What Brought The Arabs To Israel

What Brought The Arabs To Israel
This letter in The Wall Street Journal inspired me to do a little research:

No, Jews Were There Before Most Palestinians

Going up against world-renowned Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis is daunting enough but especially so when your "facts" are so wrong (Letters, Dec. 10, responding to "On the Jewish Question," Nov. 26). Contrary to Steve Feldman, Jews did not "take land away from the Palestinians." They bought low-value land at a high price and reclaimed it. The resultant economic boom, moreover, drew a large Arab influx into what had been an underdeveloped and underpopulated landscape. Contrary to Gary Goldman, far from Arabs then "dominating that part of the world," the entire region had been under the Ottoman thumb for four centuries. In the Empire's breakup, Jews were allocated but a tiny sliver. Nor was Arab opposition to their presence monolithic. Some important figures, such as "Arab Revolt" leader Emir Faisal, welcomed it and looked forward to a positive, symbiotic relationship. Violently opposed, however, was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Sadly for both peoples, he and his ilk prevailed.

Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, N.Y.

The history is here. And here's an excerpt:

A Population Boom

As Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Israel, 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 1922-1947, 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 Israel's Land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut. About 80 percent of the 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 they were migrating to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.

When John Hope Simpson arrived in Israel in May 1930, he observed: "They [the 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.

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 Israel, mostly for arid or semi-arid Land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."