Background on Transfer

Boris Shusteff of the The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons each address the history of transfer (here, here, and here).

Israel's existence has unequivocally proven one thing: the Jews and the Arabs cannot live together on land that both claim is theirs. If the Arabs were not under the constant ill influence of their leaders,perhaps this coexistence might be possible. But since it is impossible to remove this influence, there is no other solution except transfer.

Already in 1937 Arab enmity towards the Jews was apparent to the authors of the Peel Commission Report, which stated in its 22nd chapter that, "the existence of Jews in the Arab State and Arabs in the Jewish State would clearly constitute 'the most serious hindrance to the smooth and successful operation of Partition' ". Therefore the authors of the Report were advocating transfer, stating, "If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land, and as far as possible, an exchange of population."

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In the decade prior to the Second World War there were many proposals and ideas pertaining to this population exchange. Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine".

Amin was one of a very few Arab leaders who was ready to place the famous Arab hospitality above his enmity toward the Jews. He wrote in1939, "We the Arabs are prepared to accept upon ourselves this great sacrifice for the sake of your welfare and the gathering in of your exiles and because of the generations of suffering which you underwent in Spain, Russia and other places".
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Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States wrote in 1943 in a book The Problems of Lasting Peace, "Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations... the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war".

Hoover was advocating the transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq with its fertile soil and severe under-population (a transfer that a later American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also supported). He said of this transfer, "If the lands were organized and homes provided, this particular movement could be made the model migration of history. It would be a solution by engineering instead of by conflict"(1).

Championing his transfer plan, he wrote, "I realize that the plan offers a challenge both to the statesmanship of the Great Powers as well as to the good-will of all parties concerned. However, I submit it and it does offer a method of settlement with both honor and wisdom" (1).

Hoover did not built his proposal on sand. By this time the world community had already achieved tremendous success in the compulsory exchange of population between Greece and Turkey following the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. The transfer in that case was proposed by Nobel Peace prize-winner Dr. Fridtjof Nansen who was the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for refugees. That transfer was sanctioned by the League of Nations and carried out under the guidance of a mixed commission. Altogether nearly two million people were transferred: 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks, and the transfer was completed within eighteen months.

The Peel Report that recommended the transfer of the Arabs, described in 1937 the world's reaction to Nansen's transfer operation: "Dr. Nansen was sharply criticized at the time for the inhumanity of his proposal, and the operation manifestly imposed the gravest hardships on multitudes of people. But the courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now the ulcer had been clean cut out, and Greco-Turkish relations, we understand are friendlier than they have ever been before"(1).

Several days after the publication of the Peel Report, Abraham Bonne, who was Director of the Economic Archives for the Near East in Jerusalem, wrote that the Peel Commission came to the conclusion regarding Palestine that "the racial antagonism between Jews and Arabs could only be settled by very radical means, i.e. by the exchange of population".
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Four Nobel Peace Prize winners have proposed population transfer -- Sir Norman Angell, Christian Lange, Philip Noel-Baker (in the specific case of Palestine), and Dr. Fridtjof Nansen as the proponent of the Greco-Turkish exchange. This speaks volumes about the morality of transfer. And especially in our case. As Hoover wrote in 1954 when he reached the age of 80, replying to a congratulatory letter, which referred to his transfer plan, "We were on the only sane track!".

Dr. Simons also points out that transfer was also supported by FDR and Reinhold Niebuhr.