From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters

Author:Joan Peters
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Israel, International Relations, Jews, Social Science, Palestinian Arabs, 1917-1949, History & Theory, Jewish-Arab Relations, Emigration & Immigration, Jewish-Arab Relations - 1917-1949, Palestine - Emigration and Immigration, General, Arab Countries, Middle East, Political Science, Palestine, Jews - Arab Countries, History
ISBN: 9780963624208
Publisher: JKAP Publications
Published: 1984-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

rhaps one of the greatest paradoxes of the history of the “Palestinian Problem” is that the Hope Simpson Report, which by itself contributed substantially to the myth of “displaced” and “landless” Arabs brought about by Jews—a myth that prevails today, although its contentions were proved false1 within a short time after the report was published—also contains in its pages its own authors’ recognition of the evidence and factors that contradict and refute the very foundation of the myth.

The pivotal Hope Simpson Report literally admitted not only that it was the “present practice” of British officials to blink at all but the most “flagrant” of the thousands of Arabs immigrating into Western Palestine, but also acknowledged that the illegal Arab immigration was an “injustice” that was displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. As the Hope Simpson Report had put it in 1930,

Where the case is flagrant, recourse should certainly be had to expulsion. In cases of no special flagrancy, and where there is no objection to the individual, it is probably sufficient to maintain the present practice, under which he is counted against the Labour Schedule, though this method does a certain injustice to the

Jewish immigrant outside the country whose place is taken by the traveller concerned. *2

Thus we learn, as we suspected from such hard evidence as 35,000 Arabs coming unreported from the Hauran, that the elusive “secret” British correspondence that did deal with Arab deportation in large numbers dealt in fact only with “flagrant” cases, and that the “deportations” of Arabs annually reported—however large their number might be—must represent a far larger unreported incidence of illegal Arab immigration gone unrecorded.

Not only did the illicit Arab immigration go unrecorded, it was clearly recognized in 1930 that by allowing the immigration of Arabs into Palestine de facto, the British were cooperating in and even fostering what Hope Simpson himself branded as “injustice” to the Jewish immigrant, whose place—cleared frantically and against powerful odds—was being taken by an illicit Arab immigrant (or by one of the 170,000-plus Arab in-migrants), in the mandated “Jewish National Home.”

The Hope Simpson Report was riddled with facts that refuted its convoluted conclusions; according to that Report, evidence of Arab immigration abounded:

Egyptian labour is being employed;3 unemployment lists being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania;4 illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material. . . .5

The Report described the ease with which a

number of persons evade the frontier control and enter Palestine without formality of any kind----such control as exists is carried out at police posts on the roads.

The immigrant who wishes to evade the control naturally leaves the road before reaching the frontier and takes the footpaths over the Hills.6

The Report suggested that “when” the illicit immigrants “are discovered”— in other pages called “flagrant”—“it should be the rule that they are at once returned to the country whence they came.” Although it might be harsh, so the Report went, “unless it is understood that detection is invariably followed by expulsion the practice will not cease.

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