Summary
Member of the Hakibbutz Ha’artzi–Hashomer Hatza’ir Arab Department staff whose 1948 report to the Jewish Agency’s Labor Department on “The Arab Worker in the Jewish State” Lockman’s Conclusion quotes for its warning against a merely local colonial regime (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 4283).
Details
- Bauer (later Be’eri) put the issue sharply at the conclusion of his detailed report: “The transition from a colonial regime [in Palestine] to [Israel’s] independence must not be for the Arabs a transition from a colonial regime in which a people from overseas rules repressively and exploitatively to a colonial regime in which the dominant people is local. A state which seeks to realize the ideas of Herzl’s Altneuland cannot accept the existence of conditions like those in South Africa, where the human rights of an entire subject people are denied.” (Chapter 9 note 2: HH, “Hapo’el ha’aravi bamedina hayehudit,” March 15, 1948) (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 4283, 4361).
- Lockman calls Bauer’s reference to Altneuland ironic, though surely not intentionally: by the time he submitted his report many tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs had already been forced from their homes, and by early 1949 half of Palestine’s Arab population had been displaced, including most of its working class (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 4285).
- Nor did Bauer and Pinchas Lavon’s vision of a Jewish state in which Arabs would enjoy equality come to pass: the Arabs who remained within Israel in 1949 became citizens with the vote but not full and equal citizens, most under military administration until 1966 (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 4287).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Hashomer Hatza’ir, Altneuland, Pinchas Lavon