It is said by some quarters that the Jews in Palestine bought land from the Muslims at exorbitant prices, and as a result of this purchase and sale, when they became the owners of a considerable amount of land, this property proved to be a precursor to the establishment of Israel. This position is not correct. The reality is quite the opposite.
According to Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of Oxford University’s Middle East Center, it was believed that 94 percent of Palestinian land was owned by Palestinians, even in 1947. That is, three decades after Palestine went to British control, the Arabs still owned 94 percent of Palestine’s land. This was the time when Israel was being established. Now, if the local Arabs owned 94 percent of the land at the time of the establishment of Israel, then it becomes meaningless in the world of knowledge and reason that Israel was made by buying land.
French Deputy Speaker Roger Grady writes in his book that when the Balfour Declaration was made and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was talked about, Jews owned only 2.5 percent of the land in Palestine and Jews owned 6.5 percent of the land at the time of the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel.
It should be remembered that out of these six and a half percent land, the four percent was amongst what was distributed among the Jews during the British rule. It was state land that was distributed among the Jews during the Mandate under the reign of Herbert Samuel Commissionerate.
This fact was stated by the United Nations Committee itself in its report in November 1947. According to the report, Jews owned 2 percent of the land in Jerusalem, 3 percent of the land in Akko, less than 1 percent of the land in Al-Khalil, Ramallah, Jenin, Beer al-Sabah and Nablus, and 4 percent of the land in Gaza. They had 14 percent in Al-Ramla, 17 percent of the land in Tillakaram, and 35 percent of the Haifa land. All these figures are in the report of the United Nations Subcommittee on Palestine in the form of a regular chart.
Land must have been sold in Palestine. It is not possible to deny it completely, but how much? If, however, Jews owned only 6.5 percent of the land at the time of Israel’s creation, then this alleged sale and purchase of land cannot be recorded as the reasons for the creation of Israel.
This was the period when a Jewish ruler was made in Palestine after 2,000 years. Under the banner of the League of Nations, the crisis of the intellectual integrity of these Western nations was such that in a state where 98 percent of the population was Muslim, a Jew was made the ruler. During his time, Zionist groups were organized, terrorist Zionist groups were armed under state patronage, Muslims were exploited in every field, heavy taxes were imposed on them, they were weakened administratively and economically. Their lands were confiscated, villages were taken away from them and given to settler Jews, state land was also distributed among Jews, and despite all this, the Jews had only six and a half percent of the land at the time of the establishment of Israel.
The truth is not that these lands were sold, the truth is that the lands were grabbed, confiscated and taken away. A few months after the United Nations General Assembly resolution, when the British occupation ended, the Jews announced the creation of Israel a day before that. The areas that the General Assembly had illegally ceded to Israel, the massacre of Muslims started at the hands of Zionist terrorist groups.
After the UN testimony, another important testimony is that of Israeli historian Benny Morris. He is a Jew and has been a professor of history at Ben Gurion University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In his book, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited”, he describes what happened to Muslims and how their lands were grabbed.
He writes that within a year of Israel’s creation, 400 Palestinian villages were evacuated, massacred, their houses demolished with bulldozers, and driven away and occupied. This was done by the Israeli army, along with the people of the Zionist organization Haganah, as well as Jewish settlers in the neighborhood. He says that this process was going on even before the establishment of Israel and the Zionists were also supported by the British and it was a settled policy that demolishing Arab houses is a legitimate punishment. Regarding the Zionist terrorist organization Haganah, he wrote that in its Plan D, it was formally mentioned that Arab villages should be burned to ashes and nothing should be left. Collective destruction was adopted as a policy. On April 14, the order was issued that: “To continue harassing and cleansing operations, we should blow up enemy bases.” Explaining this, Benny Morris writes the bases mentioned meant that the villages should be destroyed. Their words are: “The bases refered to, of course, were villages.”
It is pertinent to mention here that Benny Morris is not only Israeli and Jewish, but he is also a Zionist, and he himself admits this in the same book and states that he did not write anything on ideological or political grounds, but he just wanted to know what happened. So, he described what happened and it is likely that he would still not have made the full statement.
“Of the 418 villages destroyed, 70 per cent were completely destroyed, and those that remained to some extent were renamed Hebrew,” writes Amnesty International’s Associate Director and American scholar Naseer Aruri in his book.
According to Jerome Slater, a professor at the State University of New York, 700 Muslim villages were burned to ashes. This is only a testimony of those days and that too a partial testimony so that the situation can be clear. Later, what has happened there since then is a different story. Millions of Muslims have been displaced and have not been able to return to their homes till date.
Roger Grady writes that by 1949, the Zionists had occupied 80 percent of Palestine’s territory and 777,000 Palestinians had been expelled from their lands and homes. Methods of fear and terror tactics were used for this. In Deir Yassin, the terrorists of the Zionist terrorist organization, Irgun, massacred women and children. Irgun leader Menachem Begin wrote in his book, “The Revolt: The Story of Irgun” that the creation of Israel would not have been possible without the massacre of Deir Yassin, we carried out victorious actions and the Arabs kept shouting in fear and terror remembering the village of Deir Yassin.
Roger Grady writes that by expelling 850,000 Palestinians from their homes, displacing them, Israel passed a law that those who left their homes before August 1, 1948 and are no longer present in their areas, lands and homes will be considered absent. And the lands of those who are absent will be confiscated and distributed among the Jews, considering them to be property of Israel. So, two-thirds of the total land of the Arabs was forcibly confiscated and taken away from them.
On September 16, 1948, the United Nations sent a representative on the manner the Muslims were killed and their lands were occupied, this representative named Folke Bernadotte submitted a report to the United Nations on September 16, 1948, in which it was written that the Jews entered the areas given to Palestine and forcibly expelled the people from there. These innocent people should be given the right to return and if this right is not given to them, then it will be tantamount to violating the principle of partition. He wrote in the report that the Zionists have looted these areas a lot. The day after submitting the report, UN Peace Mediator Folke Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem along with his assistant Colonel Andre Serot. The murder took place under the jurisdiction of Zionists land. British Secretary of State Lord Moyn said that the Zionists had no right over this land, they were also killed in Cairo the next day. This murder was also carried out by the Zionist organization.
The process of snatching land from Muslims was going on since the time of British rule and this process continued under British supervision. Britain introduced a law called LAW 24. This law still exists and through this, Israel has deprived the Palestinians of their lands and continues to do so. Under this, wherever this law is applied, all the rights of the people are suspended, and the owners of the land do not have the right to enter their lands, they are deprived of it immediately. Similarly, the owners of the land that is declared uncultivated are also deprived of this land. Moreover, the record of government lands during the Ottoman Empire was also with the Zionist administration, so government lands were also allotted to the Jews.
A false impression was also spread that the land in Palestine is like this and there is no owner, and on the other hand, the Jews are migrating poor here and there, and they do not have any land, so those who do not have land should be settled in the lands that do not have any owner. Israel Shahak, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes in his book that in order to convince us that Palestine was a desolate and abandoned area before Israel, more and more village were destroyed, wells were destroyed and their names were erased, houses were demolished so that there was no sign of population, even cemeteries and more. Tombs were also destroyed and their marks erased.
Golda Meir has made it very clear what Israel thinks about Palestine. She writes: “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. It’s not that we came and we took them out. They never existed.”
The statement of Yosef Weitz, Director of the National Jewish Fund, can also be helpful in understanding Israeli policy. “It should be clear to us that there is no room for two nations in this country. And if the Arabs leave it, there is a lot for us here. There is no other thing to do except to wipe them out. We should not leave even one village and one tribe.”
Similarly, the position of Yoram Ben-Porath, published in Israel’s Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronoth, is very important. He writes: “It is the duty of Israeli leaders to present to the public clearly that some facts have been forgotten over time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, neo-colonialism, and Jewish state without expelling the Arabs and occupying their lands.”
After all this background, if today someone claims that the Palestinians sold their own lands and this sale proved to be the precursor to the establishment of Israel, then this position has no credibility in the world of knowledge and logic. An important question that arises here is what does international law say in this whole matter? Is Burning Palestinian villages, evicting them from their lands and capturing them a legitimate act in the eyes of international law?
The answer is in the negative. Article 49 of the Geneva Convention lays down some principles in this regard. According to them:
1. The transfer of population from an occupied territory cannot be ordered to another place.
2. The occupying force does not have the right to forcibly push someone into another territory or any other country.
3. There shall be a ban on the forcible evacuation and relocation of the population, whatever the purpose.
4. If such people are expelled from their areas for any unavoidable reason, their return will be ensured as soon as possible.
5. People will not be separated from their families.
6. If someone is temporarily relocated due to unavoidable reasons, the occupying force will be responsible for the accommodation, health, food, education, etc. of these citizens there.
Wherever Israel expelled Muslims, occupied their lands, Jewish citizens were settled there. Article 49 of the Geneva Convention also prohibits this, there it is written: “The occupying power shall not transfer its civilian population to the territory under its control.”
The most important part of international law is Customary International Law. Unlike other treaties, it does not require the ratification of any country. Everyone has to abide by them. Some of its rules were formalized, of which Rule 51 states that the occupying force does not have the right to take possession of someone’s private property. It is written in Rule 51:
“Private property must be respected and may not be confiscated.”
The protection of people’s private property in the occupied territories during wars is an accepted principle of international law. The same principle exists in Article 50 of the Oxford Manual. According to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, private property cannot be confiscated. But when it comes to Palestine, all these rules of international law are brutally violated.
