kolonizacja Palestyny

[Gość: Ralph]

Bibliographic note
Table of contents
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Chapter 3
Colonizing Palestine
In 1917, there were 56,000 Jews in Palestine and 644,000 Palestinian Arabs. In
1922, there were 83,794 Jews and 663,000 Arabs. In 1931, there were 174,616
Jews and 750,000 Arabs. [32]

Collaborating with British Colonialism
With the forging of a tacit alliance with the British, the Zionists now
received support on the ground for their conquest of the land. The process was
described by the Palestinian poet and Marxist analyst, Ghassan Kanafani:

"Despite the fact that a large share of Jewish capital was allocated to rural
areas, and despite the presence of British imperialist military forces and the
immense pressure exerted by the administrative machine in favor of the
Zionists, the latter achieved only minimal results with respect to the
settlement of land.

"They, nevertheless, seriously damaged the status of the Arab rural population.
Ownership by Jewish groups of urban and rural land rose from 300,000 dunums in
1929 [67,000 acres] to 1,250,000 dunums in 1930 [280,000 acres]. The purchased
land was insignificant from the point of view of mass colonization and of the
settlement of the "Jewish problem." But the expropriation of one million
dunums - almost one third of the agricultural land - led to a severe
impoverishment of Arab peasants and Bedouins.

"By 1931, 20,000 peasant families had been evicted by the Zionists.
Furthermore, agricultural life in the underdeveloped world, and the Arab world
in particular, is not merely a mode of production, but equally a way of social,
religious and ritual life. Thus, in addition to the loss of land, Arab rural
society was being destroyed by the process of colonization." [33]

British imperialism promoted the economic destabilization of the indigenous
Palestinian economy. The Mandatory Government granted a privileged status to
Jewish capital, awarding it 90% of the concessions in Palestine. This enabled
the Zionists to gain control of the economic infrastructure (road projects,
Dead Sea minerals, electricity, ports, etc.).

By 1935, Zionists controlled 872 of a total of 1,212 industrial firms in
Palestine. Imports related to Zionist industries were exempted from taxes.
Discriminatory work laws were passed against the Arab workforce resulting in
large scale unemployment and a substandard existence for those who were able to
find employment.

The 1936 Uprising
Loss of land and repression heightened Palestinian awareness of the fate
intended for them and fueled a great uprising which lasted from 1936 to 1939.

The revolt assumed the form of civil disobedience and armed insurrection.
Peasants left their villages to join fighting units which were formed in the
mountains. Arab nationalists from Syria and Jordan soon entered the struggle.

The decision to withhold taxes was taken May 7, 1936, at a conference attended
by one hundred fifty delegates representing all sectors of the population and a
general strike swept Palestine.

British reaction was immediate and harsh. Martial law was declared July 30,
1936 - approximately five months after the uprising had begun - and widespread
repression was unleashed. Anyone suspected of organizing or sympathizing with
the general strike or other resistance was detained. Houses were blown up
throughout Palestine. A large section of the city of Jaffa was destroyed by the
British on June 18, 1936, rendering 6,000 people homeless. Homes, as well, in
the surrounding communities were demolished.

Britain sent large numbers of troops to Palestine to quell the revolt
(estimated at 20,000). By the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, however,
British forces were losing control to the armed popular revolt.

The Zionists as Police Enforcers
It was at this point that the British began to rely on the Zionists who
provided them with a unique resource they had never tapped in any of their
colonies: a local force which had made common cause with British colonialism
and was highly mobilized against the indigenous population. If before this the
Zionists had handled many of the tasks of reprisal, they now played a larger
role in the escalated repression which was to include mass arrests,
assassinations and executions. In 1938, 5,000 Palestinians were imprisoned, of
whom 2,000 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; 148 people were
executed by hanging and over 5,000 homes were demolished. [34]

Zionist forces were integrated with British intelligence and became the police
enforcers of draconian British rule. A "quasi-police force" was established to
provide cover for the armed Zionist presence encouraged by the British. There
were 2,863 recruits to the quasi-police force, 12,000 men were organized in the
Haganah, and 3,000 in Jabotinsky's National Military Organization (Irgun). [35]
In the summer of 1937 the quasi-police force was named the "Defense of the
Jewish Colonies," and later the "Colony Police."

Ben Gurion called the quasi-police force an ideal "framework" for the training
of the Haganah. Charles Orde Wingate, the British officer in charge, was, in
essence, the founder of the Israeli army. He trained such figures as Moshe
Dayan in terrorism and assassination.

By 1939, Zionist forces working with the British rose to 14,411 organized into
ten well-armed groups of Colony Police, each commanded by a British officer,
with an official of the Jewish Agency as second in command. By the spring of
1939, the Zionist force included sixty-three mechanized units, each consisting
of eight to ten men.

The Peel Report
A Royal Commission was established in 1937, under the direction of Lord Peel,
to determine the causes of the 1936 revolt. The Peel Commission concluded that
the two primary factors were Palestinian desire for national independence and
Palestinian fear of the establishment of a Zionist colony on their land. The
Peel Report analyzed a series of other factors with uncommon candor. These
were:

The spread of the Arab nationalist spirit outside Palestine
Increasing Jewish immigration after 1933
The ability of the Zionists to dominate public opinion in Britain because of
the tacit support of the government
Lack of Arab confidence in the good intentions of the British government
Palestinian fear of continued land purchases by Jews from absentee feudal
landowners who sold off their landholdings and evicted the Palestinian peasants
who had worked the land
The evasiveness of the Mandatory government about its intentions regarding
Palestinian sovereignty.
The national movement consisted of the urban bourgeoisie, feudal landowners,
religious leaders and representatives of peasants and workers.

Its demands were:

An immediate stop to Zionist immigration
Cessation and prohibition of the transfer of the ownership of Arab lands to
Zionist colonists
The establishment of a democratic government in which Palestinians would have
the controlling voice. [36]
Analysis of the Revolt
Ghassan Kanafani described the uprising:

"The real cause of the revolt was the fact that the acute conflict involved in
the transformation of Palestinian society from an Arab agricultural-feudal-
clerical one into a Jewish (Western) industrial bourgeois one, had reached its
climax. ...The process of establishing the roots of colonialism and
transforming it from a British mandate into Zionist settler
colonialism ...reached its climax in the mid-thirties, and in fact the
leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement was obliged to adopt a
certain form of armed struggle because it was no longer able to exercise its
leadership at a time when the conflict had reached decisive proportions." [37]

The failure of the Mufti and other religious lead