Ayoon Wa Azan (2 must-read books)

If I were to choose the ten most important books on the Palestinian issue, both in terms of content and the quality of documentation, they would include the two books by the Jerusalemite Dr. Naila al-Waari – “The Role of Foreign Consulates in Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine 1840-1914,” published by Dar al-Shuruq in Amman in 2007, and “The Attitudes of Governors, Scholars, Dignitaries and Feudal Lords in Palestine on the Zionist Project 1856-1914,” published by the Arab Institution for Research and Publishing in Beirut in 2012. I cannot be fair to the author and her books in this journalistic haste, and I admit that I knew nothing about Dr. Waari save for her name, and the fact that she is a dual Bahraini-Palestinian citizen. Today, I can add that Dr. Waari is a researcher from Jerusalem who currently resides in Bahrain. Her book on the attitudes of governors, scholars, dignitaries and feudal lords is based on her PhD dissertation, which was supervised by Professor Hassan Hallaq. The book about the foreign consulates falls in 403 pages. The annexes, documents, and copies of letters begin at page 289. The second book falls in 564 pages, and the annexes, documents, and copies of letters contained inside begin at page 421. Jewish settlement in Palestine began before the first Zionist Congress in Basel. The author documents how the consuls of Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Austria used pressure and bribery to facilitate the entry of Jews to Palestine. Theodor Herzl wrote in his memoirs, published in 1895, “We shall endeavor to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in the transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side.” Well, I say that it is our country, and not theirs. The majority of Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and the major cities stood against the Zionist threat, but there were land owners, particularly foreigners, who sold land to the Jews. The second book explains the extent of the sales that took place, full with the surface area, location, price, and date of sale, which makes all this impossible to deny. Here, it seems that the largest land owners in Palestine were from the Sursoq family, who were merchants and sold to the Jews, followed by the Abdul-Hadi family, who also sold land to the Jews albeit on a lesser scale. If there is one hero who resisted the sale of lands to the Jews, it would be none other than the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Jews and the government of the Commission of Union and Progress plotted against the sultan until he was impeached in 1909, for his categorical rejection of selling land to the Jews. The sultan even banned their entry to Palestine, with the exception of visits for three months only. The Ottoman sultan’s view was expressed in a letter in which he said, “I cannot give up one foot of the land for it is not my personal property; it is the property of my people. My people fought for the sake of this land and their blood was shed. Let the Jews save their millions. If my empire is torn apart one day, the Jews can separate Palestine without any cost. However, as long as I am alive, dissecting my body with a knife is easier for me than to see Palestine separated away.” The Ottoman state’s lands were known as “the Sultan’s jiftlik,” and in Palestine, they represented the largest stretch of land at 2.5 million acres, followed by land owned by Palestinian and neighboring Arab feudal lords. Some of the latter sold their land using loopholes to evade the Sultan’s decrees banning their sale. The Sultan was a resistance hero, and the true villains, along with the land owners, were the foreign consuls. Indeed, they either supported Jewish immigration to Palestine after they were bribed by wealthy Jews in Europe, or wanted to drive Jews out of their homelands. To be sure, 19th century Europe differed on everything except anti-Semitism, which culminated with the Nazi Holocaust in the century that followed. I cannot add much to Dr. Waari’s information, so I will conclude with an opinion: Germany paid reparations to the victims of the Holocaust after its defeat in World War II. I believe that Britain and the major European powers must pay reparations to the Palestinians for their complicity in stealing their land. When Britain needed financial support from Jews in the Great War (World War I), it issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Then when Britain needed the support of Arabs against Germany in 1939, it issued the White Paper, which proclaimed that the Balfour Declaration no longer represented the policy of the British government. Today, we are like the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and do not agree on anything except defeat, as our policy. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.