Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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.

...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...

Through a careful examination of documented historical material, Arieh Avneri reveals a truthful and accurate account of the facts behind the Palestinian & Arab propaganda which have unfortunately tainted and distorted this issue for a considerable period.

The author accurately shows that there is indeed no historical evidence that Palestinians' were evicted from Israel prior to the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

He makes it crystal clear that the vast majority of Palestinians/Arabs who left the Land, left on their own volition...of their own accord. Many leaving under the encouragement or instruction of the surrounding Arab nations, hoping to return to share the spoils of a defeated Jewish nation shortly to be thrown into the sea by numerically superior Arab forces.

Arieh Avneri also delves into the 'origins' of the so called 'Palestinians' and how their numbers increased due to the influx of Arabs, (of which their numbers largely comprised), from surrounding Arab nations, very much in parallel & in keeping with the rate of the Jewish transformation of the Land from what was a desert/wasteland/swamp into a very fertile area.

Thus effectively showing that the Palestinians' were largely in fact Arabs from the surrounding nations and not long term residents of what is now the Jewish state of Israel.

( One is left to wonder at the circa 1948 UN definition of Palestinian' only requiring one to have lived in the land for a period of some 2 years to qualify. One can only again draw his/her own conclusions why this was so ! Joan Peters covers this remarkably well in her book, From Time Immemorial; The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine')

The author also provides figures in relation to the alleged 'refugees'. Figures grossly inflated by the UN and the Arab world for obvious propaganda purposes. ...

This is a fine book on such a relevant and appropriate subject for our time. Books like this are becoming increasingly more valuable and sadly increasingly rare in these days where widespread attempts are being made to de-Judaize Israel, de-legitimise Jewish claims to the Land through floods of Arab propaganda and those who wish to re-write the area's history to serve their own ends. Highly recommended. Thanks for your time.

This sure is about the dullest book I've ever read. Why then am I giving it so much praise? And a five star rating? Well, read on.

As some of the earlier reviewers have already explained, the facts in this book are well documented. And, most important, the facts about the population and land purchase in the region for the past couple of centuries will shock plenty of people.

That's the key. Why is it that very dull facts about the population of a region are found surprising and even shocking by many people? Why would they care about such stuff, let alone have learned incorrect information about it? The reason is that some Arab antisemites, abetted by some antizionist propagandists, have come up with some incredible and absurd fabrications about Jewish and Arab settlement in the Middle East.

This book shows the increase in Jewish and Arab populations in the Levant. It shows how Arabs moved to areas with high Jewish populations, presumably for economic reasons.

But the most strikingly false claim that this book refutes is that unarmed Jews somehow wandered into the Levant from 1878 to 1948 in order to steal land from helpless, heavily armed Arabs. The book spends a great deal of time showing how the Jews actually purchased land, dunam by dunam, at high prices. And it explicitly names fifty major Arab nationalists, public figures, who sold significant amounts of land to the Jews.

These are some of the reasons why this book has become essential in understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict. It should have been irrelevant and unimportant. But now it has to be regarded as significant that in a world where so many books are filled to the brim with fabrications, there are a few, including this one, that tell the simple and boring truth.

This book (the Hebrew edition) predates From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, a nationwide bestseller and the more well known myth shattering book on the Arab and Muslim (Turkish etc.) immigration to Palestine. This book is pretty unknown, but is sponsored by the left-wing kibbutz movement, so it can't be accused of right-wing bias. Hard facts are given and I definitely recommend this book as essential reading.

Not an easy or pleasant read, but Avneri is a stickler for documentation, maps and specifics. His modest and cautious conclusions all the more potent as a result - the majority of Palestinian Arabs are migrant workers of a few generations or less.

Those who contest the veracity of the book would do well to give specific examples of factual errors with page references (and perhaps in Ed Smith's case to read the book more carefully first - it was published in 1984, and he doesn't cite Peters once).

Real history is messy and includes many details. Avneri's book helps unravel events to give us a clearer understanding of what really happened.

Challenging the mistaken polemic that Zionists stole Arab land we are faced with an opportunistic Arab definition of what land ownership and land rights meant at the close of the Ottoman empire. Not only do actual land owners get paid but tenants and casual users (migrant grazers) also felt they were entitled to compensation as well. Avneri shows that that Jewish settlers accepted these definitions fairly early on even though non Jewish land owners were not required to play by the same rules.

The 1858 Ottoman land reforms altered the local concept of land ownership from a feudal system to that of a market economy. Ostensibly the new laws were designed both to increase tax revenue and to encourage development. The actual effect was to concentrate ownership of the land into the hands of clan notables and wealthy Arab investors. When land was sold from owner to owner the tenants came with the land. Tenants would rent out plots of land from the owners but under terms that inevitably worked out to perpetual indebtedness.

In 1873 the laws were liberalized further to allow Jews to purchase land as well. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the British, under a mandate from the League of Nations, took over the administrative role.

When Jews started purchasing property they wanted title free and clear and specified that in the purchase leaving the former owners to deal with the tenants. Later this lead to specific terms where compensation was due to the tenants either in the form of money or as other land to farm. In some cases this was pocketed by the seller and the Jewish purchasers (usually through the agency of the JNF or the Palestine Land Development Company) had to indemnify the tenants a second time. Eventually the practice came of indemnifying the tenants directly however this did not seem to affect the purchase price of the land. For ideological reasons accompanied by an historical faith that this indeed had been a land "flowing with milk and honey" Zionist individuals and agencies were willing to pay ever higher prices for land, thereby increasing its valuation. This gave the tenant farmer an opportunity to monetize an asset and get out of debt.

Frequently Jewish groups would identify land designated as "mawat" (wasteland) that had potential for development and clear it. Avneri employs many examples such as the Hula Valley, Beit Shean, Hadera and the Sharon plain where the land had reverted to swampland and prior populations had been afflicted by and decimated by malaria. Much of the local population lived in the hills and eschewed the valleys because of the mosquitoes. Arrangements were usually made for the purchase of these lands with the added requirements of draining the swamps and providing an agreed upon portion of the cleared land to Arab farmers. Overall 605,800 dunam of such land was drained and made accessible. (pp235)

Notwithstanding these arrangements in some cases new tenants would move in and start tilling recently cleared land and demand compensation as well. The system got scammed and often as not the scammers would get paid off as well.

Those who elected to stay on the land benefitted from better health (no malaria) and improved irrigation techniques which lead to better yields. Those who moved to the cities were able to start out with a nest egg, assuming they handled the money well. One should note that the same market forces of 20th century industrialization of agriculture were at work as elsewhere - the small family farm was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Almost in passing Avneri notes that while some Arab speculators were accumulating small parcels of land for resale, some, such as the Nusseibehs, were creating their own large plantations of orange groves, however Avneri does not tell us what became of the tenant farmers in these latter cases.

Avneri pursues his subject with an incredible wealth of information. He details purchase after purchase and fearlessly explores conflicts of all kinds, naming the people involved. Very little effort is spent on political polemics - its just a recitation of events. One of the interesting sets of purchases (which can be taken as political comment) are listed on pp227-233 consisting of land sales by prominent Arab land owners who were also active in opposing Jewish immigration.

I do have two criticisms of the book which relate not to its content but to its organization which could be improved in a future edition. The book lacks an index at the back to make it easier to rereference information especially by name and by location. The addition of more maps, even just an overall reference map (there are only 3 maps in the book and two are from the same small area in 1878) would make the book easier to follow. I used outside maps as an aid.

The Arab claim of dispossession cannot be based on events prior to 1948. At that point in time Jews owned about 7% of the land of Israel and Arabs owned 11%. Of that 11% a significant portion would have been classified as "waqf" or religious property belonging to mosques and churches, some of whom would be considered foreign owners; a significant portion belonged to large scale land owners or speculators; a lesser portion belonged to former tenant farmers. The remaining 82% was public land.

It's a slow read and as other reviewers have noted - slightly boring. I recommend it as essential for libraries and those with an interest in analyzing the roots of the Arab/Israeli conflict. As a supplemental I'd also recommend Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism 1917-1948 which similarly examines the some of the same history.

This book is a result of painstaking and indepth research which exposes the lie of Islamic and far-left propagandists that the Arabs of the Holy Land were dispossessed of their land, by the Zionist movement, prior to the refoundation of the State of Israel.
By comprehensive sourcing of the documenatation available from between 1878 and 1948, Avneri proves that most of those Arabs that lived in Palestine in 1948, were descendants of migrants over the previous hundred years, from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Turkey, the Caucuses, Persia, Bosnia and elsewhere.
He essentially reminds us of the roots of the conflict between Israel and the Arab world.
In the intitial chapter he proves the massive Egyptian colonization of Palestine, during the 19th century, and how the Egyptians founded hundreds of settlements across the Holy Land. The Egyptians displaced a number of Druze, who had indeed been living in Palestine for centuries, unlike the Arabs. During the British mandate, a large number of migrants came to Palestine from the Hauran region of Syria. They were attracted by the development and employment by the Zionist enterprises, as well as being given incentives by the British, who reneged on their 1917 promise of a Jewish homeland in the ancient Land of Israel.
Avneri carefully details the population flow and ebb, and explains, through careful documentation, and calculation, how the massive increase in Moslem population during the last decades of Ottoman rule, and during the British mandate, could not have been the result of natural increase.
During the pogroms against Jews in the Holy Land, by the Arabs, in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-1939, many mercenaries came to help spread terror against the Jewish returnees, especially from Lebanon and Syria.
A large part of the book describes how the land was bought with huge sums, by the Jews, from absentee Arab landlords and Arab tribes, but still the Jews did all they could to help the Arabs there farm the land, and contributed to health, education and development of the Arab populations.
The many transactions are carefully, and in detail, recorded by Avneri.
He speaks of the extreme idealism of the Jewish settlers, who turned desert and swamp into productive land, as it was in ancient times, before the Romans expelled the Jews from their homeland.
'The Jewish settler looked upon himself as coming to conquer the desert, and redeem the land from it's desolate state...He was going to turn the curse of the unoccupied land into a blessing".With extreme fairness, even after they had bought the land, the Zionists strove to "enable the tenant farmer to settle on part of the land which will remain in their hands, adjacent to plots purchased by the Zionist agencies, and to give them, in addition to the land, sums of money, to develop intensive agriculture".

The author then go's on to describe the 1948 War of Independence and describes how hundreds of thousands of Arabs were commanded by their leaders to leave Palestine and did so, to make way for Arab armies to sweep in an anihilate the Jews.
"Jewish resistance to the threat of anihilation and the rout of several Arab armies turned the myth of Arab displacement, fostered by the Arab leaders, into tragic reality. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs were uprooted from their homes, as the Palestinian irregulars retreated and the regular armies of the Arab states fled. Flight and exile were the bitter fruits of a war that the Arab leadership had initiated, and not the result of a calculated Zionist policy of displacement and uprooting."
He also proves how many of the Arab refugees were in fact returning to their old villages of the Arab countries they had come from, after having only a lived in the Land of Israel, for a few years.
Avneri also details the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who fled from Arab lands, after the pogroms initiated against defenceless Jewish communities across the Arab world, in revenge for the refoundation of the State of Israel.
As the author concludes, Zionism as a movement for the rennaisance and liberation of the Jewish people sought to achieve it's goal by contstructive deeds. As a matter of last resort the Jews took to arms to defend their very lives..."
As regards those who dispute the findings of the book, they are underpinned by very carefully researched evidence, that are available in the footnotes.
Anyone who actually stuides the evidence will not be able to fault Avneri's foundings.
This book was written in Hebrew, four years before Joan Peter's From Time Immemorial.
Both books are vital to understand the real facts and events behind the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A great book. Rare historical facts in a the long perspective needed to understand the nature of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict.

A must for anyone who seeks the truth about this conflict.

Books like this, containing exhaustive research stand in stark contrast to the islamist propaganda that characterizes the conflict to suit their objectives, but without any basis in the hard, cold facts set out in this book, that would seem to contradict their basic assertions and suggest the outrageousness of the islamist position.