Ralph Schoenman

 

The Hidden History of Zionism

 

Chapter 5
The Seizure of the Land

4. Tragic Consequences   |   Zionist Vision of Eretz Israel

 

It is appropriate to review the pervasiveness of this murderous policy and its consequences. In the territory which came under (Israeli) occupation after Partition there were approximately 950,000 Palestinian Arabs. They inhabited nearly 500 villages and all the major cities, which included Tiberias, Safed, Nazareth, Shafa Amr, Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramle, Jerusalem, Majdal (Ashqelon), Isdud (Ashdod) and Beersheba.

After less than six months only 138,000 people remained. (Figures vary from 130,000 to 165,000.)The great majority of Palestinians were killed, forcibly expelled or fled in panic before slaughtering bands of (Israeli) army units.

Having thus eliminated most of the Palestinian inhabitants from the land of Palestine, the (Israeli) government undertook the systematic destruction of their homes and possessions. Nearly 400 villages and towns were razed to the ground during 1948 and 1949. More followed in the 1950s.

Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense, was uninhibited in his summary of the nature of Zionist colonization before students at the (Israel) Institute of Technology (The Techniyon):

We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages do not exist.
Nahalal was established in place of Mahalul, Gevat in place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kafr Yehoushu’a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village. [64]
The following table was prepared by Israel Shahak, Chairperson of the (Israeli) League for Human and Civil Rights, under the heading " Arab Villages Destroyed in Israel." [65]

 
Destruction of Palestinian Arab Villages
Name of the District
Number of Villages
Before ’48
1988
Destroyed
Jerusalem
33
4
29
Bethlehem
7
0
7
Hebron
16
0
16
Jaffa
23
0
23
Ramle
31
0
31
Lydda
28
0
28
Jenin
8
4
4
Tulkarm
33
12
21
Haifa
43
8
35
Acre
52
32
20
Nazareth
26
20
6
Safad
75
7
68
Tiberias
26
3
23
Bisan
28
0
28
Gaza
46
0
46
Total
475
90
385

Shahak stresses that this documented list is incomplete because it is impossible to find numerous Arab communities and "tribes". (Israeli) official data characterize, for example, 44 Bedouin villages and towns as "tribes", to reduce, by census contrivance, the number of permanent Palestinian communities.
 
 

"Absentee" Property

With the expulsion of the Palestinians and the destruction of their towns and villages, vast amounts of property were seized under the rubric of the "Absentee Property Law" (1950).
Until 1947, Jewish land ownership in Palestine was some 6%. By the time the state was formally established, it had sequestered 90% of the land:
Of the entire area of the state of Israel only about 300,000 to 400,000 dunums [67,000-89,000 acres] ...are state domain which the (Israeli) government took over from the Mandatory regime [British Mandate] [2%]. The J.N.F. (Jewish National Fund) and private Jewish owners possess under two million dunums [ 10% ]. Almost all the rest [i.e., 88% of the 20,225,000 dunums (4,500,000 acres) within the 1949 armistice lines] belongs in law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. [66]
The value of this stolen property was over $300 million - over thirty years ago. (Arab League estimates are ten times this amount.) In current dollars, this figure would have to be quadrupled.
The U.N. Refugee Office estimated the value of Arab abandoned orchards, trees, movable and immovable property in the territory under (Israeli) jurisdiction was about 118-120 million Pounds Sterling, an average of £130 [$364] per refugee. [67]
The seizure of Palestinian property was indispensable to make (Israel) a viable state. Between 1948 and 1953, 370 Jewish towns and settlements were established. Three hundred fifty were on "absentee" property. By 1954, some 35% of Israel’s Jews lived on property confiscated from absentees and some 250,000 new immigrants settled in urban areas from which Palestinians had been expelled. Entire cities had been emptied of Palestinians, such as Jaffa, Acre, Lydda, Ramle, Bisan and Majdal (Ashqelon).
This plunder embraced 385 towns and villages in their entirety and large sections of 94 other cities and towns, containing 25% of all buildings in (Israel). Ten thousand businesses and retail stores were handed over to Jewish settlers.

From 1948 to 1953 - the period of greatest immigration - the economic importance to (Israel) of seized Arab property was decisive. The amount of cultivatable land seized from Palestinians driven from their country by massacre was two and one half times the total area of land granted the Zionists with the end of the mandate.

Virtually all citrus groves of Palestinians were seized - consisting of more than 240,000 dunums [53,000 acres]. By 1951, 1.25 million boxes of citrus from seized Arab groves were in (Israeli) hands - 10% of the country’s hard currency profits from export.

By 1951, 95% of all (Israel)’s olive groves came from seized Palestinian land. Olive produce from stolen Palestinian groves represented (Israel)’s third largest export - after citrus and diamonds.

One third of all stone production came from 52 seized Palestinian quarries. [68]
 
 

NOTES

63. A detailed analysis of this process can be found in Janet Abu Lughod’s The Demographic Transformation of Palestine, in Ibrahim Abu Lughod, ed., The Transformation of Palestine (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1971), pp.139-64.
64. Moshe Dayan, March 19,1969, Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969, and cited in Davis.
65. Davis and Mezvinski, p.47.
66. Jewish National Fund, Jewish Villages in Israel, p.xxi. Quoted in Lehn and Davis, The Jewish National Fund.

67. The U.N. estimate was made in the late 1950s. Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Economy, p.100. Cited in Davis, p.19. In their books, Davis and Kimmerling speak of "118-120 billion Pounds Sterling." This author was unable to locate the original United Nations report, but after thorough examination of other sources, it appears Kimmerling (then Davis) made a typographical mistake. The figure should be millions of Pounds Sterling - not billions.

68. Dan Peretz, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, pp.142., Davis, pp.20-21. South African diamonds are cut and refined in Israel, in a revealing partnership, before they are distributed to the world market.

69. Walter Lehn, The Jewish National fund As An Instrument of Discrimination. Cited in Zionism and Racism, (London: International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1977), p.80.

69a. The Israel Lands Administration Report (Jerusalem 1962) stipulates that the I.L.A. has jurisdiction over "92.6%" of the total area of the state. Hebrew University professor Uzzi Ornan identifies the area "to which the principles of the J.N.F. apply" as "95% of pre-1967 Israel". Ma’ariv, January 30, 1974.

69b. Walter Lehn with Uri Davis, The Jewish National Fund, (London: Kegan Paul International Ltd., 1988), p.114.

69c. Ibid., p.115.

70. J.N.F. lease, article 23, cited in Israel Shahak, ed., The Non-Jew in the Jewish State (Jerusalem: 1975).

71. Ha’aretz, December 13, 1974.

72. Ma’ariv, July 3, 1975.

73. Raphael Patai, ed., The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, (New York: 1960), p.88.

74. Israel Shahak, A Message to the Human Rights Movement in America - Israel Today: The Other Apartheid, Against the Current, January-February 1986.

75. Ibid.
 
 

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