From: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: MEQ #16: Population transfer
Date: 6 Nov 1992 03:24:55 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: world
Reply-To: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au
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      MEQ #16.  Teveth on Ben-Gurion on Population Transfer, 1937.

[In 1937, a British Royal Commission (the Peel Commission) recommended a
partition of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State.  The report
included a recommendation for a "population transfer".]

   Even before the report's publication, Ben-Gurion learned that it
   included a provision for the transfer of the Arab population within
   the Jewish state to the territory of the Arab state.  The idea was
   not new to Zionism, and had been advocated by Israel Zangwill, Jacobson,
   and Jabotinsky.  Ben-Gurion had opposed the notion on moral grounds,
   for it had always been his claim that "we did not come to dispossess
   the Arabs of their land."  In 1929, when he drew up his federation plan,
   with its strong resemblance to partition, he rejected the idea of an
   exchange of population.  Once again, the issue proved a moral test of
   Ben-Gurion's vision of Zionism as a just movement.

   He did not respond immediately.  To Sharett [Moshe Shertok, later
   Prime Minister of Israel], Ben-Gurion wrote that "it is hard for me
   to believe in compulsory transfer, and it is hard for me to believe
   in voluntary transfer."  Would the British really agree to compel the
   movement of people, and would any Arab agree to move voluntarily?
   Only on a second reading of the report did Ben-Gurion determine that
   the proposal's "importance exceeds that of the report's other merits,
   and outweighs all of the report's shortcomings."  The idea was this:
   some 225,000 Arabs lived in the area that would be included within a
   Jewish state, and they were bound to constitute a problem once
   partition was effected.  The Peel Commission suggested the transfer
   of these Arabs to the Arab state, with British assistance.  In the
   Galilee's valleys, where Ben-Gurion estimated that some 100,000 Arabs
   lived, the Peel Commission recommended that "in the last resort the
   exchange would be compulsory."  This was, in fact, an "exchange" in
   name only, for only 1250 Jews lived in the territory earmarked for the
   proposed Arab state.

   Ben-Gurion emerged from his inner struggle with the conviction that the
   transfer of the Arab population would be a boon to the proposed Jewish
   state.  "The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the
   proposed Jewish state", he wrote in his diary, "could give us something
   which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of
   the First and Second Temples": a Galilee almost free of non-Jews.  [...]
   "We are being given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in
   our wildest imagination.  This is more than a state, government and
   sovereignty---this is a national consolidation in a free homeland."

   Yet he carefully measured the expediency of the proposal against the
   claims of justice.  "The more I study the recommendations of the
   Commission," he added in his diary, "I see above all the terrible
   difficulty in uprooting, by foreign force, some 100,000 Arabs from
   villages which they have inhabited for hundreds of years."  But again,
   the voice of expediency spoke.  A completely Jewish Galilee would give
   the Jewish state another advantage: a northern border with Lebanon. [...]

   Then the doubts returned.  "Would Britain dare to do it?" in the face
   of Arab and Muslim opposition?  Would Britain also set aside moral
   calculations?  To this, Ben-Gurion replied that Britain "certainly
   won't do it if we do not insist upon it, if we do not push with all the
   force of our influence and conviction.  Even our maximum pressure may
   not suffice.  But if because of our weakness, neglect or negligence,
   the thing is not done, then we will have lost a chance which we never
   had before, and may never have again."  Ben-Gurion's conclusion was
   unequivocal: "We must uproot from our hearts the assumption that the
   thing is not possible.  It can be done."  As a first "and perhaps
   decisive" step, "we must prepare ourselves to carry out" the transfer
   provision.

   [S. Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, Oxford University
               Press, 1985; pages 180-182.   Teveth gives references
               for all the quotations.]
   Acknowledgment: Much of the above was first typed in by Eric Perlman.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Middle East Quotes is an occasional series of quotations on Middle
East history.  The editor does not necessarily approve of the sentiments
expressed in quotes, nor will he necessarily join in any discussion
they engender.  Contributions are welcome but will not necessarily be
accepted.  Full sources are essential.      Brendan McKay.


Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast