Arab National Committees in Beirut and Cairo discussed proposals for a basis of cooperation, looking upon Jewish immigration to Palestine as a repatriation of authentic Syrians, much like the Arab Syrians who had emigrated during the nineteenth century to the United States and Latin America. It is difficult to assess today the importance of these sentiments and of the leaders who voiced them. They might have been a minority. There is no certainty whatsoever that the Arab national movement would have accepted ideas like these had they actually been embraced by the Zionist movement. The choice had never to be made anyway, because no such concrete proposal was ever put forward by the Zionist headquarters in Europe.

Up until World War I, which created a completely new situation, the Arab attitude was, on the whole, indecisive. There certainly was no resolute, clear-cut opposition to Jewish immigration and settlement, neither by political means nor by armed resistance. This came much later. It seems, therefore, that until World War I, there still existed a definite possibility of merging Zionism and Arab nationalism into one great movement-a possibility never tested, and not even seriously explored.

Analyzing this period, and many similar chapters in the later history of Palestine, one must realize that on the whole it was the Zionists who could have taken the initiative, being a new force on the Palestinian scene. Zionists were acting, the Arabs were reacting. It was, therefore, the Zionists who made the choices-often consciously but more often unconsciously-while the Arabs, faced with this new and foreign element, could only respond to situations not of their own making. But, in all justice, viewing the events in historical perspective, the Zionists can hardly be blamed. Fully occupied with their heroic struggle to gain a foothold in a new country, to turn young intellectuals into hardworking farmers, to create the first embryonic armed force for self-defense, to fight disease and hunger,

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