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Rev. Naim Ateek Distorts the Events Surrounding the 1948 War in

“A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation”

Rev. Naim Ateek claims that his most recent book, “A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation,” is about the “struggle for justice and peace,” between Israelis and Palestinians and that he merely seeks to “educate.” (p. xiii) But if this is true, why does Rev. Ateek repeatedly distort and misrepresent the history of the region in a manner clearly designed to cast Jews, Israel and Israelis in as negative light as possible -- including the events leading up to the 1948 war?

Rev. Ateek is not honest about the situation in Israel/Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948. He claims that “Palestinians did not negate the right of Jews to live in Palestine, as some Jews have always lived there. Any Jew following a legal immigration process was allowed to live in the land.” (p. 167)

• From the end of W.W. I until the establishment of Transjordan and the modern state of Israel, the entire area we now call Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan was part of the British Mandate. The British -- not the Palestinians -- controlled immigration. Prior to that time, as far back as 1517, the region was under the control of the Ottoman Turks. Palestinian Arabs had no control of who was “allowed” to live in the land. This does not, however, mean that they were receptive to Jews living there, or that they had no negative impact on British policy regarding Jewish immigration.

• There was significant Jewish immigration into Israel/Palestine during the Ottoman Era in the early1880s. After 1920, Arab anti-Jewish riots broke out. There were massacres of Jews by Palestinian Arabs throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The British did nothing to stop this. The British, fearing instability, placed immigration and travel restrictions on Jews. There was also Arab immigration into the region at the time which the British did not restrict.

• Following anti-Jewish Arab riots in 1929, the British Labor government published the Passfield White Paper (Lord Passfield, Colonial Secy), which urged the restriction of immigration and land sales to Jews.

• In 1936, the Arab leadership in the British Mandate, led by the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husayni, declared a general strike to protest Jewish immigration which quickly deteriorated into a violent rebellion which lasted approximately three years (commonly referred to as the “Arab Riots”).

Rev. Ateek claims that “Since the creation of Israel in 1948, the reality on the ground showed clearly that Israel was not in favor of two states.” (p. 166) But Rev. Ateek fails to tell his readers that it was Israel that accepted the two-state solution before and after 1947/48, while every Arab nation rejected it.

• The Peel Commission Report (published in July 1937) concluded that the desire of the Arabs for independence from the British and their hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish homeland were the underlying causes of the rioting and they suggested partitioning the Palestine Mandate further into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

• The Jewish state proposed by the Peel Commission was only a tiny strip of land running from Tel Aviv to Haifa and a little strip east of Haifa-- about 20% of what remained of Palestine.

• The Zionist Congress accepted partition in principle, but the Arab leadership rejected it. Eventually, the British government rejected the notion of partition, saying it couldn’t work.

• In Nov. 1947 the United Nations General Assembly recommended a “two state solution” -- partition of the British Mandate for Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State (U.N. Resolution 181). The U.N. partition plan was based on population demographics -- majority Jewish areas would be part of Israel, majority Arab areas would be part of a new Arab state.

• While in some ways an inherent injustice to Arabs and Jews who both had legitimate claims to the land, partition would have been a politically workable and peaceful solution.

• Violence broke out in the immediate aftermath of the U.N.’s approval of the partition plan. According to the U.N. Special Commission, nearly 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 people injured during the period beginning in December 1947 through January 1948.

• The Jewish Agency (the precursor of the Israeli government) accepted the U.N. Partition Plan. The Arab League announced that it would prevent partition by force if necessary.

Rev. Ateek distorts the history of the 1948 war.

• Although a civil war of sorts between Arabs and Jews in Palestine started right after the U.N. partition plan was announced, the actual war began when Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. Over the next few days the surrounding Arab States all invaded Israel.

• In an official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the U.N. Secretary-General on 15 May1948, the Arab States publicly proclaimed their aim of destroying the partition by force. (UN Doc. S/745, reprinted in 3 UN SCOR, Supp. for May 1948, at 83-88).

Had the Arab nations accepted U.N. Resolution 181 there would have been no Palestinian refugees and an independent Arab Palestinian state

would now exist, side by side with the Jewish state.