A Land Without a People

Abstract

Consider a few dates and numbers that bear testimony to the demographic transformation effected by the Zionists in Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century.

As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River]. We’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.

—Jewish settler, 1891

[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to hate us.

—Israel Zangwill, 1905

Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.

—Chaim Weizmann, 1919

I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral.

—David Ben-Gurion, 1938

Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.

—Benny Morris, 2004¹