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"Inflamed by nationalism and religious fervor, Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as well as Palestine are determined to fight against any force, or combination of forces, which attempts to set up a Jewish state in Palestine."
Branches of Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) have been formed in Syria and Lebanon, and one of the most active branches is in Palestine. The Ikhwan regards Westernization as a dangerous threat to Islam and would oppose any political encroachment of Zionism on Palestine with religious fanaticism. Should a "Jihad', or Holy War, be declared, the Ikhwan would be the spearhead of any "crusade". The Grand Mufti, as head of the Moslem Supreme Council, can count on the unanimous support of all members of the Ikhwan, who are assured of entrance into Paradise if they die on the field of battle.
The conditions of Beduin life have developed a hardy type of fighting man, not only imbued with a warlike tradition (combining religious fanaticism with an enthusiastic devotion to looting, plundering and raiding)....
"shall not be able to restrain the feelings of their nationals revolting against the oppression falling on them....but rather they be compelled to take every decisive action which will guarantee resistance and the restoration of justice".
"The Zionists will continue to wage a strong propaganda campaign in the US and in Europe. The "injustice" of the proposed Jewish boundaries will be exaggerated, and the demand for more territory will be made as Jewish immigration floods the Jewish sector. In the chaos which will follow the implementation of partition, atrocities will undoubtedly be committed by Arab fanatics (not terrorists..."fanatics"); such actions will be given wide publicity and will be exaggerated by Jewish propaganda. "
The manner and timing of the British withdrawal will be an important factor in the fighting, which is expectd to increase steadily in intensity after the British withdrawal, eventually taking the form of an undeclared war of attrition against the Jews.
The quasi-military groups composed of ex-army men and townspeople, will specialize in direct assaults on Zionist colonies, demolition of bridges and railroads and other sabotage. The tribesmen will engage in activities not requiring technical training or extensive coordination such as attacks on isolated villages (hence the issues with the sprawling borders), assassination, continual sniping to prevent cultivation of the fields, and attacks on transportation, communications, and supply lines. Persistent harassing attacks can be expected in time to wear the Zionist economy to the breaking point. (that part didn't happen.)
The Jewish sections of a Palestine partitioned in accordance with the UNSCOP majority report will be vulnerable to attack by the Arabs. The northeast sector is entirely surrounded by Arabs: Palestinian on the south and west, Lebanese and Syrian on the north and Transjordanian on the east. The central Jewish sector is flanked on the east by the central Arab sector, while the southern Jewish sector is surrounded by Palestinian Aranbs on the west and north, Transjordanian on the east and Egyptian on the south. The Arab sectors contain the strategic highlands of Galilee and those surrounding the proposed international zone of Jerusalem.
The establishment of strong defensive positions, within which normal economic life can be maintained, and the protection of transportation routes will be th main strategy of the Jewish forces.Large scale Jewish efforts to penetrate territory adjoining the contemplated Jewish state are unlikely because such actions would necessitate over-extending the already vulnerable supply lines and would entail the risk of combined rear, frontal and flanking attacks by Arabs.
The poverty, unrest and hopelessness upon which Communist propaganda thrives will increase throughout the Ara world, and Soviet agents (already being smuggled into Palestine as Jewish DP's) will scatter into other Arab states and there attempt to organize so-called "democratic movements" such as the one existing today in Greece.
Dreams End wrote:I had just finished writing about how the CIA and State Department have always been anti-Israel, and the tone of this document confirms this.
Dreams End wrote:F
What I am constantly told around here is that Arabs were fighting only in defense and the Zionists were the aggressors.
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But you are ignoring the fact that the Zionists initially moved in on an Arab land with the intention of creating an alien political entity
-http://www.prometheus.demon.co.uk/04/04herzog.htm[T]he formative stages of the People of Israel were utterly different from those the Bible articulates. Nonetheless, such views have not percolated into the awareness of the public at large...that the People of Israel did not sojourn in Egypt, did not wander in the wilderness, did not conquer the land of Canaan in a military campaign, and did not pass it on as inheritance to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Another thing: Everyone is describing the document as anti-Israel, but I don't see it. I would say it is more negative than positive, but more realistic than anything else. Which of the predictions made there did not come true, at least in part?
My answer, to anticipate my conclusion, is this: United States support for Israel is not primarily the result of Holocaust guilt or shared democratic values; nor is it produced by the machinations of the “Israel Lobby.” American support for Israel — indeed, the illusion of its unconditionality – underpins the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean. It has compelled Israel’s key Arab neighbors to reach peace with Israel and to enter the American orbit. The fact that there has not been a general Arab-Israeli war since 1973 is proof that this pax Americana, based on the United States-Israel alliance, has been a success. From a realist point of view, supporting Israel has been a low-cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East, managed by the United States from offshore and without the commitment of any force. It is, simply, the ideal realist alliance.
Despite its slender human and material resources, the Hibbat Tziyon (early Zionist movement of Jewish immigration to Palestine) movement managed to establish a number of new Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine, referred to in Hebrew as moshavot (“colonies” or “settlements”). It soon became evident, however, that Hibbat Tziyon was incapable of sustaining a settlement project on this scale, and within a few years many of the new settlements were on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse. They were rescued by the generosity of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, an assimilated French Jew who had little interest in Hibbat Tziyon's romantic nationalism but was aroused by the plight of the east European Jewish masses and favored their resettlement—though preferably not in France, where an influx of poor Jews from the east might fan the flames of antisemitism and undermine the tenuous place which the Rothschilds and other assimilated Jews had secured in French society. Rothschild, and later other European Jewish philanthropists, assumed control of many of the settlements and provided them with large-scale financial support, along with technical assistance and a large dose of paternalistic supervision.
By 1900 there were twenty-two moshavot with a total population of about 5,000. Most of these settlements had come to be organized on the Algerian colonial model preferred by Baron Rothschild and his agents, with European Jewish farmers employing local Arab peasants to cultivate their vineyards, citrus groves, and fields. Zionist historiography has tended to focus on this segment of the growing Yishuv, seeing in these struggling farmers the forerunners of Zionism's settlement and state-building project. Yet the great majority of Jews in Palestine, including most of those who arrived in what would later be dubbed the First Aliya, the 1881–1903 wave of Jewish immigration, preferred to live in towns, and much of the Yishuv was still quite distant from the vision of Jewish national-cultural rebirth in Palestine put forward by Hibbat Tziyon, much less the vision of Jewish statehood which Herzl's new and explicitly political Zionist movement would articulate.
http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId ... and=eschol
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