Nadene Goldfoot
The most common accusation from Arabs against Jews not belonging in Israel is (1) alleged Jewish occupation of Arab lands and (2) the existence of Israeli settlements in the West bank and Gaza Strip.
Furthermore, The Arab case against Israel, in the matter of Jewish land purchases, rests mainly on two claims: (1) that the Palestinian Arab farmer was peacefully and contentedly working his land in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th when along came the European Jewish immigrant, drove him off his land, disrupted the normal development of the country and created a vast class of landless, dispossessed Arabs; (2) that a small Jewish minority, owning an even smaller proportion of Palestinian lands (5 per cent as against the Arabs’ 95 per cent ), illegally made itself master of Palestine in 1948.
The accusations have no foundation. First of all, Zionist pioneers came to Palestine around 1880 onward and joined the local Jewish communities in rebuilding a Jewish homeland. There has always been a remnant of our former population in Palestine. Our history goes back to Abraham, and then again to Moses who brought back 601,730 Israelites from Egypt who had been slaves ever since their ancestors had migrated there from Israel because of a dry spell when food was scarce. The book, "FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL" by Joan Peters dispels any accusations over land.
1881: was the year people of the 1st Aliyah belonging to Love of Zion (Hibbat Zion) group entered Palestine. There would follow 4 more groups.
1897: Theodor Herzl held the 1st Zionist Congress in Basle, and founded the World Zionist Organization.
When these Jewish pioneers returned to their homeland from Eastern Europe, they bought land from the Turkish Crown and from Arab landowners. They didn't invade. They were not conquerors.
Because they were Jews, they had left Europe to escape from constant POGROMS and anti-Semitism that had been born since the days of the Greek period. For example: The 1st Odessa, Ukraine pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities.
In 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Russian empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port—a porto-Franco. World War I took place from 1914 to November 11, 1918. In 1919, nearly one hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine and Poland in pogroms. These ethnic riots dominated headlines and international affairs of their time as aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions came true. This talk examined how the genocidal violence that engulfed the region right after the revolution laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Was there any question as to why Jew were leaving Ukraine and Russia and heading for their homeland? Palestine was their homeland and originally was called Israel, and then Israel and Judah (southern part). It was the land of the bible, both the old and the new.
They are a people who follow the teachings of Moses, who Hillel, a 1st century BCE rabbi had taught to not do to others that which you do not want to happen to you; so they would not steal the land away. They are a people of ethics, and are accused of unethical practices.
Local Palestinian tradition, underwritten by both Ottoman and British law, held that the land belonged to God or the sultan: families could maintain the land but the notion of private property title was alien, despite efforts since 1858 to introduce it.
Until British rule, which redistributed land to individual family units, village land was held collectively by the hamula or clan. The Ottoman system and all later governments until 1967 acknowledged that the land surrounding the village was for the use of its inhabitants either as common pastures or for the future development of the village. The villagers did not have any need or opportunity to register their lands. They knew among themselves which of the village lands belonged to which families and which were owned in common (mashaa ).
Customary practice however under the British was reviewed to consider all land within village and town boundaries as no longer miri but mülk.
When the British assumed control over Palestine at the end of 1917 with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, they applied the Ottoman laws of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 to all inhabitants.
The Ottoman Land Code inherited by the British prescribed that houses were mostly privately owned and called "mulk land" (land vested fully and completely to their owners), while land was viewed as miri (allotted by the state to a village or number of villages and which cannot be private property of individuals), and is only leased to the tenants of indefinite duration, in which the lease is represented by the obligation to pay land taxes and land registry fees. When the miri interest is alienated, the ultimate ownership called raqaba is retained by the State. (This means that if taxes aren't paid, the land goes back to the state.)
A study of Palestine under Turkish rule reveals that already at the beginning of the 18th century, long before Jewish land purchases and large-scale Jewish immigration started, the position of the Palestinian fellah (peasant) had begun to deteriorate. The heavy burden of taxation, coming on top of chronic indebtedness to money-lenders, drove a growing number of farmers to place themselves under the protection of men of wealth or of the Moslem religious endowment fund (Waqf), with the result that they were eventually compelled to give up their title to the land, if not their actual residence upon and cultivation of it.
At the time of the British occupation the land tax was collected at the rate of 12.5% of the gross yield of the land. Crops were assessed on the threshing floor or in the field and the tithe was collected from the cultivators.
In 1925, additional legislation provided that taxation on crops and other produce not exceed 10%.
In 1928, as a measure of reform, the Mandate Government of Palestine began to apply an Ordinance for the "Commutation of Tithes," this tax in effect being a fixed aggregate amount paid annually. It was related to the average amount of tithe (tax) that had been paid by the village during the four years immediately preceding the application of the Ordinance to it.
In 1936 the Survey of Palestine stated that the State Lands measured 500 sq miles out of Palestine's total area of 10,500 sq miles; at that point 51% of State Domain was occupied by Arabs and 17% by Jews.
The population was exiled by the Turks in WWI. Arab riots in Jaffa caused by the instigation of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, forced Jews into Tel Aviv. By 1921 it was a separate town. This shows that there was no theft because no one complained of any. No Arabs were driven from their homes. In fact, the Arab population of the area grew during this period because of the economic development that the
"The Sheik of Araby" is a song that was written by Harry B. Smith, Francis Wheeler and music by Ted Snyder in 1921. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik.In 1926, to go with the film "The Son of the Sheik" Ted Snyder worked parts of the melody into a related song with words by Billy Rose: "That Night in Araby". This era was of great interest in Arabs. Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella, known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States.
On November 4, 1922, a team headed by British Egyptologist Howard Carter began excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.Apr 27, 2021.Carter saw a room filled with gold treasures on November 26. But it wasn't until much later that the sarcophagus containing Tutankhamen’s mummy was revealed.
The era was so gung ho over the Middle East with all the people BUT the Jews, that it was a wonder anyone paid attention to the Balfour Declaration and its meaning for the Jewish people.
By 1922 there were over 500 licensed radio stations operating in America, but less than 2 million homes equipped with radios. The population of the USA in 1922 was 110,049,000.
Balfour Declaration was written on 2 November, 1917 by British in sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations pledging support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people; not in Africa or India or Siberia but in Palestine. WWI was over on November 11, 1918. The Ottoman Empire lost in WWI being they were partners with Germany, so they lost Palestine and all their other holdings. Then the LEAGUE OF NATIONS entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine on July 24, 1922. It was good for 30 years. They were to turn it over to the Jews for their Homeland at the end. The Brits were very ambivalent about it, sometimes they allowed immigration and other times it was severely restricted and land purchase was prevented.
Between 1514 and 1850, the Arab population of the Turkish Empire was more or less static at about 340,000. It started to increase around 1855, and by 1947 the Arab population stood at about 1,300,000, almost 4 times more than in the last 100 years.
The book, "THE Settlers" by Meyer Levin, copyright 1972, is an historic novel of 832 pages hardback, that brings to life this era in Palestine. It tells of the hardships of the 1st Jewish pioneers, the spasmodic tyranny of the Turkish overlords, and the blighted relationship between neighboring Jews and Arabs and a lot more.
In 1948, 101,828 Jews immigrated into Israel. The population then was 758,702 Jews and 126,000 non-Jews. Total: 872,000 in Israel.
In 1956, 56,234 Jews immigrated into Israel. The population then was 1,667,455 Jews and 204,935 non-Jews. Total: 1,872,390 in Israel.
In 1967, 14,327 Jews immigrated into Israel. The population then was 2,383,600 Jews and 392,700 non-Jews. Total: 2,776,300 in Israel.
In 1971, 42,000 Jews immigrated into Israel. The population then was 2,636,600 Jews and 458,500 non-Jews. Total: 3,095,100 in Israel.
Resource:
Big Lies: by David Meir-Levi of David Horowitz Freedom Center
https://lessons.myjli.com/survival/index.php/2017/03/26/land-ownership-in-palestine-1880-1948/
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