Disappearing Palestine

For thirteen centuries Palestine had been universally known as an Arab land. At the beginning of the twentieth century over 90 percent of the people, in what today would be Israel and the occupied territories, were Arab. For 400 years they had lived under Ottoman rule and had established a distinctive regional identity as Palestinians.

In the late 1800s, a political project known as Zionism arose in response to discrimination and violence against European Jews. Zionists advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and aimed to achieve this goal by aligning themselves with European imperialists. In exchange for a state, Zionists would protect the interests of Britain and France in the Middle East. At the end of World War I, the British took control of the area, establishing the British mandate of Palestine. In 1917 the British Balfour Declaration promised Jews a state in Palestine, and for the next three decades Jewish immigration to Palestine increased. At first the influx of small numbers of Zionists into Palestine created no problems. As more and more Zionists arrived the indigenous population became alarmed, eventually leading to escalating waves of violence.
After World War II the fledgling UN, dominated by the victors of the war, recommended partitioning Palestine. Although Jews constituted only one-third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land, the 1947 UN Partition Plan recommended ceding 56 percent of Palestinian land to a Jewish state. The indigenous Palestinian majority justifiably rejected this plan.

Al Nakba

In March 1948, Zionist armed forces began a pre-planned, brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing forcing Palestinians from their land in order to create a Jewish majority. Even before the Israeli declaration of “independence,” over 250,000 Palestinians had fled their homes in terror, due to events such as the Deir Yassin massacre. On 15th May 1948 the British Mandate ended and the State of Israel was created. Token armies and volunteers from Egypt, Transjordan (Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinians to resist Zionist plans for the conquest of Palestine, but were defeated. Over 720,000 Palestinians were effectively ethnically cleansed from much of Palestine, becoming refugees, and over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed. The 1949 armistice agreements gave Israel control over 78 percent of the territory of what was left of the British Mandate of Palestine since Jordan’s independence in 1946. Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the West Bank, while Egypt took temporary control of the coastal plain later known as the Gaza Strip.

 

 

 

The Slow War of Conquest

Since 1949 Israel has continued to expand its control over historical Palestine. In 1967, Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza, an area with an Arab population of about 1.5 million.  This resulted in the dispossession of a further half a million Palestinians. Israel has continued to occupy these territories, despite almost unanimous international objections. For forty years those still residing in Palestine have been living under military rule. Israel has transformed its occupation into one of active colonisation. Israel has confiscated Palestinian resources and tens of thousands of areas of land, building over 200 settlements in the occupied territories and transferring almost 500,000 Israeli citizens into this land. This ethnic flooding is part of a long-term plan by much of the Israeli political establishment to eventually control all of historical Palestine. As Israeli military and political leader Moshe Dayan, who was considered more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, once stated, “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.” Other policies have included extensive use of collective punishments such as curfews, house demolitions, and the closure of roads, schools and community institutions.
Since 1967, over 300,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel without trial, and over half a million have been tried in Israeli military courts. Torture has been widely used by Israeli forces and dozens have died in prisons due to abuse and neglect. Any opposition to Israel by Palestinians, be it violent or non-violent, was crushed. In December 1987, a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation began (the Intifada). Israeli forces reacted with force killing 1,300 Palestinians.
Through out the “peace-process” of the last two decades, the Palestinians have frequently been portrayed as uncompromising in the face of Israel diplomatic efforts. In reality the Palestinians have never been offered anything more than the 22% of territory they maintained after 1967. Even this territory has never been offered in its entirety for a Palestinian state. Successive peace accords, have presented a territory with areas annexed, and the West Bank divided into enclaves by Israeli security zones, settlements, and settler/Jewish only road networks. For Palestinian refuges, both those living within the occupied territories and the over four million in neighbouring countries, their right to return to their lands in modern Israel have never even been offered in the peace process.

Dispossession Continues

Today Palestinians continue to watch the disappearance of their land. In 2002, the Israeli government began construction of the Israeli West-Bank “barrier”. This barrier is portrayed as following the 1967 border, but in fact zigzags into the occupied territories, annexing prime land and resources. By 2007 210,000 Palestinians had been isolated from the rest of the West Bank in enclaves; 67 villages had been separated from their farms, crops and other means of livelihood; 83,000 olive trees were uprooted; 30 water wells were Freedom for Palestine!

The 60-year occupation of Palestine by Israel has been a disaster for the Palestinian people.  For decades they have been made to suffer an inhumane, collective punishment in the name of ‘peace and security’.  In the latest wave of attacks alone, 1,417 Palestinians were killed, including 926 civilians.  More than 50,000 were forced to leave their homes and join the 4.25 million Palestinian refugees living around the world.  Those that remain are subjected to the daily humiliation of Israeli checkpoints, raids and the constant threat of renewed war.

There is hope, however.  Out of the horror of the assault on Gaza last summer, a new international movement for a free Palestine was born.  The Palestine Solidarity Network is a group formed in Dunedin to coordinate local activists in the Palestinian cause with others nationally and internationally.

To join,
phone: 021 254 713
email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or write to:
Palestine Solidarity Network,
PO Box 6157,
Dunedin North.confiscated; and 35,000 metres of water infrastructure destroyed. In 2004 the International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal. The Eastern Jordan Valley has been declared a closed military zone, while 31 illegal settlements are allowed to operate there freely. If this area is walled of then 500,000 Palestinians in the West Bank will be trapped in enclaves between the wall and the 1967 border, and approximately 55% of the West Bank will be effectively annexed by Israel.
Israeli’s unilateral withdrawal of 8,500 settlers from Gaza in 2005 was lauded in the western media as an Israeli peace gesture. What was not often reported was that in the same year, over 14,000 settlers moved into the West Bank. The expansion of settlements also continues in occupied Jerusalem, were almost 200,000 settlers live in 12 illegal “neighbourhoods” in East Jerusalem. The EU has accused Israel of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank wall as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem. The wall will not only isolate over 230,000 Palestinian’s from the rest of the West Bank, but will also make a farce of the peace processes intention of establishing East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Sam Campbell