel became
refugees.
Slide 7
They went into exile in 602 locations in the West Bank and Gaza,
Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Slide 8
Thus Palestine, which was promised free self-government by the
British and by the League of Nations was reduced to this.
Balfour, bear witness.
Slide 9
Israel’s appetite for colonial expansion was not satisfied. In
1967 and after, Israel occupied 100% of all Palestine, parts of
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Palestinians were besieged in
isolated cantons, treated like concentration camps.
Slide 10
Sharon envisaged a few Palestinian cantons whose land, air,
water, economy, entry and exit he controls. He has no problem
calling it a Palestinian state.
Slide 11
To make sure the cantons are Palestinian ghettos, he invented
and built the Apartheid wall. This image shows what was
accomplished till a year ago.
Slide 12
Sharon plans to encircle all Palestinian towns and dissect
Jerusalem. In July 2004 the International Court of Justice gave
an Advisory Opinion that the Apartheid Wall is illegal and that
the West Bank and Gaza Strip are Occupied Palestinian
Territory.
If Sharon built this wall to separate Israel in the west from
Palestinians, why then he plans to extend the wall on the east
side?
Slide 13
The more sinister motive of course is to siphon off the West
Bank aquifer and leave the Palestinians thirsty.
Slide 14
90% of the western aquifer is siphoned-off by Israel. The small
northern aquifer is to be shared. The negligible eastern
aquifer is to be left to the Palestinians.
This is the Odyssey of Balfour’s original sin. But we cannot
just blame Balfour himself for every evil. His legacy, his
policy, his colonial mentality still pervades halls of power in
America and Europe.
There is only one way to atone for these sins, to alleviate the
endless suffering. It is to restore rights and apply justice.
Slide 15
We know that the Right of Return has been enshrined in
international law, supported by the international community over
130 times.
But Zionist myths and fabrications are still being propagated.
They say the return is not feasible, not possible. Even if it
were, that is no reason to deny justice. But these claims are
entirely false.
Slide 16
97% of the refugees are within a hundred kilometers from their
homes.
50% of the refugees are within 40 km from their homes, a mere
bus ride. Many can see their homes.
Slide 17
Another myth: there is no room for returning refugees. Wrong.
The truth is 80% of the Israeli Jews live in 14% of Israel. The
rest is refugee land inhabited by the Kibbutz and the army. It
seems Israel finds room only for one million Russians, equal in
number to all refugees in Gaza and Lebanon.
Slide 18
Another myth: villages are built over. Wrong. 90% of the
villages sites are vacant. The built-over areas are around Tel
Aviv, Haifa and West Jerusalem.
Slide 19
They tell us we must maintain Israel’s Jewish character. There
is no moral or legal obligation for the Palestinians to remain
in exile in order for Israel to import immigrants. But what is
the meaning of the Jewish character… (Four aspects).
Slide 20
Thus there is no moral, legal, physical or geographical reason
why the refugees cannot return home. Here is a plan in seven
phases.
Slide 21
In the northern district, there is no problem. All village
sites are vacant with very few exceptions.
Slide 22
The demographic picture confirms that town by town.
Slide 23
The southern district is even easier. The number of rural Jews
in the southern district is less than a single refugee camp in
Gaza. The area of this district is 40 times the size of Gaza
Strip. True half of it is desert but with the billions of
dollars Israel receive, it could revive the fertile part.
Slide 24
The towns can easily accommodate population.
Slide 25
The central region has somewhat more difficult problems,
especially around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but they can be solved
as in similar cases in Bosnia and Kosova under the UN
supervision.
Thus Return is not only just, it is (Slide 26)
inevitable.
This presentation before you reveals, I hope, several facts:
First, starting with Balfour, continuing on today with Sharon,
the Palestinians have been subjected to the largest, longest
ethnic cleansing operation in modern history. It has come about
through an unholy alliance between Western colonialism and
anachronistic racist Zionist ideology. This evil must be
reversed. It is a shame for all of us today to condone it or do
nothing to eliminate it.
Second, the universal rise in the awareness of upholding human
rights the world over and the efficiency of electronic
communications created a genuine people’s voice, parallel to,
sometimes better than, elected parliaments. This voice is
increasingly gaining importance in making political decisions.
Witness the great show of people’s voice against racism in
Durban, against pollution in Seattle and against the war in Iraq
and for the support of Palestinians in many cities in Europe.
Here in Britain, the voice of the people transcended the
political turn-speak and became a force to be reckoned with.
Third, refugees have returned home in Kosova, Bosnia, East
Timor, Ruwanda, Guatemala, Abkhazia, Afghanistan and Iraq. They
returned everywhere on the strength of international law,
enforced by the Security Council and at times by Nato soldiers.
Everywhere except in Palestine. Why? Because US supports
Israel unconditionally in every field – politically,
economically, militarily, even to the detriment of US
interests.
Fourth, the international law is solidly behind Palestinian
rights. The international consensus, barring the rogue states,
is solidly behind them. So are the Treaty-Based Human Rights
Committees. So are practically all human rights groups in the
world. But there is an anomaly. Compare the extent and
strength of people’s support for the Palestinian rights with the
strength and persistence of Western governments’ to support
Israel and to undermine Palestinian rights. Tolerating Israel’s
policies today means that no Western politician has learnt
anything from Balfour’s shameful legacy.
Last but not the least, in spite of 88 years of continuous
struggle, the Palestinians did not surrender or give up their
rights. They never will.
It behooves every man and woman in the world with a free
conscience to support them.
For peace has only one road leading to it. That is justice.
Let us follow that road.
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