I don't have time to read everthing that's been posted since my last post right now. I'll post this now, and then, when I have time, I'll read and, if needed, respond. This is the information I've been busy gathering in the last few days:

Once again, Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state occupying 77 percent of British Mandate Palestine. It is entirely a creation of the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab segments. Its name derives from the British designation transjordan, meaning "that part of Palestine on the East of the river Jordan." It was the part of Palestine the Arabs got. It is the much bigger part, and the much better part, with all the oil and other natural resources.

This is entirely misleading, and hardly faithful to historical fact.

According to one of the official Jordanian websites, during the period of Ottoman rule:

"The four centuries of Ottoman rule (1516-1918 CE) were a period of general stagnation in Jordan. The Ottomans were primarily interested in Jordan in terms of its importance to the pilgrimage route to Mecca al-Mukarrama. They built a series of square fortresses—at Qasr al-Dab'a, Qasr Qatraneh, and Qal'at Hasa—to protect pilgrims from the desert tribes and to provide them with sources of food and water. However, the Ottoman administration was weak and could not effectively control the Bedouin tribes. Over the course of Ottoman rule, many towns and villages were abandoned, agriculture declined, and families and tribes moved frequently from one village to another. The Bedouins, however, remained masters of the desert, continuing to live much as they had for hundreds of years.

Population continued to dwindle until the late 19th century, when Jordan received several waves of immigrants. Syrians and Palestinians migrated to Jordan to escape over-taxation and feuds, while Muslim Circassians and Chechens fled Russian persecution to settle in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey."

According to all of the documents I've been able to locate about the Mandate period, none of them suggest that the Arabs living in the area that is now Israel and the Occupied Territories should be moved from where they lived to Transjordan. In fact, most of them, including the Balfour declaration, say that the rights of non-Jewish residents should not be infringed:

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

Some more sites with information about the Mandate period:

Wikipedia

Jordan website



Map of 1947 UN Partition plan

The following quotes are from declassified Israeli documents and personal diaries. Anyone who wants to, can verify them on their own:

Moshe Sharett , first Israeli foreign minister:

1914...

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ..... Recently there has been appearing in our newspapers the clarification about "the mutual misunderstanding" between us and the Arabs, about "common interests" [and] about "the possibility of unity and peace between two fraternal peoples." ..... [But] we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by such illusive hopes ..... for if we cease to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise.

1937:

"The proposed Jewish state (proposed 1937 Peel Commission partition plan) territory would not be continuous; its borders would be twisted and broken; the question of defending the frontier line would pose enormous difficulties .... the frontier line would separate villages from their fields .... Moreover the [Palestinian] Arab reaction would be negative because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing ..... in contrast to us they would lose totally that part of Palestine which they consider to be an Arab country and are fighting to keep it such ... They would lose the richest part of Palestine; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be a loss to the hinterland Arab states..... It would mean that they would be driven back to the desert ('Zorkim Otam') .... A Jewish territory [state] with fewer Arab subjects would make it easy for us but it would also mean a procrustean bed for us while a plan based on expansion into larger territory would mean more [Palestinian] Arab subjects in the Jewish territory.

For the next 10 years the possibility of transferring the Arab population would not be 'practical'. As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories. As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets. Where would they go? What would they receive in return? ... This would be such an uprooting, such a shock, the likes of which had never occurred and could drown the whole thing in rivers of blood. At this stage let us not entertain ourselves with the analogy of population transfer between Turkey and Greece; there were different conditions there. Those Arabs who would remain would revolt; would the Jewish state be able to suppress the revolt without assistance from the British Army?"

1949

"the most spectacular event in the contemporary history of Palestine, in a way more spectacular than the creation of the Jewish state, is the wholesale evacuation of its (Palestinian) Arab population. . . . The opportunities opened up by the present reality for a lasting and radical solution of the most vexing problem of the Jewish state (referring to the Palestinian Arabs living in the portion of the 1947 UN Partition plan) are so far-reaching, as to take one's breath away. The reversion of the status quo ante is unthinkable."

Quotes from Ahad Ha'Am, a Russian Jewish intellectual

1891

"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated."

"If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily."

"....[the Zionist pioneers believed that] the only language the Arabs understand is that of force ..... [They] behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency."

"[The Jewish settlers] treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so. The Jews were slaves in the land of their Exile, and suddenly they found themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that ONLY exists in a land like Turkey. This sudden change has produced in their hearts an inclination towards repressive tyranny, as always happens when slave rules."

"We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside."

"Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in unrestricted freedom and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination ..."

On the subject of the boycott of Arab labor by Jewish labor...

"Apart from the political danger, I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve at the end of times power in Eretz Yisrael? And if this be the Messiah: I do not wish to see his coming."
1914...

"(the Zionists) wax angry towards those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Yisrael that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In a future when this illusion will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great our duty to work for its solution."

Israeli historian and military strategist, Martin Van Creveld, in his book The Sword and The Olive:

"In the Event of invading (Arab) forces were limited to approximately 30,000 men. The strongest single contingent was the Jordanian one, already described. Next came Egyptians with 5,500 men, then the Iraqis with 4,500 who ..... were joined by perhaps 3,000 local irregulars. The total was thus around eight rather under strength brigades, some of them definitely of second-and even third-rate quality. To these must be added approximately 2,000 Lebanese (one brigade) and 6,000 Syrians (three brigades). Thus, even though the Arabs countries outnumbered the Yishuv by better then forty-to-one, in terms of military manpower available for combat in Palestine the two sides were fairly evenly matched. As time went on and both sides sent reinforcements the balance changed in the Jews' favor; by October they had almost 90,000 men and women under arms, the Arabs only 68,000."

"As for Abdullah's Arab Legion, it had fought better than any other Arab force. Yet on scarcely any occasion had the Arab Legion attempted to conquer territories allotted to the Jews by the partition plan, preferring to stay on the defensive."

".... there was no common military headquarters, no attempts at coordinating the offenses of the Arab armies, and ... not even a regular liaison service for sharing enemy intelligence."
"Perhaps the most important [of Arab armies problems] was a crippled shortage of ammunition, owing to the international arms embargo ..., in the case of the Iraqis and Egyptians, long lines of communications. For example, after February 25, 1948, the Arab Legion received no new ammunition for its 20mm guns. Some of the ammunition used by the Iraqi artillery was more than thirty years old; the Syrians had no ammunition for their heavy 155mm guns. Whereas Jewish stockpiles were growing all the times [especially the big arms shipment from Czechoslovakia in May 1948], the enemies were so depleted they stole ammunition shipments for each other. In addition, they were ill-coordinated, technically incompetent, slow, ponderous, badly led, and unable to cope with night operations that willy-nilly, constituted the IDF's expertise."

Yigal Allon , commander of the Haganah's Palmach between 1945-1948

"The echo of the fall of (Palestinian)Arab Safad carried far . . . The confidence of thousands of (Palestinian) Arabs of the Hula was shaken . . . We had only five days left . . . until 15 May([1948). We regarded it as imperative to cleanse (Palestinian Arabs from) the interior of the Galilee and create Jewish territorial continuity in the whole of the Upper Galilee. The protracted battles reduced our forces, and we faced major tasks in blocking (prospective Syrian and Lebanese) invasion routes. We, therefore, looked for a means that would not oblige us to use force to drive out tens of thousands of hostile (Palestinian) Arabs left in the Galilee and who, in the event of an invasion, could strike at us from behind. We tried to utilize a stratagem that exploited the (Arab) defeat in Safad and in area cleared by (Operation) Broom - a stratagem that worked wonderfully.

I gathered the Jewish mukhtars, who had ties with the different (local Palestinian) Arab villages, and I asked them to whisper in the ears of several (Palestinian) Arabs that a giant Jewish reinforcement had reached the Galilee and were about to clean out the villages of Hula, to advise them as friends, to flee while they could. And rumour spread throughout Hula that the time had come to flee. The flight encompassed tens of thousands. The stratagem fully achieved its objective . . . and we were able to deploy ourselves in face of the [prospective] invaders along the borders, with out fear for our rear."

"We looked for means which would not obligate us to use force in order to get tens of thousands of sulky (Palestinian) Arabs who remained in Galilee to flee, for in case of an Arab invasion, they would attack us from rear."

In reference to the expulsion of the villages of Lydda and Ramle of their Palestinian inhabitants:

"clogged the routes of the advance of the (Transjordan Arab) Legion and had foisted upon the Arab economy the problem of "maintaining another 45,000 souls . . . Moreover, the phenomenon of the flight of tens of thousands will no doubt cause demoralsation in every Arab area (the refugees) reach . . . This victory will yet have great effect on other sectors."

Mapam party do-leader Meir Ya'ari, on the subject of Allon's strategy of using refugees to accomplish military goals:

"Many of us are losing their (human) image . . How easily they speak of how it is possible and permissible to take women, children, and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say, the members of Hashomer Hatzair, who remember who used this means against our people during the Second World] war. . . . I am appalled."

Yigal Allon, in justifying to Ben-Gurion a plan for military conquest of the West Bank:

"Our offensive has to leave the way open for the army and the refugees to retreat. We shall easily find the reason or, to be more accurate, the pretexts, to justify our offensive, as we did up to now."