Richard Falk and “residency rights."

As I was reading this supposed "enlightened" UN BS artist’s article by Ynet and as per usual UN representatives like Falk do not check into fact before spread the lies of the “Falestinians”. Let us review his statement Falk said "that more than 11,000 Palestinians had lost their right to live in Jerusalem since 1996 due to Israel imposing residency laws favoring Jews and revoking Palestinian residence permits." And that Israel is practicing “Ethnic Cleansing” So what are the real facts?

 

View of the two large Synagogues in the Old City prior to their destruction by the Jordanians in 1948

Arab respect for the Jewish Synagogue Tiferet Yisrael in 1948

Hmm first of all Mr Falk before spreading lies one should know facts. As to “Ethnic Cleansing” I would love to have the answer to the question; “Where was the UN when the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Jews from the settlements of the Gush Etzion Block who were ethnically cleansed by the invading Jordanians in 1948?? Also where was the UN during the entire illegal Jordanian Occupation of the “West Bank” from 1947- 1967?

Ethnic Cleansing of Jews from Jerusalem and Gush Etzion

It is a recorded fact that between 100,000 to 200,000 of the Arabs of the Mandated Area moved to the Mandated Area in the years of prosperity during the British Mandate. What is not mentioned, is that most of them were not land owners but only those renting or leasing of homes. Property disputes have always existed, especially since the first land registration -Tabu - law was promulgated from the days of the Turks in 1858. It is a historical and documented fact that most of those Arab inhabitants do not have actual ownership / title to the land they claim is theirs. 

“A few months after my family and I moved to Shiloh in 1981, I witnessed a
microcosm of the land problem between Jews and Arabs. A section of land was
to be put aside for security purposes and, as the legal procedure dictated,
the mukhtars of nearby villages were informed and asked to make sure that
any resident claiming private ownership rights should show up on a certain
day to stake his claim.
 Sure enough, at the appointed hour, seven Arabs walked onto the area and
then were asked to stand on what each claimed as his private plot. Within
minutes a difficult situation developed when two villagers stood on the same
fertile section, insisting that each owned it. A minute later and they were
throwing stones at each other.
 We, the residents of Shiloh, the IDF officers and legal officials all stood
around amazed. In the end, with no documents, no tax receipts, no maps nor
any other reliable proof of ownership, the land was confirmed as "state
land" and assigned to its new use.” Yisrael Medad, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 22, 2006

The Turks and later the British attempted to register land ownership -by census - but only those who paid taxes could get ownership. Therefore many Arab inhabitants hid or lied to not have to pay taxes and thereby did not admit to ownership. Many -whole primarily Moslem -villages were virtual "serfs" or indentured servants to wealthy absentee land owners residing in Beirut or Damascus. And it is well known that most Arabs of the area immigrated to the Mandatory Areas after the Liberation in 1918 and establishment of the Mandate. So in essence they are squatters and as in most civilized countries of the world you cannot stay on land that is not legally yours.

Jews had purchased 6 to 8 percent of the total land area of Palestine. This was about 20% of the land that could be settled and cultivated. About 46% of the land was registered in the tax registers to Arab villages, to Arabs living on the land, or absentee owners, and about the same amount was government land. However, most of this land was not privately owned. The Arabs of Palestine had received much of their land in leases conditional upon cultivation or used land that was part of village commons.

During the Turkish census according to Beinin and Hajjar there was no administrative district of Palestine. Turkish census figures were for various districts, including the Jerusalem, Acco and Nablus districts for example. The Acre district included areas in Lebanon, outside the modern borders of Palestine in which there were no Jews. So the figure for the Turkish census for 1878 which listed 462,465 Turkish subjects in the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts: 403,795 Muslims (including Druze), 43,659 Christians and 15,011 Jews. Simply cannot represent the population of the Arabs of the Mandated areas.Prior to the British conquest in 1917 of the city of Jerusalem it had a Jewish majority of 70%. since about 1896 - The city of Jerusalem itself there was a Jewish majority since about 1896, but probably not before. The district of Jerusalem (as opposed to the city) comprised a very wide area in Ottoman and British times, in which there was a Muslim majority. This included Jericho, Bethlehem and other towns.  Within the Jerusalem district, there was a sub district of Jerusalem that includes many of the immediate suburbs such as Ein Karem, Beit Zeit etc. In that sub district, the Jews remained a minority, with only about 52,000 out of 132,000 persons in 1931 for example.

Population of Jerusalem until 1945

Year	Total	Muslim	Jewish	Christian	% Jews
1841	15,510	5,000	7,120	3,390	45.9
1876	25,030	7,560	12,000	5,470	47.9
1896	45,420	8,560	28,112	8,748	61.9
1922	52,081	13,411	33,971	4,699	65.2
1931	90,451	19,894	51,222	19,335	56.6
1945	164,330	33,680	99,320	31,330	60.4

1. This figure is quoted widely on the Web and is apparently the Ottoman census figure. It is given for example here.

2. John Oesterreicher and Anne Sinai, eds., Jerusalem, (NY: John Day, 1974), p. 1

3. British Mandate Census of 1922 and 1931

4. Anglo American Survey, 1945

There are those who place the population of the Arabs of the “Mandated Area” in 1893 before the arrival of the waves of Zionist Aliyah at 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine because both Arabs and Jews avoided the Turkish census. Foreigners who were without residence permits did not want to make their presence known. Arabs wished avoid taxes and in the 19th century, only Muslims were subject to the draft, and accordingly, Muslims tended to avoid the census. The British carried out only two censuses - in 1922 and 1931. The Bluebook figures were apparently last compiled in 1945 and reflect figures from 1944 or 1945. The Report of the Anglo American Committee of Inquiry used those figures and others to estimate the population of Palestine at the end of 1946, by projecting birth rates apparently. Between 1946 and the announcement of partition in November 1947, there was significant emigration of Arabs from Palestine.

After the creation of the British Mandate for Palestine, the Jewish population increased due to immigration, especially in the 1930s. The population of the Arabs of the “Mandated Area” also increased at an exceptional rate. When there were more or less reliable records we can see that about 18,000 non-Jews entered Palestine between 1930 and 1939 while in the same period, about 5,000 non-Jews left. This does not count illegal immigration of course, or immigration prior to 1930.  Economic analyses show that by the 1930s the standard of living of Arabs of the “Mandated Area” was approximately twice that of Arabs in surrounding countries, whereas in Ottoman Turkish times it was lower than in surrounding countries.

Some of the farm population may have suffered economic hardship, characteristic of any industrializing and urbanizing society, but in the main, the standard of living improved, and it improved much faster than it did in surrounding countries. There is no doubt that this improvement in conditions was an attractant for immigrants as well as resulting in improved health and larger families. Additionally, British activity in building the port of Haifa during the 1920s and in operating it during WW II undoubtedly attracted new Arab workers from outside of the Mandate. However, there is no hard evidence to show that the actual figure of the Arabs of the “Mandated Area” prior to 1948 numbered between 700,000 to 800,000. It is impossible to determine the exact number since economic conditions did not improve until mandatory times, it is unlikely that the bulk of the immigration occurred under Turkish administration. 

"The area was under populated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880's, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained "The Holy Land" in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants - both Jewish and Arab. - The report of the British Royal Commission, 1913

In the book "Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata" - a detailed geographical survey of Palestine in 1696 written in Latin by Adriaan Reland published by Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, in 1714. It states that residents of the REGION mainly concentrated in cities: Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberias and Gaza. In most cities, the majority of residents are Christians, Jews and others, very few Muslims who generally are Bedouin, seasonal workers who came to serve as Seasonal workers in agriculture or building.

Nablus: 120 Muslims, 70 Samaritans

Nazareth: 700 people - all Christians

Umm al-Fahm: 50 people-10 families, ALL Christian

Gaza: 550 people- 300 Jews,250 Christian(Jews engaged in agriculture ,Christians deal with the trading and transporting the products) note* (no Muslims in Gaza)!

Tiberias:  300 residents, all Jews.

Safed: about 200 inhabitants, all Jews

Jerusalem : 5000 people, most of them (3,500) Jews, the rest - Christian (1000) Muslim (500)

 

Shiloah Jerusalem from the south 1930

Jewish Yemenite migration to the Land of Israel took place in 1881-1882 when a group of Jews of Yemen arrived by foot to Jerusalem.  They belonged to no "Zionist movement." They returned out of an age-old religious fervor to return to Zion. The new immigrants settled on Jewish-owned property in the Shiloah Village outside of the Old City walls of Jerusalem. The Jews of Shiloah were the targets of anti-Jewish pogroms during the anti-Jewish riots in 1921 and again during the 1936-39 Arab revolt when they were evacuated by the British authorities. These Jewish families returned to Silwan/Shiloah after Israel reunited the city of Jerusalem in 1967 to reclaim the Jewish-owned property.

Shiloah/Silwan Today

Joan Peters, in her book "From Time Immemorial," argues that most of the increase in Arab population was in fact due to illegal Arab immigration. Her figures are not accepted by most demographers and historians, including Zionists. Norman Finkelstein and others have criticized her thesis and shown evidence of poor scholarship. Finkelstein's analysis also shows that the largest increases of Palestinian Arab population occurred close to Jewish population centers in Palestine, which would argue against the Palestinian contention that the Zionists were dispossessing Arabs. We do not know if this increase was due to population shifts in Palestine or immigration from outside Palestine.  It is certain that there was at least some illegal Palestinian-Arab immigration, as noted in British mandatory reports. Immigration from Transjordan was not illegal, and was not recorded as immigration at all until 1938. Beginning in the 1920s when they built Haifa port, and especially during and just prior to  World War II, the British recruited Arab workers from the Houran in Syria and elsewhere. Arabs also came to Palestine before the war, attracted by higher wages. However, since much of the depletion of Palestinian population that had occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to migration to neighboring countries, many of these returning Arabs may have been families returning to Palestine.

Falk and his bosses at the UN ignore the historical fact and International Law that the "West Bank" territory, was part of the "Mandated Area" given to the British to control in 1919. This area was offered to and refused by the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" in the partition plan of 1948 that opted for open combat in defiance of the Partition Agreement of the UN. This disputed area refused by the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" was illegally captured by the "Trans-Jordanian" Army in 1948 and occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan until their defeat in 1967. With the establishment of the border, between Israel and Jordan in the negotiated 1995 peace accords, the "West Bank" officially became Israeli territory as per Der Jure International Law.

Justice Stephen M. Schwebel, who spent 19 years as a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague including three years as President. explained; "...modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers's words, "insubstantial alterations required for mutual security" or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.." and in a footnote he added "It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them". Therefore the 1949 Armistice lines are not fixed, as purported by the Palestinians and their supporters. 

In fact in 1948 The Jordanian Government Army invaded the Palestinian Mandated Territory and at the end of the fighting illegally annexed the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem, a move which was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan. In terms of international law, between 1948 and 1967  the entire area of what remained of  the Palestinian Mandated Territory in the “West Bank” was terra nullius, or "land belonging to no one" over which sovereignty may be acquired through occupation. The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law. Therefore the “Palestinians” never had sovereignty over the “West Bank” or East Jerusalem. Justice Schwebel concluded that since Jordan, the prior occupying power of the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem had seized that territory unlawfully in 1948; Israel which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967 has better title to it.

With the negotiated peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1995 the "Mandated Area" for the Jewish Homeland (Article 8 Mandate for Palestine) was returned and therefore the "West Bank" officially became Israeli territory as per International Law termed; Uti possidetis juris or uti possidetis iuris (Latin for "as you possess under law") is a principle of international law that states that newly formed sovereign states should have the same borders that their preceding dependent area had before their independence. So legally there is no need to annex since neither the Jordanians nor the "Falestinians" never claimed sovereignty according to International Law. Thereby reinforcing Justice Schwebel's claim of  “terra nullius”, or "land belonging to no one".

In fact during negotiations for the 1995 peace agreement signed between Israel and Jordan, the Jordanian government made no claim to it. And as East Jerusalem came into Israel's possession in the course of a defensive war, Israel was entitled to annex it and create a united Jerusalem. Consequently, the Jerusalem City Council has jurisdiction over building approvals for Jewish and Arab resident in any part of the city.