In his book “Moataqal Huckstep”, Eltaher made a comparison between how the British kept their word with the Jews and what the Arabs did at that time. He wrote that “while there is no national, or religious, or ethnic, or common land between the British and the Jews, once they promised them that they will build the Jewish state in Palestine, they never wavered or let them down. They respected their word even when that cost the British rivers of their soldiers’ blood, and millions of their own money and even their reputation”.
“The British fought the Palestinian people for thirty years and committed all kinds of violence against them and bore the enmity of the whole world, yet they never reneged once on their promise. They did not leave Palestine until they silenced the Arabs, besieged the people of Palestine and separated them from their brothers, then created the Jewish State and left without a word of thanks from the Jews!”
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Members of the Palestinian Higher Committee exiled by the British mandatory power
to the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean in 1937 to decapitate the Palestinian leadership.
From right to left: Yaaqoub Al-Ghossayn; Rashid Al-Haj Ibrahim; Ahmad Hilmi Pasha;
Dr. Hussein Al-Khalidi; and Fouad Saba. |
“This is how the British kept their word with the Jews. Among the Arabs, however, you have witnessed and heard what happened, boisterousness, speeches, exaggerations, parties, resolutions and promises that drugged the people of Palestine and killed the spirit of
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Palestinian leader Abdelqader Al-Husseini,
killed in action during the 1948 war |
fighting and resistance in defence of their homeland among many of them. This is because nobody ever imagined that the Arab League was lying all along, and that certain Arab governments all around Palestine would march their armies all the way there, then suddenly stop, retreat and go back to their respective countries.”
In another page of “Moataqal Huckstep” Eltaher added: “The Palestinians have fought the British Army and the Jews from early 1936 to late 1939 and led a real war. They beat the first British army led by General Sir John G. Dill, then beat the second army commanded by General Sir Archibald Wavell in 1938, then tore apart the third army which came in 1939 under the command of General Sir Robert Haining”.
Had the Arab governments supported the Palestinian resistance commander Abdelqader Al-Husseini with the types of weapons he needed in a timely fashion in 1947 and 1948 and allowed Arab volunteers to join his ranks without intervening officially, he and his troops and the volunteers, buttressed by their inalienable right of self defence, could have secured their own victory.
The Arab people have great attributes, which are unfortunately dwarfed by their constant factionalism. They are bitterly divided by family and religious clans. They are consumed by conflicting personal ambitions and petty rivalries of no consequence. They are as eager to fight each other as to fight their enemies. They are unable to prioritize national interests above personal interests. They go to great lengths to discuss and analyze political issues and propose solutions. But once they have satisfied their oratorial thirst, they go home with the impression that they have solved the problem. It does not come to their mind intuitively that this should be followed by conceptualization, implementation and follow up until the problem is resolved, as they very quickly suffer from short breath, and soon lose interest when they are required to hold tight for a long period. Yet, whenever they are well led, or when the matter is about a business deal of interest to them, they excel.
In view of these handicaps, especially with competing leadership among the kings and presidents throughout the period of the struggle between the Jews and the Palestinians, they have not been able to protect Palestine from the armed European Jewish immigrants during the confrontations of 1936 and 1948. The Jews had a dedicated and able leadership, good organisation, commanded well trained fighters following flexible tactics, and a capacity to conduct military operations while relying on their own initiative and without having to wait for orders from command posts set up far away from the battlefields.
