The Problematic Humanitarian and Colonial Relationship between France and the Immigrants of the Zionist Movement to Ottoman Palestine: A Study in the Light of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Documents.

Abstract

This paper aims at shedding light on the real motives for France to protect the immigrants of the Zionist movement to Ottoman Palestine. In addition to revealing the nature and limits of French protection as reflected in French secret diplomatic documents. The study attempts to answer the problematic of the relationship between France and the Zionist movement's immigrants to Ottoman Palestine or from its colonies in North Africa. Does France's protection of these immigrants stem from France's deep belief in the right of these immigrants to "return to their country of origin", as is rumored? Alternatively, were they just a functional tool through which France implements on the land of Palestine its colonial projects? The study used the analytical and investigative approach in reading the relevant archive documents of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to answer the problematic. These documents include secret correspondence and reports between the various French diplomatic channels and frameworks in France, Istanbul and Palestine. Through these official correspondences, the reality of French protection for these immigrants was established.The study concluded that the humanitarian motives in France's protection of Jewish immigrants to Palestine were not real; nor did any statements appear by the French diplomats referred to the religious or historical rights of the Jews in the land of Palestine. Accordingly, France did not consider the necessity of restoring these rights to their owners. On the contrary, the economic factors and the colonial competition were the decisive factors in France's protection of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. France dealt with those immigrants just as numbers and customers, but according to purely economic calculations. France used the Jews immigrants as a tool to implement its colonial policies in Palestine in the light of the various colonial powers.