The Demographic History of Palestine
At the beginning of WWI (1914), the Jewish population in Palestine was 38,754 (5% of all population) of which 12,332 were Ottoman subjects and the rest were new European immigrants.
By the end of the British Mandate (1920-1948), which was supposed to bring independence and freedom to the Palestinian people, the Jewish immigrants were increased considerably but were able to hold land of only 6% of Palestine and that through the collusion of the British Mandate.
In addition to helping the Jews obtain land, the British government also facilitated the mass immigration of Jews into Palestine, thus altering its ethnic composition.
By 1946 there were 608,225 (32.96%) Jews including illegal immigrants and 1,237,334 (67.04%) Palestinians (Muslims and Christians); thus in spite of the mass immigration, Jews constituted a minority population, albeit larger than before.
Palestine – pre-1948
The cardinal principle of Zionism had been initiated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923 and applied faithfully by David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Jabotinsky was very clear; “israel” can only be imposed by brute force and will be shielded by an iron wall. He stated:
Their [the Arabs] voluntary agreement is out of the question… Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is our policy towards the Arabs.
David Ben-Gurion Quotes
Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it… We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.
Written statement (June 1919), as quoted in Time magazine (24 July 2006)
The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.
Speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)What matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.”
An “oft-repeated credo” according to the “Windsor Star – Dec 3, 1973 and repeated in various newspapers (with minor variations) including the Jerusalem post (May 22,2009) “It doesn’t matter what the goyim say, but what the Jews do”
Under the guise of United Nations General Assembly resolution 181 of the Partition of Palestine, which was only a non-binding suggestion and was dropped by the UN and USA in March 1948 in favour of UN trusteeship on Palestine, Ben Gurion initiated his plan, Dalet, to eliminate the Palestinian population from the area of Palestine that was to be governed by the Jewish immigrants. In this area, half of the inhabitants were Arab Palestinians. Ben Gurion would have none of them. He expelled the majority before the state of Israel was (illegally) declared on May 14, 1948.
Plan Dalet – called for the conquest of Arab towns and villages inside and along the borders of the area allocated to the proposed “Jewish State” – according to the UN Partition Plan. In case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule.
israeli War Crimes
“War” crimes perpetrated by the Zionist forces against the Palestinian civilian population, included at least 232 incidents, which included atrocities, massacres, destruction, plunder and looting between 1947 and 1956. Almost every one of the thirty Zionist/Israeli military operations was accompanied by one or two massacres of civilians. There were at least seventy-seven reported massacres, half of which took place before any Arab regular soldier set foot in Palestine.
Half of the 77 massacres committed by “israel” in 1948 took place before “israel” was declared
The expelled population, before The British left and before “israel” declared itself as a state, was half the total Palestinian refugees. This could not have happened without killing as many as possible. Half of the 77 massacres committed by Israel in 1948 took place before “israel” was declared.
Of these massacres, we know of the infamous Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948. Few knew about Bureir, where 120 of the inhabitants were killed and their homes torched. A mere 48 hours after the massacre in Bureir, Ben Gurion stood solemnly before the Jewish immigrants’ assembly to announce the foundation of Israel and declared:
We appeal – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of “israel” to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
In the following 6 months, the other half of the 77 massacres (out of 156 war crimes listed in the Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966) committed by the israelis established their practice of using massacres as a well-tried weapon of ethnic cleansing. Jabotinsky’s plan was working as Ben Gurion was turning the myth into a fact; Palestine almost became a “land without people”.
Another example of Israel ethnic cleansing arose after the signing of the first Armistice agreement between israel and Egypt on 24 February 1949. This agreement allowed the Egyptian forces to withdraw from a besieged enclave with their arms. Two villages, Faluja and Iraq-al-Manshiyya, lay within this enclave that the Egyptian forces were defending. Under the Armistice agreement endorsed by the U.N., israel guaranteed the safety, the life, and property of these two villages, which the defending Egyptian forces had to leave behind. Disregarding its agreement with the U.N. and Egypt, israel terrorized the two villages with indiscriminate shooting, constant curfews, looting, and attempted rape. Three weeks later, israel forcibly expelled the population in stark violation of the Armistice Agreement.
Kafr Qasem Massacre [Operation Hafarferet]
The israelis reneged on the “agreement” with King Abdullah I of Jordan to divide Palestine between them. In April 1949, the Zionists dictated to him that they must grab extra Palestinian land known as the Little Triangle, in central Palestine. The affected area is about 90,000 acres where one 100,000 Palestinians lived. Thus its eighteen villages were annexed outright to israel. There was a condition that the inhabitants must remain in their homes. One of these villages was Kafr Qasem. The people of the Little Triangle were not expelled at the time, but there was an Israeli plan for them. Israel was waiting for the opportunity to carry it out.
It came in October 1956, on the same day of the Tripartite Aggression, or Suez Campaign, in which Israel, Britain, and France conspired to topple Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and regain the Suez Canal. Ben Gurion’s aims were more than that, to convert the Armistice line, which has no legal value as a border, into a de facto border for Israel and to expel the Palestinian population within this “border.” It was attempted in Kafr Qasem under “operation Hafarferet”, an outright expulsion plan. Read More
It took four decades for Israeli historians to have access to declassified Israeli files. Benny Morris was hailed as a brave, objective historian when he found evidence to corroborate what the refugees were saying all along. Curiously he said that these repetitive similar massacres were ‘an accident of war’ not a plan. Not so, said Ilan Pappe. He compared the Palestinian oral history and the Israeli files and found them consistent. He gave it its proper name “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”.
The Kafr Qasem massacre is, therefore, part of a persistent pattern of ethnic cleansing of which Sabra, Shatila, Jenin, Rafah and the destruction of the Gaza Strip are but a few stations on this bloody trail. But the Kafr Qasem massacre was different in some ways. First, it was against “Israeli citizens”, thus making the claim of Israeli democracy a mockery. Second, the claim that atrocities were committed in the heat of war is false. There was no war in Kafr Qasem, no uprising, no revolt. It was a sheer bloodbath.
Unlike the massacres that are associated with the Nakba, it was perpetrated after the israeli state was established. It was deliberate, planned, calculated, a cold-blooded murder against workers returning from their fields not having heard that a curfew was imposed over their village. After the massacre, Kafr Qasem was subjected to military cordon and media prohibition, which imposed debilitating isolation after the massacre. No one was allowed in or out of the village and a tight gag order was placed on the news. Twenty-two days after the massacre, news finally reached the world.
And the israelis crimes continue – their barbaric dream is parallel to ISIS, where they wish to establish a “jewish kingdom” from the Nile to The Euphrates!
Rest assured! The Crusaders were expelled from Palestine after 90 years of occupation. So shall the new “jewish crusaders” be expelled. It’s a matter of time.