The author fails to acknowledge the religious component to the conflict. Muslims will never accept Jewish sovereignty on land Muslims claim for themselves. Before there was a Jewish state, Muslims killed Jews for no other reason then because Jews existed in the same space as Muslim Arabs.
Alan you are absolutely right. There is no way to have a full and honest conversation without mentioning the religious component.
Also, I don't think it's especially healthy to condone grievances passed down through generations. Especially when the ONLY people that seems to apply to in 2024 are self -identified palestinians.
Thank you so much to all the readers! I was honored to read your comments and see the conversations sparked by the recent blog post here.
First, let me clarify that this current post is part of a series that describes the hardships faced by Jewish people who arrived in the Land of Israel region in the late 19th century from the Russian Empire until World War I and before the British Mandate took effect. The series described what happened to the Jewish community since the assassination of Tzar Alexander, including the sanctions and laws enacted by the Russian Empire specifically targeting the Jewish community. These laws and sanctions forbid Jews from owning land and deny them employment in certain professions or conducting trade on specific days, which led to mass emigration. While many Jews emigrated to the Americas, only a small fraction - less than 3% - chose to come to the Land of Israel. The series highlights that the Jews chose to emigrate to the less popular region at that time to build a new life in other parts of the world where they wouldn’t face oppression. They embodied initiative, vision, and the creation of alternatives, forming entire communities in times when Jews faced extreme oppression in Europe and Russia, leading up to the Holocaust during World War II. In other words, despite everything that jews faced since the Babylonian exile, which included pogroms, oppressive laws, massacres, and humiliations, they did not adopt a victim mindset. Instead, they forged alternatives and created a new life for themselves rather than dwelling on past grievances or seeking revenge.
In describing this post's context, I shed light on the changes within the Ottoman Empire that affected its citizens internally, aspects often overlooked or unmentioned in many historical discussions. It’s often forgotten that the Ottoman Empire, an Arab - Muslim empire, ruled over the Arab world for 600 years, during which it oppressed, exploited, and weakened its people. This empire served only the elite, the aristocracy, and the Muslim religious leadership, ensuring that its residents remained uneducated, lacking legal status, and denied any concern for their well-being, health, or livelihood. Due to the transformations in land ownership in the world during the 19th century, the wealthy Muslim landowners, concerned only with their tax payments, sold extensive lands to Jews without any compassion or concern for the fellahin (peasants) who had worked these lands for generations. This indicates that the elite and aristocracy had low moral values, a lack of basic ethics, and disgraceful attitudes that were customary and common among them toward the lower classes within their own empire. This is something the Arab world needs to deal with; even more than a century has passed because their own leadership betrayed them first. Moreover, as part of the Industrial Revolution, these wealthy landowners refused to invest in agricultural technology that could have advanced these peasants, keeping them ignorant and incapable of competing with the industrialized world’s production pace. They abandoned the peasants without notice and simply sold the lands to anyone who could pay.
Understanding this perspective does not detract from the Jewish claim to the land of Israel; rather, it strengthens two main points. First, in the Arab world, there is a lack of mutual responsibility and concern for the weaker citizens. Even today, more than a hundred years later, they don’t have organizations to help the people; they don’t have unions or provide decent healthcare as a social responsibility. No national systems are dedicated to education, health, employment, or human capital investment. In 2024, we keep hearing that women are not allowed to go to school, hold specific professions, or issue driver's licenses. In some regions, people have succeeded in acquiring education and creating alternatives. Still, as a collective Arab group, the Arab nation suppresses education, progress, and knowledge, dragging their entire community down in comparison to Europe or the United States nations.
Second, the Jews, who believed in their right to the land since biblical times, did not foresee in the late 19th century that World War I would break out in 1914, bringing an end to the Ottoman Empire, nor did they anticipate the British Mandate or that in 1948 David Ben-Gurion would declare the establishment of the State of Israel. When the Russian Empire enacted laws against Jews, they chose to immigrate to the Land of Israel, found a way within the Ottoman legal system to own land, and purchased lands legally. They learned what was needed to establish Jewish settlements, how to purchase land legally, and how to build settlements (they tried dozens of settlement types that failed, and most people aren’t aware that only the Moshav and Kibbutz models survived after costly lessons). They learned how to build a community, create a culture, establish educational institutions, and invest in compulsory education. The Jewish community established organizations to aid settlement in Israel and institutions that would serve a future country without knowing when this country would happen. They worked hard to build the foundation and the infrastructure for a country they dream of having. They created, innovated, failed, and kept moving forward, not complaining that this was their land 2000 years ago or fostering a victim mindset over grievances toward the Romans, Mamluks, Crusaders, Byzantines, Hasmoneans, or Ottomans. They stood up and created despite being oppressed, massacred, defined as second-class citizens, or when they went through the Holocaust. They did not bury themselves in the past or nurture resentment. They rose every time they were knocked down and created a new reality.
In conclusion, the Arab world consistently nurtures resentment toward the British, French, Americans, and Jews over the period between World War I and World War II. However, this period was merely 40-50 years, after 600 years, during which the Arabs were the ones in control and oppressed the people of the Ottoman Empire far more than any other external force. It is time for the Arab world to take direct responsibility for its own leadership and demand accountability. Their governments need to care for the well-being of their people now, to move beyond the past and build a new future instead of brainwashing these people that in a few years, all Muslims in the world will control Israel, Europe, and the United States. The mechanism of maintaining resentment and hatred continues to oppress Arab people and upholds a regime that harms them in every aspect of life more than anything else.
It is time they realize that they are the only ones responsible for their fate and that creating a better life is in their hands.
It's all about the schools and the Mosques ....... That is where the hate is taught, that is where history is altered, that is where the Jew is depicted as the ultimate villain ane where killing Jews is the most noble of actions.
Until we change what is being taught, we will never have a sustainable peace. When this war is over, that is where our attention must be focused. Replacing UNRWA with honest educators, arresting Imans that preach hate and promoting Imams who preach peace.
We have always done either a terrible job or done nothing in this area. We have had peace with Egypt and Israel for decades but poll after poll shows that after all this time, they still overwhelmingly hate us. I believe its for the same reasons .... the hate is being taught in the schools and Mosques and we have done nothing to fight it. And if we have done something to fight it, it is not working at all.
Is this meant to be satire? 95% of the article makes a case for how the Palestinians have a very solid case for grievance against Israel and then the author concludes that they need to let go? Is that an argument any Jew would accept about their 2000 year cold land claim? Come on now.
The grievance even if true (which for the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs isn't) every person who had a grievance has been dead for nearly a century. Grievances don't get passed down through DNA. I don't get to claim my grandparents village in Ukraine which they left in 1923.
The existence of the state of Israel itself puts the lie to your notion. 2000 years is a lot longer than 100 years. Unless you think only one group of exiles can ever dream of their homeland?
I understand how the poor peasants could have become bitter against the new, foreign owners of the land as much as I understand the new owners having rightful ownership of the land they had bought from the former owners. Oh, if generational trauma could just heal for everybody, Jews and Muslims alike!
Yes, and here's the thing: history has been hard on many, if not most, peoples. We can be aware, and do better but we can't go backwards. No one in the US is going to give their houses to native Americans. Face it. So the whole idea of feeling guilty about it is just -- dumb. Again, move on everyone. Stop being a victim. (As far as the radical Islamic shtick about no one owning what they once owned, they'll have to be vanquished and then re-educated to get rid of that ridiculous idea).
Is it possible that some of the Palestinians would be appeased with villages that are not their grandparents', but offer them a descent livelihood, a sense of real community and a connection to the land (not enough room for this in Gaza, but maybe in the West Bank)? Or do you think the only thing that motivates them is Jew hatred and victimization?
Yes to the latter. The problem (or one of them) with the West is they think everyone is just like them. These people have not gone through the Western Enlightenment; they are not "reasonable."
Well, the Palestinians' grievance should have been against the landlords who kicked them out once they sold the land. I doubt the leftist Kibbutzniks would have wanted peasants to be kicked out, and maybe something could have been worked out if they had been in charge of the details, instead of the Jewish Authority or whoever actually bought the land. But neither did they want to hire them, not out of racism, but out of a socialist DIY ethos, which was offensive to the peasants.
A peasant attempting to take revenge against an aristocrat who doesn’t even live in the same region as them is beyond unlikely. Not that the current troubles were unforeseeable, there were a great many sceptics at the time. Unfortunately millenarian movements don’t take criticism very well. Today, the bed is made and must be lain in.
It's not only that the landlords were absentee ones and lived in other regions. They were fellow muslims, whereas the Jews were considered outgroup inferiors, with the Brits only stoking outgroup hatred in order to divide and conquer.
I don't see the article as making a case so much as shedding light on details of a complicated historical situation. I also don't see that it needs to mention the religious aspect, as that is well-known. It's an article focused on a particular aspect of a conflict, not a book trying to say everything that could be said.
But how much of the land was actually farmed by Arabs? The Hula Valley was a malarial swamp until it was drained by the Jews from 1951-1958. The area wasn't farmed until after that. When Mark Twain travelled through what was then Palestine in the late 1800s, he described it as barren and desolate (In "Innocents Abroad"). Herman Melville also travelled to Palestine in the 1850s and described it as "desolate and un-lovely". He described Nazareth as "forlorn," Jericho as a "moldering ruin," and Jerusalem as a "pauper village". It doesn't sound as if there was much agriculture going on before the Jews arrived......
I imagine it is easier to control a population via fear and manipulation -- this has worked for a long time. UN is impotent and useless. I am reading about Spain's horrific flooding ... Israelis would have been there to help, as in the past, but are very busy now trying to survive ... sorry!
She’s pointing out that the sales were legal and in no way more immoral than someone buying a repossessed house. It may leave understandable but misdirected grievance as when Jews were deliberately appointed tax collectors. Jews were very often intentionally placed in conflict situations bc of the vast number of professions closed to them such as in agriculture, skilled trades etc.
I think it is more complicated than the author acknowledges. The peasants sometimes were kicked out before the kibbutzniks set foot on the newly bought land (by the arab landowners). It makes no sense that the leftist kibbutzniks would think this was equitable, but the Jewish Agency was probably in charge of the details of the land deal, not the kibbutzniks?
The Kibbutzniks of that time had an ethos of not hiring outside labor to do manual work, which was in line with their leftist ideals, but offended the local arab peasants. But that is a separate issue than kicking them off their land.
Also, how many kicked off peasants were there? Probably a small percentage of those displaced in 1948.
"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.
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.
What happened to the Palestinian Arab landowners who still held large amounts of land after the end of the Ottoman Empire, once the Mandate went into effect?
Ottomans are Turks. Dies any one remember that? Does Turkish government accepts responsibility for 600 hundred years of brutal rule over huge parts of Europe and Middle East? Of course not! Erdogan is promising to fight Israel. Turks never accepted responsibility for Armenian genocide either.
Very interesting historical nuances here that enrich my understanding of the resentment of the Palestinians. What a lousy position they were put in by their leadership.
The author fails to acknowledge the religious component to the conflict. Muslims will never accept Jewish sovereignty on land Muslims claim for themselves. Before there was a Jewish state, Muslims killed Jews for no other reason then because Jews existed in the same space as Muslim Arabs.
Alan you are absolutely right. There is no way to have a full and honest conversation without mentioning the religious component.
Also, I don't think it's especially healthy to condone grievances passed down through generations. Especially when the ONLY people that seems to apply to in 2024 are self -identified palestinians.
I would say that the conflict goes even deeper than that, to the old grievance between Isaac and Ishmael..
Thank you so much to all the readers! I was honored to read your comments and see the conversations sparked by the recent blog post here.
First, let me clarify that this current post is part of a series that describes the hardships faced by Jewish people who arrived in the Land of Israel region in the late 19th century from the Russian Empire until World War I and before the British Mandate took effect. The series described what happened to the Jewish community since the assassination of Tzar Alexander, including the sanctions and laws enacted by the Russian Empire specifically targeting the Jewish community. These laws and sanctions forbid Jews from owning land and deny them employment in certain professions or conducting trade on specific days, which led to mass emigration. While many Jews emigrated to the Americas, only a small fraction - less than 3% - chose to come to the Land of Israel. The series highlights that the Jews chose to emigrate to the less popular region at that time to build a new life in other parts of the world where they wouldn’t face oppression. They embodied initiative, vision, and the creation of alternatives, forming entire communities in times when Jews faced extreme oppression in Europe and Russia, leading up to the Holocaust during World War II. In other words, despite everything that jews faced since the Babylonian exile, which included pogroms, oppressive laws, massacres, and humiliations, they did not adopt a victim mindset. Instead, they forged alternatives and created a new life for themselves rather than dwelling on past grievances or seeking revenge.
In describing this post's context, I shed light on the changes within the Ottoman Empire that affected its citizens internally, aspects often overlooked or unmentioned in many historical discussions. It’s often forgotten that the Ottoman Empire, an Arab - Muslim empire, ruled over the Arab world for 600 years, during which it oppressed, exploited, and weakened its people. This empire served only the elite, the aristocracy, and the Muslim religious leadership, ensuring that its residents remained uneducated, lacking legal status, and denied any concern for their well-being, health, or livelihood. Due to the transformations in land ownership in the world during the 19th century, the wealthy Muslim landowners, concerned only with their tax payments, sold extensive lands to Jews without any compassion or concern for the fellahin (peasants) who had worked these lands for generations. This indicates that the elite and aristocracy had low moral values, a lack of basic ethics, and disgraceful attitudes that were customary and common among them toward the lower classes within their own empire. This is something the Arab world needs to deal with; even more than a century has passed because their own leadership betrayed them first. Moreover, as part of the Industrial Revolution, these wealthy landowners refused to invest in agricultural technology that could have advanced these peasants, keeping them ignorant and incapable of competing with the industrialized world’s production pace. They abandoned the peasants without notice and simply sold the lands to anyone who could pay.
Understanding this perspective does not detract from the Jewish claim to the land of Israel; rather, it strengthens two main points. First, in the Arab world, there is a lack of mutual responsibility and concern for the weaker citizens. Even today, more than a hundred years later, they don’t have organizations to help the people; they don’t have unions or provide decent healthcare as a social responsibility. No national systems are dedicated to education, health, employment, or human capital investment. In 2024, we keep hearing that women are not allowed to go to school, hold specific professions, or issue driver's licenses. In some regions, people have succeeded in acquiring education and creating alternatives. Still, as a collective Arab group, the Arab nation suppresses education, progress, and knowledge, dragging their entire community down in comparison to Europe or the United States nations.
Second, the Jews, who believed in their right to the land since biblical times, did not foresee in the late 19th century that World War I would break out in 1914, bringing an end to the Ottoman Empire, nor did they anticipate the British Mandate or that in 1948 David Ben-Gurion would declare the establishment of the State of Israel. When the Russian Empire enacted laws against Jews, they chose to immigrate to the Land of Israel, found a way within the Ottoman legal system to own land, and purchased lands legally. They learned what was needed to establish Jewish settlements, how to purchase land legally, and how to build settlements (they tried dozens of settlement types that failed, and most people aren’t aware that only the Moshav and Kibbutz models survived after costly lessons). They learned how to build a community, create a culture, establish educational institutions, and invest in compulsory education. The Jewish community established organizations to aid settlement in Israel and institutions that would serve a future country without knowing when this country would happen. They worked hard to build the foundation and the infrastructure for a country they dream of having. They created, innovated, failed, and kept moving forward, not complaining that this was their land 2000 years ago or fostering a victim mindset over grievances toward the Romans, Mamluks, Crusaders, Byzantines, Hasmoneans, or Ottomans. They stood up and created despite being oppressed, massacred, defined as second-class citizens, or when they went through the Holocaust. They did not bury themselves in the past or nurture resentment. They rose every time they were knocked down and created a new reality.
In conclusion, the Arab world consistently nurtures resentment toward the British, French, Americans, and Jews over the period between World War I and World War II. However, this period was merely 40-50 years, after 600 years, during which the Arabs were the ones in control and oppressed the people of the Ottoman Empire far more than any other external force. It is time for the Arab world to take direct responsibility for its own leadership and demand accountability. Their governments need to care for the well-being of their people now, to move beyond the past and build a new future instead of brainwashing these people that in a few years, all Muslims in the world will control Israel, Europe, and the United States. The mechanism of maintaining resentment and hatred continues to oppress Arab people and upholds a regime that harms them in every aspect of life more than anything else.
It is time they realize that they are the only ones responsible for their fate and that creating a better life is in their hands.
To read the complete series, in the order it was written:
1. A Brief History of Land Ownership and the Role of Architects in Shaping Our World: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-land-ownership
2. We All Came from Somewhere: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/we-all-came-from-somewhere
3. 600 Years of Rule Made the Ottomans Blind to Changes: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/600-years-of-rule-made-the-ottomans
4. "Everything I Had, I Left Behind. There is No Going Back.": https://liatportal.substack.com/p/everything-i-had-i-left-behind-there
5. On the Frontier of a New Land: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/on-the-frontier-of-a-new-land
6. A Joke's Worth a Thousand Words: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-jokes-worth-a-thousand-words
7. A Journey from the Ma’abara to Architecture: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-journey-from-the-maabara-to-architecture
8. From Chaos to Civilization: How the British Empire Transformed the Middle East: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/from-chaos-to-civilization-how-the
9. The Future Generation: Boomers with Plenty of Free Time, Still Figuring Out Smartphones and Urban Development: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/the-future-generation-boomers-with
10. The Story of Bauhaus: How International Style Defined Tel Aviv’s Iconic Buildings: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/the-story-of-bauhaus-how-international
11. International Style and the Housing Crisis: A New Era Begins: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/international-style-and-the-housing
It's all about the schools and the Mosques ....... That is where the hate is taught, that is where history is altered, that is where the Jew is depicted as the ultimate villain ane where killing Jews is the most noble of actions.
Until we change what is being taught, we will never have a sustainable peace. When this war is over, that is where our attention must be focused. Replacing UNRWA with honest educators, arresting Imans that preach hate and promoting Imams who preach peace.
We have always done either a terrible job or done nothing in this area. We have had peace with Egypt and Israel for decades but poll after poll shows that after all this time, they still overwhelmingly hate us. I believe its for the same reasons .... the hate is being taught in the schools and Mosques and we have done nothing to fight it. And if we have done something to fight it, it is not working at all.
papa j
.
Truth, and then we also have to do more in the realm of public relations internationally. This seems to be Israel's achilles heel, sadly.
Is this meant to be satire? 95% of the article makes a case for how the Palestinians have a very solid case for grievance against Israel and then the author concludes that they need to let go? Is that an argument any Jew would accept about their 2000 year cold land claim? Come on now.
The grievance even if true (which for the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs isn't) every person who had a grievance has been dead for nearly a century. Grievances don't get passed down through DNA. I don't get to claim my grandparents village in Ukraine which they left in 1923.
The existence of the state of Israel itself puts the lie to your notion. 2000 years is a lot longer than 100 years. Unless you think only one group of exiles can ever dream of their homeland?
I understand how the poor peasants could have become bitter against the new, foreign owners of the land as much as I understand the new owners having rightful ownership of the land they had bought from the former owners. Oh, if generational trauma could just heal for everybody, Jews and Muslims alike!
Everyone's gotta stop crying, or rattling their sabers, or whatever they do. Just get on with it. Do your best and be productive and contribute!
Yes, and here's the thing: history has been hard on many, if not most, peoples. We can be aware, and do better but we can't go backwards. No one in the US is going to give their houses to native Americans. Face it. So the whole idea of feeling guilty about it is just -- dumb. Again, move on everyone. Stop being a victim. (As far as the radical Islamic shtick about no one owning what they once owned, they'll have to be vanquished and then re-educated to get rid of that ridiculous idea).
Is it possible that some of the Palestinians would be appeased with villages that are not their grandparents', but offer them a descent livelihood, a sense of real community and a connection to the land (not enough room for this in Gaza, but maybe in the West Bank)? Or do you think the only thing that motivates them is Jew hatred and victimization?
Yes to the latter. The problem (or one of them) with the West is they think everyone is just like them. These people have not gone through the Western Enlightenment; they are not "reasonable."
Well, the Palestinians' grievance should have been against the landlords who kicked them out once they sold the land. I doubt the leftist Kibbutzniks would have wanted peasants to be kicked out, and maybe something could have been worked out if they had been in charge of the details, instead of the Jewish Authority or whoever actually bought the land. But neither did they want to hire them, not out of racism, but out of a socialist DIY ethos, which was offensive to the peasants.
A peasant attempting to take revenge against an aristocrat who doesn’t even live in the same region as them is beyond unlikely. Not that the current troubles were unforeseeable, there were a great many sceptics at the time. Unfortunately millenarian movements don’t take criticism very well. Today, the bed is made and must be lain in.
It's not only that the landlords were absentee ones and lived in other regions. They were fellow muslims, whereas the Jews were considered outgroup inferiors, with the Brits only stoking outgroup hatred in order to divide and conquer.
Agreed, and blah blah blah. It gets old, no?
I don't see the article as making a case so much as shedding light on details of a complicated historical situation. I also don't see that it needs to mention the religious aspect, as that is well-known. It's an article focused on a particular aspect of a conflict, not a book trying to say everything that could be said.
Very informative, the deep, old roots of hatred started like this.
Even if true this would be like me having a grievance against Russia today because of the oppression of my ancestors over 100 years ago.
But how much of the land was actually farmed by Arabs? The Hula Valley was a malarial swamp until it was drained by the Jews from 1951-1958. The area wasn't farmed until after that. When Mark Twain travelled through what was then Palestine in the late 1800s, he described it as barren and desolate (In "Innocents Abroad"). Herman Melville also travelled to Palestine in the 1850s and described it as "desolate and un-lovely". He described Nazareth as "forlorn," Jericho as a "moldering ruin," and Jerusalem as a "pauper village". It doesn't sound as if there was much agriculture going on before the Jews arrived......
To read the complete series, in the order it was written:
1. A Brief History of Land Ownership and the Role of Architects in Shaping Our World: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-land-ownership
2. We All Came from Somewhere: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/we-all-came-from-somewhere
3. 600 Years of Rule Made the Ottomans Blind to Changes: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/600-years-of-rule-made-the-ottomans
4. "Everything I Had, I Left Behind. There is No Going Back.": https://liatportal.substack.com/p/everything-i-had-i-left-behind-there
5. On the Frontier of a New Land: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/on-the-frontier-of-a-new-land
6. A Joke's Worth a Thousand Words: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-jokes-worth-a-thousand-words
7. A Journey from the Ma’abara to Architecture: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/a-journey-from-the-maabara-to-architecture
8. From Chaos to Civilization: How the British Empire Transformed the Middle East: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/from-chaos-to-civilization-how-the
9. The Future Generation: Boomers with Plenty of Free Time, Still Figuring Out Smartphones and Urban Development: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/the-future-generation-boomers-with
10. The Story of Bauhaus: How International Style Defined Tel Aviv’s Iconic Buildings: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/the-story-of-bauhaus-how-international
11. International Style and the Housing Crisis: A New Era Begins: https://liatportal.substack.com/p/international-style-and-the-housing
I imagine it is easier to control a population via fear and manipulation -- this has worked for a long time. UN is impotent and useless. I am reading about Spain's horrific flooding ... Israelis would have been there to help, as in the past, but are very busy now trying to survive ... sorry!
She’s pointing out that the sales were legal and in no way more immoral than someone buying a repossessed house. It may leave understandable but misdirected grievance as when Jews were deliberately appointed tax collectors. Jews were very often intentionally placed in conflict situations bc of the vast number of professions closed to them such as in agriculture, skilled trades etc.
I think it is more complicated than the author acknowledges. The peasants sometimes were kicked out before the kibbutzniks set foot on the newly bought land (by the arab landowners). It makes no sense that the leftist kibbutzniks would think this was equitable, but the Jewish Agency was probably in charge of the details of the land deal, not the kibbutzniks?
The Kibbutzniks of that time had an ethos of not hiring outside labor to do manual work, which was in line with their leftist ideals, but offended the local arab peasants. But that is a separate issue than kicking them off their land.
Also, how many kicked off peasants were there? Probably a small percentage of those displaced in 1948.
Probably not many at all. Per this page in Jewish Virtual Library (which has citations): https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-the-mandatory-period
"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.
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.
Thanks for that!
Getting malaria under control (done by Jews) increased the population.
What happened to the Palestinian Arab landowners who still held large amounts of land after the end of the Ottoman Empire, once the Mandate went into effect?
There were none. That's what the article points out. They were tenant peasants. The few that were actually there.
That is not what the article says. It does not cover the history after the Ottomans.
Ottomans are Turks. Dies any one remember that? Does Turkish government accepts responsibility for 600 hundred years of brutal rule over huge parts of Europe and Middle East? Of course not! Erdogan is promising to fight Israel. Turks never accepted responsibility for Armenian genocide either.
Very interesting historical nuances here that enrich my understanding of the resentment of the Palestinians. What a lousy position they were put in by their leadership.
Still is.