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Ahmed Jamal Pasha, commander of the Fourth Army and minister of the navy, then controlled the regions of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. He supported Baha al-Din and backed the measures he took. The Jewish leaders tried to entice him with money but failed, until they persuaded him to accept an invitation from “Miss Lanzo,” a Zionist Jewish woman who ran the Jewish Teachers’ House in Jerusalem. Miss Lanzo took advantage of this golden opportunity and assembled a select group of female students and others to receive him. They performed an athletic display before him. When the visit ended, they presented him with an album containing photographs and addresses of the girls. Thus Jamal Pasha’s visit to Miss Lanzo’s teachers’ house marked the turning point in his departure from his previous firm policy toward the Jews. Baha al-Din Bey was exiled from the region, and the Jews thereafter strengthened their relationship with Jamal Pasha. He granted them a large tract of Islamic endowment land, the Rubin endowment near Jaffa, on the pretext of reclaiming and draining its marshes, and ordered the Jerusalem Council to take the legal steps to register it in the Jews’ names.

But the late Sayyid Muhammad Kamil al-Husayni, then Mufti of Jerusalem, opposed this. The procedures were delayed and not completed until the end of the war. The Jews had in fact taken possession of the land, planted hundreds of thousands of eucalyptus trees, and established farms there. When we took charge of the Supreme Muslim Council of Palestine, we recovered the land with its hundreds of thousands of trees despite Jewish resistance and their lawsuit against us. The area of that land exceeded 32,000 dunams.

When the British occupation of Palestine took place on 9 December 1917, the Jews throughout Palestine numbered no more than 4.5 percent of the total Arab population. Most held foreign passports and therefore had no right to own property or vote. Britain nevertheless opened the gates of immigration to them despite the protests, demonstrations, and successive bloody revolts of the people of Palestine.

Since the British occupation, we resisted Jewish immigration by every means then available: protests, demonstrations, and successive revolts. We appealed to the Arab states that had Jewish populations to prevent their migration, and some answered our request. The late Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din completely prohibited Jewish migration from Yemen. Even a Jew who wished to visit Aden had to be guaranteed by people who undertook to ensure his return to Yemen; if he did not return, their property was confiscated and the guarantors punished.