Before 1947, before the UN resolution: the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Palestine occurred in April 1936, with the murder of two poultry traders
April 15, 1936, is perhaps the date that comes closest to a starting point in the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Much had happened before and an enormous amount more would happen afterward, but the event of that day is considered by many experts and historians to be a turning point, as well as the moment when the Jews became convinced that the problems with the Arabs of Palestine could only be solved by force. To understand what happened that day, we need to go back a few steps.
In 1904, Israel Zangwill, one of the most famous Jewish writers of the early 20th century, gave a famous speech in New York in which he argued for the need for the Jewish people, who had been scattered for centuries in various European countries, to conquer Palestine by force, which the Jews had always considered the “promised land” given to them by God. Zangwill, in particular, believed that Palestine should be conquered by force, “to drive out with the sword the tribes that possess it, as our fathers did.” A political and cultural movement supporting a greater Jewish presence in Palestine had existed for decades, and between the 19th and 20th centuries, several Jewish communities had been established there. But at that time the leaders of the Zionist movement were mainly intellectuals and philanthropists of the European bourgeoisie, and the movement had rarely taken such violent forms. Because of his positions, Zangwill was expelled from the Zionist movement and was only readmitted years later, although he continued to hold equally radical positions.
A few years later, in 1918, David Ben-Gurion, the future first prime minister of Israel, harshly criticized Zangwill and his positions. In an article in the Yiddish magazine Kemper, he wrote that the expropriation of the inhabitants of Palestine “is not the aim of Zionism. […] Under no circumstances should we infringe on the rights of its inhabitants. Only people like Zangwill can imagine that the Land of Israel will be given to the Jews together with the right to expropriate the present inhabitants.”
A WAR THAT CONTINUES TODAY
Eighteen years later, Arabs and Jews fought the first real clash of a war that continues to this day: between 1936 and 1939, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine rose up against the British “mandate” of the country, a kind of protectorate, largely because they believed it overly favored the new Jewish immigrants. The beginning of the so-called “Great Arab Revolt,” as the revolts of that period are known, dates precisely to April 15, 1936.
During the first thirty years of the 20th century, increasing numbers of Jews made aliyah, which in Hebrew means “ascension,” “return,” to the Palestinian territories. There, they bought land from Arab owners, drained swamps, and improved wastelands to build kibbutzim, egalitarian communities where private property was rare, as well as schools and other Jewish institutions.
The most optimistic among the Zionists thought that coexistence would be peaceful and that the Arabs would gradually accept remaining a minority in Palestine. The most pessimistic thought that the constant influx of European Jews would force the Arabs to move to neighboring Arab countries, such as Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. However, for many Jews who arrived in Israel, the local Arab population was not the main problem. Since, in 1917, the British Empire, which had a kind of protectorate over Palestine, recognized the legitimacy of the creation of a Jewish state, the Jews focused mainly on establishing a stable economic system, inspired by socialism. They invested heavily, for example, in the cultivation and trade of citrus fruits, as well as in the creation of the first state institutions. The renowned Hebrew University of Jerusalem was founded in 1918. At that time, about 90 percent of the population of Palestine was Arab.
In the years that followed, there were many examples of tolerance, even peaceful coexistence, between Arabs and Jews. In Lida, an ancient Greek colony that had later become a small Arab town, 20 kilometers from Tel Aviv, the German Jewish doctor Siegfried Lehman founded in 1927 a boarding school for Jewish youth that was highly respected in the surrounding Arab villages. Lehman provided medical care to the residents of these villages, the students often went there for walks, and a “fair” was established at the school to honor and study Arab culture. By 1947, twenty years after its founding, Lehman’s school had about a thousand students and was among the most active in the Jewish community in Palestine.
COEXISTENCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
In his recently published book, My Promised Land, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit shows that similar forms of peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Israelis existed in Rehovot, the small Israeli town where he was born in 1957. Shavit writes: “Like Rehovot, Zarnuga [the Arab village from which half of Rehovot’s workforce came at the time] is developing rapidly. […] Over the past ten years, the village’s population has grown, reaching 2.400 residents; over the past five years, the area of orange groves has doubled, now reaching 2.555 dunams. In ten years, real estate prices have increased tenfold.”
Working and spending most of their time in Rehovot, many of its residents have learned a lot. They now know how to drive tractors, operate well pumps, and cultivate orange groves using the latest techniques. They build modern stone houses, increasingly resembling those in Rehovot. In the Arab settlement, they buy Western-style jackets, furniture, Western-made pots and pans, canned food, medicine, and baby food.
Thus, in the autumn of 1935, the [Israeli] orange grower may think that the Arab question is not an issue at all. The Arabs who work for him are no problem […]. Rehovot grows and, with it, Zarnuga. Rehovot prospers and so does Zarnuga. Every morning, when the village workers arrive at the gate of the orange grove, it seems as if everything is going wonderfully. And every day, when dozens of little boys from Zarnuga arrive in Rehovot on their bicycles, it seems as if there is nothing to worry about.
Indeed, during the twenties and thirties, the situation had become increasingly tense. Jews continued to arrive in Palestine by the thousands, buying land and establishing kibbutzim. The world economic crisis of 1929 had put Arab farmers in particular in difficulty, who had lost their jobs or were forced to sell their land to Jews, who had large financial resources coming from Europe. In response to all this, the poor economic situation of the Arab population of Palestine and the progress of the Zionist project, Palestinian nationalists organized themselves into nationalist associations and paramilitary brigades. They opposed Jewish immigration and the Zionist project, which they accused of wanting to impose itself on a land they considered their own.
The first major clash occurred in 1929. In late August, word spread that Jews in Palestine would try to seize control of the Wailing Wall, a site considered part of the ancient Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans. But the Wall lies directly beneath the Esplanade of Mosques, the most important of which is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on the site where, according to Islamic belief, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
WHEN LARGE PROPERTIES BEGAN TO BE RARE
After these words spread, the Arab population attacked Jewish residents of Palestine. In the clashes that followed, about 130 Jews were killed, half of them in Hebron, a predominantly Arab city in the West Bank that remains very dangerous, and almost as many Arabs. Historian James L. Gelvin, author of a highly regarded book on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has described the situation of those years very well from the perspective of Palestinian Arabs: As more Jews arrived in Palestine, more land was bought up by Zionist agents. Agricultural land prices skyrocketed, and not a few [Arab] landowners living in the cities decided to make huge profits by selling their land to the Jewish National Fund. [When] large estates began to become scarce, Zionist agents began to buy up small plots, either directly or by taking them from moneylenders. Thus they came into contact with an ever-increasing number of Palestinians living on the verge of survival.
By 1931, Zionist land purchases had driven some twenty thousand peasant families from their lands. Within a few years, the percentage of Palestinian farmers without land would reach 30 percent. Moreover, 75–80 percent of landowners owned plots that were not enough to ensure survival. Zionism, which had previously been something completely abstract for many native Palestinians, had become a tangible presence.
In October 1935, the situation worsened further. At the end of that year, a British official discovered in the port of Jaffa, an ancient city south of Tel Aviv, a large quantity of weapons intended for the Jewish community in Palestine, hidden in a shipment of cement shipped from Belgium.
Following this discovery, a popular Islamic preacher and military leader named Izz Abd al-Qader Mustafa Yusuf ad-Din al-Qassam called for jihad against the Jewish population. Although al-Qassam enjoyed popularity, exploiting the poverty and discontent of the Arab population, few people joined his brigades. He himself was killed in a clash with the British army on November 20, 1935.
Thus it came to April 15, 1936, when a group of armed men blocked the road from Tulkarem to Tel Aviv. The first passers-by were asked for money for the Arab cause. When two Jewish poultry traders on their way to Tel Aviv, Israel Khazan and Zvi Dannenberg, arrived, the armed group robbed and killed them. Arab newspapers of the time, writes Haaretz, reported that a German who was there at the time was released and that the armed group told him: “Go in peace, in the name of Hitler.” The links between Islamist leaders in Palestine and the Nazi dictatorship continue to be the subject of study, although their existence is considered practically certain. Rami Khazan, a 64-year-old descendant of Israel Khazan, told Haaretz: “They ambushed him. They stopped him at the checkpoint and he, out of pride, which in that case could be called irresponsibility, confronted the armed group and said, ‘Here I am, what can you do to me?’ And then they shot him.”
After the murders of Khazan and Dannenberg, Haaretz published an editorial expressing great concern: “These days the atmosphere is electrified. The mood of the masses has been poisoned by a completely ideological propaganda, according to which the end justifies any means. This electricity can be discharged at any moment, whether in “small” criminal acts, like the one two days ago, or in mass atrocities.”
On April 17, during Khazan’s funeral, a group of Jews attempted to kill, in retaliation, some Arab workers who were on the street. In the following days, the Jewish civilian population was the target of several assassination attempts, including a bomb thrown on one of the busiest streets in Tel Aviv and several assassinations by snipers. In total, 88 Jews were killed during the summer of 1936.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian leaders, historically very divided, had managed to unite in an “Arab Supreme Committee”, which was supposed to represent their interests vis-à-vis the British. The committee organized a general strike of Arab workers, which caused various problems and, over time, deepened the division between the two communities. The British and Jews replaced the striking Arab workers with Jewish workers. The strike ended in October 1936, without major consequences, while a few months later the British declared the Arab Supreme Committee illegal, which ceased to function. Violence continued in the following years. Gelvin writes that in the autumn of 1937, “between 9 thousand and 10 thousand Arab fighters, Palestinian and others, moved through the villages, attacking British forces and Zionist settlements and sowing panic”.
But the most violent year of the entire uprising was 1938. On June 19, 18 Arab civilians were killed by a bomb explosion in an Arab market in Jerusalem. Another bomb exploded on July 6 in the Arab market in Haifa, killing 21 Arabs. Both attacks were attributed to the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary organization founded a few years earlier, which carried out dozens of attacks during the uprising.
PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE WAS NO LONGER POSSIBLE
In the months that followed, the British army crushed the Arab uprising, mostly by force. But the clashes convinced the Jewish community that peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians was no longer possible. The British authorities also reached the same conclusion, which, for this reason, a few years later proposed a partition plan that envisaged the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state. In 1938, as Shaviti writes in his book, David Ben-Gurion said: “My solution to the question of the Arabs in the Jewish state is their transfer to other Arab countries.”
On September 19, 1939, when the uprising had already ended, the general headquarters of the Haganah was established, a Jewish paramilitary organization that had been operating for years and that, after the 1948 war, became the nucleus of the Israeli national army.
In 1948, during what Israelis call the War of Independence and Palestinians the Nakba, “the catastrophe,” one of the most controversial military actions of the Israeli army occurred in Lida, the town where Lehman had opened a boarding school for young men. Due to some misunderstanding, the Israeli army, which had already occupied the town in a military operation, ordered indiscriminate fire on a group of civilians who had remained in the town: between 150 and 200 people were killed. The next day, the Israeli army ordered the remaining inhabitants to pack up and abandon the town, heading for the Arab regiments that were several kilometers away. Many of them, perhaps dozens, wrote the Israeli historian Benny Morris, died on the way from dehydration and exhaustion.
In a 2013 article for The New Yorker, Shaviti explained: “Lida is Zionism’s black box. The truth is that Zionism could not tolerate an Arab Lida. From the beginning, there was a fundamental contradiction between Zionism and Lida. If Zionism was to survive, Lida could not exist. Looking back, it is all very clear. When Siegfried Lehmann arrived in Lida in 1927, he should have known that Lida was an obstacle to the creation of a Jewish state and that Zionism would one day have to get rid of it. But Lehmann did not understand, and Zionism pretended that it was nothing. For decades, Jews managed to hide from themselves the contradiction between their national movement and Lida. For 45 years, Zionism pretended that it was the Ben Shemen school and that it lived in peace with Lida. Then, in three days in the summer of 1948, Lida ceased to exist.”