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   Sixty-seven per cent of the inhabitants of Palestine are engaged in agriculture(farming and cattle breeding). There are about one million hectares of arable land. Of this area 450,000 hectares belong to the large landowners (Arab feudal lords), and 90,000 hectares to the state. There is also much land belonging to the waqf ([Islamic] religious institutions).

   [….]

   In November 1944, four Arab organizations (the Arab Federation, the Arab Union, the Muslim Youth Society and the Muslim Brotherhood)3 sent a special appeal to President Roosevelt, which stated:

   No other country in the world has experienced such great injustice as Palestine. Palestine is an Arab country, and by the will of God and of its population will always remain so. Seventy million Arabs and three hundred million Muslims support the Palestine Arabs, and are fully determined to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives to support the Arab cause. Neither the Balfour Declaratiion nor the statements of other political figures who are under Jewish influence will ever alter these historic factors or force the Arabs and Muslinms to change their position or renounce the defence of Palestine, so that it will remain an Arab country for Arabs.

The Essence of the Jewish-Arab-British Disagreements

The Jews’ yearning for Palestine, the ‘land of their ancestor’, has existed from time immemorial. The Jews’ expectation of coming of the Messiah, was always connected with the idea of their return to Palestine. At one time this ‘Palestinophile’ movement was of a religious-mystical character. Many orthodox Jews dreamed of moving to Palestine in their old age, in order to die there, believing that this would have a favourable effect on their lives in the next world, and they did in fact realized this dream. The more enlightened among the nationalistically inclined Jews aimed at turning Palestine into a spiritual century in Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Romania, and the pogroms against Jews in southern Russia gave the Palestine movement a more

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3. On19 November 1944 approximately 500 people assembled in Cairo at the Young Muslim Association building to protest against US policy towards Palestine. The text of the assembly’s telegram to Roosevelt was signed by six organizations: the Arab Union Society, the Young Men’s Muslim Association, the Executive Committee of the International parliamentary Union Committee for the Defence of Palestine.

4.An entire unabridged version of this pi9ece is printed in FRUS, 1945.Vol.5,p.639. The two salient paragraphs read:’2. No country in the world has suffered a greater injustice than Palestine. From time immemorial it has been an Arab country. Jews entered it as invaders and only occupied it for a short time; for they were constantly at war with the aboriglnes [sic], and other invaders soon drove them out until the Arabs, more than thirteen centuries ago, finally liberated the country and will forever remain so. Seventy million Arabs, supported by three-hundred million Muslims,are determined to redeem it with their lives. Neither the Balfour Declaration, nor declarations of statesmen and the power of Zionism employing various measures of force and coercion can change the course of history or dissuade Arabs from defending Palestine and checking the tide of Zionism.’

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earthly character. Jewish craftsmen and other petty-bourgeois elements began to seek in Palestine a refuge from persecution in their homeland, for which they benefited from the charity of richer Jews.

   Palestinophilism or, as it began to be called, Zionism, acquired a political hue after the appearance of Dr.Herzl’s pamphlet Judenstaat. Herzl asserted that there would be no end to antisemitism until the Jews had their own territory; meanwhile they would be citizens without a motherland and an alien element in all countries. What was needed was to create a legitimate Jewish state, to which a significant part of Jewry, if not the whole of it, could migrate. If that were done, Jews who remained in other countries, but become citizens off their own Jewish state, would enjoy diplomatic protection from the latter, just as do other foreigners in various states. Thanks to Herzl’s extraordinary energy and that of his numerous followers in all countries in the US, professors Mandel’shtam, Ussishkin, Kogan-Bernstein and others in the Russia) the Zionist movement developed on a large scale. Herzl left no stone unturned with the Turkish and various other government, but failed to gain international recognition of an autonomous Jewish state under the Sultan’s sovereignty. The British government was the first to meet the Zionist movement halfway with the above-mentioned Balfour Declaration in favour of a ‘national home for the Jews’ in Palestine.

   There is very reason to suppose that in his declaration Balfour had in mind the realization in practice of the Zionist ideal, i.e., the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Later, however, faced with Arab opposition, British politicians started ‘clarifying’ the Balfour Declaration to the effect that it was not at all about the creation of a Jewish state, but only about establishing a Jewish national home in a Palestine state. For instance, already by 1920 Winston Churchill, who was then colonial secretary, issued a memorandum in which it was said that the ‘nationality which will be given to all citizens of Palestine-Jews and non-Jews alike- will be Palestinian and no other, but the Jewish community will know that it is in Palestine by right, and not just on sufferance’.5

   Of course the Jews do not agree with this interpretation but insist that the British government promised them a Jewish state, in which they alone would rule. They say that Jews are rushing to Palestine not in order to find themselves once again a minority among a foreign people; but, in order to become the majority; they demand unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine. According to the statement made by British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald to the

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5.Reference is to the 1922 statement usually called the Churchill White Paper. The sequence and wording of the original text are as follows:’2.A Jewish national home will be founded in Palestine. The Jewish people will be in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance. Bur His Majesty’s govement have no such aim in view as that Palestine should become as Jewish as England is English…4.Status of all citizens of Palestine will be Palestinian. No section of the population will have any other status in the eyes of the law’ (correspondence with the Palestine Arab delegation and the Zionist Organization. Cmd.1700,1922,p.30)

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permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, in 1919 there were about 635,000 Arabs and 58,000 Jews in Palestine, i.e., a total of 693,000 people, whereas at the end of March 1939, the population had already grown to 1,535,000, of which 1,113,000 were Arabs and 422,000 Jews.