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Title: Saudi prince: Maybe the Palestinians should've taken the deals they were offered
Source: HotAir
URL Source: https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04 ... -shouldve-taken-deals-offered/
Published: Apr 30, 2018
Author: Ed Morrissey
Post Date: 2018-05-01 02:51:50 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 8205
Comments: 88

Or maybe they should stop sucking up to Iran. That’s the real subtext of the surprising rhetoric coming from Mohammed bin Salman, the young crown prince of Saudi Arabia who’s rewriting the Middle East script after seizing power in a family feud last year. Barak Ravid reports for Axios that MBS, as he’s colloquially known, told representatives of Jewish groups last month that while Saudi Arabia still wants a just and lasting settlement for the Palestinians, they could have gotten that themselves.

Now, MBS says, it’s time to make a deal or “shut up and stop complaining”:
According to my sources, the Saudi Crown Prince told the Jewish leaders:

“In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.”

MBS also made two other points on the Palestinian issue during the meeting:

  1. He made clear the Palestinian issue was not a top priority for the Saudi government or Saudi public opinion. MBS said Saudi Arabia “has much more urgent and important issues to deal with” like confronting Iran’s influence in the region.
  2. Regardless of all his criticism of the Palestinian leadership, MBS also made clear that in order for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to normalize relations with Israel there will have to be significant progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Under MBS’ leadership since taking effective power in June 2017, Saudi Arabia has aligned itself far more with the West. Decrees from the royal palace are now allowing women to drive and to dress in something other than black abayas and niqabs while in public. MBS has opened cinemas in Saudi Arabia for the first time in decades. He’s either cleaning up corruption or purging dissidents and hardliners, but either way MBS is making sure that he directs public policy for Saudi Arabia for the next several decades, and directs it to come closer to the West.

The main intention of all this appears to be an effort to isolate Iran, which has become an existential threat to Sunni power in the region. Our invasion and then abandonment of Iraq didn’t help in that effort, which is why even the previous crown prince took a distinctly cool approach to Barack Obama at the end of his presidency. MBS knows that he’ll have to modernize in order to make Western nations comfortable with any partnership for the region, and that the glut on oil markets means that the Saudis can’t simply use energy as leverage any more.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, they’ve been playing footsie with Tehran more than Riyadh, and now they’re going to pay for it. Choosing sides has consequences, and with the stakes as high as they are now, the Saudis see the Palestinians as dispensable. They’d rather ally openly with Israel to keep Iran at bay, and the best way to do that is for the Palestinians to take a deal and get on with their lives.

Unfortunately again for the Palestinians, they still can’t decide what they want, or even how to discuss it:
A powerful but rarely convened assembly that calls itself the Palestinian “supreme authority” meets for the first time in 22 years on Monday, but boycotts and rifts suggest it will struggle to achieve its stated goal of unity against Israel and the United States.

President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to use the four-day Palestinian National Council (PNC) meeting to renew his legitimacy and to install loyalists in powerful positions to begin shaping his legacy.

Abbas has billed the meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, as a chance to establish a united front against Israel and the United States, after President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The hardline Islamists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which are aligned with Iran, have boycotted the event, ostensibly because its West Bank location puts them at risk of arrest by Israel. But Reuters notes that three factions of the PLO are also boycotting, in part because they believe Abbas hasn’t been open enough to working with IJ or Hamas. The event is seen as an anachronism by other Palestinians, a desperate attempt by Abbas to emphasize his legitimacy as the Palestinian Authority leader while being largely ignored by all sides.

The Saudis have had enough. Perhaps Abbas should take MBS’ advice and cut a deal while he still can.


Poster Comment:

Ha! The Pali animals are being thrown under the bus as the Saudis see Israel as a more valuable ally in the struggle against Iranian hegemony instead of playing the whipping boy of Arab Jew-hate propaganda.

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#1. To: Tooconservative, Pinguinite, sneakypete, Vicomte13, Deckard (#0) (Edited)

Maybe the Palestinians should've taken the deals they were offered The Pali animals are being thrown under the bus

Doesn't it matter. Whatever choice Indian tribes made the result was always the same. They had the land so they were targeted for extinction. All else is a smoke screen.

Yeah; "The Pali animals". So were the Indian animals, Slav animals (WWII), slave Negro animals (when their labor was needed).

You stink malodorously at this moment. Did you soil yourself?

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-01   3:52:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: A Pole (#1)

Yeah; "The Pali animals".

Would you feel better if I called them Vermistinians?

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   7:10:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Tooconservative (#2)

Would you feel better if I called them Vermistinians?

I think you need a doctor.

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-01   7:29:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Tooconservative (#0) (Edited)

What we are coming to is goodbye Palestine. Israel cannot afford another Iranian enclave on its borders. Faced with the possibility of increased Iranian presence in Syria, Israel cannot afford enemies like Iran so close. The shooting of many Palestinian protesters recently points to a ramping up of Israeli attitudes. If the Palestinians want a state they might have to give up Gaza, they will then have to deal with the problem of Hamas themselves

paraclete  posted on  2018-05-01   9:15:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: paraclete (#4)

. If the Palestinians want a state they might have to give up Gaza

Whatever they give up will not be enough. They are cornered.

BTW, the nearest Shia "Iranian" enclave is in southern Lebanon. Israel decided to invade it in 2006.

Got sound beating and had to flee.

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-01   9:25:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Tooconservative (#0)

Saudi prince: Maybe the Palestinians should've taken the deals they were offered

You mean the Saudi Peace Plan that was endorsed by the 22-member Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 Arab League summit and at the 2017 Arab League summit?

Well, the Palestinians did accept that deal. Trouble is, the Israelis didn't. They'd rather steal the land and force the Palestinians out of the territory granted to them by UN Resolution 181.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-01   9:45:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: misterwhite (#6) (Edited)

You mean the Saudi Peace Plan that was endorsed by the 22-member Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 Arab League summit and at the 2017 Arab League summit?

Was Israel even allowed to attend this summit? LOL

I didn't realize LF was such a hotbed of Israel-haters.

And the Arab League is as toothless and unimportant as OPEC. You're stuck in the past.

Even the Saudis have made hardcore changes in their Pali policies. The Gulf states will follow as usual.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   10:09:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Tooconservative (#7)

Was Israel even allowed to attend this summit?

Don't know. But they were presented with the plan and rejected it.

"And the Arab League is as toothless and unimportant as OPEC."

Still, you have 22 Arab nations agreeing to peace and a recognition of Israel. That's gotta count for something.

"I didn't realize LF was such a hotbed of Israel- haters."

For blockading Gaza and stealing Palestinian land and property? Nah. The Palestinians, however, don't like it one bit.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-01   10:39:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: misterwhite (#8)

Don't know. But they were presented with the plan and rejected it.

Their foreign minister welcomed it as part of a diplomatic dialogue. As usual, the Pali animals refused to negotiate under any terms with Israel.

This is why the Sunni monarchs are abandoning the Palis. Their foreign policy will not be tied to this long-time loser of a policy, especially since they want Israel to be a military bulwark against expansion of Iran's hegemony across the region. And it doesn't hurt that Israel is a nuclear power. The Iranians alone might provoke an Israeli nuclear attack on them, solving the problems of the oil monarchs of the Gulf states and S.A.

Nothing about the Palis offers a win like that for the oil-rich Sunni states. The Palis are just a bad bet that has never paid off and, after decades of failure, they're being cut loose.

I guess all you Pali sympathizers will just have to get used to the new reality.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   11:13:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Tooconservative (#9)

As usual, the Pali animals refused to negotiate under any terms with Israel.

"The Arab Peace Plan has received the full support of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which even took the unprecedented step of placing advertisements in Israeli newspapers on November 20, 2008 to promote it."

"The Palestinian Authority published full-page notices in Hebrew in four major Israeli daily newspapers, which reproduced the text of the Initiative in full and added that "Fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel in return for a full peace agreement and an end to the occupation."
-- Wiki

Sure does look like they supported it. Israel didn't.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-01   15:17:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: misterwhite (#10)

They both supported it publicly at a high level.

But the Palis refused, as usual, to negotiate.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   15:26:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: Tooconservative (#11)

But the Palis refused, as usual, to negotiate.

They offered a peace plan in 2002, 2007, and 2017 that had the support of the Arab states and gave Israel the peace and recognition they insisted on.

Sorry. The Israelis are the ones who refused to negotiate. Then again, why should they? They have nukes.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-01   16:17:47 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: misterwhite (#12)

They propose (to dictate) a treaty with Israel but the Palis constantly refuse to actually negotiate at all.

They refuse to even acknowledge officially the existence of Israel in any form. They have taken this position for a long time.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   16:21:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: Tooconservative (#13)

They refuse to even acknowledge officially the existence of Israel in any form.

That's in the peace plan.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-01   16:37:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: A Pole (#5)

. If the Palestinians want a state they might have to give up Gaza

Whatever they give up will not be enough. They are cornered.

I hate to say it because no matter how much we may disagree,we ALL want the entire Muddle East to stop murdering each other as well as everyone else,but I just don't see it happening.

Too much ignorance,and too many religious leaders to exploit the ignorance. Conflict means wealth and power to the shitheads running things all over the Muddle East,and since they are rarely the ones that do any dying because of it,they ain't going to give it up until somebody there manages to kill off ALL his opponents.

Maybe not even then. It's not only what they do,it's who they are and have been for over a thousand years.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2018-05-01   16:45:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: misterwhite (#14)

That's in the peace plan.

Their "peace plan" is to drive the Jews into the ocean.

It always was.

Now it is clear that that is not going to happen.

And the Saudis no longer care much because Iran is a regional threat to the Sunni monarchs.

And the Palis are embracing Iran as well.

And so the Palis have invited the Sunni monarchs to abandon their cause.

Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-01   23:49:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: misterwhite (#8)

For blockading Gaza and stealing Palestinian land and property?

First of all, there is no such country or people as Palestine. These are mongrel squatters on land legally purchased by Israel in the late 19th century. Until the Jews bought the land from Arabs who thought they were stupid for wanting to buy it, the land was virtually uninhabitable. The Jews through hard labor made the land livable. The Arabs there now are just the offspring of laborers who came there to be hired by the jews.

Other Arab countries have plenty of money to take care of these squatters if they really wanted to.

The point is nothing was ever stolen.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2018-05-02   1:09:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: no gnu taxes (#17)

First of all, there is no such country or people as Palestine.

While you may be right there was a British mandated territory called Palestine

"In 1918, the Jewish Legion, a group primarily of Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine.[133] Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of a Jewish militia known as the Haganah (meaning "The Defense" in Hebrew), from which the Irgun and Lehi, or the Stern Gang, paramilitary groups later split off.[134] In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine under terms which included the Balfour Declaration with its promise to the Jews, and with similar provisions regarding the Arab Palestinians.[135] The population of the area at this time was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11%,[136] and Arab Christians at about 9.5% of the population.[137]" ~ Wikipaedia

The name Palestine has been used for a long time, having originally been used by the Romans. Clearly, there were arabs in the early twentieth century

paraclete  posted on  2018-05-02   2:56:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: no gnu taxes (#17)

"These are mongrel squatters"

Mmm, delicious phrase. Did you lift it from Der Sturmer?

You might like this map of avg brain size (native populations no squatters)

By the way, do you realize that Jews are more "mongrelized" than Palestinians?

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   5:17:30 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: paraclete (#18)

Palestine refers to a region. There is no country of Palestine.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2018-05-02   5:23:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: A Pole (#19)

The Jews legally bought and owned the land. There was virtually nobody living there when they did.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2018-05-02   5:24:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: paraclete (#18)

Earlier.

Palestine. from Latin Palestina (name of a Roman province), from Greek Palaistine (Herodotus), from Hebrew Pelesheth "Philistia, land of the Philistines." They were in Canaan before Hebrews.

The map below shows the actual Jewish Kingdom - Judea. Israel - Samaritan kingdom of "the lost tribes" is in blue to the north.

Edom (descendents of Esau, brother of Jacob) were converted by force to Judaism under Maccabee rule. Since they they make major part of Sephardi - Middle Eastern DNA ;)

Ashkenazi Jews DNA in male lineage (Y chromosome) derives in large part from Sephardim and from converted Khazars ( semi-nomadic Turkic tribe north of Caucasus and Caspian Sea). In female line (marked by mitochondria) most of genes come from Germanic/Slavic gene pool.

So much for racial purity. Jews are not a race, it is a RELIGION!

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   5:46:00 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: no gnu taxes (#21)

The Jews legally bought and owned the land. There was virtually nobody living there when they did.

Exactly like in North America. White settlers legally bought and own the land.

Indian tribes were inferior race, that were nobody. Jawohl, Parteigenosse.

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   5:56:14 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: misterwhite (#10)

Your Muslim cousins don't want peace. Israel should just kill them all. Yes that means all of them. You should go and fight for your Muslim cousins. You're a pussy letting your people down.

A K A Stone  posted on  2018-05-02   7:18:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#25. To: A K A Stone (#24)

Israel should just kill them all. Yes that means all of them.

You mean all 6 millions of them? Including Christians?

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   7:54:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#26. To: A Pole (#23)

The land was barren and virtually uninhabitable before the Jews improved it. Nobody lived there except for a few nomads.

The injuns were killing each other long before any white men came. They were even warring with other members of their own tribes.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2018-05-02   8:08:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#27. To: no gnu taxes (#26)

The land was barren and virtually uninhabitable before the Jews improved it. Nobody lived there except for a few nomads.

"Barren" land of Palestine end of XIX and first decades of XX century:

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   8:53:52 ET  (6 images) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#28. To: A K A Stone (#24)

Israel should just kill them all. Yes that means all of them.

Maybe put them in boxcars and ship them off to concentration camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka?

What the fuck makes you any different than the Nazis?

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   8:55:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#29. To: sneakypete (#15)

=It's not only what they do,it's who they are and have been for over a thousand years.

Four thousand.

Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-02   8:55:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#30. To: misterwhite, A K A Stone, sneakypete, Pinguinite, Vicomte13, Tooconservative, Deckard (#28)

What the fuck makes you any different than the Nazis?

Well, he is a Nazi. Only with different "master race"

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   8:58:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#31. To: no gnu taxes (#20)

Palestine refers to a region. There is no country of Palestine.

And there won't be if Israel has their way.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   8:59:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: A Pole (#19)

You might like this map of avg brain size (native populations no squatters)

Northern Peoples have the biggest brain buckets.

Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-02   8:59:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#33. To: A Pole (#19)

You might like this map of avg brain size

so this would suggest Russians are smarter than the rest, if they are so damn smart how come they haven't learned to come in from the cold, and this map might also explain something about my neighbours

paraclete  posted on  2018-05-02   9:03:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#34. To: Vicomte13 (#32)

Northern Peoples have the biggest brain buckets.

My head is too large for the hats. I need XXL size, hard to find. Really.

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   9:07:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#35. To: A Pole (#34)

Northern peoples have the largest empty heads

paraclete  posted on  2018-05-02   9:08:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#36. To: no gnu taxes (#21)

The Jews legally bought and owned the land. There was virtually nobody living there when they did.

When the British Mandate of Palestine was divided by UN 181 into two territories -- one for the Jews and one for the Palestinians -- that division was based on location of the settlers in the area.

"These boundaries were based solely on demographics. Overall, the Jewish State was to be comprised of roughly 5,500 square miles and the population was to be 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. The Arab State was to be 4,500 square miles with a population of 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews."
-- ht http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-u-n-partition-plan

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   9:10:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#37. To: paraclete (#33)

if they are so damn smart how come they haven't learned to come in from the cold

They like the cold.

A Pole  posted on  2018-05-02   9:13:43 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#38. To: Vicomte13 (#29)

Four thousand.

Yeah. Some wandering Jew pitched a tent in the desert 4,000 years ago and that established the State of Israel forever.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   9:13:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#39. To: no gnu taxes (#21)

The Jews legally bought and owned the land.

From whom?

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   9:17:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#40. To: no gnu taxes (#17)

Other Arab countries have plenty of money to take care of these squatters if they really wanted to.

And Israel has plenty of money and territory to abide by UN 242 and allow the Palestinians their own state.

misterwhite  posted on  2018-05-02   9:21:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#41. To: A Pole (#27)

For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: "...[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse....A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action....We never saw a human being on the whole route....There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. "The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years," he said.

The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:

The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:

We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria....Large areas...were uncultivated....The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots...changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin.

Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, wrote: "It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country."

Even a leading Arab nationalist believed the return of the Jews to their homeland would help resuscitate the country. According to Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia:

The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1000 years. At the same time we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (abna'ihi­l­asliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles (jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and in all things connected with toil and labor.

A Population Boom

As Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Palestine, and the growth of its population, came only after Jews returned in massive numbers. The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000. In fact, the permanent Arab population increased 120 percent between 1922 and 1947.

This rapid growth was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states — constituting 37 percent of the total immigration to pre-state Israel — by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible. The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945 and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.

The Arab population increased the most in cities with large Jewish populations that had created new economic opportunities. From 1922­1947, the non-Jewish population increased 290 percent in Haifa, 131 percent in Jerusalem and 158 percent in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42 percent in Nablus, 78 percent in Jenin and 37 percent in Bethlehem. Jewish Land Purchases

Despite the growth in their population, the Arabs continued to assert they were being displaced. The truth is from the beginning of World War I, part of Palestine's land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. About 80 percent of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins.

Jews actually went out of their way to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap and, most important, without tenants. In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as "the most important asset of the native population." Ben-Gurion said "under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them." He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. "Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement," Ben-Gurion added, "should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price."

It was only after the Jews had bought all of this available land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.

When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: "They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."

In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government's legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.

In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi al-Qawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.

The Peel Commission's report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that "much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased....there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land." Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was "due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population." The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.

In his memoirs, Transjordan's King Abdullah wrote:

It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (author's emphasis).

Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938, the British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.

The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. "In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."

By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin. Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As'ad el­Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2018-05-02   9:24:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  



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