Tangled Roots (2019–2020): Season 1, Episode 1 - Episode #1.1 - full transcript
Northern Ireland, Vietnam,
Korea, the Falklands, Bangladesh,
the Iran-Iraq War,
the Greco-Turkish War,
World Wars One and Two.
These are just a few of the conflicts
that broke out and ended
while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
goes on and on.
What is it about our conflict
that won't let it end?
Is what happened between us
really so unforgiveable
and insurmountable?
Or can it be that what happened
was replaced, as always,
with simple myths,
myths that enable the two sides
to live at peace with themselves
but not with each other?
The myths have their
measure of honor,
certainly in a conflict
over territory and honor,
but let's try to understand
the complexity of the situation.
Let's go back to this story again,
but let's try to tell it,
not as an argument
but as a lesson is taught.
Let's call it a refresher lesson.
Let's call it Homeland Lesson.
Our story begins
where it refuses to end,
Jerusalem.
In the mid-19th century Jerusalem
was .still a fairly peaceful town
which had dozed for 400 years
on the outskirts of the great
Ottoman Empire.
In the Ottoman Era
our region was a single territory.
No borders, no ID papers,
no passports.
If I live in Damascus today
I can move to Baghdad tomorrow.
No one will stop me
and ask where I'm going.
There isn't really an Israel
or a Palestine.
As the Ottomans see it our region
is part of the province of Syria
whose capital is Damascus.
Until the end of the 19th century
there is no Arab nationality
in the modern sense of the word,
and certainly not Palestinian
or Iraqi or Syrian
or Lebanese or whatever,
but, of course, I'm either a Muslim
or a non-Muslim, a Christian or a Jew.
The Land of Israel
has no borders yet,
but in the mid-19th century
it has a population of about 350,000,
almost all of them villagers.
The less than 20,000 Jews
constitute just 6% of the population
and they keep the fire burning
in the four holy cities:
Tsfat, Tiberias, Hebron
and Jerusalem,
whose Jews have good things
to say about their lives there.
The Jews and Muslims shared
common courtyards.
We were like a single family.
We were friends.
Our mothers poured their woes out
to the Muslim women,
who opened their hearts
to our mothers.
The Muslim women taught their tongues
to speak Ladino.
There are areas and districts
where they live together,
they all speak Arabic,
the neighborhood kids'
friends are Arabs
and the mothers
chat among themselves.
Still, it's complicated,
there's an Ottoman identity,
there's an Arab identity,
there's a Jewish identity
and a Muslim and Christian identity,
in the late 19th century
and early 20th century,
to be part of a whole
with much in common.
Jerusalem's pan-religious
coexistence
receives a tailwind from Istanbul,
capital of the empire,
which, in an attempt to close the growing gap
between itself and the Western superpowers,
tries to get with the times
through a series of reforms,
the Tanzimat.
There's the Citizenship Law of 1866
through which Jews, Christians
and Muslims are equal citizens.
So we have a situation where,
for the first time
in the history of Palestine,
there's equality
among the religions.
We see Jerusalem
start a gradual process
of going outside the walls
of the Old City
and spreading geographically.
European-style construction
begins outside the walls
and foreign consulates are built:
the British consulate,
the French consulate,
the Austro-Hungarian,
and they take the Jews who come
to Jerusalem under their auspices.
This makes Jerusalem very diverse,
international in certain ways.
The Jewish community of Jerusalem
also becomes more international
as more Ashkenazis
(Western Europeans) move in.
The Sephardi (Oriental) community
maintains the interfaith relations
that were cultivated both inside
and outside the walls.
Yosef Meyouhas, for instance,
writes of his new neighbors
in the village of Silwan:
We're realizing how similar the Arabs
are to us, spiritually as well.
They have preserved all the ancient
customs and values
that our people forgot
in our exile.
Today, by the way,
Meyouhas' house in Silwan
is occupied by members of Elad.
If Meyouhas came to Silwan today
he wouldn't understand what's going on
since Meyouhas didn't speak in terms
of sovereignty over Jerusalem
because the issue was clear:
Istanbul rules Jerusalem,
and now we're talking about
a common Jewish-Arab territory
in which we have to get along.
He had no intention
of taking over Jerusalem
or Silwan.
The situation is very complicated.
You could say that compared
to what came later
and what came before
it was the only period of
some sort of quality.
Demographically, too, the Jews
of Jerusalem achieve equality
and in the 1880s
they make up more than
half the city's population.
In Palestine on the whole
they're still a tiny minority
but the Jewish people
is already packing its bags
and heading for Palestine.
The new notions of nationalism
and enlightenment
end in Eastern Europe,
like the old notions,
with a series of pogroms
that force the Jews to emigrate to America
by the hundreds of thousands
and to Palestine by the thousands.
The First Aliyah (wave of immigration)
arrives in Palestine
and is nothing like we imagine.
Essentially, these were
traditional people,
they weren't thinking of a national homeland
and certainly not a Jewish state.
That didn't exist.
Then they build the settlements
we know today.
Hadera
Gedera
Nes Ziona
Rishon LeZion
Agricultural settlements which rely
on the locals to a great extent.
People from the neighboring
Bedouin tribes and other fellahin
from the neighboring villages
come to work in the settlements.
For example, in Nes Ziona
there were more Arabs than Jews
since some who came
to work in the settlements
built shacks, tents
and small houses
on the outskirts.
This is very similar
to other colonial settlements
the world over.
Beginning with the First Aliyah in 1882
many Palestinians realized
that something new
was happening here.
When Jews purchased land
it meant that the fellahin
who lived on the land
had to move out,
so the first settlements,
as the Arabs saw them,
were the beginning
of a process of uprooting
the Palestinian Arabs.
Including the immigrants
from Yemen,
the first Aliyah doubles
the number of Jews in Palestine
and purchases 100,000 acres of land,
an impressive number given the real estate
market's centuries-long dormancy.
Facilitating these purchases
and those that came afterward
is the influence of
the Ottoman land law
which was passed a few years earlier,
also as part of the Tanzimat reforms.
This law states
that if you see land
that isn't being cultivated
you can go there with a plough,
plough the land,
plant sorghum or barley,
and the next season you can register
the land under your name.
The fellahin's rich city-dwelling
relatives told them:
Don't register the land
under your name,
you'll have to pay taxes,
so people were persuaded
to register their land
under the names of their clans.
Thus grew the gap in status
between the villagers
and the big families in the cities.
They don't have the same
connection with the land
or the same need for the land
that the farmers have.
We know, for instance, that the Sursuq family
bought over 50,000 acres
in the Jezreel Valley for a song,
which, later, made it easier for the Zionists
who came in the '80s and afterwards
to purchase land.
If the Zionist movement
had begun in 1820
it couldn't have bought land
in the Ottoman state.
Over a decade after the First Aliyah
Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl comes into the picture,
giving the Zionist movement
both a plan of action
and great popularity.
Yousef al-Khalidi,
Jerusalem's worried mayor,
writes a letter to Herzl:
Good God,
the world is big enough.
There are still unsettled countries
where millions of Jews can be settled,
but for God's sake,
leave Palestine alone.
Herzl, on his part,
tries to reassure the mayor:
When Jews are allowed to immigrate,
bringing their intelligence,
their financial brilliance
and their entrepreneurial skills
to Palestine,
there's no doubt that the entire land's
benefit will be the happy outcome.
A local comes up and tells him:
Your immigration bothers me,
I don't like it, I oppose it.
How can you say:
It's okay, it means nothing"?
All the colonialists who took over
and exploited the locals said:
We bring progress,
we bring development,
when in fast they harmed
the local populace.
Khalidi says:
I understand your connection
with this land.
He understands the problem,
he realizes this is a deep issue
very early on.
He understands that Herzl
wants sovereignty.
There was no objection to
Jews living in Palestine.
The objection was to
the Zionists' aspiration
to establish a national Jewish homeland
in Palestine when it was already settled.
Herzl's statement that
if we Jews come here
the Arabs will benefit too,
is the Zionist narrative
that hasn't changed to this day.
You have to look at
the historical context.
On one hand,
they really didn't see the Arabs here
as a national collective.
On the other hand, it wasn't one.
Only a few Zionists understand
how Herzl's approach
is received by the other side.
We're mistaken about this big,
strong, zealous people,
a crude error of human judgment.
While we feel
a powerful love for our homeland,
land of our forefathers,
we forget that the nation
now living here
also has a sensitive heart
and loving soul.
Arabs, like all people,
are bound to their homeland
by strong chains.
Early on they realize
there's a problem,
that we don't relate to
the people living here
as part of our enterprise,
but nobody thinks there's an inherent
problem with the enterprise itself.
The Zionist movement
keeps trying to say:
This isn't a nation
or a distinct group,
they're part of the greater
Arab nation,
therefore our presence
doesn't undermine
their national existence,
we paid for the land,
we have no ethical problem here.
The notion of Arab nationality
is in fact in its infancy
and applies solely to the elite.
The notion of Jewish nationalism,
on the other hand,
takes a quantum leap when
the Second Aliyah comes to Palestine.
The Second Aliyah had vision,
the people were revolutionaries.
Revolution means
totally changing
the existing social order.
They don't come to settle the land
calmly with a little Zionist flag
under the flag of
the Ottoman Empire.
Their spirit is much more grounded,
they come to establish an actual country
whose government and center
will be here, not in Europe.
They start to form
political parties
and labor unions.
They organize to buy land
and settle on land
and they spoke of taking over
the land and the language
and all sorts of things.
Obviously they know
the Arabs are there,
but that's unimportant.
They see the Sephardis
but that's unimportant.
They see the ultra-Orthodox Jews
but that's unimportant.
They know what to do
better than anyone.
At the same time, the young Tel Aviv
creates a vibrant cultural scene
that makes Palestine's Jews
feel bigger than they really are.
Even Baron Rothschild, patron of
the First Aliyah, is impressed:
I've come to realize that the Zionist idea
has had a great impact on Palestine,
maybe even more than my money.
Khalil al-Sakakini
looks on from the other side:
I went into town
and saw the Jews preparing
to welcome Rothschild.
The schoolchildren went out
carrying flags.
The Arab nation needs
a man like Rothschild
who will spend money
to keep it alive.
Despite the despair
that sometimes grips me
I cannot help but be
a nationalist.
Sakakini is a true representative
of the cultural rebirth
who was influenced by
world events
and he realizes that the Arabs
also need to organize
around their collective
Arab identity
with Arabic and the Arab ethos
at the center.
Arabic journalism begins
to flourish as well
and in 1913 it reports the convening
of the First Arab National Congress
in Paris
and the call to establish an independent,
united Arab state in Syria,
Palestine and Transjordan.
The Haifa newspaper El Carmel
supports the idea
while the Jaffa newspaper La Palestine,
apparently the first time the name is used,
supports continued loyalty
to the Ottoman Empire.
Thus, just before WWI,
Arab nationalism
takes its first steps,
Jewish nationalism
takes its second steps,
but the Ottoman Empire
takes its last steps.
In 1914 WWI breaks out
between German and Austria-Hungary on one side
and France and Great Britain on the other.
It soon becomes a bloody
but static trench-war.
When the Ottomans
join the Germans
this enables the British to open
a second front against them.
They look for an ally
within the Ottoman Empire
and turn to Emir Hussein,
Sharif of Mecca.
In an exchange of letters between
McMahon, Governor of Egypt
and Abdullah, Hussein's son,
the British suggest that he
rebel against the Ottoman Empire
and receive in exchange rule over
greater Syria and Transjordan.
The agreement states:
If the British capture
the region from the Ottomans,
Sharif Hussein and his sons
will establish a kingdom in the Arab east.
The Arab party,
Sharif Hussein's party,
fulfills its obligation in 1916
and joins the British
in fighting the Ottomans.
The British are suggesting
that Abdullah think
much bigger,
not only of their government in Hejaz
but of an Islamic caliphate.
They tell him that his father
should be a caliph.
Abdullah and his father
don't think in these terms,
but when the biggest,
strongest empire in the world
makes you an offer like that
it's hard to refuse.
In this war not only is blood
spilled like water, fuel is too,
and the oil fields
of the Middle East
attract the attention
of the French.
They demand from their British allies
part of the future spoils of war.
MP Mark Sykes meets with
François Picot,
secretary of the French embassy,
and they divide between Britain and France
the same territory that the British promised
Sharif Hussein and his sons.
Great Britain made promises
left and right
to different entities
for a simple reason:
It was in dire straits.
The way in which Sykes and Picot
divided the territory
is typified by Sykes'
immortal line:
I would like to draw a line
from the E in Acre
to the last "K" in Kirkuk.
The officials take a map
of the Middle East
and draw a very rough line
defining the borders
which are to become the borders
of the current Middle East.
Sykes-Picot is the basis
for the modern state of Lebanon,
the modem state of Syria,
the modern state of Iraq,
the creation of Jordan
and the creation of Palestine
as a political entity
which would eventually become
the Mandate.
The whole idea of ISIS
is to erase the colonial borders
created by the superpowers,
Great Britain and France.
See, this is the so-called border
of Sykes-Picot.
Praise Allah, we don't recognize it
and we will never recognize it.
This is not the first border we will break,
we will break all the borders also
but we'll start with this, Allah willing.
The idea is to create an Islamic caliphate,
to turn the Middle East
back into a single political entity
based on Islam.
While McMahon promises
Hussein and his sons one thing
and Sykes promises
the French something else,
British Foreign Secretary Balfour
promises the Jews yet another thing.
He does so with the influence of his good
friend Dr. Chaim Weizmann the chemist,
who, despite being a Zionist,
didn't move from Russia to Palestine
but to England instead.
When the war breaks out
he develops for the British war effort
acetone from com,
but more than that he befriends
senior government officials,
including Lord Balfour,
former prime minister,
appointed foreign minister in 1916.
Weizmann was the Jew
the British had always been looking for.
Like Herzl he's very involved in
establishing and expanding
the Zionist enterprise.
He understood the balance of power
within the British Parliament
and was an expert
at manipulating it.
The idea that Weizmann
tries to sell to Balfour
and his powerful associates
isn't so new,
it's deeply entrenched
in their religious faith
and the imperial heritage
they represent.
Weizmann is joined
in his energetic lobbying
by Postmaster General
for His Majesty, Herbert Samuel,
a Jew, who writes:
The entire Protestant world
will view with favor
a renewed Hebrew presence
in the land of the Bible.
The annexation of Palestine
and its settlement by Jews
will enable Great Britain
to fulfill its destiny once again
as civilizer of the underprivileged
countries.
The empire bears
the white man's burden.
The British Empire has a mission,
to civilize the world.
It wants to rule the world
while seeing itself
as a catalyst for progress
toward a better, healthier,
more educated future, etc., etc.,
and Zionism,
as represented by Weizmann,
is a perfect fit.
These are people who understand
the British language,
the Jews we bring inand support
will be on our side,
and that works for them.
Weizmann encourages Balfour
to believe that American Jewry
can be theirs, too,
that the Jews will convince
American president Wilson
to finally join the war
and win it.
And thus writes Foreign Secretary Balfour
in November 1917
in a letter containing
a historic declaration:
His Majesty's Government
view with favor
the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people,
and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object,
it being clearly understood
that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights
of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine.
The Jews saw the Balfour Declaration
as a seminal event
since the great superpower
that was taking over Palestine
was letting them build a homeland
in the Land of Israel.
What else could they ask?
What more could they ask?
It was an amazing
diplomatic achievement.
Here the seed of destruction
was planted.
It would be impossible
to establish a homeland
without undermining the rights
of the non-Jews
who constituted the majority.
The Jews are granted
national rights
but all the others
are called "minorities
and are granted
civil and cultural rights
but not collective national rights.
As the Palestinian Arabs saw it,
it was clear,
the British Empire supports
the Jewish presence in Palestine
and the turning point
for many Palestinians isn't '48 or '36,
it's the Balfour Declaration
in 1917.
The Jews of the pre-Zionist era
also feel uncomfortable.
Haim Ben-Kiki writes:
The Sephardic community,
whose soul intertwined
for several generations
with the Arab people,
felt that something unpleasant
is taking place here,
that there's something wrong
with the whole movement.
Some people,
mainly Sephardim living in Tiberias,
Jerusalem and Hebron, said:
We live here with the Arabs
and we're part of
the Middle Eastern culture
and we want to build a common life
here with the Arabs
so the Balfour Declaration
is against us, not for us.
We're Oriental, not Occidental.
The Jews are an Oriental people,
not Occidental.
They were the minority.
In the euphoria following
the Balfour Declaration
no one spoke about
more rights for Arabs.
Remember, the Jews
were the minority
and as a minority
it's rare to think about
the majority's rights.
It's almost unprecedented,
a minority thinking about
the majority's rights,
which makes this fascinating
from every angle.
In December 1917 General Allenby
defeats the Ottomans
and enters the gates
of Jerusalem.
The Arab townspeople welcome
the representative of the Empire
which promised Sharif Hussein
an Arab kingdom.
The Jews enthusiastically greet
the representative of the Empire
which promised them a homeland.
The French general who accompanies Allenby
holds onto promises of his own.
When this mishmash of contradicting
agreements and promises blows up
Allenby won't be here
to clear up the mess,
but Ronald Storrs, military governor
of Jerusalem, will report:
Two hours of Arab complaints make me run
for the nearest synagogue,
and a concentrated dose of Zionist
propaganda makes me want to convert to Islam.
Over 100 years later
the Palestinians still demonstrate
on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Israeli prime minister's residence
is on Balfour Street.
The agreement between Sykes
and Picot still rocks the Middle East
and the global superpowers are still
up to their necks in it.
We deserve full rights!
But as the conflict's international career
drags on,
does any of the local tradition
of neighborly relations
and interfaith tolerance remain?
Perhaps it does.
That's what makes it so complicated.
Korea, the Falklands, Bangladesh,
the Iran-Iraq War,
the Greco-Turkish War,
World Wars One and Two.
These are just a few of the conflicts
that broke out and ended
while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
goes on and on.
What is it about our conflict
that won't let it end?
Is what happened between us
really so unforgiveable
and insurmountable?
Or can it be that what happened
was replaced, as always,
with simple myths,
myths that enable the two sides
to live at peace with themselves
but not with each other?
The myths have their
measure of honor,
certainly in a conflict
over territory and honor,
but let's try to understand
the complexity of the situation.
Let's go back to this story again,
but let's try to tell it,
not as an argument
but as a lesson is taught.
Let's call it a refresher lesson.
Let's call it Homeland Lesson.
Our story begins
where it refuses to end,
Jerusalem.
In the mid-19th century Jerusalem
was .still a fairly peaceful town
which had dozed for 400 years
on the outskirts of the great
Ottoman Empire.
In the Ottoman Era
our region was a single territory.
No borders, no ID papers,
no passports.
If I live in Damascus today
I can move to Baghdad tomorrow.
No one will stop me
and ask where I'm going.
There isn't really an Israel
or a Palestine.
As the Ottomans see it our region
is part of the province of Syria
whose capital is Damascus.
Until the end of the 19th century
there is no Arab nationality
in the modern sense of the word,
and certainly not Palestinian
or Iraqi or Syrian
or Lebanese or whatever,
but, of course, I'm either a Muslim
or a non-Muslim, a Christian or a Jew.
The Land of Israel
has no borders yet,
but in the mid-19th century
it has a population of about 350,000,
almost all of them villagers.
The less than 20,000 Jews
constitute just 6% of the population
and they keep the fire burning
in the four holy cities:
Tsfat, Tiberias, Hebron
and Jerusalem,
whose Jews have good things
to say about their lives there.
The Jews and Muslims shared
common courtyards.
We were like a single family.
We were friends.
Our mothers poured their woes out
to the Muslim women,
who opened their hearts
to our mothers.
The Muslim women taught their tongues
to speak Ladino.
There are areas and districts
where they live together,
they all speak Arabic,
the neighborhood kids'
friends are Arabs
and the mothers
chat among themselves.
Still, it's complicated,
there's an Ottoman identity,
there's an Arab identity,
there's a Jewish identity
and a Muslim and Christian identity,
in the late 19th century
and early 20th century,
to be part of a whole
with much in common.
Jerusalem's pan-religious
coexistence
receives a tailwind from Istanbul,
capital of the empire,
which, in an attempt to close the growing gap
between itself and the Western superpowers,
tries to get with the times
through a series of reforms,
the Tanzimat.
There's the Citizenship Law of 1866
through which Jews, Christians
and Muslims are equal citizens.
So we have a situation where,
for the first time
in the history of Palestine,
there's equality
among the religions.
We see Jerusalem
start a gradual process
of going outside the walls
of the Old City
and spreading geographically.
European-style construction
begins outside the walls
and foreign consulates are built:
the British consulate,
the French consulate,
the Austro-Hungarian,
and they take the Jews who come
to Jerusalem under their auspices.
This makes Jerusalem very diverse,
international in certain ways.
The Jewish community of Jerusalem
also becomes more international
as more Ashkenazis
(Western Europeans) move in.
The Sephardi (Oriental) community
maintains the interfaith relations
that were cultivated both inside
and outside the walls.
Yosef Meyouhas, for instance,
writes of his new neighbors
in the village of Silwan:
We're realizing how similar the Arabs
are to us, spiritually as well.
They have preserved all the ancient
customs and values
that our people forgot
in our exile.
Today, by the way,
Meyouhas' house in Silwan
is occupied by members of Elad.
If Meyouhas came to Silwan today
he wouldn't understand what's going on
since Meyouhas didn't speak in terms
of sovereignty over Jerusalem
because the issue was clear:
Istanbul rules Jerusalem,
and now we're talking about
a common Jewish-Arab territory
in which we have to get along.
He had no intention
of taking over Jerusalem
or Silwan.
The situation is very complicated.
You could say that compared
to what came later
and what came before
it was the only period of
some sort of quality.
Demographically, too, the Jews
of Jerusalem achieve equality
and in the 1880s
they make up more than
half the city's population.
In Palestine on the whole
they're still a tiny minority
but the Jewish people
is already packing its bags
and heading for Palestine.
The new notions of nationalism
and enlightenment
end in Eastern Europe,
like the old notions,
with a series of pogroms
that force the Jews to emigrate to America
by the hundreds of thousands
and to Palestine by the thousands.
The First Aliyah (wave of immigration)
arrives in Palestine
and is nothing like we imagine.
Essentially, these were
traditional people,
they weren't thinking of a national homeland
and certainly not a Jewish state.
That didn't exist.
Then they build the settlements
we know today.
Hadera
Gedera
Nes Ziona
Rishon LeZion
Agricultural settlements which rely
on the locals to a great extent.
People from the neighboring
Bedouin tribes and other fellahin
from the neighboring villages
come to work in the settlements.
For example, in Nes Ziona
there were more Arabs than Jews
since some who came
to work in the settlements
built shacks, tents
and small houses
on the outskirts.
This is very similar
to other colonial settlements
the world over.
Beginning with the First Aliyah in 1882
many Palestinians realized
that something new
was happening here.
When Jews purchased land
it meant that the fellahin
who lived on the land
had to move out,
so the first settlements,
as the Arabs saw them,
were the beginning
of a process of uprooting
the Palestinian Arabs.
Including the immigrants
from Yemen,
the first Aliyah doubles
the number of Jews in Palestine
and purchases 100,000 acres of land,
an impressive number given the real estate
market's centuries-long dormancy.
Facilitating these purchases
and those that came afterward
is the influence of
the Ottoman land law
which was passed a few years earlier,
also as part of the Tanzimat reforms.
This law states
that if you see land
that isn't being cultivated
you can go there with a plough,
plough the land,
plant sorghum or barley,
and the next season you can register
the land under your name.
The fellahin's rich city-dwelling
relatives told them:
Don't register the land
under your name,
you'll have to pay taxes,
so people were persuaded
to register their land
under the names of their clans.
Thus grew the gap in status
between the villagers
and the big families in the cities.
They don't have the same
connection with the land
or the same need for the land
that the farmers have.
We know, for instance, that the Sursuq family
bought over 50,000 acres
in the Jezreel Valley for a song,
which, later, made it easier for the Zionists
who came in the '80s and afterwards
to purchase land.
If the Zionist movement
had begun in 1820
it couldn't have bought land
in the Ottoman state.
Over a decade after the First Aliyah
Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl comes into the picture,
giving the Zionist movement
both a plan of action
and great popularity.
Yousef al-Khalidi,
Jerusalem's worried mayor,
writes a letter to Herzl:
Good God,
the world is big enough.
There are still unsettled countries
where millions of Jews can be settled,
but for God's sake,
leave Palestine alone.
Herzl, on his part,
tries to reassure the mayor:
When Jews are allowed to immigrate,
bringing their intelligence,
their financial brilliance
and their entrepreneurial skills
to Palestine,
there's no doubt that the entire land's
benefit will be the happy outcome.
A local comes up and tells him:
Your immigration bothers me,
I don't like it, I oppose it.
How can you say:
It's okay, it means nothing"?
All the colonialists who took over
and exploited the locals said:
We bring progress,
we bring development,
when in fast they harmed
the local populace.
Khalidi says:
I understand your connection
with this land.
He understands the problem,
he realizes this is a deep issue
very early on.
He understands that Herzl
wants sovereignty.
There was no objection to
Jews living in Palestine.
The objection was to
the Zionists' aspiration
to establish a national Jewish homeland
in Palestine when it was already settled.
Herzl's statement that
if we Jews come here
the Arabs will benefit too,
is the Zionist narrative
that hasn't changed to this day.
You have to look at
the historical context.
On one hand,
they really didn't see the Arabs here
as a national collective.
On the other hand, it wasn't one.
Only a few Zionists understand
how Herzl's approach
is received by the other side.
We're mistaken about this big,
strong, zealous people,
a crude error of human judgment.
While we feel
a powerful love for our homeland,
land of our forefathers,
we forget that the nation
now living here
also has a sensitive heart
and loving soul.
Arabs, like all people,
are bound to their homeland
by strong chains.
Early on they realize
there's a problem,
that we don't relate to
the people living here
as part of our enterprise,
but nobody thinks there's an inherent
problem with the enterprise itself.
The Zionist movement
keeps trying to say:
This isn't a nation
or a distinct group,
they're part of the greater
Arab nation,
therefore our presence
doesn't undermine
their national existence,
we paid for the land,
we have no ethical problem here.
The notion of Arab nationality
is in fact in its infancy
and applies solely to the elite.
The notion of Jewish nationalism,
on the other hand,
takes a quantum leap when
the Second Aliyah comes to Palestine.
The Second Aliyah had vision,
the people were revolutionaries.
Revolution means
totally changing
the existing social order.
They don't come to settle the land
calmly with a little Zionist flag
under the flag of
the Ottoman Empire.
Their spirit is much more grounded,
they come to establish an actual country
whose government and center
will be here, not in Europe.
They start to form
political parties
and labor unions.
They organize to buy land
and settle on land
and they spoke of taking over
the land and the language
and all sorts of things.
Obviously they know
the Arabs are there,
but that's unimportant.
They see the Sephardis
but that's unimportant.
They see the ultra-Orthodox Jews
but that's unimportant.
They know what to do
better than anyone.
At the same time, the young Tel Aviv
creates a vibrant cultural scene
that makes Palestine's Jews
feel bigger than they really are.
Even Baron Rothschild, patron of
the First Aliyah, is impressed:
I've come to realize that the Zionist idea
has had a great impact on Palestine,
maybe even more than my money.
Khalil al-Sakakini
looks on from the other side:
I went into town
and saw the Jews preparing
to welcome Rothschild.
The schoolchildren went out
carrying flags.
The Arab nation needs
a man like Rothschild
who will spend money
to keep it alive.
Despite the despair
that sometimes grips me
I cannot help but be
a nationalist.
Sakakini is a true representative
of the cultural rebirth
who was influenced by
world events
and he realizes that the Arabs
also need to organize
around their collective
Arab identity
with Arabic and the Arab ethos
at the center.
Arabic journalism begins
to flourish as well
and in 1913 it reports the convening
of the First Arab National Congress
in Paris
and the call to establish an independent,
united Arab state in Syria,
Palestine and Transjordan.
The Haifa newspaper El Carmel
supports the idea
while the Jaffa newspaper La Palestine,
apparently the first time the name is used,
supports continued loyalty
to the Ottoman Empire.
Thus, just before WWI,
Arab nationalism
takes its first steps,
Jewish nationalism
takes its second steps,
but the Ottoman Empire
takes its last steps.
In 1914 WWI breaks out
between German and Austria-Hungary on one side
and France and Great Britain on the other.
It soon becomes a bloody
but static trench-war.
When the Ottomans
join the Germans
this enables the British to open
a second front against them.
They look for an ally
within the Ottoman Empire
and turn to Emir Hussein,
Sharif of Mecca.
In an exchange of letters between
McMahon, Governor of Egypt
and Abdullah, Hussein's son,
the British suggest that he
rebel against the Ottoman Empire
and receive in exchange rule over
greater Syria and Transjordan.
The agreement states:
If the British capture
the region from the Ottomans,
Sharif Hussein and his sons
will establish a kingdom in the Arab east.
The Arab party,
Sharif Hussein's party,
fulfills its obligation in 1916
and joins the British
in fighting the Ottomans.
The British are suggesting
that Abdullah think
much bigger,
not only of their government in Hejaz
but of an Islamic caliphate.
They tell him that his father
should be a caliph.
Abdullah and his father
don't think in these terms,
but when the biggest,
strongest empire in the world
makes you an offer like that
it's hard to refuse.
In this war not only is blood
spilled like water, fuel is too,
and the oil fields
of the Middle East
attract the attention
of the French.
They demand from their British allies
part of the future spoils of war.
MP Mark Sykes meets with
François Picot,
secretary of the French embassy,
and they divide between Britain and France
the same territory that the British promised
Sharif Hussein and his sons.
Great Britain made promises
left and right
to different entities
for a simple reason:
It was in dire straits.
The way in which Sykes and Picot
divided the territory
is typified by Sykes'
immortal line:
I would like to draw a line
from the E in Acre
to the last "K" in Kirkuk.
The officials take a map
of the Middle East
and draw a very rough line
defining the borders
which are to become the borders
of the current Middle East.
Sykes-Picot is the basis
for the modern state of Lebanon,
the modem state of Syria,
the modern state of Iraq,
the creation of Jordan
and the creation of Palestine
as a political entity
which would eventually become
the Mandate.
The whole idea of ISIS
is to erase the colonial borders
created by the superpowers,
Great Britain and France.
See, this is the so-called border
of Sykes-Picot.
Praise Allah, we don't recognize it
and we will never recognize it.
This is not the first border we will break,
we will break all the borders also
but we'll start with this, Allah willing.
The idea is to create an Islamic caliphate,
to turn the Middle East
back into a single political entity
based on Islam.
While McMahon promises
Hussein and his sons one thing
and Sykes promises
the French something else,
British Foreign Secretary Balfour
promises the Jews yet another thing.
He does so with the influence of his good
friend Dr. Chaim Weizmann the chemist,
who, despite being a Zionist,
didn't move from Russia to Palestine
but to England instead.
When the war breaks out
he develops for the British war effort
acetone from com,
but more than that he befriends
senior government officials,
including Lord Balfour,
former prime minister,
appointed foreign minister in 1916.
Weizmann was the Jew
the British had always been looking for.
Like Herzl he's very involved in
establishing and expanding
the Zionist enterprise.
He understood the balance of power
within the British Parliament
and was an expert
at manipulating it.
The idea that Weizmann
tries to sell to Balfour
and his powerful associates
isn't so new,
it's deeply entrenched
in their religious faith
and the imperial heritage
they represent.
Weizmann is joined
in his energetic lobbying
by Postmaster General
for His Majesty, Herbert Samuel,
a Jew, who writes:
The entire Protestant world
will view with favor
a renewed Hebrew presence
in the land of the Bible.
The annexation of Palestine
and its settlement by Jews
will enable Great Britain
to fulfill its destiny once again
as civilizer of the underprivileged
countries.
The empire bears
the white man's burden.
The British Empire has a mission,
to civilize the world.
It wants to rule the world
while seeing itself
as a catalyst for progress
toward a better, healthier,
more educated future, etc., etc.,
and Zionism,
as represented by Weizmann,
is a perfect fit.
These are people who understand
the British language,
the Jews we bring inand support
will be on our side,
and that works for them.
Weizmann encourages Balfour
to believe that American Jewry
can be theirs, too,
that the Jews will convince
American president Wilson
to finally join the war
and win it.
And thus writes Foreign Secretary Balfour
in November 1917
in a letter containing
a historic declaration:
His Majesty's Government
view with favor
the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people,
and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object,
it being clearly understood
that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights
of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine.
The Jews saw the Balfour Declaration
as a seminal event
since the great superpower
that was taking over Palestine
was letting them build a homeland
in the Land of Israel.
What else could they ask?
What more could they ask?
It was an amazing
diplomatic achievement.
Here the seed of destruction
was planted.
It would be impossible
to establish a homeland
without undermining the rights
of the non-Jews
who constituted the majority.
The Jews are granted
national rights
but all the others
are called "minorities
and are granted
civil and cultural rights
but not collective national rights.
As the Palestinian Arabs saw it,
it was clear,
the British Empire supports
the Jewish presence in Palestine
and the turning point
for many Palestinians isn't '48 or '36,
it's the Balfour Declaration
in 1917.
The Jews of the pre-Zionist era
also feel uncomfortable.
Haim Ben-Kiki writes:
The Sephardic community,
whose soul intertwined
for several generations
with the Arab people,
felt that something unpleasant
is taking place here,
that there's something wrong
with the whole movement.
Some people,
mainly Sephardim living in Tiberias,
Jerusalem and Hebron, said:
We live here with the Arabs
and we're part of
the Middle Eastern culture
and we want to build a common life
here with the Arabs
so the Balfour Declaration
is against us, not for us.
We're Oriental, not Occidental.
The Jews are an Oriental people,
not Occidental.
They were the minority.
In the euphoria following
the Balfour Declaration
no one spoke about
more rights for Arabs.
Remember, the Jews
were the minority
and as a minority
it's rare to think about
the majority's rights.
It's almost unprecedented,
a minority thinking about
the majority's rights,
which makes this fascinating
from every angle.
In December 1917 General Allenby
defeats the Ottomans
and enters the gates
of Jerusalem.
The Arab townspeople welcome
the representative of the Empire
which promised Sharif Hussein
an Arab kingdom.
The Jews enthusiastically greet
the representative of the Empire
which promised them a homeland.
The French general who accompanies Allenby
holds onto promises of his own.
When this mishmash of contradicting
agreements and promises blows up
Allenby won't be here
to clear up the mess,
but Ronald Storrs, military governor
of Jerusalem, will report:
Two hours of Arab complaints make me run
for the nearest synagogue,
and a concentrated dose of Zionist
propaganda makes me want to convert to Islam.
Over 100 years later
the Palestinians still demonstrate
on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Israeli prime minister's residence
is on Balfour Street.
The agreement between Sykes
and Picot still rocks the Middle East
and the global superpowers are still
up to their necks in it.
We deserve full rights!
But as the conflict's international career
drags on,
does any of the local tradition
of neighborly relations
and interfaith tolerance remain?
Perhaps it does.
That's what makes it so complicated.