Chapter One examined whether the Bible is a "deed of ownership" to Canaan for modern Jews. Chapter Two examined modern Jews' "moral hereditary right to return." This chapter will exam-ine the right to immigrate, limited by "the common good rightly understood." It will do this in the context of the history of Zionism between 1800 and 1914.

I. Jewish Immigration To Palestine Before 1882.

   In 1800 Palestine was somewhat feudal, with many large landowners - some of them absentee - and impoverished peasants working for them, as well as small, independent farmers, craftsmen and shopkeepers. Seminomadic Bedouin grazed sheep and goats. They also raided farms and villages, which had little police protection. This discouraged settling rural areas. Some land, especially in the Jordan valley and along the coast, was swampy, malarial and sparsely inhabited. Jews lived primarily in the four holy cities, Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. They were mostly shopkeepers, artisans, and students of the Bible, the Talmud and other Jewish religious teachings. Virtually none were farmers. Since the late 1700s a few Jewish immigrants, including elderly wishing to die there, continued to enter Palestine. By 1850 Palestine's Jews had increased to about 10,000-13,000.  Jewish immigration also stemmed from the influence of several Jewish writers who advocated a type of Zionism, a return to Palestine. Some of these proto-Zionists urged forming Jewish colonies there, but not necessarily a separate Jewish state; that later movement would be called political Zionism.  The early writers did not think Jews could or even should be fully assimilated into the predominantly Gentile societies in Europe and the Americas. Some early and middle nineteenth century writers advocated a religious and/or cultural Zionism. Palestine was seen as the fitting center of Jewish religious and cultural life, in some ways comparable to Rome's leadership role among Catholics.
   Meanwhile many European and U.S. Jews thought that assimilation into the culture and society in which they found themselves was both possible and desirable. Many of these assimilationists saw their Judaism primarily as a religion rather than as an ethnic (or racial) or cultural factor to be dealt with. Before 1882 rela-tively few Jews embraced any form of Zionism. According to au-thor Moshe Leshem, few, if any rabbinical authorities taught that Jews might be restored to Eretz Israel before the Messiah came. Only some time after 1850 did some rabbis consider Jewish immigration there a good preparation for redemption. "They undoubtedly did so," Leshem noted, "under the influence of the surge of nationalism in Europe, not out of any theological understandings."

II. The First Immigration Wave (First Aliyah), 1882-1903.

   Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism. Czars required most Jews to live within the Pale of Settlement, a wide strip of western Russia (which then included Lithuania and eastern pre-1772 Po-land) and the Ukraine, between the Baltic and Black seas. In 1881 Czar Alexander II was murdered. A Jew was one of several peo-ple accused in his death. Alexander III, who succeeded his father, condoned pogroms - anti-Semitic rioting - which began in June 1881. When Jews tried physically to defend themselves, police moved against them. The brutality quickly spread throughout the Pale of Settlement, ending in 1884. Hundreds of Jews had been murdered. Thousands fled, mostly to western Europe and America. Many who remained were reduced to abject poverty and some were starving. The pogroms triggered the first large-scale immi-gration to Palestine - the First Aliyah - between 1882 and 1903.
   The Ottoman sultan, 'Abdul Hamid II, (ruled 1876-1909), was somewhat liberal toward Jews but opposed their moving to Palestine. He feared it would increase European governments' already extensive meddling in Palestine. He was especially wary of immigrants from Russia, his expansionist neighbor, because he feared they might be its agents. After the influx of Russian Jews in 1882 the sultan banned Jewish immigration and land purchase. This ban was soon withdrawn but reinstated in 1891. However, it was not strictly enforced; his officials could be bribed. During the First Aliyah some 25,000 Jews moved to Palestine. They founded several farming settlements, including some in malarial swamps. Russian shopkeepers and artisans were unaccustomed to the harsh life and work of reclaiming land; many left Palestine. Jews in Palestine increased to between 27,000 and 50,000 by 1904.
   Those in farm settlements often hired Arabs to work the fields. This forestalled much of the anti-Jewish feeling that later aliyahs created because many of the later newcomers did their own farm work and displaced Arab workers. Nevertheless some Arabs reac-ted negatively even to the First Aliyah. In 1891 Arab merchants and craftsmen in Jerusalem telegraphed the Ottoman grand vizier, noting that they expected more Jewish immigration. They called for a halt to this and to further Jewish purchase of land. Palestinian Arabs made this twofold demand four years before Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat, a book about an independent Jewish state. They would repeat their demand many times in the next fifty-six years as more immigrants came and acquired more land.
   A leading Russian "spiritual" or "cultural" Zionist, Ahad Ha'am - pen name of Asher Ginsberg (1856-1927) - visited Palestine in 1891, the year of the first Arab protest. He found the Arabs generally quiet but he warned: "If ever...we...develop...our life in Erez-Israel to the point where we shall be encroaching upon them...[we should not expect them] to yield their place easily."  Conor Cruise O'Brien, author of The Siege, points out:
 That was not an insight shared (or at least acknowledged) by any other Zionist, either at that time or for long afterwards. Officially, the Zionist position was that there was no conflict of interest, but only a community of interest, between Arabs and Zionists. That long remained an article of faith to Zionists in the Diaspora.
   O'Brien contends, however, that among Jews who lived in Palestine there was a growing realization that Ahad Ha'am was right about possible Arab reaction. Ha'am thought Jews should develop Palestine as a worldwide Jewish spiritual and cultural center. In some of his writings he did not see Palestine as a political magnet - a homeland to which masses of Jews should immigrate. He assumed that Jews would still live throughout the Diaspora. Although he actively promoted the development of Palestine as a spiritual and cultural center, he saw no urgency in it.  Despite his concern over possible Arab reaction to large-scale Jewish immigration, he maintained in 1903 that "Palestine will become our spiritual centre only when the Jews are a majority of the population and own most of the land."  Ha'am was setting forth his vision of cultural Zionism in 1896 and afterward. Meanwhile, political Zionism was rapidly surpassing his ideas in popularity among European, especially Russian, Jews.

III. The Beginning of Political Zionism.

   Political Zionism included the desire to form in Palestine an independent Jewish state. A Russian Jewish immigrant, Ze'ev Dubnov, wrote in 1882 that his final purpose was "to take possession in due course of Palestine and to restore to the Jews the political independence of which they have now been deprived for 2,000 years."  He said this could be achieved by establishing colonies of farmers and various types of workshops and industries, and then gradually expanding them "to put all the land, all the industry, in the hands of the Jews."  Dubnov advocated teaching young Palestinian Jews how to use arms. "Then the Jews, if necessary with arms in their hands, will publicly proclaim themselves masters of their own, ancient fatherland."  Significantly, Dubnov does not mention the indigenous Arabs or their desires, unless the arms were to be used against Arab neighbors, not just Ottoman troops. This practice of ignoring or discounting the rights and feelings of the native Arabs would recur often in political Zionists' writings and actions.
   Political Zionism won its first prominence when championed by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a Jewish Austrian playwright and journalist. He had seen virulent anti-Semitism in Vienna and Paris and was convinced that Jews could protect themselves from it only by moving from anti-Semitic countries to a land that would be their own. In 1896 he published Der Judenstaat.  Herzl opposed mere Jewish immigration into a country. He wanted an internationally recognized charter in which a country would cede to Jewish immigrants a political entity of their own. He considered both Palestine and part of Argentina desirable sites. He noted that Argentina was sparsely settled and had fertile land and a good climate, while Palestine had a strong historical attraction for Jews. Der Judenstaat was ridiculed by some non-Zionist Jews. Other Jews took it seriously but rejected it because they did not consider Jews a nation. Even Zionists considered the book unoriginal. Ha'am and his cultural Zionists thought it was not specifically Jewish enough. They felt that solely flight from anti-Semitism would not create a bond strong enough to build a state.
   Herzl, undeterred, organized the First Zionist Congress, in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. It stated:
 Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law. The congress contemplates the following means to gain this end: 1. The promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers. 2. The organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country. 3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and consciousness. 4. Preparatory steps toward gaining government consent where necessary to achieve the aim of Zionism.
   Herzl intended to form a state. This is clear from a diary entry he made soon after the Congress: "At Basel I founded the Jewish state."
   Herzl and his political Zionists from western Europe felt a much greater sense of urgency about enacting political Zionism than did Russian Ha'am about enacting his cultural and spiritual Zionism. Ha'am was familiar with a type of anti-Semitism that Jews had long experienced in Europe. But Herzl and other western Europeans had experienced a new type of anti-Semitism that was secular, anti-Christian, and gaining strength. Herzl considered it very dangerous. Thus, as noted, he, unlike Ha'am, concluded that Jews needed not just a spiritual and cultural center they could look to for leadership but their own sovereign state to which they could immigrate en masse and which they could control politically. He preferred that this be Palestine but he was open to other sites.

   According to corrected Ottoman figures, in 1897 Palestine had 563,000 people, including 529,500 Arabs and 21,500 Jews.

IV. Arab Reactions to Political Zionism, 1898-99.

   As educated Arabs learned of Zionism and its goals some became concerned. A few months after the First Zionist Congress, a Lebanese writer, Rashid Rida, warned Arabs that the Jews "can take possession of your country, establish colonies in it, and reduce its masters to hired labourers and its rich to poor men."  Rida "thought that nothing prevented the Jews from becoming 'the mightiest nation on earth' except statehood, and they were well on their way to achieving that, through their powers of organization."
   Yusuf al-Khalidi was a member of a prominent Muslim family in Jerusalem. In 1899, while mayor of Jerusalem, he wrote to France's chief rabbi, Zadoc Kahn: "There are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation ....But...let Palestine be left in peace."
   Kahn sent the letter to Herzl, who wrote a reassuring reply to al-Khalidi. He predicted the Arabs would share in the prosperity that Jews would bring to Palestine. At least this part of Herzl's reply reflected reality at that time because during the First Aliyah Jewish farming settlers paid well for land and hired Arab workers. Herzl assured al-Khalidi that no one was trying to remove Arabs. O'Brien comments:
 it is easy to see in retrospect that al-Khalidi was raising real difficulties, and Herzl, returning unreal answers. Did he simply have his tongue in his cheek?...he was saying how he hoped - and intended - things would turn out....What would happen, if the things he hoped would happen did not happen, was not something Herzl ever much cared to contemplate.
   It seems that Herzl's answers were not merely unreal but also not what he intended. He had written in his Diary four years earlier:
 We must expropriate gently the private property on the states assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.
   Herzl also wrote to al-Khalidi that in the immigrants "the Sultan will acquire loyal and good subjects."  In saying this, contends O'Brien, Herzl "was saying what he knew to be untrue and intended to be untrue."  Herzl stipulated that his diary not be opened until twenty years after his death.  In it he stated that he always intended that the Jewish homeland would be an independent Jewish state but that he was not always open about this because of political problems such openness might cause. Thus Herzl must have intended that the Palestinian Arabs would be incorporated in-to a specifically Jewish state, not an Arab-Jewish state. This seems to be his assumption in Altneuland, a novel he wrote in 1902 to describe his vision of the Jewish state in Palestine. In the novel, relations with Arabs present no problems because they share in the riches that the Jews' introduction of modern irrigation and other modern technology has brought to all the people of Palestine. The Arabs appreciate what the Jews have done for them.
   Joseph Jeffries also criticizes Herzl's attitude: "He even visits Palestine, but seems to find nobody there but his fellow-Jews. Arabs apparently vanish before him as in their own Arabian Nights."  The British historian's criticism may seem overdone but it points to a real problem. Herzl met Arabs and corresponded with a few of them, but historian Walter Zeev Laqueur notes that in Herzl's mind "the Arabs certainly did not figure prominently, though he did not ignore them altogether....He was aware of the rising national movement in Egypt and on various occasions stressed the close relationship between Jews and Muslims."

V. The Movement for Alternative Areas to Palestine, 1902-14.

   Herzl repeatedly tried to obtain a charter for an autonomous Jewish national home in Palestine. The sultan refused but offered to let Jews settle in small groups throughout the empire. They would have to become Turkish citizens; immigration to Palestine could be only minimal. Herzl rejected the offer and considered other sites. Because of increased Russian Jewish immigration to Britain since 1882, its Jewish population by 1902 exceeded 100,000. London wished to restrict further immigration and thus was open to considering Jewish settlements in British possessions. Zionists proposed the island of Cyprus - technically part of the Ottoman Empire but under British control. Britain rejected the plan; it would require evicting Greeks and Muslims.
   In 1902 Herzl proposed making a Jewish colony at Wadi El 'Arish, on the Mediterranean about thirty miles southwest of the Palestinian-Egyptian border. Egypt was technically an Ottoman vassal but Britain controlled it. Water for El 'Arish would have to come from the Nile, but Egypt objected to losing so much water. Britain, refusing to force that issue, rejected the idea in May, 1903. In 1906 some Zionists urged London to reconsider, but tension along the de facto Ottoman-British frontier in Sinai tabled the idea indefinitely.
   In April 1903 the British colonial secretary told Herzl that Uganda, then a British colony, seemed ideal for a Jewish homeland. The site tentatively offered, which is now in Kenya, had some 6,000 square miles. Because of tribal warfare it had few people. Britain suggested that a Jewish settlement in a British colony could at best be as politically independent and have as much authority as a British county council, with a Jewish governor and a Jewish administration. London did not want "an empire within an empire." Both Herzl and Britain pursued the idea. Herzl and some other Zionists thought it would offer Jews at least temporary refuge from Russian pogroms, which had again erupted. However, the Russian delegates to the Sixth Zionist Congress, held in Basel that August, bitterly opposed Uganda and would consider only Palestine.  They argued that accepting Uganda even as a temporary refuge would destroy any chance for a homeland in Palestine, for if Jews had another refuge the European powers would lose their motive to help Jews win a homeland there. Non-Russians at the Congress proposed at least forming a commission to study Uganda's feasibility. The resolution passed but the Russian delegates, including Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), Zionism's future leader, walked out. They returned only after Herzl personally appealed for unity.
   The Russian attitude was forcefully expressed by Menachem Ussishkin (1863-1941), the leader of Russian political Zionism, who was in Palestine during that Sixth Congress: "Just as no majority in the world can cause me to apostatize from the faith of Israel or the law of Israel, so no numerical majority at the Congress will detach me from the Land of Israel."  According to O'Brien: "One thing the East Africa debate revealed was how thin the secular covering was over the sacred core of Zionism."  At that time many if not most Zionists were Russian. After the Congress Herzl realized that so many Russian Zionists would hear only of Palestine that proposing any other site was unrealistic. He died within a year but the battle continued at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905. The Congress, urged by Russian delegates, voted overwhelmingly "to reject all colonization programs other than those in Palestine and adjacent countries."
   For Russian Zionists this effectively killed Uganda. Britain also cooled to the project. Some government officials argued that it would be unfair to British taxpayers, who had paid for a road built to the area. They also feared antagonizing local Africans.
   After the Seventh Congress's vote, forty delegates opposing it founded the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO) in August 1905. It explored sites in East Africa, Cyrenaica (Libya), Angola, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Dutch Guiana (Suriname), Australia and Siberia. All were judged unusable because either local governments opposed their use or the inhabitants were expected to, or the sites lacked water or had other serious weather problems. Meanwhile, the Galveston Immigration Scheme (GIS) brought 10,000 Jews to Texas between 1906 and 1914; ITO ran GIS from 1907 until GIS ended at the start of World War I.  The decision of the Seventh Zionist Congress "to reject all colonization programs other than those in Palestine and adjacent countries," together with ITO's failure to find suitable alternate sites, has had fateful consequences for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Through hindsight one can ask: What if enough Zionists had been content to develop simply a spiritual and cultural center in Jerusalem, and Zionists had succeeded in forming a sovereign or almost sovereign state elsewhere? Then the refuge that Herzl foresaw the need of would have existed. In retrospect ITO's demise was very sad for humanity.
   In either failing, neglecting or refusing adequately to acknowledge the presence of the Palestinian Arabs and their moral rights and aspirations did the "Palestine-or-nothing" Zionists unwittingly help seal the fate of several million European Jews thirty years later? Or would some or all have died anyway? Was there as a matter of fact no other place on this planet that was (a) vacant enough, (b) politically available enough, and (c) inhabitable enough to become a Jewish state? ITO searched but found nothing it judged feasible. Did it look hard enough? Did it reject sites that could have been developed? Were non-Jewish nations overly possessive of perhaps excess feasible sites?
   These are post-Holocaust questions. It is unrealistic to ask them both of the people searching for sites and the people approached before that disaster, the enormity of which no one could foresee. This is not to imply that had they foreseen the disaster they would have been able to establish a Jewish state on some non-Palestinian site. Perhaps there simply was no livable place which was not also inhabited by people, people who had the same rights regarding their homeland as had - and have - the Palestinian Arabs regarding their homeland - moral rights which required respect. To raise the questions is not to "blame the victim"; it is not to imply that the "Palestine-only" Zionists of 1905 were partly responsible for European Jews not having anywhere to flee from the Nazis.

VI. The Second Aliyah, 1904-14.

   In 1903, widespread Russian pogroms again erupted. Before the ensuing Second Aliyah was ended by World War I, some 40,000 more Jews - mostly Russian - came to Palestine. (The causal rela-tionship between European anti-Semitism and Zionism generally, and Jewish immigration to Palestine in particular, manifests itself repeatedly. If Europeans had treated Jews justly there would prob-ably have been no large-scale Zionist movement and no large ali-yahs.) Many of the new immigrants left Palestine. However, by 1914, some forty-seven farming settlements with about 12,000 Jewish occupants had been founded.  Like many other Zionist projects, many of these were largely funded by Rothschild family members, some of whom had softened their anti-Zionism. Readers of some Zionist writings which extol Zionist pioneers who drained swamps and turned desert into farmland could get the impression that settlement founders bought only previously unused land. In fact, Arabs had already farmed some of these settlements.
   According to an ancient custom recognized by Ottoman law, Palestinian villagers shared the use of grazing land around their village even if they did not hold individual title to the land. Some new Jewish landowners did not allow this. On the other hand, some settlers loaned their farm equipment to Arabs, and Jewish doctors did not always charge their poor Arab patients. Such neighborliness did not remove the bitterness felt by Arabs who were now hired laborers working the very fields they once tended either as owners or tenants. Second Aliyah immigrants seeking work on Jewish farms started during the First Aliyah often found it hard to convince their Jewish managers to hire them because Arabs worked for less and had more experience.  Second Aliyah immigrants who chose to live in newly purchased or developed farm settlements were more inclined to work the land themselves than had been First Aliyah immigrants. Therefore, if Second Aliyah immigrants bought a farm village from, for instance, an ab-sentee Arab owner, its Arab peasants often were forcibly replaced with Jewish workers. Thus Arabs feared and resented the increasing Jewish settlements as a threat to their livelihood. Sometimes Arabs attacked immigrants. Displaced rural Arabs, lacking urban job and social skills, were nevertheless forced to move to towns and cities.  There they often could not find work and did not have their village social support system to sustain them physically and psychologically. Arab resentment therefore also simmered among urban dwellers, where most of Palestine's Jews lived.
   In the spring of 1908, Jewish and Arab workers in Jaffa clashed. S.D. Levontin, the Jewish director of the local Anglo-Palestine Bank, complained to David Wolffsohn, the head of the World Zionist executive, that young Jewish men were largely responsible. He said that they were armed with sticks, knives and guns, and behaved toward Arabs with arrogance and contempt. That same year Levontin also wrote to Wolffsohn that Zionist labor leaders were creating local ill will for Zionism by urging that jobs be given to Jews instead of to Arabs.
   Arabs also complained that immigrants did not bother to learn about Palestinian Arabs' customs or respect them. Regarding their economic standards, Laqueur maintains that Palestinian Arabs were no worse off than Arabs in neighboring countries:
 urbanization in Palestine did not proceed at a faster rate than in the neighbouring Arab countries...and the birth rate rose more quickly than in the neighbouring countries, as did the living standards of the Arabs in the neighborhood of the new Jewish settlements....[This was true] both for the prewar period and the 1920s. If some Arabs suffered as a result of Jewish settlement, the number of those who benefitted directly or indirectly was certainly greater. True, if Arab living standards improved, the Jewish settlers were still much better off, and the emergence of prosperous colonies must have caused considerable envy.
   Between 1890 and 1914, educated Christian and Muslim Arabs voiced worry that Zionism threatened their future political inde-pendence. Some Zionist leaders, primarily those in Palestine, rec-ognized that this danger was felt by both Muslims and Christians. One non-Palestinian Zionist, Richard Lichtheim, a German who represented the Zionist central executive committee in Istanbul, wrote in 1913: "The Arabs are and will remain our natural opponents. They....want to preserve their nation and cultivate their culture....The Jew for them is a competitor who threatens their predominance in Palestine."  Later Lichtheim stated that even before 1914 it was clear that the national aspirations of Zionists and Palestinian Arabs were incompatible.  Some non-Palestinian Zionists mistakenly thought only Christian Palestinian Arabs worried about Zionism. Because they were a small minority of Arabs some Zionists thought they could be ignored.  In 1931 Weizmann, Zionism's international leader, stated: "If you look at prewar Zionist literature you will find hardly a word about the Arabs."  According to Laqueur, Weizmann's remark "implied that the Zionist leaders had been half aware of the existence of the Arabs but for reasons of their own had acted as if they did not exist. Or had it been a case of real, if astonishing blindness? The issue was in fact considerably more complex."
   Laqueur contends that "Zionists certainly paid little attention to the first stirrings of the Arab national movement and few envisaged the possibility of a clash of national interests."
   The political threat posed for the Arabs by the increasing num-ber of Zionist settlements would be actualized within a few years. After Britain succeeded in engineering its mandate over Palestine, each settlement helped to increase Zionist political pressure on Britain, pressure which proved disastrous to Palestinian Arabs.

   By 1914, some 56,000-60,000 Jews and some 659,000 Arabs lived in Palestine. Some Zionists assert that the increase in Arabs was due to many non-Palestinian Arabs moving into Palestine. Thus, these Zionists claim, Palestinian Arabs, like Jews, are pri-marily recent newcomers and cannot claim several centuries' resi-dency. But demographer Justin McCarthy claims there is no evi-dence between the 1870s and 1914 of a significant Arab immigration. (Before the 1870s the Ottomans did little census work in Palestine.) He maintains that the increase was comparable to that throughout the Empire at that time and resulted from a high birth rate and a lowered mortality rate.  Israeli demographer Bachi's findings support McCarthy: "It is possible that some part of the growth of the Moslem population was due to immigration. However, it seems likely that the dominant determinant of this modest growth was the beginning of some natural increase."
   Bachi added that possible causes for this small improvement in life expectancy, which resulted in the population increase "are likely to be found in the apparent absence between 1840 and 1914 of major calamities (although various large-scale epidemic outbreaks did occur)."  Thus the Israeli demographer himself attests to the Arabs' long occupancy in Palestine.

VII. The Right to Immigrate Versus the Rights of Inhabitants.

   In Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII stated in 1963:
 when there are just reasons for it, [one has] the right to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that one is a citizen of a particular state does not detract in any way from one's citizenship in the world community and one's common tie with all people....A person [has the right to] enter a political community where one hopes one can more fittingly provide a future for one's self and one's dependents.
   This right to immigrate, Pope John states in that encyclical, creates a corresponding duty: "Wherefore, as far as the common good rightly understood permits, it is the duty of that state to accept such immigrants and to help to integrate them as new members."  Thus the right to immigrate is both basic and yet limited by "the common good rightly understood." This common good includes especially the good of the people living in the country where the emigrants wish to live. When Pacem in Terris speaks of immigration, it presumably envisions (a) movement to an already-existing state and (b) the immigrants' intent to become part of the society already there. Pope John presumably was not considering a situation in which immigrants would revolt, establish their own state, supplant the indigenous people, or prevent the latter from exercising their right to self-determination.
   In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the small number of Jews entering Palestine, considered simply as immigrants, would have had a small impact, either positive or negative, on Palestinian Arabs. Therefore considered simply in terms of immigration it would seem that the balance of rights at that time could have been in the immigrants' favor. (This is not to say that the immigrants, especially in the Second Aliyah, who displaced Palestinian Arabs from their jobs and villages were acting justly, for that displacement certainly disrupted those peasants' "common good rightly understood." But that is a moral issue that is related to but not intrinsic to the immigration issue itself.)
   In weighing the rights of the immigrants versus those of the inhabitants, the immigrants' intent is also a factor. Did they intend simply to purchase a limited amount of property and develop it in such a way that it would not unduly disrupt the Palestinian Arabs' "common good rightly understood" or did they intend (a) to dis-place the Palestinian Arabs from all or much of Palestine and also (b) to found a specifically Jewish state which by its nature would seriously harm the Palestinian Arabs' common good? The intent probably varied among the immigrants. But, as noted, the goal of at least some immigrants and their leaders was to form a state that was specifically Jewish, while other immigrants wanted it to be almost exclusively Jewish. As intended by Zionists, their state would radically harm Palestinian Arabs' right to self-determination. This state would seriously harm Arabs' society and culture, and, indeed, virtually every facet of their lives. This would inevitably constitute a serious violation of Palestinian Arabs' right to their common good. Thus, although it seems evident that a limited number of Jews would ordinarily have had a right to immigrate to Palestine simply as immigrants, that right was limited. For no one has a right to immigrate to a country with the intent of supplanting the indigenous people, preventing the exercise of their right to self-determination, or otherwise disrupting their common good. Therefore it would seem that Zionists with such intentions forfeited their moral right to immigrate to Palestine.
   However, the same onus would not seem to fall on these immigrants' descendants who were born in the Holy Land. Seemingly a person ordinarily has a moral right to first-class citizenship in the land in which one is born, or, more accurately, in the land in which one's mother is a resident when one is born. Regardless of the legitimacy of one's parents' actions, the child should not be subject to banishment from the state of its birth. Nor should that child be relegated to second-class citizenship in that state. The argument for the right seemingly flows from what might be called appropriateness or fittingness: It is inappropriate to expel someone from the land of one's birth. A problem with this position is that one generation of aggressors can unjustly inundate an indigenous people's territory; then the aggressors' children, enjoying the moral right to first-class citizenship, might be able to politically, socially and culturally swamp the indigenous people. Like all other moral rights, this right must be weighed against competing moral rights. For this and other reasons it seems difficult to delineate how substantial this birth right is.
   Many Israelis were born in what is now Israel. Seemingly their strongest basis for a moral right to live there does not depend on whether the Bible is a "deed of ownership" to the land of Canaan or whether there is a moral hereditary right of Jews to Eretz Israel. Their strongest basis seemingly flows from the fact that they are natives. Arabs should recognize that these Israelis especially may have a strong moral right to live there. Moreover, this moral right would seem to increase with the length of time, reaching back from the present, that these Israelis or their ancestors have actually been living in the Holy Land. Some Jewish families can trace their modern roots there back to the First Aliyah in the 1880s. A few families may be able to go back even further. It would seem that such people are in a real sense indigenous.
   The moral-rights basis for political rights is different from the moral-rights basis for the right to own or use property. Thus the moral rights to political self-determination flowing from birth in the Holy Land and from modern ancestral presence would not establish a moral right to property confiscated as recently as 1948.
   Of course these rights also apply to Palestinian Arabs, including refugees born in the Holy Land. Most of them have longer modern ancestral roots there than do the children of the Jewish immigrants. These rights also belong to the descendants of the Palestinian Arabs who were expelled in 1947-49 and barred from return-ing. These descendants should not be penalized because they were unjustly denied their right to be born in their ancestral homeland. (Cf. Ch. Two, Sec. VI.) But this is getting ahead of the story.

   Some Palestinian Arabs in the early twentieth century knew of or at least suspected the Zionists' intent regarding statehood. Their response reflected their fear for their own future, which the intent threatened. History has shown that this fear was well founded. At least after the Second Aliyah began in 1904, immigration to Palestine became increasingly involved not simply in the moral issue of (a) immigration but also in the moral issues of (b) displacing workers and of (c) forming a state in which the indigenous people would be seriously disadvantaged. These three issues, which generated increasing violence after World War I, will be more fully examined in the following chapters.