Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Supreme Muslim Council: Temple Mount is Jewish - by YJ Draiman


Supreme Muslim Council: Temple Mount is Jewish - by YJ Draiman


Supreme Muslim Council: Temple Mount is Jewish


Click here for the 1925 Temple Mount Guide.
http://www.raptureforums.com/IsraelMiddleEast/guide.pdf
https://www.templeinstitute.org/wakf-1925-guidebook.htm

The widely-disseminated Arab Muslim position that the Temple Mount is not Jewish has been debunked - by the Supreme Muslim Council (Waqf) of Jerusalem, in a Temple Mount guide published in 1925.

Wakf guidebook, 1925, cover
The Temple Institute


Guidebook Puts the Lie to Current Arab Campaign In 1997, the chief Muslim cleric of the Palestinian Authority, Mufti Ikrama Sabri, stated, "The claim of the Jews to the right over [Jerusalem] is false, and we recognize nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision..."

Thus began a campaign to convince the world that the millennia-old natural association between Jerusalem and Jews was untrue. As Islamic Movement chief Raed Salah stated in 2006, "We remind, for the 1,000th time, that the entire Al-Aqsa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Muslim property, and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in it."

However, it is now known that this "absolute" Muslim claim is actually not as absolute as claimed. In fact, back in 1925, the Supreme Muslim Council - also known as the Waqf, which has overseen Temple Mount activities on behalf of the Muslim religion for hundreds of years - boasted proudly that the site was none other than that of Solomon's Temple.

The Jerusalem-based Temple Institute (http://www.templeinstitute.org) reports that it has acquired a copy of the official 1925 Supreme Muslim Council Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Muslim name for the Temple Mount). On page 4, the Waqf states, "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the L-rd...', citing the source in 2 Samuel XXIV,25.

Wakf guidebook, 1925, excerpt close-up
The Temple Institute

In addition, on page 16, the pamphlet makes reference to the underground area in the south-east corner of the Mount, which is refers to as Solomon's Stables. "Little is known for certain of the history of the chamber itself," the guide reads. "It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon's Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D."

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was in fact the site of the two Jewish Holy Temples which stood for nearly 1,000 years (see below).

Wakf guidebook, 1925, excerpt
The Temple Institute

Proof of Muslim Anti-Jewish Revisionism The Temple Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief. "In recent years," he writes, "the Muslim Waqf has come to deny the historic existence of the Holy Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount belongs solely to the Muslim nation, and that there exists no connection between the Jewish nation and the Temple Mount. It is clear from this pamphlet that the revised Waqf position strays from traditional Muslim acknowledgment of the Mount's Jewish antecedents."

"The current denial of historical reality is merely one tool in the war being waged by Muslims against the G-d of Israel and the entire 'infidel' world," Richman declares.
Posted by YJ Draiman

Sunday, December 18, 2016

The legal background to Amona


The legal background to Amona  


Reno Tzror began his program on Army Radio this week with a Bible lesson. The journalist read every verse of the story of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite in the Book of Kings, and for those who didn’t get the message, he took the trouble to spell it out: The government and the settlers are the equivalent of Ahab and Jezebel, and the Palestinians are the hapless Naboth. “Will you murder and also inherit?” roared Tzror as he assailed the Regulation Law. Echoing his sentiments, Benny Begin said that while he indeed supports the settlement endeavor, it cannot be based on exploitation of the Palestinians.
Leftists don’t like to let the facts rain on their parade, and that’s why our task here is to remind everyone of the forgotten details of the case of Amona in order to understand what it’s really all about. To that end, I will put aside the question of motivation: Officials in the Attorney General’s office have already admitted that the petitions submitted by the leftist organizations Yesh Din and Peace Now were not motivated by a desire to protect the property rights of the oppressed Palestinians, but were rather submitted in the context of “lawfare” — legal warfare aimed at promoting the interests of Palestinians, the purpose which is to force Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Israel’s heartland without an agreement. However, for now, that’s not the discussion, so let’s focus on the case itself.
When the Amona case reached the High Court of Justice, the Land Registrar of the Civil Administration maintained that although Amona was a bare, rocky, abandoned hilltop, its land was registered as private land, meaning that the Jordanian government had registered the land in the name of local sheikhs and clans. Amona initially argued that the Jordanian registration was not legally binding because the Jordanian occupation had never been recognized by any country other than the United Kingdom and Pakistan (and Aharon Barak), further adding that the land records did not provide evidence of actual ownership, which would be reflected in agricultural cultivation of the land, but that the land was registered as a form of bribery to serve the political interests of the Jordanian government. However, these claims were not relevant because the court took no interest in them, but only wanted to know what the state’s position was. And the state, i.e. the department in charge of responding to petitions to the High Court of Justice on behalf of the state and the Attorney General at the time, “admitted” that private lands were involved and that the state planned to have them evacuated.
The interesting twist in the plot occurred when Yesh Din, elated at its success, filed a civil suit on behalf of the plaintiffs against the state, demanding compensation for the years they had been denied the right to access and cultivate their lands.
However, unlike the Supreme Court, lower courts do not make decisions without any evidentiary foundation. The suit arrived in the court of Judge Shirley Renner in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court. During the proceeding, Land Registrar Uzi Gilo gave his testimony, and an amazing fact came to light: Of the nine petitioners, the lands of seven were found to be located outside Amona with nothing preventing the petitioners from accessing and cultivating them. It was further discovered that the two remaining petitioners upon which the impressive petition stands – Miriam Hassan and Ibrahim Khalil – claim ownership of only a tiny sliver of a percentage of the settlement land. Their proportion of the ownership rights grants them – wait for it – about 2 dunam (or half an acre) out of the 500 dunam (124 acres) upon which the settlement sits (!). This is what Registrar Gilo stated: “The proportion belonging to Plaintiff 1 (Mariam Hassan) is 12/109 of a plot of 24 dunam. The proportion belonging to Plaintiff 2 (Ibrahim Khalil) is 80/3600 in a plot of 36 dunam.”
It is important to dwell on this fact: The settlement of Amona is located on about 500 dunam. The plaintiffs that came to trial claim ownership of two dunam, i.e. less than half a percent. All the rest of the land is registered in the name of people that do not really exist either now or in 1967; there is no trace of them in the population records drawn up after the Six Day War.
At this point, the prosecution executed two painful fouls against the people of Amona: The first was to treat all the plots among which Miriam and Ibrahim’s sections are located as private plots, rather than relating only to the proportion of which they were the actual owners. In other words, instead of giving them their 2 dunam of land, they were given 60 dunam, an area that covers the entire southern part of the settlement. The second kick was completely below the belt: In a particularly problematic response, the prosecution did not make any distinction between the plots that were the subject of the petition and those regarding which there was no claim at all. The state could take the strictest interpretation and say that since we had no idea where the tiny plots belonging to the petitioners are located, we will treat the entire southern part of the settlement as privately owned land, but will save the northern part of the settlement and move the buildings from the southern part to the northern part. But that is not what the state decided to do. The two dunam were turned into a highly concentrated drop of iodine that stained the entire bucket. A senior official in the State Prosecutor’s office recently told me: The person that wrote that response didn’t have much in the way of brains. I told him that he had a lot of brains and quite a bit of malice too.
The third foul was delivered by the High Court of Justice when it accepted the state’s surreal position and issued a ruling that made no distinction between the southern and northern parts of the settlement. At that time, the county’s political leadership had little influence on the prosecution, but when the elected officials finally woke up, they held a trenchant talk with officials in the prosecutor’s office. The state then announced that it would enforce the judgment, but only in regard to the plots over which the lawsuit had been filed, and on July 14, Yesh Din submitted a request that the state be held in contempt of court. As a result, Justice Asher Grunis handed down another ruling explicitly stating that the court’s ruling applied to the entire settlement.
The Regulation Law is truly the last opportunity to prevent a historic injustice from being perpetrated. With all due respect, the arguments put forth against it can be described as ranging from groundless to downright strange. The first argument is that the Knesset has no legislative authority in Judea and Samaria because it is occupied territory. This argument was refuted by the former president of Tel Aviv University, an expert in international law, Prof. Yoram Dinstein: “If the occupier has legislative authority in the held territories, the authority is granted to the state as such, rather than to any of its organs.” In an article he published In Iyunei Mishpat, the law journal of the Faculty of Law of Tel Aviv University, he showed how international law is completely indifferent to the technique by which laws are applied in occupied territory, and consequently, there is no difference between an order issued by the military commander and Knesset legislation.
A second argument maintains that the Regulation Law contravenes international law because it permits confiscation of property belonging to the Arab population in favor of the Israeli population. This assertion is also strange because international law requires that Israel ensure the welfare of the entire population in the West Bank, Israelis and Arabs alike. The tool of expropriation is an inherent power possessed by every governmental authority in the world, without which it would be impossible to build roads, interchanges, public buildings and new residential neighborhoods.
Moreover, the Regulation Law is consistent with the legal systems that were applied to Judea and Samaria before their liberation: Article 906 of the Majalah, the Turkish book of laws, and Section 10 of the Jordanian Holding and Use Law (Tasruf) state that if a person built and planted land belonging to another in good faith, and if the value of the construction exceeds the value of the land, the landowner is forced to accept monetary compensation.
A further argument put forth against the Regulation Law is that it constitutes an attack on the High Court of Justice because it involves retroactive legislation that contravenes a peremptory court ruling. This argument does not hold water either, because the state has not hesitated in other cases to legislate against peremptory court rulings, for example when a law was amended to allow the government to release murderers as part of the Shalit deal, in contravention of peremptory court rulings that had sentenced those murderers to long prison terms.
The most important argument against the law is that it defies Israel’s Basic Laws. Let’s put aside the legal paradox for a moment – because if Israeli law may not be applied in the West Bank, then the Basic Laws do not apply there either. The crux of the matter is that the Regulation Law seeks to balance two values: 40 families and 200 children who have been living on land for 20 years, as opposed to two petitioners who own less than half a percentage of the land on which they have never lived. Anyone who thinks that ownership of half of a percentage of a community justifies the uprooting of that community in the name of any fundamental right either doesn’t understand the content of the Basic Laws, or has a moral compass so corrupted that it distorts their understanding of reality beyond repair.

Translated from Hebrew and republished with permission by Yehuda Yifrah, Editor of Law section, Makor Rishon

Land Ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948 - Draiman


Land Ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948 

by Moshe Aumann



A great deal has been spoken and written over the years on the subject of land ownership in Israel—or, before 1948, Palestine. 
Arab propaganda, in particular, has been at pains to convince the world, with the aid of copious statistics, that the Arabs "own" Palestine, morally and legally, and that whatever Jewish land ownership there may be is negligible. From this conclusions have been drawn (or implied) with regard to the sovereign rights of the State of Israel and the problem of the Arab refugees.

The Arab case against Israel, in the matter of Jewish land purchases, rests mainly on two claims: (1) that the Arab-Palestinian farmer was peacefully and contentedly working his land in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th when along came the European Jewish immigrant, drove him off his land, disrupted the normal development of the country and created a vast class of landless, dispossessed Arabs; (2) that a small Jewish minority, owning an even smaller proportion of Arab-Palestinian lands (5 per cent as against the Arabs' inflated 95 per cent), illegally made itself master of Palestine aka The Land of Israel in 1948.

Our purpose in this pamphlet is to set the record straight by marshaling the facts and figures pertaining to this very complex subject, on the basis of the most reliable and authoritative information available, and to trace the history of modern Jewish resettlement purely from the point of view of the sale and purchase of land.


Pre-1948 Conditions in Palestine 
A study of Palestine under Turkish rule reveals that already at the beginning of the 18th century, long before Jewish land purchases and large-scale Jewish immigration started, the position of the Arab-Palestinian fellah (peasant and sharecropper) had begun to deteriorate. The heavy burden of taxation, coming on top of chronic indebtedness to money-lenders, drove a growing number of farmers to place themselves under the protection of men of wealth or of the Muslim religious endowment fund (Waqf), with the result that they were eventually compelled to give up their title to the land, if not their actual residence upon and cultivation of it.

Until the passage of the Turkish Land Registry Law in 1858, there were no official deeds to attest to a man's legal title to a parcel of land; (The Ottoman Empire owned over 90% of the land and some of it was loaned to the local Arabs as sharecroppers) tradition alone had to suffice to establish such title— and usually it did. And yet, the position of Arab-Palestine's farmers was a precarious one, for there were constant blood-feuds between families, clans and entire villages, as well as periodic incursions by rapacious (118 The Case for Israel) Bedouin tribes, such as the notorious Ben Sakk'r, of whom H. B. Tristram (The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1865) wrote that they "can muster 1,000 cavalry and always join their brethren when a raid or war is on the move. They have obtained their present possessions gradually and, in great measure, by driving out the fellahin (peasants), destroying their villages and reducing their rich corn-fields to pasturage." (p. 488.) 

Tristram goes on to present a remarkable and highly revealing description of conditions in Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River in the middle of the 19th century—a description that belies the Arab claim of a tranquil, normally developing Arab-Palestinian rural economy allegedly disrupted by Jewish immigration and settlement.

A few years ago, the whole Ghor was in the hands of the fellahin, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture, except in a few spots cultivated here and there by their slaves; and with the Bedouin come lawlessness and the uprooting of all Turkish authority. No government is now acknowledged on the east side; and unless the Porte acts with greater firmness and caution than is his wont . . . Palestine will be desolated and given up to the nomads.

The same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon, where, both in the north and south, land is going out of cultivation, and whole villages rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. Since the year 1838, no less than 20 villages have been thus erased from the map and the stationary population extirpated. Very rapidly the Bedouin are encroaching wherever horse can be ridden; and the Government is utterly powerless to resist them or to defend its subjects. (p. 490)

For descriptions of other parts of the country, we are indebted to the 1937 Report of the Palestine Royal Commission—though, for lack of space, we can quote but the briefest passages. In Chapter 9, para. 43 the Report quotes an eye-witness account of the condition of the Maritime Plain in 1913: 

The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts . . . no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna a Jewish village. . . . Not in a single Arab village in all this area was water used for irrigation. . . . Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen. . . . The plow's used were of wood. . . . The yields were very poor. . . . The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist. . . . The rate of infant mortality was very high. . . . 

The area north of Jaffa . . . consisted of two distinctive parts. . . . The eastern part, in the direction of the hills, resembled in culture that of the Gaza-Jaffa area. . . . The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert. . . . The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants. 

The Huleh basin, below the Syrian border, is described as " including a number of Arab villages  and a large papyrus swamp draining south into Lake Huleh . . . a triangular strip of land some 44 sq. miles in area. . . . This tract is irrigated in a very haphazard manner by a network of small, primitive canals. It is, owing to over-irrigation, now the most malarious tract in all Palestine. It might become one of the most fertile." 

With regard to yet another region in Palestine—the Beisan (Beit Shean) area—we quote from the report of Mr. Lewis French, Director of Development appointed by the British Government in 1931: 

We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria. . . . Large areas of their lands were uncultivated and covered with weeds. There were no trees, no vegetables. The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots of cultivation changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors the Bedouin.

This, then, was the picture of Palestine in the closing decades of the 19th century and up to the First World War: a land that was overwhelmingly desert, with nomads continually encroaching on the settled areas and its farmers; a lack of elementary facilities and equipment; peasants wallowing in poverty, ignorance and disease, saddled with debts (interest rates at times were as high as 60 per cent) and threatened by warlike nomads or neighboring clans. The result was a growing neglect of the soil and a flight from the villages, with a mounting concentration of lands in the hands of a small number of large landowners, frequently residing in such distant Arab capitals as Beirut and Damascus, Cairo and Kuwait. Here, in other words, was a social and economic order that had all the earmarks of a medieval feudal society. 

Who Dispossessed the Arab-Palestinian Peasant? 
The Arab-Palestinian peasant was indeed being dispossessed, but by his fellow-Arabs: the local sheikh and village elders, the Government tax-collector, the merchants and money-lenders; and, when he was a tenant-farmer (as was usually the case), by the absentee-owner. By the time the season's crop had been distributed among all these, little if anything remained for him and his family, and new debts generally had to be incurred to pay off the old. Then the Bedouin came along and took their "cut", or drove the hapless fellah off the land altogether. 

This was the "normal" course of events in 19th century Palestine. It was disrupted by the advent of the Jewish pioneering enterprise, which sounded the death-knell of this medieval feudal system. In this way the Jews played an objective revolutionary role. Small wonder that it aroused the ire and active opposition of the Arab sheikhs, absentee landowners, money-lenders and Bedouin bandits. (120 The Case for Israel Jewish Land Purchases).

It is important to note that the first enduring Jewish agricultural settlement in modern Palestine was founded not by European refugees, but by a group of old-time families, leaving the overcrowded Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. (According to the Turkish census of 1875, by that time Jews already constituted a majority of the population of Jerusalem and by 1905 comprised two-thirds of its citizens. The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910 gives the population figure as 60,000, of whom 40,000 were Jews.) 

In 1878 they founded the village of Petah Tikva in the Sharon Plain—a village that was to become known as the "Mother of Jewish Settlements" in Palestine aka The Land of Israel. Four years later a group of pioneering immigrants from Russia settled in Rishon le-Zion. Other farming villages followed in rapid succession.

When considering Jewish land purchases and settlements, four factors should be borne in mind:

(1) Most of the land purchases involved large tracts belonging to absentee owners. (Virtually all of the Jezreel Valley, for example, belonged in 1897 to only two persons: the eastern portion to the Turkish Sultan, and the western part to the richest banker in Syria, Sursuk "the Greek".) 

(2) Most of the land purchased had not been cultivated previously because it was swampy, rocky, sandy or, for some other reason, regarded as uncultivable. This is supported by the findings of the Peel Commission Report (p. 242): "The Arab charge that the Jews have obtained too large a proportion of good land cannot be maintained. Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased . . . there was at the time at least of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land." (1937)

(3) While, for this reason, the early transactions did not involve unduly large sums of money, the price of land began to rise as Arab landowners took advantage of the growing demand for rural tracts. The resulting infusion of capital into the Palestinian economy had noticeable beneficial effects on the standard of living of all the inhabitants. 

(4) The Jewish pioneers introduced new farming methods which improved the soil and crop cultivation and were soon emulated by Arab farmers.

The following figures show land purchases by the three leading Jewish land-buying organizations and by individual Jews between 1880 and 1935.

JEWISH LAND PURCHASES, 1880-1935 (in dunams*) 

Organization Total land acquired Government concessions From private owners Large tracts** Percent Dunams (approx.) 

PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonization Assoc.) 469,407 39,520 429,887 293,545 70 
Palestine Land Development Co. 579,492 66,513*** 512,979 455,169 90 
Jewish National Fund**** 836,396 Until 1930 270,084 239,170 90 1931-1947 566,312 50 Individual Jews 432,100 432,100 50 * 4 dunams = 1 acre.

 ** The large tracts often belonged to absentee landlords. 
*** Land situated in the sandy Beersheba and marshy Huleh districts. 
**** ". . . created on December 25, 1901, to ensure that land would be purchased for the Jewish        workers who were to be personally responsible for its cultivation.

"Since the J.N.F. was as concerned with conforming to socialist ideals as with intensive economic exploitation of land, its Charter was opposed to the use of lands purchased by it as private property. The J.N.F. retained the freehold of the lands, while the people working it are only life tenants. . . . 

 "The capital of the Jewish National Fund was essentially raised from small regular donations from millions of Jewish craftsmen, laborers, shop-owners and intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe where the shadow of genocide was already apparent, who felt concerned about the return of Jews to Zion. . . . 

"Contrary to colonialist enterprises, which were seeking an exorbitant profit from land extorted from the colonized peoples, Zionist settlement discouraged private capital as its enterprise was of a socialist nature based on the refusal to exploit the worker." (Kurt Niedermaler, Colonisation without Colonialism, Youth and Hechalutz Dept., Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 1969). 

From the above table it will be seen that the proportion of land purchased from large (usually absentee) owners ranged from about 50 to 90 per cent.

"The total area of land in Jewish possession at the end of June 1947," writes A. Granott in The Land System in Palestine (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952, p. 278), "amounted to 1,850,000 dunams, of this 181,100 dunams had been obtained through concessions from the Palestinian Government, and about 120,000 dunams had been acquired from Churches, from foreign companies, from the Government otherwise than by concessions, and so forth. It was estimated that 1,000,000 dunams and more, or 57 (122 The Case for Israel) per cent, had been acquired from large Arab landowners, and if to this we add the lands acquired from the Government, Churches, and foreign companies, the percentage will amount to seventy-three. From the fellahin there had been purchased about 500,000 dunams, or 27 per cent, of the total acquired. The result of Jewish land acquisitions, at least to a considerable part, was that properties which had been in the hands of large and medium owners were converted into holding of small peasants." 

The League of Nations Mandate 
When the League of Nations followed the San Remo Conference agreement and conferred the Mandate for Palestine upon Great Britain in 1922, it expressly stipulated that "The Administration of Palestine . . . shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency . . . close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes" (Article 6), and that it "shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country, having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land." (Article 11) 

British policy, however, violated the terms and followed a different course, deferring to the extremist Arab opposition to the above-mentioned provision of the Mandate. Of some 750,000 dunams of cultivable State lands, 350,000, or nearly half, had been illegally allotted by 1949 to Arabs and only 17,000 dunams to Jews. This was in clear violation of the terms of the Mandate. Nor, ironically enough, did it help the Arab peasants for whose benefit these transactions were ostensibly carried out. The glaring examples of this policy are the case of the Besian lands and that of the Huleh Concession.

Beisan Lands 
Under the Ghor-Mudawwarra Agreement of 1921, some 225,000 dunams of potentially fertile wasteland in the Besian (Beit Shean) area were illegally handed over to Arab farmers on terms severely condemned not only by Jews but also by such British experts as Lewis French and Sir John Hope-Simpson. More than half of the land was irrigable, and, according to the British experts, eight dunams of irrigated land per capita (or 50-60 dunams per family) were sufficient to enable a family to maintain itself on the land. Yet many farmers received far more than that: six families, of whom two lived in Syria, received a combined area of about 7,000 dunams; four families (some living in Egypt) received a combined area of 3,496 dunams; another received 3,450 and yet another, 1,350.

Thus the Ghor-Mudawwarra Agreement was instrumental in creating a new group of large landowners. Possessing huge tracts, most of which they were unable to till, these owners began to sell the surplus lands at speculative prices. In his 1930 Report, Sir (Appendix 2 123) Hope-Simpson wrote of the Agreement that it had deprived the Government of "the control of a large area of fertile land eminently suited for development and for which there is ample water for irrigation," and that "the illegal grant of the land has led to speculation on a considerable scale." 

Huleh Area 
For twenty years (from 1914 to 1934) the Huleh Concession— some 57,000 dunams of partly swamp-infested but potentially highly fertile land in north-eastern Palestine—was in Arab hands. The Arab concessionaires were to drain and develop the land so as to make additional tracts available for cultivation, under very attractive terms offered by the Government (first Turkish, then British). However, this was never done, and in 1934 the concession was sold to a Jewish concern, the Palestine Land Development Company, at a huge profit. The Government added several onerous conditions concerning the amount of land (from the drained and newly developed tracts) that had to be handed over—without reimbursement for drainage and irrigation costs—to Arab tenant-farmers in the area.

All told, hundreds of millions of dollars were paid by Jewish buyers to Arab landowners. Official records show that in 1933 £854,796 was paid by Jewish individuals and organizations for Arab land, mostly large estates; in 1934 the figure was £1,647,836 and in 1935, £1,699,488. Thus, in the course of only three years £4,202,180 (more than 20 million dollars at the prevailing rate of exchange) was paid out to Arab landowners (Palestine Royal Commission Report, 1937).

To understand the magnitude of the prices paid for these lands, we need only look at some comparative figures. In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semi-arid land; in the same year rich black soil in the state of Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre (U.S. Department of Agriculture).

Effects on Arab Population 
In those instances where as a result of such transactions Arab tenant-farmers were displaced (on one year's notice), compensation in cash or other land was paid, as required by the 1922 Protection of Cultivators Ordinance; the Jewish land-buying associations often paid more than the law required (Pollack and Boehm, The Keren Kayemeth Le-Israel). Of 688 such tenants between 1920 and 1930, 526 remained in agricultural occupations, some 400 of them finding other land (Palestine Royal Commission Report, 1937, Chapter 9, para. 61).(124 The Case for Israel)

Investigations initiated in 1931 by Mr. Lewis French disposed of the charge that a large class of landless or dispossessed Arab farmers was created as a result of Jewish land purchases. According to the British Government report (Memorandum prepared by the Government of Palestine, London 1937, Colonia No. 133, p. 37), the total number of applications for registration as landless Arabs tenants was 3,271. Of these, 2,607 were rejected on the ground that they did not come within the category of landless Arabs. Valid claims were recognized in the case of 664 heads of families, of whom 347 accepted the offer of resettlement by the Government. The remainder refused either because they had found satisfactory employment elsewhere or because they were not accustomed to irrigated cultivation or the climate of the new areas (Peel Report, Chapter 9, para. 60).

 Purchases of land by Jews in the hill country had always been very small and, according to the investigations by Mr. French, of 71 applications by Arabs claiming to be landless tenants, 68 were turned down. 

Arab Population Changes Due to Jewish Settlement 
Another Arab claim disproved by the facts is that Zionist "colonialism" led to the disruption and ruin of the Arab Palestinian society and economy.

Statistics published in the Palestine Royal Commission Report (p. 279) indicate a remarkable phenomenon: Palestine, traditionally a country of Arab emigration, became after World War I a country of Arab immigration. In addition to recorded figures for 1920-36, the Report devotes a special section to large illegal Arab immigration. While there are no precise totals on the extent of Arab immigration between the two World Wars, estimates vary between 160,000 and 260,000. The principal cause of the change of direction was Jewish development, which created new and attractive work opportunities and, in general, a standard of living previously unknown in the Middle East. 

Another major factor in the rapid growth of the Arab population was, of course, the rate of natural increase, among the highest in the world. This was accentuated by the steady reduction of the previously high infant mortality rate as a result of the improved health and sanitary conditions introduced by the Jewish population. 

Altogether, the non-Jewish element in Palestine's population (not including Bedouin) expanded between 1922 and 1929 alone by more than 75 per cent. The Royal Commission Report makes these interesting observations:

The shortage of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population, (p. 242) (Appendix 2 125) We are also of the opinion that up till now the Arab cultivator has benefited, on the whole, both from the work of the British administration giving land to the Arabs and from the presence of Jews in the country improving economic conditions. Wages have gone up; the standard of living has improved; work on roads and buildings has been plentiful. In the Maritime Plains some Arabs have adopted improved Jewish methods of cultivation. (p. 241).

Jewish development served as an incentive not only to Arab entry into Palestine from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and other neighboring countries, but also to a major Arab population movements within the country—to cities and areas where there was a large Jewish concentration. Some idea of this phenomenon may be gained from the following official figures: 

Changes in towns: The Arab population in predominantly Arab towns rose only slightly (if at all) between the two World Wars: in Hebron—from 16,650 in 1922 to 22,800 in 1943; Nablus—from 15,931 to 23,300; Jenin—from 2,737 to 3,900; Bethlehem—from 6,658 to 8,800. Gaza's population actually decreased from 17,426 in 1922 to 17,045 in 1931. 
On the other hand, in the three major Jewish cities the Arab population shot up drastically during this period, far beyond the rate of natural increase: Jerusalem—from 28,571 in 1922 to 56,400 (97 per cent); Jaffa—from 27,437 to 62,600 (134 per cent); Haifa— from 18,404 to 58,200 (216 per cent). 

Changes in rural areas: The population of the predominantly Arab Beer-sheba district dropped between 1922 and 1939 from 71,000 to 49,000 (the rate of natural increase should have resulted in a rise to 89,000). In the Bethlehem district the figure increased from 24,613 to about 26,000 (after falling to 23,725 in 1929). In the Hebron area it went up from 51,345 to 59,000 (the natural increase rate dictated a rise to 72,000). 
In contrast to these declines or comparatively slight increases in exclusively Arab-inhabited areas, in the Nazareth, Beit Shean, Tiberias and Acre districts—where large-scale Jewish settlement and rural development was underway—the figure rose from 89,600 in 1922 to some 151,000 in 1938 (by about 4.5 per cent per annum, compared with a natural increase rate of 2.5-3 per cent). 
In the largely Jewish Haifa area the number of Arab peasants increased by 8 per cent a year during the same period. In the Jaffa and Ramla districts (heavily Jewish populated), the Arab rural population grew from 42,300 to some 126,000—an annual increase of 12 per cent, or more than four times as much as can be attributed to natural increase (L. Shimony, The Arabs of Palestine, Tel-Aviv, 1947, pp. 422-23).

One reason for the Arab gravitation toward Jewish-inhabited areas, and from neighboring countries to Palestine aka The Land of Israel, was the incomparably (126 The Case for Israel) higher wage scales paid there, as may be seen from the following table.

DAILY WAGE SCALES, 1943 (in mils)

Palestine Egypt Syria Iraq Unskilled labor 220-250 30-50 80-100 50 Skilled labor 350-600 70-200 150-300 70-200 Source: A. Khoushy, Brit Poali Eretz-Israel, 1943, p. 25.

The capital received by Arab landowners for their surplus holdings was used for improved and intensive cultivation or invested in other enterprises. Turning again to the Report of the Palestine Royal Commission (p. 93), we find the following conclusions: "The large import of Jewish capital and technology into Palestine has had an enormous general fructifying effect on the economic life of the whole country. . . . The expansion of Arab industry and citriculture has been largely financed by the capital thus obtained. . . . Jewish example and technology has done much to improve Arab cultivation. . . . The large increase in Arab population is most marked in areas affected by Jewish development." 
During World War II, the Arab population influx mounted apace, as is attested by the UNRWA Review, Information Paper No. 6 (September 1962) : 
A vast and considerable movement of people is known to have occurred, particularly during the Second World War, years when new opportunities of employment opened up in the towns and on military works in Palestine. These wartime prospects and, generally, the higher rate of industrialization in Palestine attracted many new Arab immigrants from the neighboring countries, and most of them entered Palestine without their presence being officially recorded, essentially illegal Arab immigrants. 

Land Ownership in 1948 
The false claim is often made that in 1948 a Jewish minority owning only 5 per cent of the land of Palestine made itself master of the Arab majority, which owned 95 per cent of the land. 

In May 1948 the State of Israel was established in only part of the area allotted by the original Agreement set forth in the 1920 San Remo Conference and its implementation by the League of Nations Mandate. 8.6 per cent of the land was owned by Jews and 3.3 per cent by Israeli Arabs, while 16.9 per cent had been abandoned by Arab owners who imprudently heeded the call from neighboring Arab countries to "get out of the way" while the invading Arab armies made short shrift of Israel. The rest of the land—over 70 per cent—had been vested in Appendix 2 127 the Mandatory Power as a trustee for the Jewish people, and accordingly reverted to the State of Israel as its legal heir. (Government of Palestine, Survey of Palestine, 1946, British Government Printer, p. 257.)
 
The greater part of this 70 per cent consisted of the Negev, some 3,144,250 acres all told, or close to 50 per cent of the 6,580,000 acres in all of Mandatory Palestine. Known as Crown or State Lands, this was mostly uninhabited arid or semi-arid territory, inherited originally by the Mandatory Government from Turkey. In 1948 it passed to the Government of Israel. 

These lands had not been owned by Arab farmers—neither under the British Mandate nor under the preceding Ottoman regime. Thus it is obvious that the contention that 95 per cent of the land—whether of Mandatory Palestine or of the State of Israel—had belonged to Arabs has absolutely no foundation in fact. * * • 

There is perhaps no better way of concluding and summing up this study than to quote from an article entitled Is Israel a Thorn or a Flower in the Near East? by Abdul Razak Kader, the Algerian political writer, now living in exile in Paris (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 1, 1969): 

"The Nationalists of the Arab states neighboring on Israel, whether they are in the government or in business, whether Arab-Palestinian, Syrian or Lebanese, or town dwellers of tribal origin, all know that at the beginning of the century and during the British Mandate the marshy plains and stone hills were sold to the Zionists by their fathers or uncles for gold, the very gold which is often the origin of their own political or commercial careers. The nomadic or semi-nomadic peasants who inhabited the frontier regions know full well what the green plains, the afforested hills and the flowering fields of today's Israel were like before the Jews came in and turned the desert into green pastures . 

"The Arab-Palestinians who are today refugees in the neighboring Arab countries and who were adults at the time of their flight know all this, and no anti-Zionist propaganda—pan-Arab or pan-Muslim— can make them forget that their present nationalist exploiters are the worthy sons of their feudal exploiters of yesterday and that the thorns of their life are of Arab, not Jewish, origin."

Jerusalem in Photos from 1862: No mosques, no Palestinians – only ghost towns of massacred Christian areas


Jerusalem in Photos from 1862: No mosques, no Palestinians – only ghost towns of massacred Christian areas

 
 
 
 
 
 
139 Votes

A new photographic exhibition in London follows the journey taken by England’s Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in 1862, as he undertook a four month tour around the Middle East.
And as usual, no sign of mosques or active Palestinian presence as the decades old argument from the Palestinian side to keep up the saga to fight and occupy, for the sake of jihad and foreign aid.
In the exhibition we find more photographs from Jerusalem in 1862, when the so called “palestinians” allegedly were already 1 million in population on land they profess to have “lost to Jewish occupation” a few decades later. The only problem with this argument is that, as with all photographs up to the second decade of 1900’s, there are rarely any Muslims or mosques to be found on any photographs. The only mosque – and a confiscated synagogue converted after Muslim invasion is the Temple Mount’s Dome of the Rock – and it stands empty of Muslims in ALL pictures through the 1800’s and early 1900’s, demonstrating the falsity in the Palestinian argument. There are more evidence and remains of the massacres Muslims caused on Christians, than any living signs of Muslims themselves. In comparison, other towns with a living Muslim population documented in photographs during the mid and late 1800’s always feature a lot of mosques.
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Cairo to Constantinople: Early Photographs of the Middle East

The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace

Friday, 7 November 2014 to Sunday, 22 February 2015
This exhibition follows the journey taken by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in 1862, as he undertook a four month tour around the Middle East.
Seen through the photographs of Francis Bedford (1815-94), the first photographer to travel on a royal tour, it explores the cultural and political significance Victorian Britain attached to the region, which was then as complex and contested as it remains today.
The tour took the Prince to Egypt, Palestine and the Holy Land, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece where he met rulers, politicians and other notable figures, and travelled in a manner not associated with royalty – by horse and camping out in tents.
On the royal party’s return to England, Francis Bedford’s work was displayed in what was described as ‘the most important photographic exhibition that has hitherto been placed before the public’.
Cairo to Constantinople: Early Photographs of the Middle East is presented alongside Gold at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
The Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane
The Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane [Jerusalem]
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date: 2 Apr 1862
Materials: Albumen print, mounted on card
Dimensions: 23.4 x 28.5 cm
RCIN 2700922
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance: Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
The Mount of Olives rises to the east of Jerusalem. The walled enclosure to the right contains the site identified as the Garden of Gethsemane. After the Last Supper, Jesus went to the garden where he prayed, accompanied by St Peter, St John and St James the Greater. Jesus was subsequently betrayed by Judas in the garden and arrested.
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated (incorrectly as 2 March 1862) in the negative, ‘F Bedford Jerusalem’. The number in the Day & Son series is 63.
Hasbeiya - scene of the massacre [Syria]
Hasbeiya – scene of the massacre [Hasbaya, Lebanon]

Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  26 Apr 1862
Materials:  Albumen print
Dimensions:  23.2 x 29.0 cm
RCIN  2700954
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance: Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
On their route towards Damascus, the royal party stopped at some of the towns and villages close to the Lebanon-Syria border, which had seen fighting during the 1860 conflict. The first town they reached was Hasbaya. The Prince was told that between 800 and 1000 Christians were killed here by the Druze [Muslim Shia minority group].
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated in the negative, ‘F Bedford Hasbeiya’. The number in the Day & Son series is 90.
Garden of Gethsemane
Garden of Gethsemane [Jerusalem]
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  2 Apr 1862
Materials:  Albumen print, mounted on card
Dimensions:  21.1 x 29.1 cm
RCIN  2700924
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance:  Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
The Garden of Gethsemane has always been identified as an olive grove. Here the carefully tended, centuries-old olive trees are easily identified.
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated (incorrectly as 2 March 1862) in the negative, ‘F Bedford Gethsemane’. The number in the Day & Son series is 68.

Rasheiya [Syria]
Rasheiya [Rashaya, Lebanon]
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  27 Apr 1862
Materials:  Albumen print
Dimensions:  23.6 x 29.0 cm
RCIN  2700955
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance:
Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
Rashaya, a mostly Druze-inhabited town [Shia Muslim sect], was the scene of conflict in June 1860. The Prince wrote: ‘In this town, 400 to 500 Christians were massacred and we saw still the remains of the burnt houses.’ In July, the conflict spread from this area into Damascus.
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated in the negative, ‘F Bedford Rasheiya’. The number in the Day & Son series is 92.

Gateway to the Citadel, Banias, Golan
Gateway to the “Metzuda” Citadel, Banias, Golan
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  23 Apr 1862
Materials:  Albumen print
Dimensions:  23.6 x 28.0 cm
RCIN  2700951
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance:  Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
View of dilapidated entrance to Citadel – part of complex of Castle of Banyas. Stream runs through ditch in foreground.
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated in the negative, ‘F Bedford Banias’. The number in the Day & Son series is 87.

Upper Bethoron
Upper Bethoron [Beit Ur al-Foqa and the Valley of Ajalon]
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  31 Mar 1862
Materials:  Albumen print, mounted on card
Dimensions:  23.1 x 29.0 cm
RCIN  2700913
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance:  Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
The Royal Yacht reached Jaffa (modern-day Tel Aviv) on 29 March. The following day the royal party set out on horses in the direction of Jerusalem. En route they visited Beit Ur al-Foqa from where they could view the Valley of Ajalon, the site of a famous biblical battle, fought by Joshua, the leader of the Israelites, against the Amorite kings.
The photograph is signed, captioned and dated in the negative, ‘F Bedford Bethoron’. The number in the Day & Son series is 50.

Jerusalem from Mount of Olives
Jerusalem, From Mount of Olives
Creator: Francis Bedford (1815-94) (photographer)
Creation Date:  Mar-Apr 1862
Materials:  Albumen print, mounted on card
Dimensions:  22.7 x 29.1 cm
RCIN  2700915
Acquirer: King Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom (1841-1910), when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-63)
Provenance:  Acquired by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), 1862
Description:
View from slopes and olive groves of the Mount of Olives towards distant rooftops of Jerusalem.
The royal party arrived at Jerusalem in the evening of 31 March. They set up a camp outside the city walls, between the Damascus Gate and the Gate of St. Stephen. Their first evening was spent walking along the walls of the town, taking in the view of the city, under the guidance of the Revd Dr Stanley, one of the gentlemen in the Prince’s party.
The photograph is unsigned, uncaptioned and undated. The number in the Day & Son series is 52.