The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 [Paperback]

Arieh L Avneri (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1982

This study of the Israeli-Arab conflict sheds new light on the historic background of the contemporary Palestinian problem. Unlike other books that treat the political issues of this confl ict, this volume traces the spread of Jewish settlements over the seventy year period before the establishment of the State of Israel, in order to see how it affected the existing Arab community's economy and its social and cultural institutions.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers (January 1, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878559647
• ISBN-13: 978-0878559640
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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59 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Myth buster, October 28, 2003

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Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 (Paperback)

This exceedingly well-documented book lays bare the false claim that Jewish settlers dispossessed Arab people from their land in Palestine. The examination of records from 1830 onward will shock most readers.

In the first place, the book shows that Palestine's population barely grew for 250 years--rising from 205,000 Moslems, Christians and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. In the second, records from 1830, 1863, 1878 and 1893 and 1917, among others, demonstrate that when the heaviest Jewish immigration began in 1880, a large proportion of the 425,000 to 440,000 Arabs in Palestine were themselves recent immigrants.

The book also carefully documents the origins of those immigrants. Many came from Egypt: The 1831 invasion by the Egyptian Khedive, Ibrahim Pasha, forced Palestine fellaheen, urban dwellers and Bedouin to permanently flee Ottoman military drafts and taxes. The 1837 Great Earthquake and epidemics that followed further cut their numbers. In their wake came Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian Arabs, who settled the empty land. In 1831 alone, 6,000 Egyptian Arabs settled in Akko. The Egyptian Arab-Hinadi, Ghawarna tribes settled in the Beit Shean and Hula Valleys and in the Jordan Valley towns of Ubeidiya, Delhamiya and Kafer-Miser. In the Hula Valley, the Egyptian ez-Zubeids later sold their land to Jewish settlers from Yessud-Hama'ala. According to an 1893 British Palestine Exploration Fund report, Egyptians made up most of the population in Jaffa.

Additionally, Avneri shows, Arab and Muslim immigrants also came from Algeria, Damascus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Persia, India, Tripoli, Morocco, Turkey and Iraq. The French conquest of Algeria, for example, led to the eventual rebellion and imprisonment of Abd el-Kadar el-Hassani, whose followers in 1856 fled to Syria and the Lower Galilee towns of Shara, Ulam, Ma'ader, Kafer-Sabet, Usha (near present-day Ramat-Yohanan), the Mount Atlas village of Qedesh and villages on Lake Hula and in the Upper Galilee, where they spoke Berber. In Ramle, immigrants spoke Qebili, a Mugrabi dialect. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus settled in Trans-Jordan and as far east as Caesarea.

Arab immigration continued to rise through World War I, as Avneri documents, despite locusts, the Ottoman draft and more epidemics. Egyptian laborers, contractors and businessmen flooded the country. By 1922, the Moslem population had more than doubled to 566,311, including 62,500 Bedouins. The 1931 Mandatory government census counted 693,147 permanent Moslem residents, including 66,553 Bedouins. It also gave the natural increase of the population as 132,211--57,125 less than the absolute increase. Only illegal Arab immigration explains this contradiction, Avneri shows.

The next census in 1948, as Avneri recounts, followed unprecedented economic growth, during which illegal Arab immigration continued. From April 1934 to November 1935, for example, 20,000 Haurani Arabs came to Palestine. These and thousands of other Arab immigrants worked on farms, construction projects (building roads, railroads and the Haifa port), and government and municipal jobs. Syrians and Lebanese Arabs were free to come with nothing but border passes, and they came along with immigrants from Somalia, Trans-Jordan, Persia, India, Ethiopia and the Hejaz. Mandatory government rules required the supervision of immigration, but Palestine's borders remained porous to all but Jews. In all, Avneri shows that 35,000 to 40,000 illegal Arab immigrants came from 1931 to 1947--on top of up to 20,000 other Arab immigrants who arrived from 1935 to 1945.

The book also carefully examines numerous historical descriptions of a desolate landscape, composed almost entirely of swamps and deserts, and sold to the Jewish people by absentee Arab landlords, appointed by the Ottoman government, at enormous profits. Dozens of sales are documented specifically, including some by the Egyptian el-Husseini family of Yasser Arafat.

Altogether, this book shatters the Arab claim of dispossession.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

45 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative, November 16, 2004

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a history buff (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 (Paperback)

Excellent work of dispassionate scholarship

Highly informative. The author meticulously documents Palestinian demographic trends, Jewish efforts to purchase lands, and the effect of these efforts on Arab peasants. Its only drawback is that its dispassionate non-polemical style at times makes for dry reading

A previous reviewer ("ramacat") claimed to have read this work, but then claims he could not "confirm" some of the source material, and that supporting evidence was "bogus" , "misquoted", "misreported" , "unverified racist ramblings", and finally "often just patently stupid". These comments seem odd and it is clear this person never even gazed upon this book.

The author relies primarily on three types of sources. His demographic analysis relies on the work of a highly respected geographic demographer and academic; Prof. Roberto Bachi , as well as on British censuses conducted during the British mandate. The works of Pof. Bachi as well as British census data are both readily available at the research libraries in most major cities (they were at least at the 42nd st. research library at NYC). Thus for example he provides British census data to demonstrate Arab migration to Jewish settled areas by noting the dramatic increases in Arab populations in cities with a substantial Jewish populations or adjacent to rural Jewish settlements (i.e. Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa ect.) and the much more modest population increases (and at times decreases) in the Arab population of purely Arab cities or areas (i.e. Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah ect.).

In documenting Jewish land purchases he relies on archival records of the Jewish Agency. As these sources are in Hebrew and are located in Israeli archives, I doubt that the reviewer mentioned above attempted to "confirm" them seeing as he is writing from Thailand.

Finally the author relies on the reports of various British commissions and surveys (i.e. Peel, Hope Simpson, Lewis French) to evaluate the effects of Jewish purchases on Arab peasants. Thus for instance he relates that in 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government's legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer. The Lewis French survey along with the Hope Simpson and Peel commision reports are readilly available at most research libraries, including the one in NYC mentioned above.

This books detractor "concludes" that all positive reviews come from "true believers". I think it is clear who the "true believer" is.

72 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read, August 9, 2002

By 

"aiwac" (Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 (Paperback)

...The book is divided into three parts, each of which examines and challenges articles of faith of Palestinian-Arab nationalists. The first part deals with one of the most talked-of of the lot (next to the claim that most of the Palestinian refugees were expelled), namely the claim that the Palestinian Arabic-speaking population have lived in the area since the beginning of the Arab conquest.

Avneri demonstrates that, far from being an island of serenity in which few came in or out, and in which the population had enjoyed relative peace for centuries, the Arabs in Palestine in the 19th century were "a tiny remnant of a volatile population which had been in constant flux as a result of unending wars [and other factors such as disease]''. The population that had been in the country for a relatively long while was dying out and immigrating elsewhere, while immigrants from all over, and especially from neighboring countries such as Egypt and Trans-Jordan poured in before and after the advent of Zionist settlement. Palestine was both a hot plate and a magnet-the people already living there couldn't stay in (and alive) and immigrants couldn't stay out.

Avneri demonstrates this in a methodical manner-showing exactly when there was immigration into the country, the reasons for it, such as flight for political reasons and economic opportunity, and where the immigrants settled, as well as the factors in the decline of the existing population already there. I think that it can be safely said that if the population was this volatile during the previous centuries, or more, the claim of perpetual residence for 1300 years can not stand up to scrutiny as an a priori axiom, as it has up until now.

The second part, which represents the bulk of the book, takes on the claim that the Zionists dispossessed the poor Arab rural population & ruined their economy. In a methodical and detailed, if somewhat dry, manner, Avneri shows that:

1) The areas of Zionist settlement were not densely populated nor the land fully cultivated.

2) Zionist work increased economic opportunity and actually attracted Arabs from neighboring countries, in addition to improving the economic lot of the Arabs already present.

3) Except in a small minority of cases, most Arabs were amply indemnified for the land, and even offered plots of land elsewhere. The fellaheen/sharecroppers became landless of their own free will, preferring cash payment rather than eventual ownership of the land they worked after a few years of renting the plot.

The third and final part of the book deals with the question of the Palestinian-Arab refugees, and it is here that I have to complain that while the other two sections feel solid and meticulous, this part seems rushed. It almost feels that the refugee chapter was added as an afterthought...