New research reveals the way the British Mandate allowed hundreds of thousands of Arabs to immigrate to the Land of Israel while the gates to the Land were closed to Jews. Today, those Arabs claim that they have been here since time immemorial…
One of the most commonly repeated claims made by spokesmen of Arabs from Judea and Samaria is the claim that they have been connected to the Land for many generations, but new research by Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak shows that this is not true at all.
The research, which is included in its totality in her book When and How did the Arabs and Muslims Immigrate to the Land of Israel (Yediot Aharonot Press), reveals how the regime of the British Mandate brought about the flow of hundreds of thousands of Arabs to the Land of Israel. This occurred despite the fact that the purpose of the Mandate was to establish a national home for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel.
Dr. Shpak-Lissak states that the British Mandate betrayed its function and acted in a manner totally opposite to its avowed purpose. In an interview with Arutz 7, she described the main point of her research, which is that “the Transjordanian Border Control Corps, whose role was to patrol the Jordanian borders with Lebanon and Syria until Akaba, received orders directly from the Mandate to ignore the entry of Arabs to the Land but not to allow entry to Jews to the Land, because there had been attempts of Jews trying to enter via Syria”.
Shpak-Lissak also says: “The border was totally open and anyone who wanted to enter could have done it. Sinai also was open, without oversight, and anyone could have passed through. In this way, many Arabs and Muslims took advantage of the possibility to enter”.
“They wanted to enter because the conditions in the Land were much better, Jews as well as Christian organizations such as the Templars and the Mandate government were investing money here. As a result, there was development, the standard of living rose and wages were higher than in the Arab countries, so it is no wonder that they wanted to enter”.
Research data shows that “the British did not want the Jews to establish a Jewish state. They forsook and betrayed the role that was assigned to them by the League of Nations and then by the UN to establish a national home for the Jewish People”.
The dimensions of Arab immigration that occurred under the British Mandate and under their protection cannot be stated exactly, but it is possible to get an idea from the words of a Muslim Sheikh at the a national assemble that was held in Jaffa on the 9th of April, 1940. “He said at that time, ‘Thanks to the British Mandate, we have grown from a half million to a million’. He said that in 1940, but by ’47, there were already a million and two hundred thousand”.
During the interview, Shpak-Lissak also said, relating to her research: “I examined documents of the Hagana, the Zionist archives and the state archives and I discovered how it happened that in Arab settlements the population increased not from natural growth and how, throughout the Land, new settlements were established or joined already existing settlements. There is research by Prof. David Grossman and Prof. Moshe Breuer that relates to the southern part of the Land and shows that at least 25,000 Egyptians settled in these villages”.
Regarding the Egyptian immigration into the Land of Israel Shpak-Lissak stated that “Most of the refugees in Gaza are Egyptian and the best proof of this is that in an interview in 2012, a Fatah representative plainly stated that ‘Half of us are Egyptian’. They have relatives in Egypt and other Arab countries. There is another proof that fifty thousand Houranis from southern Syria entered the Land freely and told Eliyahu Eilat, a Jewish Agency representative, that they can pass freely by way of the Yarmouk River. This is how the British increased the number of Muslims in the Land, all with the aim of preventing a Jewish majority and establishing a Jewish state”.
Regarding British interests, she explained: “The Arab states have oil, so it is very important to maintain good relations with the Arab countries, who do not want a Jewish state. Moreover, there is also the Suez Canal, which is controlled by Egypt and it is important to have good relations with Egypt. British imperialist interests dictated that she would support the Arabs and not the Jews”.
Dr. Shpak-Lissak also said that “During the First World War, the British army brought in Egyptian workers to work in the Egyptian military camps. They were brought here [to the Land of Israel] and remained, and in the Second World War, instead of using local residents they brought in Egyptian and Syrian workers. They brought laborers in trucks from Syria and Lebanon to work for the British army”.
Shpak-Lissak’s book is a continuation of the first part of her research in which she examined the era that preceded the Mandate period, on the events regarding the Muslim presence in the Land of Israel beginning in the year 640, when they came from the Arab Peninsula and conquered the Land. “All of the research, which includes testimonies by Muslim tourists, shows that in the entire period of the Arab occupation there was a Christian majority here. The Arabs did not settle in the Land. The Bedouins, who were the conquering army, proceeded southward and those who remained preferred to camp on the border of the desert. In the large cities in the Land there were approximately thirty thousand Arabs who served the regime and for the entire period until the middle of the 14th century, the Christians were the largest group. It was the Mamluks who destroyed the Christian majority, which had begun to shrink even prior; during the four hundred years of Arab rule, the population had decreased from three million to a half million. The Arabs destroyed the economy and the security of the Land. In addition to the massacres and slaughter, there was a gradual Islamization, which ended around the middle of the 14th century when the Christians were eliminated as the majority group”.
“The Jews have a history of at least a thousand years before the Arab conquest. We never left the Land by our free will. The first holocaust of the Jewish People was here. Anyone who knows history knows that we were here, and the Palestinians are trying to erase this. They used to claim that they are the Jebusites, another time it was that they are the Canaanites and then they were actually of Jewish extraction but there is no proof for this in the research. The fact that the Jews are not the most beloved of peoples has helped them. Goebbels said that if you tell a lie a thousand times it will be accepted. Indeed, the Arab and Palestinian propaganda has achieved this; they have told a total lie and anti-Semitism helped them along. The Europeans played no small part in this”.
In all of her interviews, Dr. Shpak-Lissak emphasizes that does not identify with the Israeli Right, however, she presents her research in Israel and abroad because she is disgusted with the lies and demonization of Israel.