I am doing research for an exam about main events that divided the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine prior to the Arab/Israeli war of 1948. I am stuck on this topic...
I have gathered that it was a small percent of land (6-7% of Palestine) that was purchased by the Zionists from Arab absentee land owners. Why would Arabs sell land to the Jews when they knew of the Balfour Declaration and that the Zionists were trying to establish their own national homeland in Palestine?
edit:
"Land acquired during the mandate was usually made into kibbutzim or moshavim. The Jews hoped to avoid the creation of a Jewish landlord class exploiting a landless Arab peasantry, but land purchases often led to the eviction of Arab peasants. It is important to remember that all the land purchased in the mandate period was legally purchased, and much of it was swamp or marshland or was otherwise uninhabited."
This is from 'A History of The Arab-Israeli Conflict' 6th Edition, Ian J. Bickerton, Carla L. Klausner.
I am very new to all of this so please enlighten me if what I have said is incorrect.
Thanks
This is a subject which I have a great deal of interest in, so I will try to provide a decent answer.
As HaZyyskies mentioned below in a very concise point below, Arab landowners sold to organizations which represented Jewish interests in Palestine largely with the intent to remove the Palestinian tenets so as to begin cultivating the land with Jewish tenets.
To give a bit of background I will quote from Kenneth Stein's The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939.
For at least three-quarters of a century prior to the British civil administration, the fellaheen had borrowed for seed, new plows, fresh horses, donkeys, mules, oxen for plowing, and repayment of other debts, or private loans. Usually fellaheen were unable to pay back loans that rose to 50% annum interest.. for some, the only means of removing their oustanding debt was through the sale of their small parcel of land...over time a large tenet and agricultural labouring class alongside a small class with great landholding developed. circa page 19.
Because the Palestinian peasantry (fellaheen) was consistently, and over a long period of time, severely economically disadvantaged they had little voice in the processes of government. Many would argue that the Palestinian nobility didn't have much say during the British Mandate either- more on this below. Anyway, the fellaheen had been selling off their land due to debts, BUT- also due to land registration laws that were misrepresented to them. The Land Registration Law of 1858 saw the Palestinian elite misrepresent the land registry as a method to increase taxation and as registry for military service. Peasants were easily persuaded to sell their prescriptive rights to the land they cultivated for nominal prices- landholders (oftentimes Palestinian, sometimes Absentee in Syria or Lebanon) would then make large profits by selling to the early Zionist emissaries or organizations.
Stein also says,
Despite being denied real power in national, municipal, and local government, the notable class had its political status officials sanctioned on the social level during the mandate period by many governmental proclamations and ordinances which had the quality of binding law... the Zionists and civil administration was carefully guarded the prestige of the landowning class by never publicly faulting it for collaborating with Jews in land sales. circa pg 30
As to the 'why,' this is a difficult question to answer because it isn't something you can just pull from the sources. I think it's part speculation, part economics, part politics.
To paraphrase from Stein,
In earlier years there wasn't much pressure against the sale of land to Jews. There was much more effort put up towards opposing immigration. At this point many of the purchases were made with non-resident Palestinians and involved dislocating fewer tenants/labourers....Militant protests against the purchasing enterprise did not take off until the 1930s.
From the research I have done regarding national movements and their development among the landed or more financially secure segments, the fact that Palestinian notables sold land to the Jews does not surprise me. Its a factor of individual vs. national priorities. In the earlier years, the stratification of Palestinian society was quite severe and the notables were more concerned with their financial status than the fellaheen who would be dispossessed. I don't think it has to do with a lack of nationalist sentiment. At this earlier juncture the Palestinian elite did not see the creation of a Jewish homeland as imminent- but it was a major and daily concern. As I said before, the main concern from the populace was immigration in the earlier years. Land ownership was the "last surviving prerogative for man of the Arab elite, whose privileges were slowly circumscribed by the British presence and Jewish settlements."
Please, if anyone else here sees any factual errors in this brief write up- I would appreciate more insight.
Hope that was a bit helpful, I will be happy to crack open a few books to discuss this more if needed.
Upon further reading I have learned that Arab absentee land owners sold land to the Zionists at an inflated price. The land was purchased by a Zionist institution called the Jewish National Fund. Jews around the world would donate money to the effort of creating a national homeland in Palestine. The JNF had a philosophy of Jewish money, labor and land. They purchased the land to rid Arabs from Palestine because less Arab owned land meant more security for the Jews. When the JNF bought this land they evicted Arab peasants and their families that had lived and worked there for decades. This led to animosity towards the Jews because Arab peasants were now landless and jobless. I still can't find why the Arabs would sell land to the Jews knowing that they were trying to establish their own homeland in Palestine.