Personally, I find any use of the term 'Settler-Colonialism' as denoting a great sin, a crime against humanity or genocide laughable. Of course many of the indignant virtue signalers of today would not have headed to the 19th century frontiers seeking land and prosperity because of fear, weakness or inherited wealth but for the majority of people settler-colonialism was their only way out of perpetual povery and many tried and died without success. The 'notables' class of Palestine proudly claimed succession from tribes of Arabian settler-colonialists who arrived in 'Palestine' in the 7th century. Those conquerors were more colonialists than settlers, they lived off the existing populations, they didn't join them.

Were the Zionist Settler-Colonialists?

from Zionism and the Palestinians - Flapan Simha

The thesis that Zionist colonisation in Palestine was a product of the surge of European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century, and that Israel therefore originated as a colonial settler state,1 is inaccurate. Jewish settlement in Palestine before 1948 was not the result of a military conquest of the native population by the white settler population. All the colonial states in Africa and Latin America were

194 The Policy of Economic and Social Separation 195

based on an identity between the settlers and a European power which conquered and expropriated the land and resources of the native population. In Palestine the Jewish settlers were not identical to the colonial power which, given her important interests in other Arab countries, was ambiguous about encouraging a Jewish national home. Thus, Jews purchased land from the Arabs on the open market, subject to increasing restrictions by the colonial administration. In 1948, Jews owned less than 12 per cent of the cultivated land.

The relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine were not those of colonisers and natives. This is borne out by comparing Palestine to the North African countries which were subjected tofrench colonisation. The structure of employment and land ownership was such as to reduce the native population to dependence and prevent its autonomous development. By contrast, in Palestine, the Arab sector of the economy developed at a quickened pace between 1917-48; what emerged was not the exploitation of one sector by another, but the competition between two separate national economies, each growing rapidly, accompanied by a crisis of modernisation in the Arab sector.

In 1917, Arab industry in Palestine was primitive and the area served as a hinterland for Beirut and Damascus. But by 1936, 23 per cent of the Arab population of Palestine was engaged in manufacture, construction, transport and commerce, while the number in agriculture and other branches of primary production was 62 per cent. (The remainder were in the services sector.) Due to the impact of the Second World War, by 1945 the number in primary production had dropped to 50 per cent, and the percentage in the above sectors increased from 23 per cent to 30 per cent. Likewise, output per person increased substantially. In the area of land ownership there is a marked disparity between the patterns in the Maghreb and in Palestine:2

The Policy of Economic and Social Separation 195

based on an identity between the settlers and a European power which conquered and expropriated the land and resources of the native population. In Palestine the Jewish settlers were not identical to the colonial power which, given her important interests in other Arab countries, was ambiguous about encouraging a Jewish national home. Thus, Jews purchased land from the Arabs on the open market, subject to increasing restrictions by the colonial administration. In 1948, Jews owned less than 12 per cent of the cultivated land.

The relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine were not those of colonisers and natives. This is borne out by comparing Palestine to the North African countries which were subjected to French colonisation. The structure of employment and land ownership was such as to reduce the native population to dependence and prevent its autonomous development. By contrast, in Palestine, the Arab sector of the economy developed at a quickened pace between 1917-48; what emerged was not the exploitation of one sector by another, but the competition between tw o separate national economies, each growing rapidly, accompanied by a crisis of modernisation in the Arab sector.

In 1917, Arab industry in Palestine was primitive and the area served as a hinterland for Beirut and Damascus. But by 1936, 23 per cent of the Arab population of Palestine was engaged in manufacture, construction, transport and commerce, while the number in agriculture and other branches of primary production was 62 per cent. (The remainder were in the services sector.) Due to the impact of the Second World War, by 1945 the number in primary production had dropped to 50 per cent, and the percentage in the above sectors increased from 23 per cent to 30 per cent. Likewise, output per person increased substantially. In the area of land ownership there is a marked disparity between the patterns in the Maghreb and in Palestine:2

Table 6.1: Land Ownership in North Africa and Palestine

Thus, in contrast to European ownership in the Maghreb, Jews in Palestine owned less land than their percentage in the population would warrant. This reflects the overwhelmingly urban concentration of the Jewish population and the lack of absentee Jewish land ownership. A more detailed breakdown shows that European colonialists in Algeria engaged in agriculture owned 147 hectares per head, while the Jewish agricultural population had an average of 3.0 hectares per head.3

A comparison related to an extended period shows the difference between a colonial pattern of development in agriculture and the course of Jewish settlement in Palestine. While the increase in the total agri cultural revenue in Algeria between 1880 and 1955 barely kept pace with population growth, the European sector managed to increase its dominance of the sector. By contrast, in Palestine both Jewish and Arab agricultural income increased rapidly over a much shorter period, spurred by the rapid population growth due to Jewish immigration and a high rate of natural increase by the Arab population.4

196 The Policy of Economic and Social Separation

Table 6.2: Agricultural Revenue in North Africa and Palestine

The Policy of Economic and Social Separation 197

A similar pattem applies to the industrial and commercial sectors. For the whole of North Africa in 1955, two-thirds of the income in the non-agricultural sector went to the European population which made up less than one quarter of the non-agricultural population. Per capita, the colonialists received nine times the income of the natives. In Palestine the difference in income per head was about 2.75:1. Actually, the difference was even less because the age structure of the two populations was radically different: the Jewish population was predominantly of working age, while the Arab population had a large number of children. Thus, in 1936 the output per employee was in the ratio of only about 2:1. By 1946, the gap narrowed to 1.5:1.5 In Algeria the European sector took 70 per cent of non-agricultural income in 1880, and 75 per cent of a vastly increased total in 1955.6 It is significant that the gap did not increase in Palestine during a period of rapid industrialisation. The non-agricultural sector in Palestine also experienced fast development, spurred on in part by the Second World War. The output per worker in the Arab sector grew four times between 1936 and 1945. Admittedly, this was partially offset by an increase in the number of dependents per worker and inflation.7

The non-employment of Arab labour in the Jewish sector had its impact on the pattem of economic development. In Algeria, over 70 per cent of native agricultural income was received for work on European-owned plantations;8 overall the European income per capita was seven and a half times the native income (it was nine times in Morocco and seven times in Tunisia).9 In Palestine, the difference in the per capita income never exceeded three times between Jews and Arabs, and the total income of each national sector was roughly in balance.10 The campaign for Jewish labour in the Jewish sector prevented the integration of the Arab peasantry into a colonial system of exploitation; it did not, however, prevent the growing crisis of the Arab agricultural sector - due to the impact of the rapid development of capitalism in Palestine.

The Zionist version of the benefits brought to the mass of the Arab population as a result of Jewish settlement in Palestine is just as misleading as the Arab version of Zionism as a colonial phenomenon. No doubt the economic level of the Arab community in Palestine was higher than that of the Arab population in neighbouring countries. Annual per capita income for an Arab was £27 (sterling) in Palestine, as compared to £12 in Egypt and £16 in Syria and Lebanon. The wages of the Palestine Arab worker were four to five times higher than those in Egypt. Annual government expenditures per capita were £4.4 for an

198 The Policy of Economic and Social Separation

Arab in Palestine as opposed to £2.3 per person in Egypt and £1.8 in Lebanon.11 Public services, especially education and health services, expanded, as reflected in the dramatic drop in the infant mortality rate, which gave Palestine the highest rate of population growth in the world at that time. The urban areas affected by Jewish development - Haifa, Jerusalem amd Jaffa - were growing faster than the purely Arab towns. The expansion of Arab industry and citriculture was largely financed by capital obtained from Jewish land purchase.12

The process of rapid capitalist development of the country cannot be attributed only to Zionist colonisation, for it also resulted from infrastructure investments by the Mandatory Government (as well as military expenditures), and from a high rate of population growth in the Arab sector. The socio-economic transformation of Palestine was faster than that of any other Middle Eastern country, but it brought in its wake problems that were not fundamentally different from those of other developing countries - landlessness among the peasants and under-employment among the fast-growing urban masses. It also led to a rapid social transformation of Arab society, resulting in the creation of new classes and a new structure which might have served as the basis for an agreement with Zionism, were it not for the fact that the political conflict developed in conditions of economic segregation. As the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine summarised in 1947:

The economic life presents the complex phenomenon of two distinctive economies -one Jewish and one Arab, closely involved with one another and yet in essential features separate … this economic separateness … finds its expression in certain facts which may be briefly summarised as follows:

1. Apart from a small number of experts, no Jewish workers are employed in Arab undertakings and apart from citrus groves, very few Arabs are employed in Jewish enterprises … Government service, the Potash Company and the oil refinery are almost the only places where Arabs and Jews meet as co-workers in the same organizations.

2. There are considerable differences between the rates of wage for Arab and Jewish workers in similar occupations, differences in the size of investments and differences in productivity and labour costs which can only be explained by the lack of direct competition be tween the two groups.

The Policy of Economic and Social Separation 199

3. Arab agriculture is based to a considerable extent on cereal pro duction and tends to be of a subsistence kind. Only about 20%-25% of Arab agricultural produce (excluding citrus) is marketed - Jewish agriculture is largely intensive and cash crop farming. About 75% of Jewish agricultural produce is sold on the market.

4. The occupational structure of the Jewish population is similar to that of some homogenous industrial countries, while that of the Arabs corresponds more nearly to a subsistence type of agricultural society. [Report of the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UN SCOP) 1947.]

The economic separation of the two communities, which had a profound impact on the possibilities of political co-operation, was essentially the result of two factors: (1) the policy of the Zionist leadership aimed at the establishment of a fully autonomous and independent Jewish economic sector in order to create a new type of Jewish society, which would reverse the 'economic pyramid' of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, with its preponderance of middlemen and lack of productive workers. By establishing Jewish basic branches of industry, agriculture and mining, Jewish life would be normalised. It should be stressed that this basic tenet of Zionism was motivated solely by a reaction to conditions in the Diaspora, in a desire to create a new society rooted in the land and productive labour. (2) The use of economic boycott of Jewish goods and services as a political weapon by the Palestinian Arab movement in an attempt to restrain the development of Zionist enterprise and the counter-boycott organised by the Yishuv. Two economic problems played a major role in the estrangement between the two communities: land and labour.

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. For example, Maxime Rodinson, in Israel et le Refus Arabe(P& m ,l96& ).
2. Samir Amin (for the Maghreb), L'Economie du Maghreb, Editions Minuit (Paris, 1966), pp. 114,118; for Palestine, Edward Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy: the Struggle for Palestine (Boston, 1957), pp. 330-1. Jewish land-holdings in Palestine were 180,000 hectares, of which 72,000 were cultivated in 1944. This represented 6.6 per cent of the total land area of Palestine, 12.0 per cent of the total land under cultivation, and approximately 20 per cent of total cultivable land. The last figure is uncertain depending on estimates of how much uncultivated land had the potential for cultivation; John Ruedy, in 'Dynamics of Land Alienation' in The Transformation of Palestine (Evanston, 1971), pp.119-20, estimates at a minimum 975,000 hectares of cultivatable land, plus an uncertain amount of the Negev (total area 1.26 million hectares). Approximately 600,000 hectares were cultivated in 1946.
3. Amin, L'Economie du Maghreb, p. 185.
4. Algeria, in Samir Amin, ibid., p. 187. Palestine: population, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, The Demographic Transformation of Palestine', in The Transformation of Palestine, pp. 139ff ; agricultural revenue per head, Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy pp. 324-30. All prices are constant prices.
5. Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy, p. 323; Amin, L'Economie du Maghreb, The Policy of Economic and Social Separation 233 p. 179.
6. Amin, L'Economie du Maghreb, p. 188.
7. Asfoui, Backdrop to Tragedy, pp. 319-23.
8. Amin, L'Economie du Maghreb, pp. 126,119.
9. Amin, ibid., p. 189.
10. Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy, p. 323.
11. Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab Worid (London, 1970), pp. 212-13.
12. Peel Commission Report, p. 129, Cmd 3479, London, July 1937.