Ok – enough of the Palestinian refugees already. Nuff said in Parts 25 to 27 of this series.

The issue of illegal Muslim immigration into Palestine is huge when looking at what happened before the state of Israel was created in 1948.

The worst part of it was that a lot of bad hats came in. That was what Colonel MacKereth called them in Part 19. He used that term to mean any of the Muslims that were entering Palestine to commit acts of violence to very extreme violence. They were criminals, thugs, soldiers of fortune, whose very existence was about bringing violence to whoever their employer wanted harmed or killed. Their targets covered a wide range of people from moderate Muslims, who were able to live with the incoming Jews, to the Jews themselves of course. The moderate Muslims and the Jews were all fit to be killed.

The categories of Muslims coming in to Palestine did so for a wide variety of motives apart from the hired killers that I just spoke about. The Grand Mufti was pretty much single mindedly interested in doing violence, to moderate Muslims and all Jews, hence his association is with the bad hats.

But a lot of Muslims were drawn to Palestine for the prosperity that followed in the wake of the Jewish immigrants, and the money that was coming into the country that was creating jobs. The Muslim migrants coming into Palestine were coming in in very large numbers. They were taking up all of the jobs. The British, whose administration’s leanings had over the years from when Balfour first had the vision of creating a Jewish homeland, to the 1920’s when that attitude began to do a backflip, changed from pro-Zionist to anti-Zionist. These Arabist British administration officials developed an extreme interest in making sure that Jewish immigrants coming into the country, weren’t taking the jobs that they were creating. These British officials didn’t see it that way. But the truth was that the Muslim illegal immigrants were coming in in such large numbers, that some of the Muslims couldn’t get a job. When the British felt that there was a shortage of jobs for Muslims, legal or illegal – mostly they couldn’t tell, they would slow or stop Jewish immigration. That would in turn probably slow down the creation of jobs for everyone. Since the Jewish money that was coming into the country from wealthy Jews was intended to create jobs for Jews.

The common thread throughout the British administration of Palestine, was that they held what seemed like a never ending series of commissions that issued endless papers – mostly white in colour. 

And so in 1930 the British convened yet another commission, to look into the situation with Jewish immigration. As I said right at the beginning of this series, apart from the Easter Riots of 1920, which the Grand Mufti was very much behind, but those riots backfired on the Muslims, almost every other outbreak of Muslim violence saw the British crack down on the Jewish immigration, land purchases etc.

The latest commission was the Hope-Simpson Report. In it’s findings, it didn’t give the Jews much hope.

Tag words: Palestinian refugees; Muslim immigration; Colonel MacKereth; Jews; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Hope-Simpson Report; Report on Immigration, Land Settlement, and Development, 1930; the League of Nations British Mandate; Immigration of Other Than Jewish Labour; The White Paper; Lewis Yelland Andrews; Lewis Andrews; Arab Revolt; Passfield White Paper of 1933; Musa Alami; David Ben-Gurion; Chaim Wiezmann; Winston Churchill; Herbert Samuel; Lloyd George; Ramsay MacDonald; the Black Letter; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Turks; Islamic Golden Age; Bar Kochba; Ezekiel 33:28; Peel Report 1937; Shaw Commissions Report; Palestine Mandate; 1948 Arab Israeli war;