1946 Statement of Palestinian officials to the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry of 1945

1946 Arabs Say No to Jewish Homeland – State of Israel

Statement of Palestinian officials to the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry of 1945:

“The whole Arab people is unalterably opposed to the attempt to impose Jewish immigration and settlement upon it, and ultimately to re-establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Its opposition is based primarily on right. The Arabs of Palestine are descendents of the indigenous inhabitants of the country, who have been in occupation of it since the beginning of history; they cannot agree that it is right to subject an indigenous population against its will to alien immigration, whose claim is based upon a historical  connection which ceased effectively many centuries ago….The idea of partition and the establishment of a Jewish state in a part of Palestine is inadmissible for the same reasons of principle as the idea of establishing a Jewish state in the whole of the country.”

Source: Laqueur, Walter and Barry Rubin (eds.), The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. New York: Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 94-104; 87, p. 285