Palestine: A Modern History (ص 8)

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Palestine: A Modern History (ص 8)

المحتوى

18 Setting for a Conflict: 1881-1908
Fears and Apprehensions
In the same year, A. Antebi, of the Jewish Colonial Association (a non-
Zionist institution) reported:
The Zionists had made the Muslim population ill-disposed to all
progress accomplished by the Jews. A year and a half later, illiterate
Muslim peasants asked him, ‘Is it time that the Jews wish to retake
this country?’ and in early 1902 the ill-will had spread to the
Administrative Council, the law courts and government officials
many of whom especially at lower levels were drawn from the local
population.?*
Religious sentiments were an additional ground of resentment:
Muslim sentiments in Jerusalem .were reflected in the following
statement made in 1903 by a young (and; it is reported not very
fanatical) Arab: ‘We shall pour everything to the last drop of our
blood rather than see our Haram Sharif fall into the hands of non-
Muslims.”2?
It is also worth noting that local goyernment officials, Christians and
educated Muslims, were interested in reading Zionist literature and
some of them even read Ha-Po’el Ha-Zair. This explains the presence of
a state.of alarm among the Arab population of Palestine following the
Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, which resolved that Zionist efforts
must be directed entirely towards Palestine.
The Palestinians were not entirely alone in conceiving the implica-
tions of Jewish immigration and agricultural settlement in Palestine.
Rashid Rida,,one of the most prominent Islamic reformists and- editor
of the influential Al-Manar, recognised that the Jews were seeking
national sovereignty in Palestine.2? In his book, Le Reveil de la Nation
Arabe (Paris, 1905), Najib, Azoury warned that Zionists and Arab
nationalist aspirations would come into conflict. Because Azoury called
for Arab independence, copies of his manifesto had to be smuggled into
Palestine; as a result of which several Arab notables in Jaffa, Gaza and
Ramla were imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities.”
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, an important event took
place that was destined to have.a most dramatic impact on the fate of
Palestine. Organised Zionism was born at the First Zionist Congress,
1897, where the formulation of the Zionist Programme and the
establishment of the Zionist Organisation were achieved. The Zionist
Setting for a Conflict: 1881-1908 19
Programme, alias the Basle Programme,** declared that ‘the aim of
Zionism is to create for'the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured
by law , to be achieved by systematically promoting tHe settlement in
Palestine of Jewish agriculturalists, artisans and craftsmen, in ‘addition
to strengthening the Jewish national consciousness through Zionist
Federations all over the world. After creating the Zionist Organisation
its founder, Theodor Herzl,** proceeded to create the instruments of
systematic colonisation. Herzl had his misgivings about the haphazard
colonisation of Palestine supported by wealthy Jews as a mixed philan-
thropic nationalistic venture. For him, it did not prove to be the right
way for the fulfilment of Zionist aims. The chosen instruments for this
colonisation scheme were The Jewish .Colonial Trust (1898), The
Colonisation Commission (1898), The Jewish National Fund (1901)
and The Palestine Land Development Company (1908).>7 With th
arrival in Palestine of the second aliya (1904-1907), a more determined,
better organised and ideoldgically committed attitude prevailed The
attitudes between the first and secorid aliya colonists differed in a
number of aspects, of which the most important constituted their
attitude towards the Arab population of Palestine. An outstaridin
leader of the second aliya, David Greer (Beni-Guridn),*® spoke about
the state of Jewish affairs at the time of his arrival in 1906: P .
Among the early disappointments was the spectacle of Jews of the
first aliya, now living as effendis, drawing their income from groves
and fields worked by hired workmen or from occupation of the kind
imposed on our peaple by their exile. It was clear to me that we
could never achieve national rehabilitation that way.°?
_ According to Ben-Gurion the aims and achievements of the second
aliya were radically different from those of the first gliya: ‘Pioneer aliya
gave birth to a Jewish community radically unlike all others
independent in economy, culture and speech, able to defend itself.
. Here we find the prototype, as it were, of the embryo of the
contemplated Zionist state: exclusively Jewish, motivated by Zionist
Meals and almost! completely insulated. The key Zionist concept in this
wane was Kibush Avodah (Conquest of Labour). In Ben-Gurion
mene ac. t e Zionist veteran explained this concept, and the fight it
an against Jewish landowners who preferred Arab labourers to
xperienced Jewish hands, and the dismissal of Circassian guards with
th ti
i resulting emergence of the organisation of watchmen called the
lashomer, the forerunner of the Haganah.*!

هو جزء من

Palestine: A Modern History

تاريخ

1978

المنشئ

Abdul-Wahhab Kayyali

مجموعات العناصر

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