Beginning in 1922 with the Balfour Declaration the fate of Palestine, as Arabs had known it for thirteen-hundred years, was about to change. Britain, in concord with the Zionist movement, went behind closed doors and arranged what evolved later into a mass immigration of Jews to what they call their The Holy Land. There were many reasons for this, including the insistence by Zionists that the land belonged to the Jews historically and that the Palestinians who now occupied it were only one of many tribes which had called it home. While admittedly the distant history of Palestine is vague, King Abdullah in his 1947 letter asserts correctly that the awarding of it to the Jews by Britain, helped along by America, is one of history's most dubious and inequitable actions-the giving of a gift neither the English nor the Americans had the right to offer.
Taking each of his arguments in order, the charges of Arab anti-Semitism are clearly out of context and seem suspiciously part of the Zionist plan to use the tragedy of the Holocaust as justification for the takeover of Palestine. Rubin (1987) writes, "Among large and increasing numbers of U.S. Jews, the ideal view of Israel... of a poor little Israel that is surrounded and threatened by big, hostile, anti-Semitic Arab countries has been drastically changed to something much closer to the reality" (12), a reality that existed then as it did today. Clearly history recalls that the tribes of Israel lived, thrived and prospered with other tribes all over the Middle East. That there is evidence they were somewhat subjugated in Palestine at some period in the middle ages had little to do with their ultimate Diaspora to the European continent, and even less to do with their modern claims on Palestine as "theirs." If any enmity exists it is more likely over arguments as to the location of the Temple Mount as Jewish sacred land, and the over the years it also became important to the Moslem religion. It seems then that the real enmity has more to do with religious claims than toward a certain group. Even Rubin (1987) suggests that the new anti-Semitism may be, in reality, anti-Zionism, a quite different matter. As the King points out, the Jews thrived in Spain under the Moors (Abdullah, 1947), until, that was, Christians eventually drove them out or killed them during the Christian sponsored Inquisition. The King points out correctly that it was European Christians, not Arabs who persecuted the Jews, a persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.
The King makes an excellent point regarding the Zionist historical claim to Palestine in comparing past occupations that today hold no historical value. Using the same historical rationale as the Jews and Palestine, Italians [Romans] he maintains, based on historical occupation could make claim to England, which it once ruled. In an Esco Foundation (1947) report, David Ben Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive is quoted as writing this blatantly contradictory statement, 'Our aim...is not a majority. Our aim is a Jewish state'" (1209). Consider this curious situation if the Italians said to the English: we want a significant portion of English land that we will essentially populate and run, but other native English people who have been living there for centuries are welcome to stay as long as they let us run things.
Despite Jewish promises to share the country with others, they are really only sharing the small portion where the Temple resides with Moslems and Christians. The rest of the land, which they seem to grab more and more of every day in Jewish settlements, belongs to, is run by and completely controlled by the Jews as a "new" country-Israel.
And how did they do this? As the King charges, with the original though reluctant help of the British and subsequent emotional and financial help of America. By the time Palestine fell into the hands of the British in the early part of century the land was "clearly no longer the land of milk and honey" (Sicker, Preface, 1999: x) described in the Old Testament. Yet, with the settlement of 50,000 Russian Jews in Palestine even before the war, and considering the stated goal of Zionists for a homeland, William R. Hall of the British Admiralty's statement proves their intent to take over. "the Jews have [had]...a very strong political interest in the country" (Sicker, 1999: 121), and the British anticipated Jewish opposition to any move toward Arab independence and predominance in the area. (Sicker, 1999). By the time Britain assumed control of Palestine in the early nineteen hundreds, "the roots of the Jewish State had already been planted" (Sicker, 1999: 167) without the advice and consent of a significant and majority number of Arabs living there and in the region.
This fact alone foreshadows later 1948 British concerns for the seemingly unstoppable mass migration of Jews to Palestine. They were either unable and/or unwilling to stop to it. The Arabs were soon to become the two-pronged victim of a series of complex political maneuverings. Given the horrors of the Holocaust, Arabs objecting to the mass migration were judged cruel, anti-Semitic and insensitive to their plight as victims. (Abdullah, 1947). Their concerns were also cast aside by the British who were soon to leave the area to its own fate, with thousands of new Jews pouring in every day.
America's support came from several areas including its Judeo-Christian population favorable to the idea of "Holy Land". "...[at the time] religion was one of the most powerful predictors of support for Israel in the American public" (Green, 2009: 1). Politics, of course, was also involved. President Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Congress were unabashed supporters of Zionist claims to the land, along with American Abram I. Elkus and the consul in Jerusalem Reverend O.A. Glazenbrook. The latter even attended a Zionist rally in New York described by Davidson (1994) as a celebration of "the British promise to return Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Jewish people"(130). Politically the U.S. Congress has consistently backed the Jewish claim to Palestine and Israel without serious regard to Arab historical connections to the country.
United States support for the partition of Palestine was crucial to the adoption of the UN partition plan and to the creation of the state of Israel. As history writes, President Roosevelt, in a letter in 1945, promised King Saud that the USA would make no policy decisions about Palestine without consulting the Arabs, a promise broken by President Harry Truman after the horrors of the Holocaust came to light. (President Harry. S. Truman and U.S. Support for Israeli Statehood, 2003).
While not in favour of statehood, Truman did support the immigration. This leads one to believe that he cared little about King Abdullah's comments and more about playing favorable politics. In supporting the mass immigration alluded to by the King in 1947, the U.S. was clearly making an emotional rather than a political and fair decision. Helped along by a strong, powerful and well funded U.S. Jewish Lobby, its further support for Israel and against Arab interests is documented and not surprising. As the policies evolved into support and sympathy for a Jewish homeland in 1948, so America support grew into a partnership that has produced a small but well armed superpower in the region (President Harry. S. Truman and U.S.Support for Israeli Statehood (2003), at the expense of less funded and militarily inferior Arab dissenters.
Perhaps the most grating of all of this is that in allowing thousands of Jews to immigrate into the region, Palestinians, who were supposed to share in the wonderful largess of the new Israel, have been relegated mainly to inferior status, poverty and refugee camps." The mass-expulsion and the uprooting of 600,000 Palestinians (eighty percent) in 1948 left a nation in exile, in continuous statelessness and refugee squalor". (Ismael, 2008: 751). They have no say in the government which, by Israel's constitution, must be Jewish. Britain and America have created what amounts to a racist state ruled by demagogues and funded by the "richest, greatest and most powerful nation" (Abdullah, 1947) in the world. "We are sometimes told that since the Jews came to Palestine, the Arab standard of living has improved. This is a most complicated question. But let us even assume, for the argument, that it is true. We would rather be a bit poorer, and masters of our own home. Is this unnatural?" (Abdullah, 1947)Meanwhile, settlements keep expanded despite the current American administrations contention that the Israeli's should stop building them. How can you stop building housing if you keep inviting more guests to join you?
Conclusion
It is clear in all this that the mass immigration of Jews into Palestine was destined to produce the new country the Zionists wanted. That they grew in political power over and their influence over the years with two of the world's most powerful nations is undeniable. The British from even before the war held too much sway over the fate of Palestine, which it gained from political maneuvering after World War I. It used that influence to shape the fate of Palestine and the thousands of Arabs he lived there through treaties and declarations they made as if they owned the land. At the end, they like Abdullah grew suspicious of Jewish aims and the mass immigration, but by then they could do little. America and its emotional, political and financial support ultimately provided the death knell for the Palestinians and glorious success for the Jewish movement. Each of these countries far removed from the reality of Palestine gave it as a gift to a group of interlopers claiming that from the mists of history, and because of the Holocaust, it should belong to them.
