Quotation from Menahem Ussishkin “I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land” — May 19 1936

" I would very much like the Arabs to go to Iraq. And I hope they will go there sometime . . . agricultural conditions in Iraq are better than in the Land of Israel because of the quality of the soil. Secondly, they will be in an Arab state and not in a Jewish state. We cannot remove them from here. Not only because we cannot, even if an exchange has been carried out between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Turks, between Turkey and Greece. But today they would not accept this.
What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included within the Land of Israel . . . on condition that Transjordan would either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those Arabs whose lands [in Palestine] we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue . . . For the Arabs of the Galilee, Transjordan is a province . . . this will be for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs. This is the land problem . . . Now the Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . because this country belongs to us and not to them . . . . "