?One single act of compulsion is better for both sides than perpetual friction.? - Israel Zangwill
It is the Arab hatred toward the Jews that makes the transfer of Arabs from Eretz Yisrael a must. The Jews and the Palestinian Arabs cannot live together. One of the parties must be resettled. We return to Rev. Parkes's words: "one would have to give way to the other." There are only two options. Either the Arabs have to vacate western Palestine or the Jews must abandon Eretz Yisrael. Since Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, the Jews have nowhere else to go. At the same time, the Arabs can be resettled in one or more of two dozen Arab countries.
In the decade prior to the Second World War there were many proposals and ideas pertaining to this population exchange. Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine."(1) Amin was one of a very few Arab leaders who was ready to place the famous Arab hospitality above his enmity toward the Jews. He wrote in 1939, "We, the Arabs, are prepared to accept upon ourselves this great sacrifice for the sake of your welfare and the gathering in of your exiles and because of the generations of suffering which you underwent in Spain, Russia and other places."(1).
It is a tragedy for both Arabs and Jews that Amin's proposal was not supported by other Arab leaders. Hatred toward the Jews doomed hundreds of thousands of Arabs to live under terrible living conditions, while generation after generation of Arab youth was raised on enmity towards the Jews. Money that could have been spent for Arab and Jewish welfare has been used to buy weapons. Five destructive wars between the Arabs and the Jews have taken several hundred thousand lives, with many times more people wounded and maimed. In the face of these circumstances, how is it possible to say that transfer is immoral? Is it moral for children to be raised in hatred towards their neighbors? Is it moral to rob children of their childhood? Is it moral to promote a culture of suicide? Is it moral to doom generations of Arabs to live in poverty and misery? According to what kind of morality is it better to let people murder and be murdered instead of allowing them to start a new life in a new place?
Abraham Sharon (Schwadron), a Zionist writer who settled in Palestine in 1927, understood much more than we understand today, in the twenty first century. He wrote, in 1941, "Zionism has come and shown us a new way - a radical solution for quarrels between peoples living in one land by means of the transfer of one of the peoples to a different territory; a transfer that is not an uprooting and a destruction but a planting and an alleviation. It is certainly a very difficult and complicated solution, but it is fundamental, realistic and of enduring value."(1) Somehow we never recall that some of the biggest achievements in the history of mankind were accomplished as a result of population transfer. Such stalwarts of democracy as America and Australia came into existence through transfer.
Israel Zangwill, one of the rare transfer proponents among Zionists, wrote in 1904 that there would have to be a complete elimination of various false theories, such as that of migration being a tragedy. "This is one of the most conspicuous falsehoods in the world. Migration is a fortunate experience. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the transferees have found their new territories to be better, more spacious and healthier."(1) Several years later Zangwill wrote, "As could be seen from Canada and the Transvaal, leaving races put up in one territory led to trouble and friction. The World War had been fought to break up the dangerous sources of friction in Austria and Hungary. Where was the logic of creating in Palestine a minor Austria artificially? The races should separate as Abraham did from Lot."(1)
Zangwill was not the only person who realized that the elimination of sources of friction through transfer is a very viable solution. A much greater political leader made a similar proposal. Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States, wrote, in the 1943 book The Problems of Lasting Peace, "Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations? the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war."(1) Hoover was advocating the transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq, with its fertile soil and severe under-population (a transfer that a later American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also supported). He said of this transfer, "If the lands were organized and homes provided, this particular movement could be made the model migration of history. It would be a solution by engineering instead of by conflict."(1) Championing his transfer plan, he wrote, "I realize that the plan offers a challenge both to the statesmanship of the Great Powers as well as to the good-will of all parties concerned. However, I submit it and it does offer a method of settlement with both honor and wisdom."(1)
By the time Hoover made his proposal, the world community had already achieved tremendous success in the compulsory exchange of population between Greece and Turkey, following the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. The transfer in that case was proposed by Nobel Peace prize-winner Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, who was the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for refugees. That transfer was sanctioned by the League of Nations and carried out under the guidance of a multinational commission. Altogether nearly two million people were transferred: 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks. The transfer was completed within eighteen months. The 1937 Peel Report that recommended the transfer of the Arabs, described the world's reaction to Nansen's transfer operation, "Dr. Nansen was sharply criticized at the time for the inhumanity of his proposal, and the operation manifestly imposed the gravest hardships on multitudes of people. But the courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now the ulcer had been clean cut out, and Greco-Turkish relations, we understand are friendlier than they have ever been before."(1)
Three other Nobel Peace Prize winners, in addition to Dr. Nansen, have also proposed population transfer: Sir Norman Angell, Christian Lange and Philip Noel-Baker, the latter in the specific case of Palestine. This speaks volumes about the morality of transfer. Especially in our case. As Hoover wrote in 1954, replying to a letter that referred to his transfer plan, "We were on the only sane track!"(1)
Several days after the publication of the Peel Report, Abraham Bonne, who was Director of the Economic Archives for the Near East in Jerusalem, wrote that the Peel Commission came to the conclusion regarding Palestine that "the racial antagonism between Jews and Arabs could only be settled by very radical means, i.e. by the exchange of population."(1) It is very unfortunate that this warning about the antagonism between Jews and Arabs went unnoticed. It is a tragedy that there were no brave Israeli or world statesmen at that time who could have brought to fruition a plan to transfer the Palestinian Arabs from western Palestine [Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza] into the Arab countries. If the transfer had taken place half a century ago, Arabs and Jews would have, at the very least, been spared hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded people. Moreover, the maniacal Arab hope of eliminating Israel might have been dead by this time and conditions might have been ready for establishing decent neighborly relations between the Jewish Palestinian State of Israel and the Arab Palestinian State of Jordan. The assumption that Arab hatred towards the Jews would not have subsided and that the Arabs would not forget the lands that were once under their control can easily be dismissed. The example of Spain is sufficient proof. The Moslems once ruled Spain and considered it to be their land. They were defeated, left the Iberian peninsula and today they do not demand the return of these lands.
The elimination of the causes for future friction and wars is, on its own, a sufficient moral justification for transfer. The creation of another Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which the Arabs so adamantly strive for today, will only exacerbate the situation. This fictitious and non-viable entity will serve only as a bridgehead for another Arab-Israeli war and a prologue to more bloodshed and suffering. The cancer of conflict must be cut out. As Sir Walter Smiles, a Conservative member of the British House of Commons said on November 24, 1938, during the debates on the Peel Commission Report, "No matter what sacrifice or discomfort people who were transferred were put to at one time, it might be better to get it over at once as the Greeks who left Asia Minor and went to Greece learned, rather than to be always at enmity with their neighbors."(1)
The time is long overdue to examine the idea of transfer in the case of the Palestinian Arabs without prejudice and bias. Political correctness must be pushed aside. After an objective evaluation of all the pros and cons, if one really cares about the future of both the Jews and the Arabs who currently reside in Eretz Yisrael, there can be only one ?sane track.?
[Part 2 of 2]
1. Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons. "A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895 - 1947." (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/transf1.html)
-------------------------------------------
Boris Shusteff is an engineer. He is also a research associate with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies.
It is the Arab hatred toward the Jews that makes the transfer of Arabs from Eretz Yisrael a must. The Jews and the Palestinian Arabs cannot live together. One of the parties must be resettled. We return to Rev. Parkes's words: "one would have to give way to the other." There are only two options. Either the Arabs have to vacate western Palestine or the Jews must abandon Eretz Yisrael. Since Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, the Jews have nowhere else to go. At the same time, the Arabs can be resettled in one or more of two dozen Arab countries.
In the decade prior to the Second World War there were many proposals and ideas pertaining to this population exchange. Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine."(1) Amin was one of a very few Arab leaders who was ready to place the famous Arab hospitality above his enmity toward the Jews. He wrote in 1939, "We, the Arabs, are prepared to accept upon ourselves this great sacrifice for the sake of your welfare and the gathering in of your exiles and because of the generations of suffering which you underwent in Spain, Russia and other places."(1).
It is a tragedy for both Arabs and Jews that Amin's proposal was not supported by other Arab leaders. Hatred toward the Jews doomed hundreds of thousands of Arabs to live under terrible living conditions, while generation after generation of Arab youth was raised on enmity towards the Jews. Money that could have been spent for Arab and Jewish welfare has been used to buy weapons. Five destructive wars between the Arabs and the Jews have taken several hundred thousand lives, with many times more people wounded and maimed. In the face of these circumstances, how is it possible to say that transfer is immoral? Is it moral for children to be raised in hatred towards their neighbors? Is it moral to rob children of their childhood? Is it moral to promote a culture of suicide? Is it moral to doom generations of Arabs to live in poverty and misery? According to what kind of morality is it better to let people murder and be murdered instead of allowing them to start a new life in a new place?
Abraham Sharon (Schwadron), a Zionist writer who settled in Palestine in 1927, understood much more than we understand today, in the twenty first century. He wrote, in 1941, "Zionism has come and shown us a new way - a radical solution for quarrels between peoples living in one land by means of the transfer of one of the peoples to a different territory; a transfer that is not an uprooting and a destruction but a planting and an alleviation. It is certainly a very difficult and complicated solution, but it is fundamental, realistic and of enduring value."(1) Somehow we never recall that some of the biggest achievements in the history of mankind were accomplished as a result of population transfer. Such stalwarts of democracy as America and Australia came into existence through transfer.
Israel Zangwill, one of the rare transfer proponents among Zionists, wrote in 1904 that there would have to be a complete elimination of various false theories, such as that of migration being a tragedy. "This is one of the most conspicuous falsehoods in the world. Migration is a fortunate experience. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the transferees have found their new territories to be better, more spacious and healthier."(1) Several years later Zangwill wrote, "As could be seen from Canada and the Transvaal, leaving races put up in one territory led to trouble and friction. The World War had been fought to break up the dangerous sources of friction in Austria and Hungary. Where was the logic of creating in Palestine a minor Austria artificially? The races should separate as Abraham did from Lot."(1)
Zangwill was not the only person who realized that the elimination of sources of friction through transfer is a very viable solution. A much greater political leader made a similar proposal. Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States, wrote, in the 1943 book The Problems of Lasting Peace, "Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations? the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war."(1) Hoover was advocating the transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq, with its fertile soil and severe under-population (a transfer that a later American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also supported). He said of this transfer, "If the lands were organized and homes provided, this particular movement could be made the model migration of history. It would be a solution by engineering instead of by conflict."(1) Championing his transfer plan, he wrote, "I realize that the plan offers a challenge both to the statesmanship of the Great Powers as well as to the good-will of all parties concerned. However, I submit it and it does offer a method of settlement with both honor and wisdom."(1)
By the time Hoover made his proposal, the world community had already achieved tremendous success in the compulsory exchange of population between Greece and Turkey, following the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. The transfer in that case was proposed by Nobel Peace prize-winner Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, who was the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for refugees. That transfer was sanctioned by the League of Nations and carried out under the guidance of a multinational commission. Altogether nearly two million people were transferred: 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks. The transfer was completed within eighteen months. The 1937 Peel Report that recommended the transfer of the Arabs, described the world's reaction to Nansen's transfer operation, "Dr. Nansen was sharply criticized at the time for the inhumanity of his proposal, and the operation manifestly imposed the gravest hardships on multitudes of people. But the courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now the ulcer had been clean cut out, and Greco-Turkish relations, we understand are friendlier than they have ever been before."(1)
Three other Nobel Peace Prize winners, in addition to Dr. Nansen, have also proposed population transfer: Sir Norman Angell, Christian Lange and Philip Noel-Baker, the latter in the specific case of Palestine. This speaks volumes about the morality of transfer. Especially in our case. As Hoover wrote in 1954, replying to a letter that referred to his transfer plan, "We were on the only sane track!"(1)
Several days after the publication of the Peel Report, Abraham Bonne, who was Director of the Economic Archives for the Near East in Jerusalem, wrote that the Peel Commission came to the conclusion regarding Palestine that "the racial antagonism between Jews and Arabs could only be settled by very radical means, i.e. by the exchange of population."(1) It is very unfortunate that this warning about the antagonism between Jews and Arabs went unnoticed. It is a tragedy that there were no brave Israeli or world statesmen at that time who could have brought to fruition a plan to transfer the Palestinian Arabs from western Palestine [Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza] into the Arab countries. If the transfer had taken place half a century ago, Arabs and Jews would have, at the very least, been spared hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded people. Moreover, the maniacal Arab hope of eliminating Israel might have been dead by this time and conditions might have been ready for establishing decent neighborly relations between the Jewish Palestinian State of Israel and the Arab Palestinian State of Jordan. The assumption that Arab hatred towards the Jews would not have subsided and that the Arabs would not forget the lands that were once under their control can easily be dismissed. The example of Spain is sufficient proof. The Moslems once ruled Spain and considered it to be their land. They were defeated, left the Iberian peninsula and today they do not demand the return of these lands.
The elimination of the causes for future friction and wars is, on its own, a sufficient moral justification for transfer. The creation of another Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which the Arabs so adamantly strive for today, will only exacerbate the situation. This fictitious and non-viable entity will serve only as a bridgehead for another Arab-Israeli war and a prologue to more bloodshed and suffering. The cancer of conflict must be cut out. As Sir Walter Smiles, a Conservative member of the British House of Commons said on November 24, 1938, during the debates on the Peel Commission Report, "No matter what sacrifice or discomfort people who were transferred were put to at one time, it might be better to get it over at once as the Greeks who left Asia Minor and went to Greece learned, rather than to be always at enmity with their neighbors."(1)
The time is long overdue to examine the idea of transfer in the case of the Palestinian Arabs without prejudice and bias. Political correctness must be pushed aside. After an objective evaluation of all the pros and cons, if one really cares about the future of both the Jews and the Arabs who currently reside in Eretz Yisrael, there can be only one ?sane track.?
[Part 2 of 2]
1. Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons. "A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895 - 1947." (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/transf1.html)
-------------------------------------------
Boris Shusteff is an engineer. He is also a research associate with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies.