This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. CONFLICT IN PALESTINE 1917-1948: Palestinian Responses to Zionist Settlement in Palestine with Particular Reference to the Attempts to Solve the Conflict By Abdel Mahdi Abdalla Al-Soudi Thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Keele for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. April 1986 ABSTRACT There are two themes contained in this thesis: firstly, the examination of the Palestinian attitude, concept and views towards Zionist settlement in Palestine during the period 1917-1948, secondly, the analysis of their arguments and responses to the different attempts to solve the Palestine conflict during this period. The Palestinians viewed Zionism as a European political movement which was connected with Western colonialism, and sought to transform Palestine into an exclusively Jewish state. Therefore, they resisted this alien settlement in their country by all possible means, political as well as military. The Palestinians, however, failed to persuade the British Government to grant them independence or to stop Zionist settlement because they, as a traditional society, did not possess the material or military power to match the combined forces of the British Empire and the Zionist movement. However, during this period the British Government suggested certain proposals to solve the conflict, but these proposals were rejected by the Palestinians, the Zionists or by both. Therefore, in 1947 the British Government transferred the problem to the United Nations. On 29th November 1947 the U.N., under the influence of the Western powers and the approval of the Soviet Union, endorsed a partition scheme, similar to a partition plan suggested by the Royal Commission in 1937, which proposed the establishment of two independent states, Arab and Jewish. The Palestinians rejected the proposal on the grounds that it was not based on the principles of justice, equality and the right to self-determination. This study suggests that the Palestine conflict was created as result of alien settlement in a country which was already inhabited by a people who were unwilling to compromise on what they saw as their right to independence under a national government which would represent the wishes of the majority. Acknowledgements I am indebted to a number of people for their assistance in the production of this thesis and I should now take the opportunity to express my gratitude. Foremost amongst those whose advice and assistance has been most valuable is my supervisor, Dr. Harry Christian. His excellent advice has proved invaluable to me. also his understanding and accessibility will always be remembered. I wish to thank my colleagues in the Sociology Department, particularly Dr. John Law, head of the Department, Dr. P. Bellaby and Dr. U. Sharma for the useful discussion which they provided, during the weekly seminars which were conducted in the Department. My deep thanks to the secretaries at the Sociology Department and to the people on the Inter-Library Loan Desk at Keele university. I wish to thank my wife Aisheh for her excellent care and understanding during the late working hours and for typing the thesis. Finally I wish to dedicate this work to my dear mother, father, my wife my Sons Majdi and Mahdi and all my family in Jordan. CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction and Theoretical Framework (pp.I-39) Chapter 2. Historical Background (pp.40-61) Chapter 3. The Transformation of the Palestinian Society under the Mandate, A Socio-Historical Profile (pp.62-109) Chapter 4. Palestinian Reaction to Zionist Settlement and their Responses to British Attempts to Solve the Problem, 1920-1935. (pp.ll0-143) Chapter 5. Palestinian Resistance To Zionist Settlement and British Mandate, 1936-1939. (pp.144-181) Chapter 6. Palestinian Responses to the British Proposals to Solve the Palestine Conflict, 1936-1939. (pp.182-229) Chapter 7. Palestinian Responses to the British Proposals to Solve the Palestine Conflict, 1945-1947. (pp.230-262) Chapter 8. Palestinian Responses to the U.N. Proposals to Solve the Palestine Conflict, 1947-1948. (pp.263-297) Chapter 9. The Origin of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (p.298-320) Summary and Conclusion (pp. 321-341) Bibliography CHAPTER ONE Introduction and Theoretical Framework Introduction When I decided to study the basic Palestinian arguments and responses to Zionist settlement in Palestine, especially their responses to the attempts to solve the conflict, I expected to be asked the following questions: What can a historical approach offer to the social scientist who is interested primarily in contemporary social conflict or to the policy-maker whose focus is on the present and on the future? What relevance for example, do historical crises have for the present conflict between the Arabs and Israel? Clearly the circumstances are different, the people, the leaders, and weapons are different. What can we learn that will be useful in facing and solving problems of the future? Social science approaches to historical situations are based upon the fundamental assumption that there are pattern repetitions, and close analogies throughout the history of mankind. It is true that the circumstances will differ between the 1930s and the 1980s but the patterns of human fears and anxieties and perceptions of threat and war may not be dissimilar. 1 A fundamental part of the problem lies in identifying the levels of abstraction in finding likeness between problems or crises that are widely separated in time and also in space. There is a further consideration. In fact, history may provide the sole key we have to the future. As Horst put it "The only way to judge what will happen in the future is by what has happened in the past.,,2 Wisdom about the present and future is derived from what we have experienced or learned about in the past. It is by comparing new problems with old experiences, by looking for similarities and differences, that we move into the future. "Other things being equal, the more frequently things have happened in the past the more sure you can be they will happen in the future.,,3 As human beings we have no other way of assessing, judging and deciding. -1- Essentially, then, it is by projecting past experiences into the future that human beings make decisions, and the leaders of states in this respect, are not exceptions. Thus, foreign policy decisions, like other human decisions, imply not only an abstraction from history but also the making of a prediction, the assessment of probable outcomes. These two operations may be undertaken almost unconsciously, but they are nonetheless real and inescapable. 4 For example, the "Marshal Plan" was based upon a prediction derived from a combination of experiences, that systematic aid to European countries would bring about certain consequences. Viewed in retrospect this prediction seems to have been sound. The basic prediction inherent in the Russian leaders' decision to establish long range missiles in Cuba was much less accurate. 5 The Palestinian prediction that the Jews would leave Palestine when the British did was also wrong and the Zionists' prediction that the Jewish problem would be solved once the Palestinians had been uprooted from Palestine and a Jewish state had been established there was wrong too. Prediction depends always upon knowledge and knowledge is necessarily an offspring of the past. This principle is basic, not only to science, but perhaps to all knowledge and herein lies the crucial importance of understanding the Palestinians' arguments in the first period in order to understand and predict their future responses for any lasting settlement of the Palestine conflict. It is not sufficient to know what happened, we want to know how the people concerned explained and understood the problem. As Robert Park put it: "It is not sufficient to know what happened we want to know how the transaction looked through the eyes of individuals seeing it from opposing points of view."6 In other words I would like to highlight the Palestinians' point of view in relation to their conflict with the Zionists and how they responded to the attempts to solve the conflict. Probably Palestinian-Zionist conflict in fact is very complicated. No other topic of discussion in recent times has generated such polemic in academic and political circles as has commentary on the Palestinian-Zionist conflict in Palestine or later between the Palestinians, the Arabs and "Israel".7 From the beginning any critical assessment of Zionist policies in relation to settlement in Palestine would provoke emotional accusations, often loaded with charges of anti-semitism, even when the critics were Jews or pro-Zionists. The Zionist Movement succeeded in giving the impression that the aim of -2- Zionist settlement in Palestine was to find a refuge for the persecuted Jews and the relief of their hardships, and on the other hand that such settlement would not benefit the Jews only but the Palestinians as well. The Zionists succeeded in building such a noble image of the aim of their settlement in Palestine through their advanced methods of diplomatic negotiations and propaganda, carried out by and through their offices throughout Europe and the United States and their official representatives in these countries Indeed the Zionists succeeded in shaping World opinion into the belief that Palestine was their "promised land", that it was a country without a people and the Jews were a people without a country.