What were Arab - Jewish relations like before the founding of Israel?

I've posted this before on another thread but it is relevant here. I'm focusing on the period of Jewish settlement and colonisation in the first half of the 20th century. In this period just before the foundign of Israel the relations between Arabs and Jews were necessarily strongly tied up with the issues of land rights.

It is often contended by Israel that the majority of Jewish land purchases were not in inhabited and developed areas where arabs lived.

There were of course many kibbutz founded that sought to transform the desert, and the state propaganda made much of them. However a large and significant quantity of the purchased and appropriated land was highly fertile, extremely rich land, heavily populated by Arabs, who had lived there for many generations.

This is a very important point, if one wishes to truly understand the perspective and actions of the Arabs at the time. It is often mentioned that it was the Arabs that refused the partition plan, and invaded Israel, and these facts are often presented in such a way as to paint the Arabs as stubborn and unreasonable. However, the Arabs were seeing vast swathes of highly fertile land that they had lived on for generations being handed over by a foreign western power to a minority group of other (largely western) foreigners who had only just arrived. It is highly unlikely that any people group in the same situation would have agreed to half their country being taken away from them by foreign invaders.

It is also improtant to note that the JNF specifically wrote into their land contracts that the purchasers of the land could not ever employ non-jews on the land, in perpetuity. This was land that had been tenant-farmed by palestinians for centuries. After the Jews bought the land from the JNF, they evicted the Arab tenants and left them jobless and homeless. It is interesting that reports at the time (The Hope-Simpson report specifically) noted that older settlers who had arrived in the 19th century and early years of the 20th had been living lived in quite friendly relations with their arab neighbours. It was the overt and calculated discriminatory practices of zionist land dispossession in particular that seems to have caused the arabs to protest the Jewish immigration with such vigour rather than naked racism per se.

Much of the rioting and tension in the 20's and 30's was due to these dispossessed poor flooding into cities from the rural areas, starving and poverty stricken, and furious at the unfairness of their plight.

Not only this but the land that was given to the Jews was not even land that had a majority Jewish population living in it. In much of the territory awarded to Israel by the far-away UN, the Arabs remained as a majority of the populace - at least before the expulsions of the 1948 war.

One of the best sources I've seen is the Hope-Simpson report of 1930, which details the cultivation, and colonisation being carried out by the Jewish settlement organisations at the time. Read this report here, and specifically turn to Chapter 5: Jewish Settlement on the land, section III, The effect of the Jewish Settlement on the Arabs.

From the report: "In discussing the question of the effect of Jewish Settlement on the Arab it is essential to differentiate between the P.I.C.A. colonisation and that of the Zionist Organisation.

In so far as the past policy of the P.I.C.A. is concerned, there can be no doubt that the Arab has profited largely by the installation of the colonies. Relations between the colonists and their Arab neighbours were excellent. In many cases, when land was bought by the P.I.C.A. for settlement, they combined with the development of the land for their own settlers similar development for the Arabs who previously occupied the land.

All the cases which are now quoted by the Jewish authorities to establish the advantageous effect of Jewish colonisation on the Arabs of the neighbourhood, and which have been brought to notice forcibly and frequently during the course of this enquiry, are cases relating to colonies established by the P.I.C.A., before the KerenHayesod came into existence.

In fact, the policy of the P.I.C.A. was one of great friendship for the Arab. Not only did they develop the Arab lands simultaneously with their own, when founding their colonies, but they employed the Arab to tend their plantations, cultivate their fields, to pluck their grapes and their oranges. As a general rule the P.I.C.A. colonisation was of unquestionable benefit to the Arabs of the vicinity.

It is also very noticeable, in travelling through the P.I.C.A. villages, to see the friendliness of the relations which exist between Jew and Arab. It is quite a common sight to see an Arab sitting in the verandah of a Jewish house.

The position is entirely different in the Zionist colonies. ...of 688 Arab families which cultivated in the villages in the Vale of Esdraelon which were purchased and occupied by the Jews, only 379 are now cultivating the land...It is also to be recorded that the number, 688, does not by any means include all the families who were displaced."

The report then quotes from provisions being included in new Zionist land lease agreements that, unlike the earlier PICA land transfers, specifically bar non-jews from living or working on the land in perpetuity, even barring the Jewish landholder from employing non-jews in any capacity. The report continues:

"The abovequoted provisions sufficiently illustrate the Zionist policy with regard to the Arabs in their colonies. Attempts are constantly being made to establish the advantage which Jewish settlement has brought to the Arab. The most lofty sentiments are ventilated at public meetings and in Zionist propaganda.

At the time of the Zionist Congress in 1921 a resolution was passed which '' solemnly declared the desire of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people in relations of friendship and mutual respect, and, together with the Arab people, to develop the homeland common to both into a prosperous community which would ensure the growth of the peoples."

This resolution is frequently quoted in proof of the excellent sentiments which Zionism cherishes towards the people of Palestine. The provisions quoted above, which are included in legal documents binding on every settler in a Zionist colony, are not compatible with the sentiments publicly expressed...

...the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable.

It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted."