LEST THE CIVILIZED WORLD FORGET

By: Jamil A. Fayez, M.D.

The total area of Palestine is 10,434 square miles or 27,024 square kilometers. Its boundaries are the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Jordan River to the east, Lebanon and Syria to the north and Egypt to the south.

Palestine has been continuously inhabited since the dawn of history. I n 1850, more than 500,000 people lived there: 80% Muslim, 10% Christian, and 7% Jewish.1 By 1922, according to a census conducted by the British, that number had risen to 757,182: 78% Muslim, 11 % Jewish, 10% Christian.2 In 1922, the League of Nations put Palestine under a British Mandate, with the result that Jewish immigration nearly tripled, despite strong opposition by the Palestinian people. The official British estimate in 1947 gave a population of 1,908,775: 61% Muslim, 31% Jewish, 8% Christian. In terms of land ownership, Jews in 1947 owned 5.6 percent of the total area of the country, while Muslim and Christian Palestinians owned the rest of Palestine.3

For 100 years Zionist Jews have been planning to occupy all of Palestine and, in the process, to expel its inhabitants who have been living there for thousands of years. They fabricated false slogans such as, "A land with out people for a people without land."4 while knowing all along, as Theodor Herzl, the architech of Zionism wrote, that the land of Palestine could be acquired only by armed conquest.5

By May 14, 1948, the day of Israel's declaration of independence, Zionists had successfully expelled 400,000 Palestinians. After May 15, their tactics became even more ruthless and by December 1948 another 400,000 had been expelled.6 The results were best summed up by Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli Defense Minister, in a 1967 address he gave to students at Technion, Haifa: "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."7

After the Palestinians were terrorized and forced to leave their homes to camps in neighboring Arab countries, David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, warned: "We must do everything to insure they never do return."8 Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes, Ben Gurion predicted: "The old will die and the young will forget."9

But we do not forget. Palestinians now number more than 4.5 million. About 40% live within Palestine, many in squalid refugee camps far away from their family homes. The remaining 60% are scattered all over the world. Meanwhile, Zionist Jews occupy their homes and cultivate their land. A notice with Section 11 of U.N. Resolution 194 written in bold letters should be nailed to each of these occupied houses: "The General Assembly having further considered the situation in Palestine... Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so." 10

We Palestinians, old and young, will not forget Palestine. This booklet records the names, locations, populations and areas of cultivated lands of 394 Palestinian villages and towns that Zionist Jews have obliterated since 1948. Unless the civilized world addresses the human rights of these Palestinians and forces Israel to accept their return, peace will never prevail in the Holy Land, that land where Jesus of Nazareth preached peace, love, and, yes, justice.

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    Notes
    1. J. Abu-Lughod, "The Demographic Transformation of Palestine." in The Transformation of Palestine, Abu-Lughod, ed., Northwestern Univ. Press, 1971, p. 140.
    2. Ibid.
    3. Appendix VI to Report of Sub-Committee 2, U.N. Document A/AC 14/32, 11 November 1947, p. 270.
    4. I. Zangwill, "The Return to Palestine," New Liberal Review, II, December 1901, p. 627.
    5. T. Herzl, Gesammette Zionistische Schritten, Judisher Veriag, 1934-35.
    6. E. O'Ballance, The Arab-Israeli War, 1948, Praeger, 1957, pp. 171-2.
    7. Ha-Aretz (Hebrew newspaper), April 4,1969.
    8. In his diary, 18 July 1948, cited in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
    9. London Sunday Times, 14 June 1969.

      Ibid.