From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine

By Joan Peters. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. 601 pp. $24.95.

Reviewed by John P. Richardson

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was quoted in the June 15, 1969, edition of the Sunday Times (London) as follows:

"There was no such thing as Palestinians... It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."

Now, 15 years later, Golda has an ex post facto apologist in the person of Joan Peters, author of From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

Joan Peters's book falls in the category of what may be called scholarly polemic: Scholarly by being heavily researched and documented, polemical by using selective documentation as a battering ram for an ideological position. (The book title is a sarcastic reference to the Palestinian claim of long tenure in Palestine.)

The author attempts to create an aura of objectivity and fair-mindedness at the outset by describing her "ardent" civil rights activism in Mississippi, followed later by travel to the Middle East to report on the Palestinian refugees, whose plight had "seemingly" been prolonged "by a mechanism (i.e., Israel) funded predominantly by contributions from the United States." So far, so good. At this point, however, Ms. Peters shows the anger of a woman scorned and the zeal of a religious convert as she describes her shock at "discovering" continuing disagreements about Palestinian demography and the historical status of Jews in Arab countries. Ms. Peters, no shy violet, gives herself high marks for her determination to share her new insights with the public.

The Population Exchange Notion

In simplest terms, Ms. Peters's book is a 412-page attempt to use statistics arguably lowering the highest quoted figures for Palestinians displaced by creation of the state of Israel, plus a massive assemblage of quotes showing that Jews often suffered from second-class status in Muslim societies, to "prove" that Israel's insertion into Arab Palestine affected a relatively small number of people and constituted little more than an exchange of populations that rescued not only European Jewish refugees but also Jews living in Arab countries.

The book's endlessly repetitive treatment of Palestinian demography in the 20th century builds its case on several grounds: 1) Long-settled Palestinians in the parts of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 did not comprise the total non-Jewish population of the area; 2) significant numbers of immigrants and "in-migrants" from the Arab World and elsewhere came to Palestine during the British mandate period (1918-1948), attracted in part by jobs created by Jewish endeavor; 3) the Palestinian refugee population assisted by UNRWA includes many who were either recent immigrants to Palestine or ineligible for one reason or another. Ms. Peters concludes that "only" 430,000 Palestinians can properly be considered refugees from 1948, rather than the 750,000-plus figure used by international relief organizations.

The author uses selected quotations from Arab and Palestinian figures to argue that Palestinian nationalism is an artificial phenomenon created for the convenience of Arab politicians in their battle with Israel. A key element in the argument is an observation by Musa Alami, distinguished Palestinian, to the effect that the Palestinians needed a national "myth" since many of them lacked a modern sense of nationalism.

Showcasing Only Thorns

The second pillar of the Peters book is the argument that, contrary to many scholarly accounts (including Abba Eban in his recent television series, "Civilization and the Jews"), Jews living in Arab and Muslim societies have always suffered from anti-Jewish attitudes fostered by Islam and that the exodus of "Arab Jews" to Israel after 1948 was the final step in a history of degradation rather than the result of Zionist excesses in Palestine. Understandably, Ms. Peters has to deal with well-known periods such as the "Golden Age" in Moorish Spain, when Jewish culture flowered and Jews contributed at all levels of Arab society and politics. She does so in every case by showcasing the thorn rather than the rose.

It is important for fair-minded readers of the Peters book to realize that lowering the Arab population of pre-1948 Palestine does not invalidate the claim of a people to their land. Uprooting even one-half million long-established Palestinians, plus a large number of more recent arrivals, in order to replace them with Jewish settlers wouldn't be any more justifiable because the number might not have been three-quarter million. Similarly, even if Jews living in Arab countries may have had more problems than some Arab spokesmen maintain, that doesn't justify uprooting an innocent people not responsible for their problems so as to give them another home.

Golda Meir's 1969 observations about the Palestinians were made by the highest elected official of Israel and reflected Israeli policy of minimizing Palestinian claims to their historical homeland. While one can disagree sharply with Ms. Meir's statement, her political purposes were clear. Unfortunately, Ms. Peters follows the identical line of argument of Ms. Meir without the justification of political expediency.

John P. Richardson is the author of The West Bank: A Portrait, published by the Middle East Institute.