Abuney Dejany - Arab Viewpoint on Palestine (1947)

Speaker 1: Our speaker today is Aouni W. Dejani of the Arab Office in Washington. His subject is the Arab viewpoint on Palestine. The Arab Office represents the Arab League, which includes Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen. Mr. DeGeney was born and reared on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. He is a Muslim Arab. He first came to the United States in 1930. During the succeeding eight years, he attended various universities, including Brown, the University of Nebraska, the University of Minnesota, and Harvard. He holds the A.B. degree from the University of Minnesota University a master's degree in criminology from Boston University, and a master's degree in government from Harvard. In 1939, Mr. Dujaney became associate professor of law at Iraq Law College in Baghdad, lecturing there for three years. During 1944 and 45, he practiced law in Jerusalem. In September of 1945, he joined the Arab office in Washington. I take pleasure in presenting to you Mr. Dijani.

Abuney W. Dejany: Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, I am highly honored indeed to be invited to talk to you about the Arab viewpoint on Palestine. I have to take you a little bit back into history in order that you may have a clear picture of that problem. In the year 1915 and prior to that period, Palestine, like the rest of the Arab world, was under the rule of the Turks. The native inhabitants, the Arabs, had self-government in the respective districts, and they were represented in the parliament in Constantinople. But to the people whose empire once extended from the shores of the Atlantic into Central Asia, domination and dominance of any group was unacceptable. Independence was their aim. They were planning to revolt against the Turks. All kinds of underground activities and open activities to that effect were going on. In 1915, the position of the British in the Middle East was critical. They knew how the Arabs felt toward the Turks. They approached the Arabs and an agreement was made between the Arabs and the British. The Arabs were to revolt against the Turks and to expel them from the Arab countries. And in return for the Arab cooperation with the British and the allies, the British and the allies at the conclusion of the war were to recognize the independence and unity of the Arab world. The Arabs fulfilled their pledges. The British, unfortunately, however, joined in splitting the Arab countries They went further and in 1917 they issued what became to be known as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was a letter sent by the Foreign Office to Lord Rothschild. It viewed with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The latter part of the Balfour Declaration, however, which is very rarely mentioned in the United States especially, says that nothing shall be done to prejudice the rights of the Arabs of Palestine. The Balfour Declaration never promised to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The British government has repeatedly said so. As a matter of fact, only last year, the Anglo-American Committee reported that a Jewish state in Palestine goes beyond both the Balfour Declaration and the mandate and was expressly disowned by the chairman of the Jewish agency as late as the year 1931. The British have recently said that as far as they were concerned, their pledges to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration have been fulfilled by what has taken place today in Palestine. The Arabs, from the beginning, challenged the Balfour Declaration. They challenged it as a unilateral undertaking, not binding on them either legally or morally. In that declaration, they felt that Britain was giving away something which did not belong to them. And furthermore, it was contrary to the promises which the British formerly has made to the Arabs, and also after the declaration was made too. However, in spite of the opposition of the Arabs, the British imposed themselves on that country, and they administered it under the guise of what the world became to know as the mandate system, the unfortunate trust of civilization. The struggle continued between the Arabs and the British up to the year 1938. And in the year 1939, the British tried to rectify the wrong that they have done to the Arabs, and they issued what became to be known as the White Paper of 1939. The most essential elements of the White Paper of 1939 is that the British shall help Palestine to become independent within a period of ten years. And the second part is that immigration into Palestine shall be limited to the number of 75,000 during the next five years. And at the end of the period of five years, not one single immigrant may enter that country without the consent of the Arabs of that country. We believe that the British were sincere and wanted to carry out the provisions of that white paper until the pressure from the United States of America became so great that they had to postpone the execution of that policy of 1939. I would like to emphasize at this point the fact that the Arabs do not, however, base their claim to Palestine on the Hussein-McMahon Agreement of 1915, or on any other agreement or treaty, either made with Great Britain or with any other power or group of powers. Their claim to Palestine rests on simple historical facts. The first is that they constituted 91% of the inhabitants of Palestine in the year 1915. The second is that these people have been in continued and uninterrupted possession of that land for at least the past 1,300 years. Many historians put the date as a much larger one, make it 2000 and 3000. But the undisputable fact is that the Arabs have been in that country for at least 1,300 years. And the third fact is that Those people have a unity of culture, language, and tradition. The Arab claim therefore rests on this unity of tradition, culture, and language, on this continued and uninterrupted association between land and people. No people can present a better claim to any land. Many people in this country feel that the Arabs are anti-Jewish. I would like to emphasize that this is a false, wrong argument. The fact is that whenever the Jews were persecuted in the different parts of the world, they always found refuge and hospitality in the Arab world. Not only did they find refuge and hospitality in the Arab world, but they always held key positions in the various Arab countries. To this very day, they are treated on absolute equality with the people of other faiths, and they are represented in the parliaments of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt equally as the Christians and the Copts and the members of other faiths. The Arabs, however, are opposed to one group from the Jews who I hope does not represent a large portion. That group is known as Zionists. And Zionists are the groups who are aiming at the political domination of Palestine. They are the group who are aiming at overpopulating that country in order that they have the majority and the state established in that territory. The Arab opposition to Zionists does not arise, therefore, from the fact that they happen to be Jews. The Arab opposition would have been the same were they French, American, Scandinavians, or Belgians. I do not think that there is any group of people in the world today who will welcome to their land a group who is as hostile to the country as the Zionists are towards the natives of Palestine. The people in this country have unfortunately been wrongly associating the Jewish problem and the refugee problem with the problem of Palestine. I would like to emphasize the fact that both the refugee problem and the Jewish problem were created in the Christian world. They were created in Europe, not by the Arabs either in Palestine or in any other part of the Arab world.