David Ben Gurion

“ Can the Arabs be expected to agree to Jewish immigration and under what conditions? There is no deception worse than self-deception. We must face facts: if it depends on Arab consent, there will hardly be any Jewish immigration at all. It is critically important, politically as well as morally, that our position be unequivocal. Jewish immigration to Palestine needs no consent. We are returning as of right. History, international law and the irresistible life-need of a people nothing can destroy, these have ordained Palestine as the rightful home of the Jewish people. ”

“ The Arab problem really means political opposition by the Arabs to Jewish immigration. Many people, ignoring this simple but unpleasant truth, try to solve the problem where it does not exist. One solution offered is a bi-national State. If this means simply that all the inhabitants of Palestine, Jews and Arabs alike, must enjoy complete equality of rights not merely as individuals but also as national entities, which means the right freely to develop their language, culture, religion and so forth, then certainly no Jew, much less a Zionists, will hesitate to support it. ”

“ A Jew is no stranger, no intruder, no immigrant in Palestine. He is at home. History and the links of history, an attachment unbroken for thousands of years in spite of all vicissitudes, in spite of expulsion on expulsion, have made Palestine our inalienable Homeland. ”

“ But whatever proves to be the constitutional relation of Jewish Palestine to other countries, there must be a continued willingness and readiness to cooperate closely with the Arabs in Palestine as well as in neighboring countries. Once the bone of contention of Jewish immigration is removed by a clear-cut international decision on the one hand, and on the other, by assurance that the Jews are to control their own immigration, there is no serious reason to abandon hope of Jews and Arabs working together.
Zionism in action means building nation and State. ”

“ Palestine is incontestably the southern portion of our country. The Zionist claim it. We have suffered too much from sufferings resembling theirs, not to throw open wide to them the doors of Palestine. All those among them who are oppressed in certain retrograde countries are welcome. Let them settle in Palestine, but in an autonomous Palestine, connected with Syria by the sole bond of federation. Will not a Palestine enjoying wide internal autonomy be for them a sufficient guarantee?’
It is then on historical record that, when the decision was taken, there was no Arab opposition. ”

“ In industrial and maritime development, this is self-evident as there is practically no Arab industry and the sea is entirely vacant. But even in agriculture, either we occupied so-called uncultivable land, or, in the case of cultivated land, so heightened the yield that the same area not merely provides for additional settlers, but makes it possible for the old ones to enjoy a higher standard of living. Mass immigration and colonization on the largest possible scale, such as we must expect after this war, can be effected without the slightest need to displace the present population. ”

“ There is no conflict of economic interests between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, none between present population and new arrivals. The very fact that the Mufti and his friends, and the Chamberlain-MacDonald Government which tried to appease them, insisted on abolishing the principle of economic absorptive capacity as the only yardstick of Jewish immigration implies that the Arabs as well as the authors of the White Paper realized that on purely economic grounds there is room for a very large influx, which may turn Palestine into a Jewish country. ”

“ In the period between the last war and this, we saw a remarkable transfer of population between Greece and Turkey, from Asia Minor to Europe. Syria and Iraq may also have an interest economically as well as politically, in strengthening their position vis-à-vis their Turkish and Persian neighbors by transferring new Arab settlers to their country, and the only source of such settlers is Palestine. But this is a purely internal Arab problem, in which we may help if asked by the Arabs, but neither can nor ought take any initiative. It is not a prerequisite of large-scale Jewish settlement ”

“ Since the last war, Palestine has taken in more Jewish refugees than any other country, and in certain periods, when artificial limitations were relaxed, more than all other countries together. But in view of the magnitude of the coming refugee problem, the question is legitimately asked: How many more Jews can settle in Palestine on a sound economic basis?
No one can profess to give a clear-cut answer. Science has not yet discovered a sure method for predicting how many people can be settled on a given area anywhere. ”

“ Ours is a realistic generation. After the many disappointments of the last war and peace, men fear idealistic illusions and want to be sober and practical. And he must be a visionary, a dreamer, who cannot see how grim and bitter will be the reality of Jewish migration after this war, of Jewish urge for Palestine. ”

“ Others offer parity as a solution, or interpret a bi-national State to mean parity, so that, irrespective of their numerical strength Jews and Arabs should, in all main departments of Government, legislative and executive, be represented on a fifty-fifty basis. I was one of those who strongly advocated parity under the British Mandate. But I doubt whether a regime of parity without a Mandatory is practicable, or whether a self-governing State can carry on at all under what may mean a permanent deadlock. ”

“ At the London Conference in 1939, the Arab delegation made public a statement that, in the whole of western Palestine, there are only seven million dunams of cultivable land. The whole area is twenty-six and a half million dunams, so that, according to the Arabs, some nineteen million dunams are uncultivable and are certainly not cultivated by them. Practice has shown that what is uncultivated, and considered uncultivable, by the Arabs is cultivable and has been cultivated by Jews. ”

“ But they found it hard seriously to believe that Jews, who for centuries had become more and more denationalized, uprooted from their native heath, set apart in cities, and confined to a very few occupations and trades, who had forgotten their national language and loosened their national ties, who remained Jews largely because they could not become something else-that these could again become a nation, rebuild a country and recreate an independent economy and culture. ”

“ They will serve as the pedestal upon which to build the Jewish Commonwealth, and a Jewish Commonwealth means a Commonwealth of Justice. To build it will need maximal effort by the entire Jewish people, in the Diaspora and in Palestine. As part of the great human cause, America, England, Russia and other nations that champion humanity, may be expected to help us. But we must do the job ourselves. Palestine will be as Jewish as the Jews will make it. ”

“ Only a Jewish Administration can be equal to it, one completely identified with the needs and aims of Jewish settlers and whole-heartedly devoted to the upbuilding of the country. Jewish immigration in great volume is bound to result, in the not distant future, in a growing Jewish majority and the establishment of a self-governing Jewish Commonwealth. ”

“ Mass colonization on a large scale will be necessary to meet post-war needs of Jewish migration, and require a large outlay of capital from inter-governmental sources. The principal and indispensable readjustment for a task of such magnitude, however, is a new regime-political, legal and administrative, especially designed for the maximum development of the resources of Palestine and the absorption of the maximum number of immigrants in the shortest possible time. ”

“ Jewish industry employs 35,000 workers, who are increasingly harnessed to war production. Its output for war has increased eightfold since 1940. Many plants are working day and night.
‘The Jewish National Fund has acquired 133,000 dunams of land during the war period. Eighteen settlements were founded, breaking new ground for agricultural production and increasing space in the old and new settlements, whose manpower and resources are strained to the highest pitch. Despite the veering fortunes of war, tens of thousands of refugees have entered Palestine since September of 1939. ”

“ All this speculation about absorptive capacity is a peculiarly Zionist, or perhaps an anti-Zionist, invention. Absorptive capacity is no fixed and static measurement, but a fluctuating, dynamic quantum, which depends as much on human factors as on nature and area, if not more. No human factor is more decisive than need, and our desperate need creates immense absorptive capacity. ”

“ But it is not vainly that we fought for all the centuries to maintain our identity and over Jewishness, molded in the Homeland whence our Prophets bequeathed to humanity the still unrealized vision of human brotherhood and justice, love of neighbor, peace among nations. ”

“ The potentiality of agricultural development is certainly determined largely by the size of the country and the amount of land available for additional settlers. But even land is not a rigid datum, for although its length and breadth cannot be made more, it also has a third dimension-fertility or productivity-which can, as Palestine has shown. ”

“ Without bloodshed, without coercion, by a voluntary moral effort, assisted by the goodwill and sympathetic help of the whole Zionist Movement, our Halutzim set up a new type of communal and cooperative settlement-kibbutz and moshav-embodying an original human kinship of free creative work, mutual help, common interests and complete equality, and combining an ideal social structure with a sound economic foundation, so far not elsewhere known. And it has stood the test of time- the first kvutza was set up in 1910-and proved its economic and social superiority to other types. ”

“ The Arabs are among the rare races which are almost entirely, with insignificant exceptions, concentrated in their own territories. They are in possession of vast lands, and if they suffer at all it is from a paucity, rather than a surplus, of population. ”

“ In Palestine it encountered an advanced and progressive Jewish community, and a dynamic situation requiring constant initiative, unrelenting effort and creative energy. It was only human nature that the officials should feel themselves much more at ease dealing with Arabs and administering to their needs, where they could indulge their ingrained habit of maintaining the status quo. ”

“ In some quarters the idea of transfer is advanced as the perfect solving of the problem. Let us understand once and for all that to enable Palestine to absorb all the Jews who may be expected to want a new home in the post-war period, there is no economic necessity for any transfer whatsoever. In post-war Europe, resettlement of populations may become urgent, even inevitable,. ”

“ The number of inhabitants has increased fourfold...The process of agricultural colonization has steadily continued...yet more impressive has been the urban development. Tel Aviv, still a wholly Jewish town, has leaped to the first place among the towns of Palestine. Its population now probably exceeds 150,000...rising so quickly from a barren strip of sand it is quite startling...There is the same effect at Jerusalem. The population of Jerusalem has grown to 125,000 and of that some 75,000 are Jews. ”

“ The fundamental laws of the country, land and water regulations, labor legislation, fiscal and commercial statutes, must be entirely altered to match intensive settlement, the speedy building up of industries, the growth of town and village. ”

“ Of 500,000 souls, 125,000, adults are members of the Labor Federation. As nowhere else, they are active in every kind of work: in fields, factories and quarries, in mines on buildings, roads and railways, in harbors, fishing and aviation. ”

“ The growth of Haifa, too, which now has a population of over 100,000, is only less remarkable than that of Tel Aviv...about on-half of its inhabitants are now Jews and much of the business of its port is Jewish business....Broadly speaking, the remarkable urban development in Palestine has been Jewish. ”

“ Coming from all ends of the earth with diverse languages and cultural traditions, they are being welded into a new uniformity, Hebrew their common language, the rebuilding of Zion their common purpose. ”

“ It has an extensive hinterland, the whole of the Near and Middle East as far as India, as a market for its wares. And with their proved ability to develop industry in many countries, there is no reason why Jews should not make Palestine the industrial center of the Middle East. ”

“ One irrigated dunam yields at least as much as ten unirrigated. Each million of the three million dunams, when fully irrigated, makes room for from twenty-five to thirty thousand new settlers, leaving enough still for the former occupants, whether Jews or Arabs. ”

“ And they so increased their yield that they were able steadily to raise the standard of living, while gradually reducing the subsistence area from the 250 dunams per family necessary in the earlier stages of colonization to 100 dunams in unirrigated plain land, 50 dunams in the mountains where fruit trees were planted, and 20-25 dunams under irrigation. ”

“ The Administration was composed of an officialdom trained to administer backward peoples, used to dealing with primitive tribes, where its main duty was to preserve the existing order as far as possible. ”