Colonial-Settlers

During the colonialism heyday, groups of immigrants could migrate to lands not internationally recognized as independent states, claim parcels of land, overpower the inhabitants, ethnically cleanse the indigenous people, and declare themselves an independent nation. The United States, Canada, and Australia followed this colonial-settler formula to become independent nations.

The Zionist project in Palestine was a colonial-settler quest for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Besides using a successful formula, the Zionist project had an additional cache. They had international diplomatic decrees, land purchasing institutes, wealthy benefactors, and the British military might to guarantee a Jewish State in Palestine. 

The 1917 Balfour Declaration

British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur James Balfour Declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” His declaration is the oxytocin that started it all. 

The British government, with no regard for the indigenous population, committed to establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” on land inhabited by Palestinians. For centuries before the Balfour Declaration, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other religious and ethnic groups lived peacefully in Palestine. The Zionist ideology and settler-colonialism destabilized Palestinian life.

Pre-Balfour Declaration, Zionists were a minority of about 1% of the Jews of the world. The idea of setting up an exclusive theocratic Jewish society was a radical idea. The vast majority of Jews were non-Zionists who sought a different solution to the pogroms and antisemitism of 19th-century Russia and Europe. Their solution was assimilation, not self-segregation in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration set in motion Israel’s 75-year war against the Palestinians. 

1922 British Mandate of Palestine

This League of Nations issued a document provided for the administration of Palestine by the British to establish the Jewish national home. It acted as a guarantee for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The mandate made it clear that the only people in Palestine recognized with national rights were the Jewish people. In the 28 articles, there is no reference to the Palestinians as having national or political rights.

The 1937 Peel Commission

The 1937 Peel Commission was the first official British paper to propose dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. With hints of ethnic cleansing, the Peel Commission concluded that the feasibility of partition required the transfer of Palestinian Arabs outside the Jewish state. 

The Zionist Congress accepted the plan as a first step to secure a base from where Jewish dominance could expand. Palestinian-Arab opposition was immediately expressed by the escalation of the Palestinian revolt launched in 1936. 

1938 British Woodhead Commission

In November of 1938, Britain formed the Woodhead Commission to study the feasibility of the Peel Plan. The Commission reported no plan for the partition of Palestine could successfully meet the terms of the Peel Commission. The Commission believed there was little hope of success in establishing self-supporting Arab and Jewish states. The Commission concluded that the partitioning plans were “impracticable”.

Britain continued to manage the Palestine situation politically and militarily. By 1947, after suffering several deadly terrorist attacks from the Zionist extremist, they realized their incapability of maintaining peace. In April 1947, the British referred the future of Palestine to the UN. 

The 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine, UN Resolution 181 

Ignoring the Woodhead Commission, the British leaving, increasing violence, and indicators of civil war did not deter the UN from issuing Resolution 181. The UN plan recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The partition plan proposed a Jewish state of more than half (56%) of Mandated Palestine territory. At that time, Jews comprised less than a third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. 

The plan disregarded both the land and population injustice of the proposal. About one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state were Arabs: nine of the sixteen districts were part of the Jewish state, and only one of nine had a Jewish majority. The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The Arabs rejected it. 

Since 1947, Israel has propagandized this disagreement over UN Resolution 181. They convinced the West that since they had the backing of the UN, removing Palestinians from their land was justifiable, and the Palestinians were the trespassing outlaws who wanted to destroy Israel. The Zionists used this disguise as a reason for their conquest and cleansing of Palestinians. It fits nicely into a victimhood narrative. 

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

The civil war between the Palestinian Arabs and Britain training Zionist armed groups was lopsided. The Palestinians, recovering from their 1936-39 Arab Uprising that annihilated their military capabilities, were no match. The Zionists proceeded on the belief that one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state had to be killed or relocated. 

Emboldened by the international imprimatur given by the UN decision, the Zionist military organizations attacked Arab villages and residential quarters before launching the highly organized Plan Dalet. Devised to control and conquer areas of the UN-partitioned Jewish state as well as areas of Jewish settlements outside its borders. 

Relying on the diplomatic and political assets provided by the UN Partition Resolution and U.S. support, the Zionists embarked on an offensive to conquer as much land as possible beyond the recommended boundaries defined in the partition, to destroy and empty whole Palestinian villages and towns.  

What proceeded (1947-49) was the expulsion of over seven hundred fifty thousand from a 1.9 million population, made refugees. Estimates indicate that 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed and removed from the map, 5,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of atrocities, and more than 70 massacres. Palestinians refer to this period as Nakba – the catastrophe. 

On May 15, 1948, the last of the British military left Palestine. The same day, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli first prime minister, declared independence for Israel. The Zionist movement had carefully prepared for independence and had created a network of institutions ready to begin the process of governing. The scheme to establish a national home for the Jewish people was almost complete. However, Israel had some unfinished business.

By early 1949, the proposed UN partition boundaries had become irrelevant. Israeli forces controlled 77 percent of pre-1948 Palestine, including large areas the UN planned to designate as part of the Arab state. Egyptian forces controlled Gaza while Jordanian and Iraqi troops held onto the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The 1967 Six-Day War

In 1967, Israel launched a pre-empted attack against Egypt, unleashing the Six-Day War. The airstrike destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian air force. Israel then followed suit against the Syrian Air Force. On that evening, Yigal Allon, an Israeli minister, wrote: “must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel”. 

All Egyptian, Iraqi, and Jordanian control ended in 1967 after the Israeli forces removed them during the Six-Day War. As a result, Israel was able to absorb the whole of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. In addition, they conquered the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. By the end of the war, Israel had expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, including 130,000 refugees displaced in 1948, and increased its territory by three and a half times. 

Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military leader, and politician, bragged, “We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here… Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of the Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist [but] the Arab villages are not there either.”

The 1967 war was the culmination of the Zionist colonial-settler project that began with Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl and his 1896 publication, Der Judenstaat. Herzl offered a solution to the antisemitism that plagued Europe. His work encouraged Jews to purchase land in Palestine to create an independent Jewish state. Anyway, after the 1967 war, the Israeli purchasing of Palestine was complete.

“The surest way to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.” Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian author

The Palestinians have never succumbed. Israel has used ethnic cleansing and racial separation of an apartheid society as strategic themes to eliminate Palestinian history. Settler colonial projects eventually reach a point when patience wanes. The final solution becomes slaughter and genocide to cleanse a native population that refuses to capitulate. Ask Native Americans, Armenians, Aborigines of Australia, Bengalis, Bosnians, Congolese, and Rwandans. Will Palestinians be added to that list?