40 mahatma gandhi and the jewish national homeright and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab re sis tance in the
face of overwhelming odds.”^68
In other words, Arab po liti cal claims vis-à- vis the British were valid,
and the Arabs were outnumbered by a more powerful adversary. There-
fore, the Mahatma was prepared to understand if not endorse Arab vio-
lence. Ironically, only a few paragraphs earlier, he had implored the Jews
to practice nonviolence against Hitler. He chose not to give similar advice
to the Arabs of Palestine against the Mandate authorities. Likewise, dur-
ing the Khilafat struggle, he did not demand nonviolence as a precondi-
tion of his support for the Muslims.^69
Fourth, was the Mahatma realistic when he demanded that the Jews
abandon the support and patronage of the British? Was there a possibility
that the Zionists could have abandoned the imperial power, sought a
compromise with the Arabs, and still secured a homeland? History is not
the place to answer such hypothetical questions. But it is obvious that the
creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine meant a massive migration of
Jews from the Diaspora to Palestine. At the time of the Balfour Declara-
tion, the Jews were a microscopic minority in Palestine, constituting less
than 5 percent of the total population. This objective reality resulted in
a number of rather unique international developments, such as the ex-
clusion of Palestine from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen
principles enumerated at the end of World War I, the British Mandate
over Palestine, endorsement of the Balfour Declaration by the League
of Nations, Zionist opposition to the Arab exercise of self- determination,
and the Zionist linkage between Palestine and the Holocaust. They all
emerged from Jews being a small minority in Palestine. The entire Zion-
ist leadership, including binationalists like Martin Buber, who advocated
coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs, was unanimous on the question
of unrestricted Jewish immigration. Indeed, during the darkest days of
World War II, Palestine was a major refuge for the persecuted Jews of
Eu rope.
At the same time, Jewish immigration and the resultant demographic
shift in Palestine meant national suicide for the Arabs. Irrespective of
their po liti cal affi liations, familial loyalties, social status, and religious
beliefs, the Palestinians were unanimous in opposing Jewish immigra-
tion.^70 Jewish immigration to Palestine, the cornerstone of Zionism, was
also the fundamental cause of Arab opposition. Under such circumstances,
Arab- Jewish accommodation, as visualized by Mahatma Gandhi, was noth-
ing but a fantasy.