The Balfour Declaration, which resulted in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians, was issued on November 2, 1917.

The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.

The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel.

It is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades.

What is the Balfour Declaration?

The Balfour Declaration (“Balfour’s promise” in Arabic) was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.

It was made during World War I (1914-1918) and was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The so-called mandate system, set up by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation.

The system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war – Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – to the victors.

The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent.

The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the post-war mandates, the main goal of the British Mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish “national home” – where Jews constituted less than 10 percent of the population at the time.

Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population.

Though the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

Why was it controversial?

The document was controversial for several reasons.

Firstly, it was, in the words of the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, “made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory”.

In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.

Secondly, the declaration was one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British.

When it was released, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence.

The British also promised the French, in a separate treaty known as 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be split between the two colonial powers after the war.

The declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence.

Finally, the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law – that of a “national home”.

The use of the vague term “national home” for the Jewish people, as opposed to “state”, left the meaning open to interpretation.

Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase “the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish State”, but that was later changed.

In a meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1922, however, Arthur Balfour and then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly said the Balfour Declaration “always meant an eventual Jewish state”.

Why was it issued?

The question of why the Balfour Declaration was issued has been a subject of debate for decades, with historians using different sources to suggest various explanations.

While some argue that many in the British government at the time were Zionists themselves, others say the declaration was issued out of an anti-Semitic reasoning, that giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution to the “Jewish problem”.

In mainstream academia, however, there are a set of reasons over which there is a general consensus:

• Control over Palestine was a strategic imperial interest to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within Britain’s sphere of influence
• Britain had to side with the Zionists to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to stay in the war until victory
• Intense Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in Britain and the British government; some of the officials in the government were Zionists themselves
• Jews were being persecuted in Europe and the British government was sympathetic to their suffering

How was it received by Palestinians and Arabs?

In 1919, then-US President Woodrow Wilson appointed a commission to look into public opinion on the mandatory system in Syria and Palestine.

The investigation was known as the King-Crane commission. It found that the majority of Palestinians expressed a strong opposition to Zionism, leading the conductors of the commission to advise a modification of the mandate’s goal.

The late Awni Abd al-Hadi, a Palestinian political figure and nationalist, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs, saying it was made by an English foreigner who had no claim to Palestine, to a foreign Jew who had no right to it.

In 1920, the Third Palestinian Congress in Haifa decried the British government’s plans to support the Zionist project and rejected the declaration as a violation of international law and of the rights of the indigenous population.

However, the other important source for insight into Palestinian opinion on the declaration – the press – was closed down by the Ottomans at the start of the war in 1914 and only began to reappear in 1919, but under British military censorship.

In November 1919, when the al-Istiqlal al-Arabi (Arab independence) newspaper, based in Damascus, was reopened, one article said in response to a public speech by Herbert Samuel, a Jewish cabinet minister, in London on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration: “Our country is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine must remain Arab.”

Even prior to the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate, pan-Arab newspapers warned against the motives of the Zionist movement and its potential outcomes in displacing Palestinians from their land.

Khalil Sakakini, a Jerusalemite writer and teacher, described Palestine in the immediate aftermath of the war as follows: “A nation which has long been in the depths of sleep only awakes if it is rudely shaken by events, and only arises little by little … This was the situation of Palestine, which for many centuries has been in the deepest sleep, until it was shaken by the great war, shocked by the Zionist movement, and violated by the illegal policy [of the British], and it awoke, little by little.”

Increased Jewish immigration under the mandate created tensions and violence between the Palestinian Arabs and the European Jews. One of the first popular responses to British actions was the Nebi Musa revolt in 1920 that led to the killing of four Palestinian Arabs and five immigrant Jews.

Who else was behind it?

While Britain is generally held responsible for the Balfour Declaration, it is important to note that the statement would not have been made without prior approval from the other Allied powers during World War I.

In a War Cabinet meeting in September 1917, British ministers decided that “the views of President Wilson should be obtained before any declaration was made”. Indeed, according to the cabinet’s minutes on October 4, the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour confirming that Wilson was “extremely favourable to the movement”.

France was also involved and announced its support prior to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration.

A May 1917 letter from Jules Cambon, a French diplomat, to Nahum Sokolow, a Polish Zionist, expressed the sympathetic views of the French government towards “Jewish colonisation in Palestine”.

“[I]t would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago,” stated the letter, which was seen as a precursor to the Balfour Declaration.

What impact did it have on Palestinians?

The Balfour Declaration is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba when Zionist armed groups, who were trained by the British, forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.

Despite some opposition within the War Cabinet predicting that such an outcome was probable, the British government still chose to issue the declaration.

While it is difficult to imply that the developments in Palestine today can be traced back to the Balfour Declaration, there is no doubt that the British Mandate created the conditions for the Jewish minority to gain superiority in Palestine and build a state for themselves at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the British decided to terminate their mandate in 1947 and transfer the question of Palestine to the United Nations, the Jews already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II.

More importantly, the British allowed the Jews to establish self-governing institutions, such as the Jewish Agency, to prepare themselves for a state when it came to it, while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so – paving the way for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

END

“A land without a people for a people without a land”

It is almost impossible to acquaint yourself with scholarship on Palestine, or be involved in Palestinian activism to any extent without coming across a variation of the above. Sadly, despite all the meticulous scholarship of Palestinians and others on the topic, variations of this talking point remain a prominent feature of Israeli propaganda. But how could such a ridiculous and thoroughly debunked claim still exist to this day? Wouldn’t disproving it be as simple as a quick internet search?

Indeed, all it takes is a glance at the Nüfus (Ottoman population registry) or the much later British mandate census data to see that the land has never been empty. Additionally, inspecting these numbers tells quite a clear tale of a minority settler population growing next to a large native majority. I will not be going into the details of population numbers, but if you are at all interested in the minutiae of census and population information in Palestine, then I would recommend obtaining a copy of Justin McCarthy’s The population of Palestine: Population history and statistics of the late Ottoman period and the Mandate.

Even the earliest of proto-Zionists knew this was not a factual statement. Some of the earliest Zionist ‘pioneers’ that settled Palestine before Zionism even had its first conference wrote condescendingly about their experiences with the natives. I imagine it would be quite difficult to document your interactions with a people who do not exist.

So why does this slogan persist?

This slogan persists to this day because it was never meant to be literal, but colonial and ideological. This phrase is yet another formulation of the concept of Terra Nullius meaning “nobody’s land”. In one form or the other, this concept played a significant role in legitimizing the erasure of the native population in virtually every settler colony, and laying down the ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ basis for seizing native land. According to this principle, any lands not managed in a ‘modern’ fashion were considered empty by the colonists, and therefore up for grabs. Essentially, yes there are people there but no people that mattered or were worth considering.

There is no doubt that Zionism is a settler colonial movement intent on replacing the natives. As a matter of fact, this was a point of pride for the early Zionists, as they saw the inhabitants of the land as backwards and barbaric, and that a positive aspect of Zionism would be the establishment of a modern nation state there to act as a bulwark against these ‘regressive’ forces in the east [You can read more about this here].

A characteristic feature of early Zionist political discourse is pretending that Palestinians exist only as individuals or sometimes communities, but never as constituting a people or a nation. This was accompanied by the typical arrogance and condescension towards the natives seen in virtually every settler colonial movement.

That the early settlers interacted with the natives while simultaneously claiming the land was empty was not seen as contradictory to them. According to these colonists, even if some scattered, disorganized people did exist, they were not worthy of the land they inhabited. They were unable to transform the land into a modern functioning nation state, extract resources efficiently and contribute to ‘civilization’ through the free market, unlike the settlers. Patrick Wolfe’s scholarship on Australia illustrates this dynamic and how it was exploited to establish the settler colony.

This becomes exceedingly clear when reading the discussions of early Zionists, such as Chaim Weizmann, who when asked about the inhabitants of Palestine responded with:

“The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.”.

You can clearly see the influence and internalization of racist European colonial rhetoric. This attitude would become a cornerstone of Zionism as a political and colonial movement. This is why there is an emphasis in the Zionist narrative on how supposedly desolate and backwards Palestine was before their arrival. This same logic animates the ‘making the desert bloom’ myth that remains central to Israeli Hasbara efforts [You can read more about this here]. The underlying message being: We deserve the land more than its natives, they have done nothing with it, and we can bring it into modernity.

Perhaps one of the most widely quoted texts used to support this argument is Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869) in which he chronicled his travels through Europe and the Middle East. Naturally, his unflattering descriptions of the ‘Holy land’, both people and land, are what draw attention, as he found Palestine to be a “..hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land“. He then concludes that ‘Palestine is desolate and unlovely.’

Twain’s account is taken as definitive proof that Palestine was a lifeless, empty husk before the arrival of the Zionist colonists. But as usual, in order to present and sustain this talking point, context must be completely ignored and any evidence to the opposite omitted. Even if we are to take Twain’s commentary at face value, one would be remiss not to investigate the circumstances of his visit.

Indeed, once some very basic research is done it becomes clear that Twain visited Palestine in September, which meant that it was at the end of the summer season and the land had not seen any rain for months. In addition to this, his visit happened to coincide with a drought, meaning that this was an exceptional case of dryness even for September. And finally, his visit also coincided with the American civil war, which disrupted the cotton trade the region depended upon. That meant that the whole area, not only Palestine, was undergoing a significant economic downturn and increase in poverty, which pushed many a peasant to abandon their farms.

But let us say you are unconvinced by this, what have others who visited Palestine had to say?

Twain is far from the only traveler to visit Palestine in the 19th century. Another such traveler is David Roberts, a Scottish painter who visited Palestine in 1839. He wrote describing his travels that the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem lay..

“..across the plain of Sharon, through a richly-cultivated country. The ground is carpeted with flowers—the plain is studded with small villages and groups of palm-trees, and, independent of its interesting associations, the country is the loveliest I ever beheld.“

Siegfried Sassoon also visited Palestine during the first world war and chronicled his journey:

“March 11, reached Railhead (Ludd) at 2.30 pm. Olive trees and almond orchards. Fine hills inland, not unlike Scotland. Last night we went through flat sandy places. About daybreak the country began to be green. Tents among crops and trees all the way up from Gaza. Weather warm and pleasant, with clouds. A few Old Testament pictures of people and villages. Inhabitants seem to live by selling enormous oranges to the troops on the train.”

On page 94 of his digitized journal, which you can access fully (here), he wrote describing the flowers growing in Palestine:

“Came back through a tangle of huge golden daisies -knee deep solid gold, as if Midas had been walking here among the almond trees and cantaloupes.”

So, what is the truth? Was Palestine a desolate, backwater wasteland, or a paradise with golden daisies and green hills akin to those in Scotland?

Both Roberts and Sassoon visited Palestine in the spring, at the end of the rainy season in years with no droughts. It makes sense, then, that the land would be green and the trees and flowers would be blooming.

So why only focus on the Twain paragraph to the exclusion of others? Is it not intellectually dishonest to present The Innocents Abroad as the definitive description of Palestine when other accounts contradict it? Is this not an irresponsible and deceptive selection of information?

Sadly, this is par for the course, as more often than not these arguments are made in bad faith. Because once again, conveying historical or factual accuracy is not the intended goal of these claims. These claims serve mainly as propaganda to legitimize the colonization of Palestine and to prove that the Zionist movement was more entitled to the land than its natives. This speaks to the insecurity of the settler, as such efforts to justify themselves would not be needed if they did not believe -even if on a subconscious level- that they do not belong.

This is hardly the only example of such discourse, Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial is one of the more shameless propaganda publications masquerading as a history book, full of cherry-picked data and absurd claims regarding the origins of Palestinians [You can read more about this here]. Even though this book has been utterly debunked by a large number of scholars, it remains incredibly popular among Zionists as the definitive version of history. The endurance of this book as a source of information shows that much discourse on the question of Palestine is anything but fact based.

These cases illustrate a central point about Israeli and Zionist propaganda: It is full of selectively chosen data, dubious framing and omissions of inconvenient information. To succeed, it primarily relies on the ignorance of the listener. These talking points do not stand up to scrutiny, and wither away once countered with actual historic literacy. We should strive to challenge these claims wherever they arise, and do our best to set the record straight.

But for argument’s sake, even if Palestine had been truly “desolate” or “unlovely”, does this provide a moral cover for settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and erecting a reactionary ethnocracy at the expense of the people living there? Of course not. It’s a fruitless argument which only aims to discredit the natives.

END

‘Settler colonialism differs from classic colonialism, in that settler colonialism only initially and temporarily relies on an empire for their existence. In many situations, the colonists aren’t even from the empire supporting them, and end up fighting the very sponsor that ensured their survival in the first place. Another difference is that settlers are not merely interested in the resources of these new lands, but also in the lands themselves, and to carve out a new homeland for themselves in the area.”

MYTH: ZIONISM IS NOT COLONIALISM, JUST JEWISH SELF DETERMINATION

https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/zionism-is-not-colonialism-just-jewish-self-determination/

When we speak of Israel as a settler colony, we refer to a very specific phenomenon. Settler colonialism differs from classic colonialism, in that settler colonialism only initially and temporarily relies on an empire for their existence. In many situations, the colonists aren’t even from the empire supporting them, and end up fighting the very sponsor that ensured their survival in the first place. Another difference is that settlers are not merely interested in the resources of these new lands, but also in the lands themselves, and to carve out a new homeland for themselves in the area.

The obvious issue here is that these lands were already inhabited by other people before their arrival.

This is when the settler “logic of elimination” comes into play. Coined by scholar Patrick Wolfe, this means that the settlers needed to develop not only moral justifications for the removal of the natives, but also the practical means to ensure its success. This could take the form of ethnic cleansing, genocide or other gruesome tools of ethnocide.

If you’re at all familiar with Zionist talking points, you can see this logic of elimination in motion. “A land without a people for a people without a land“, “there is no such thing as a Palestinian“, “Israel made the desert bloom” and many other talking points illustrate this perfectly. For example, you can immediately see how denying the existence of Palestinians resembles the Terra Nullius argument used by colonists all over the world [You can read more about this here]. All of these talking points are aimed at justifying the dispossession of the Palestinians and legitimizing Zionist claims to the land they wished to colonize. As for the practical means to remove the natives, the Nakba remains a testimony to such crimes.

The claim that Zionism is merely Jewish self-determination also conflates the Jewish people with Zionism, an ideology finding its origins in Europe in the late 1800s. At the time, the Jewish people were largely uninterested in Zionism. As a matter of fact many Jewish groups were fiercely anti-Zionist. The attempt to conflate the two is an attempt to give legitimacy to self-professed settlers from Europe, and portray any criticism of the Zionist project as inherently antisemitic.

Yet in the early days, the Zionist movement was astonishingly honest about its existence as a form of colonialism. For example, Herzl, one of the founders of political Zionism wrote in 1902 to infamous colonizer Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:

“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor ; not Englishmen, but Jews . How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”

Nordau, Herzl’s right hand man, even rightfully called Zionist settlements in Palestine “colonies”:

“Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and the idea of “sneaking” into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore devoted themselves preeminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them.”

Menachem Usishkin, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, was known for his calls to rid Palestine of its natives:

“What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included in the Land of Israel. . . on condition that Transjordan would be either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those [Palestinian] Arabs, whose lands [in Palestine] we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue . . . For the [Palestinian] Arabs of the Galilee, Transjordan is a province . . . this will be for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs. This the land problem. . . . Now the [Palestinian] 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 not to them . . . “

Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, in an essay titled The Iron Law (1925) wrote that:

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”

These quotations are merely the tip of the iceberg, but lest you think I am cherry-picking and choosing out of context passages, I invite you to read their original writings. There are only so many mental gymnastics you can perform to try and find a different meaning to “Zionism is a colonization adventure.” One of them is the claim that the Zionists adopted this kind of language only to convince the great imperial powers. It must have been a pretty convincing act, then, as its practice is still ongoing after over 100 years.

This, of course, is nonsense. It was not a question of rhetoric, but also execution. The first Zionist bank established was named the ‘Jewish Colonial Trust’ and the whole endeavor was supported by the ‘Palestine Jewish Colonization Association’ and the ‘Jewish Agency Colonization Department’. Such an association was yet to become unpopular or taboo as it is today.

A further problem with the claim that Zionism is merely Jewish self-determination is that it is an intellectually dishonest claim. It is a claim so rife with critical omissions that it cannot but be classified as a lie when the full context is explored.

Let’s try and apply this argument to another prominent settler colonial context: The colonization of Turtle Island.

When somebody today describes American “Manifest destiny” as settlers seeking a better life for themselves, or claims that the United States was founded on liberty, equality and justice for all, you instantly know that something is amiss. How could they leave out details such as the genocide of the indigenous nations or slavery from the story?

When they say liberty, equality and justice for all, you ask, liberty for whom? Equality for whom? Justice for whom?

In the American case, the answer was white, male land-owners. Everybody else’s oppression -to different degrees- was necessary to build the privileges and power of this class. But you absolutely cannot glean an accurate understanding of American history without mentioning this foundational and continuing oppression.

So, when Zionists claim that Zionism is just Jewish self-determination, what are they leaving out of their story?

At what cost was Israel established?

What happened to the society that already existed when the first Zionist settlers arrived?

Is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the colonization of their lands not worth mentioning in this context?

Furthermore, is it intellectually honest to frame objection to these atrocities as objection to Jewish self-determination as a concept?

Once again, we return to the logic of elimination where this destruction is justified.

When it came to Palestinians, the issue was never with an abstract Jewish self-determination. Everybody should be able to determine their own destiny, but not at the expense of the oppression of others. As a matter of fact, there is ample evidence -recorded by the Zionist pioneers themselves- that the native Palestinian population was welcoming of the first Zionist settlers. They worked side by side, they taught them how to work the land, even when they showed arrogance and saw the natives as inferior. Only after it became clear that these settlers did not come merely to live in Palestine, but to become its landlords as Usishkin said, did resistance to Zionism begin.

Palestine has always been home to countless refugee populations, the idea that the Jewish people fleeing persecution could find a safe home in Palestine was never the issue. The issue is that these ideals of coexistence were never reciprocated by the Zionist movement, who showed disdain towards Palestinians from the very beginning and sought to take over the land. For example, it sanctioned settlers working with Palestinians, even calling Arab labor an “illness” and formed a segregated trade union that banned non-Jewish members.

In 1928, the Palestinian leadership even voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.

It is due to this long history that Zionism is facing a legitimacy crisis. It has nothing to do with denying Jewish self-determination, and everything to do with attempting to right historical wrongs. You cannot hope to find solutions if you refuse to even entertain thinking about the root causes.

After all, could it ever be righteous to end a diaspora by causing another one?

END

1. The Land of Palestine: A Brief Overview

Palestine is a geographical region located in the Eastern Mediterranean, bordered by modern-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. It is part of the broader area known as the Levant, which has been a crossroads of various civilizations throughout history.

Before 1948, Palestine was home to a diverse population of Arabs, Jews, and Christians, as all groups had religious ties to the area, especially the city of Jerusalem. The land itself was under the control of various empires, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and eventually the Islamic Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire.”

WHAT WAS PALESTINE BEFORE 1948?

https://www.pcrf.net/information-you-should-know/what-was-palestine-before-1948.html

What Was Palestine Before 1948? 

Throughout history, the region known as Palestine has been a melting pot of different cultures and civilizations. However, the Six-Day War changed the landscape of the region forever. In this article, we will take a closer look at Palestine before 1948 and the lasting effects of the Six-Day War.

1. The Land of Palestine: A Brief Overview

Palestine is a geographical region located in the Eastern Mediterranean, bordered by modern-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. It is part of the broader area known as the Levant, which has been a crossroads of various civilizations throughout history.

Before 1948, Palestine was home to a diverse population of Arabs, Jews, and Christians, as all groups had religious ties to the area, especially the city of Jerusalem. The land itself was under the control of various empires, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and eventually the Islamic Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire.

2. The British Mandate and the Rise of Nationalism

In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate to administer Palestine. The British Mandate aimed to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” while also protecting the rights of the Arab majority. However, tensions between the Arab and Jewish communities began to rise, leading to widespread unrest and violence.

During the British Mandate, the idea of a separate Jewish and Arab state was proposed multiple times. However, these proposals were met with opposition from both communities, making it difficult for the British authorities to find a solution to the growing unrest.

3. The Creation of Israel and the 1948 Palestine Conflict

In 1947, the United Nations proposed the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an internationally administered city. While the Jewish community largely accepted this plan, the Arab community rejected it, leading to the outbreak of civil war.

On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was established, marking the end of British rule in Palestine. This event triggered the first Arab-Israeli War, involving neighboring Arab countries, which ultimately led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs.

4. The Six-Day War and Its Impact

In 1967, the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. This conflict drastically changed the landscape of Palestine, with Israel capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Following the Six-Day War, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank became occupied territories, leading to a deterioration of the humanitarian circumstances in these areas from that point forward. The conflict also led to the rise of Palestinian nationalism, as the Palestinian people sought to establish their own state and regain their lost lands.

5. The Ongoing Struggle for a Palestinian State

The events of 1948 and the Six-Day War have left lasting scars on the Palestinian people, who continue to struggle for recognition and the establishment of a sovereign state. The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has resulted in numerous peace initiatives and negotiations, but a comprehensive and lasting solution has yet to be reached.

Despite the challenges faced by the Palestinian people, there are ways that individuals and organizations can help Palestine. Supporting humanitarian efforts and advocating for a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict can make a difference in the lives of those living in the region.

The history of Palestine before 1948 is a complex tapestry of different cultures and empires, marked by periods of relative harmony and conflict. The establishment of the State of Israel and the subsequent Six-Day War have had lasting impacts on the region, resulting in the displacement of the Palestinian people and ongoing struggles for a sovereign Palestinian state.

By understanding the history of Palestine and the events that led to the current situation, we can better appreciate the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and work toward a future marked by peace, justice, and reconciliation for all parties involved.

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) continues to provide humanitarian aid and medical relief to children and their families—some of whom are refugees fleeing their home countries—through our pediatric cancer departments, humanitarian aid programs and projects, pediatric mental health initiatives, hospital infrastructure projects, orphan and disabled children sponsorships, medical sponsorships, treatment abroad program, and medical missions. These efforts help to ensure that children in need get the vital assistance they require.

PCRF has a committee of volunteer doctors and specialists on our Medical Advisory Board who are dedicated to building up services through training, programs, and guiding PCRF to improve the quality of pediatric care in Palestine, Lebanon, and other areas in the Middle East.

PCRF is not a political or religious organization. Our mission is to provide medical and humanitarian relief collectively and individually to Arab children throughout the Middle East, regardless of their nationality, politics, or religion. We rely on charitable giving to provide medical treatment, surgeries, safety, shelter, and support to children and their families in Palestine and the Levant. Find out how you can get involved and help make a difference in children’s lives today!

We are not terrorists. We’re a native society fighting those who have been terrorising us since they arrived on our shores; people facing our extinction and fighting for our lives against foreigners who continue to pour into our lands, believing that God endowed them with an inherent right to have an extra country.

Dislodging colonial verbiage, its fairy tales and myths, no matter how absurd or illogical, is no easy task. In the words of Steven Salaita: “The normative liar, remember, is always given more authority in colonial societies than the recalcitrant subject.”

But continuing to allow or echo the language of power that disdains social justice struggles cannot be an option. Examination of embedded colonial terms and the conscientious use of a native people’s language of struggle must accompany everything we do.

Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian author. Her latest novel, The Blue Between Sky And Water (Bloomsbury 2015), has sold in 21 languages so far.

She is also the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS”A CRUEL

SYSTEM OF DOMINATION AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

1 FEBRUARI 2022

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.

The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.

Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.

“There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”

Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.

Identifying apartheid

A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights violation which is prohibited in public international law. Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that Israel enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.

In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute, and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.

Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas Israel controls, although they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in Israel. Israeli authorities enact multiple measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of refugees’ right to return. The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, and unlawful killings, in both Israel and the OPT.

Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and domination. They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.

The unlawful killing of Palestinian protesters is perhaps the clearest illustration of how Israeli authorities use proscribed acts to maintain the status quo. In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the border with Israel, calling for the right of return for refugees and an end to the blockade. Before protests even began, senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of 2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.

In light of the systematic unlawful killings of Palestinians documented in its report, Amnesty International is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. This should cover all weapons and munitions as well as law enforcement equipment, given the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces. The Security Council should also impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.

Palestinians treated as a demographic threat

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and then maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, and maximizing control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis. In 1967, Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.

Amnesty International recognizes that Jews, like Palestinians, claim a right to self-determination, and does not challenge Israel’s desire to be a home for Jews. Similarly, it does not consider that Israel labelling itself a “Jewish state” in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate.

However, Amnesty International’s report shows that successive Israeli governments have considered Palestinians a demographic threat, and imposed measures to control and decrease their presence and access to land in Israel and the OPT. These demographic aims are well illustrated by official plans to “Judaize” areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer.

Oppression without borders

The 1947-49 and 1967 wars, Israel’s ongoing military rule of the OPT, and the creation of separate legal and administrative regimes within the territory, have separated Palestinian communities and segregated them from Jewish Israelis. Palestinians have been fragmented geographically and politically, and experience different levels of discrimination depending on their status and where they live.

Palestinian citizens in Israel currently enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their counterparts in the OPT, while the experience of Palestinians in Gaza is very different to that of those living in the West Bank. Nonetheless, Amnesty International’s research shows that all Palestinians are subject to the same overarching system. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to minimize the Palestinian presence and access to land.

Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT.

For example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.

Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence. Israel’s exclusion of refugees is a flagrant violation of international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced displacement.

Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence instead of citizenship – though this status is permanent in name only. Since 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.

Lesser citizens

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized discrimination. In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”. The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic’s status as an official language.

The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing on 80% of Israel’s state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.

The situation in the Negev/Naqab region of southern Israel is a prime example of how Israel’s planning and building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians.  Since 1948 Israeli authorities have adopted various policies to “Judaize” the Negev/Naqab, including designating large areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for increasing the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.

Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently “unrecognized” by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions. As the villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages, in what amounts to forcible transfer.

Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel have left them consistently economically disadvantaged in comparison to Jewish Israelis. This is exacerbated by blatantly discriminatory allocation of state resources: a recent example is the government’s Covid-19 recovery package, of which just 1.7% was given to Palestinian local authorities.

Dispossession

The dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel’s apartheid system. Since its establishment the Israeli state has enforced massive and cruel land seizures against Palestinians, and continues to implement myriad laws and policies to force Palestinians into small enclaves. Since 1948, Israel has demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other properties across all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control.

As in the Negev/Naqab, Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the OPT live under full Israeli control. The authorities deny building permits to Palestinians in these areas, forcing them to build illegal structures which are demolished again and again.

In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements exacerbates the situation. The construction of these settlements in the OPT has been a government policy since 1967. Settlements today cover 10% of the land in the West Bank, and some 38% of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.

Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem are frequently targeted by settler organizations which, with the full backing of the Israeli government, work to displace Palestinian families and hand their homes to settlers. One such neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, has been the site of frequent protests since May 2021 as families battle to keep their homes under the threat of a settler lawsuit.

Draconian movement restrictions

Since the mid-1990s Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the OPT. A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their travel into Israel or abroad.

A 700km fence, which Israel is still extending, has isolated Palestinian communities inside “military zones”, and they must obtain multiple special permits any time they enter or leave their homes. In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade which has created a humanitarian crisis. It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.

“The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel’s brazen discrimination against Palestinians. While Palestinians are locked in a blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they please.”

Amnesty International examined each of the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians. The report shows that, while some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate.

The way forward

Amnesty International provides numerous specific recommendations for how the Israeli authorities can dismantle the apartheid system and the discrimination, segregation and oppression which sustain it.

The organization is calling for an end to the brutal practice of home demolitions and forced evictions as a first step. Israel must grant equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and the OPT, in line with principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived, and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity with full reparations.

The scale and seriousness of the violations documented in Amnesty International’s report call for a drastic change in the international community’s approach to the human rights crisis in Israel and the OPT.

All states may exercise universal jurisdiction over persons reasonably suspected of committing the crime of apartheid under international law, and states that are party to the Apartheid Convention have an obligation to do so.

“Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

REPORT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS”A CRUEL

SYSTEM OF DOMINATION AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/

file:///C:/Users/Astrid/Downloads/MDE1551412022ENGLISH%20(10).pdf

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAELI APARTHEID: ”A THRESHOLD CROSSED”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed

In April, Human Rights Watch released a 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed,” finding that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians coupled with grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem

In the months since, a growing chorus of voices, from former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa and current Knesset members to the ex-UN Secretary General and the French foreign minister, have referenced apartheid in relation to Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians, in particular in the occupied territory. Yet many in Germany, including those critical of Israeli human rights abuses, remain hesitant to apply the label to Israeli conduct.

Given history, one can certainly understand Germany’s concern for the welfare of the Jewish people, but that should not carry over to an endorsement of abusive and discriminatory Israeli government conduct, especially in the occupied territory. As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand.

The problem begins with the Israeli government having exercised primary control for more than a half-century over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, encompassing Israel and the occupied territory, where two main groups of people of roughly equal size live. Throughout this area, Israeli authorities methodologically privilege one of the groups, Jewish Israelis, who are governed under the same body of laws with the same rights and privileges wherever they live. At the same time, authorities allocate different baskets of inferior rights to the other, Palestinians, systematically discriminating against them wherever they live and most severely in the occupied territory.

Our sense that our research was not capturing this underlying reality led us to write this report. Reporting on “separate, not equal” schools for Palestinians inside Israel, Palestinians being forced out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, the serious rights abuses stemming from the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank, and the crushing closure of the Gaza Strip, we felt that our work captured important dynamics, including entrenched discrimination, in particular areas, but did not capture the full scope of Israel’s discriminatory rule over Palestinians.

We set out in the report to evaluate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. As we do in the nearly 100 countries across the world we work in, we began by documenting the facts—drawing on years of our own research, case studies that compared Palestinian areas with predominantly or exclusively Jewish ones, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and a range of other materials.

Across Israel and the occupied territory, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli authorities have pursued an intent to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. They have done so by undertaking policies aimed at mitigating what they openly describe as the “demographic threat” Palestinians pose and maximizing the land available for Jewish communities, while concentrating most Palestinian in dense enclaves. The policy takes different forms and is pursued in a particularly severe form in the occupied territory. It includes efforts to, as leading Israelis officials have put it, “Judaize” the Negev and Galilee regions of Israel and to maintain “a solid Jewish majority,” as described in government planning documents, in the Jerusalem municipality, which includes the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed and occupies. It also encompasses efforts to “settle [Jews in] the land between the [Palestinian] minority population centers and their surroundings” in the West Bank, as set out in plans that have guided the government’s settlement, and to pursue “separation” between the West Bank and Gaza. The policy across the board serves the same fundamental goal: maximum land, minimum Palestinians.

Furthermore, we found that Israeli authorities have carried out the grave abuses needed for the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians living in the occupied territory. It has done so through, among other policies, sweeping restrictions on movement in the form of the 14-year generalized closure of Gaza and the discriminatory permit system in the West Bank; the confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank; and denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives. Israel has imposed draconian military rule over millions of Palestinians, suspending their basic civil rights, while Jewish Israelis living in the same territory are governed under the permissive Israeli civil law; and imposed harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that led to forcing thousands of Palestinians out of their homes.

We then evaluated these facts against the relevant areas of international law—in this case, the established law on discrimination—which includes a universal prohibition against apartheid. While the term was coined in relation to specific practices in South Africa, international treaties define apartheid as a universal legal term referring to a particularly severe form of discriminatory oppression.

International criminal law, including the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court, define apartheid as a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements: (1) an intent by one racial group to dominate another; (2) systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group; and (3) particularly grave abuses known as inhumane acts.

Racial group is understood today also to encompass treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin. International criminal law also identifies a related crime against humanity of persecution. Under the Rome Statute and customary international law, persecution consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or other group with discriminatory intent.

The ratification by the State of Palestine of these two treaties in recent years has strengthened the legal application of these two crimes in its territory. A ruling by a chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this year confirmed that it has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity – including apartheid and persecution – committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2014.

Applying the facts to the laws, Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We found that the elements of the crimes come together in the occupied territory as part of a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there.

Sometimes the most important thing someone who cares deeply about you can do is to share hard truths and push you to confront them. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and leaders of Israel’s closest ally, the US, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State John Kerry, warned of the prospect of apartheid if things did not change.

Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. A 54-year-occupation is not temporary. The threshold has been crossed. Apartheid, and parallel persecution, is the reality for millions of Palestinians. Recognizing and correctly diagnosing a problem is the first step to solving it and ending apartheid is vital to the future of both Palestinians and Israelis and the cause of peace. It is by extension Germany’s special relationship with Israel and history that should prompt them to recognize the reality of apartheid and persecution and bring to bear the sorts of tools needed to end these crimes against humanity.

END

REPORT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

A TRESHOLD CROSSED

27 APRIL 2021

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution