The third paradigm is the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. The Zionist project did not conclude, as in North America, with the colonizers becoming the majority, nor as in apartheid South Africa where whites continued to be the minority. Despite the ethnic cleansing which took place in 1848 when the Zionist terror organizations expelled around 70 percent of Palestinians from their ancestral homes and lands and from more than 418 villages and towns, and despite the Israeli so-called right of law of 1951 allowing any Jew in the world to come to live in the state of Israel and to immediately acquire full citizenship while denying the Palestinian natives who became refugees by the same right, the current number of Palestinians living in historic Palestine is almost the same number as Israelis.
However, despite the similarities between the three types of colonization, the situation in Palestine was wholly different to the two previously cited models because the Zionist project was realized in modern times. Palestine was, paradoxically, removed from the map in the age of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was declared, with profound irony, in the same year as Palestine's eradication from the map. Palestine was removed from the map with the full knowledge and support of the Western powers. Yet, unlike the colonization of the "New World," as the American author Annie Annab has observed, Palestine was not an isolated island totally untouched by external influences, but part of a long-established trade route with an ancient culture, as well as various alphabets and manuscripts and a long history of scholarship. Palestine was a renowned nation, with a long and celebrated history. When Zionists first began to immigrate collectively to Palestine after the First World War, the country already had its own currency, national border, newspapers, magazines, theatres, clubs, radio stations, railway stations, political parties and a recognized written history, as well as many stone buildings including ancient churches, mosques, synagogues, schools and businesses, and many thousands of permanent homes.
Zionists had to face the fact that their project came during a period when the maps of the world were fully complete and no "New World" had been left empty as was the case in the colonial expansionist period of the 15th and 16th centuries. This also explains why Zionists initially considered many countries as a potential state for Zionist Jews, including Uganda and Argentina; in the end, however, they settled on Palestine as their future state due to the influence of the Biblical traditions and Palestine's ancient Jewish history.
The Zionists' claim was based on two basic arguments, firstly, that Jews longed to go to Palestine considering it the ancestral homeland that they had lost 2,000 years before, and secondly, that Jews were oppressed in Europe as a Semitic people. Regarding the first argument, even if we agree that modern day Jews are the descendants of those ancient Jews, what about the rights of the native Palestinians who have always existed there? And what right, apart from the 'right' of force and terror, do Zionists have to destroy one of the oldest societies in the Middle East? The second argument, that of European persecution of Jews, can be countered by asking: which would have been better for them, to struggle for democracy and equality in their home countries or to make the dreadful choice of allying themselves with the imperial powers in order to colonize Palestine?
Throughout history Palestinians defended their country against all invaders, They fought the crusaders army which committed in Jerusalem a huge massacre where thousands were murdered in Jerusalem in 1096.Palestinians revolted against the tyranny of the ottoman state in the 18th century under the leader ship of Sheikh Daher Al Omar, and they defeated Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801 at the hills of Nablus and Tulkarem and Genin. And launched the great Palestinian revolution against the British occupation and the Zionists in 1936 and they declared the modern revolution against the Zionist state in 1965 which still going.
Contemporary Palestinians are the product of intermarriage between Arabs and the ancient Canaanites.
Palestinians are the ancestors of the Semitic people the Canaanites who have lived in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and parts of Jordan since the year 2000 BC. The Canaanites developed a reputation for remarkable industry, enterprise and intelligence. For that reason Palestine was also called the land of Canaan.
About 1900 BC, the Canaanites developed a remarkable invention, the Alphabet, in which they used a 22-letter system for recording events and ideas in writing. Through them, the Alphabet was transmitted to the Greeks and the other European nations. The Zionists, however, who sought to remove Palestinians from their homeland, also sought to remove them from history. In his interesting book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The silencing of Palestinian History (1996), British historian Keith Whitlam revealed the Zionists' efforts to erase ancient Palestinian history and to focus only on ancient Jewish history without any reference to Palestinian Canaanite history .In this way as Whitlam says they wanted to take possession of the past in order to own the present.
Palestine had become a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics — including its name in Arabic, Filastin — became known to the entire Islamic world, with the country being celebrated as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance...In 1516, Palestine, along with all the Arab countries except Morocco, became part of the Ottoman Empire, but this made Palestine no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic. Sixty percent of the population worked in agriculture and Palestinian Jaffa oranges has been renowned in European markets since the 19th century. Its indigenous people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine as the descendants of the Canaanite people, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab and Islamic nation. Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1917, it is important to recall that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Palestinian majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314 native Palestinians.
Knowing that Palestine was already populated by another nation Zionists invented the term ''a land without people for a people without land," which has become of the biggest lies in modern history.
Yet this assertion was more than simply a lie, it showed in reality a Zionist resolution to exterminate Palestinians on the theoretical and ideological levels even before the Zionists began to immigrate under the auspices and protection of Great Britain, which occupied Palestine.
The declaration that Palestinians did not exist meant only one thing, to expel them as Ben Gorion and other Zionist leaders stated on various occasions. No wonder that the concept of "transfer," as the Palestinian writer Nor Masalha says, was central and fundamental to the successful realization of Zionism. This false assertion gave the Zionists their justification for carrying out a number of massacres during the 1940s that led to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and lands. However, without the need to go into the numerous Zionist expressions which dehumanize Palestinians, consider Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's oft-cited 1969 statement. "There is no such thing as a Palestinian." In this statement Golda Meir unequivocally illustrated the Zionist worldview, which has been based always on denying and eliminating the very existence of Palestinians.
When the Ottoman Empire, which was the ruling power in Palestine and the region, lost the war in 1917, the allies who had previously promised Arabs their independence immediately betrayed their pledges, deciding instead to divide the Arab territory of the former Ottoman Empire into five parts: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq.
The British Balfour declaration of that year promising Jews a homeland in already populated Palestine was in fact only a collateral consequence of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement which divided the region. The Zionist movement sought to create an overwhelmingly Jewish state, with the Balfour Declaration realizing the first step of that plan. One problem for Zionists, however, was the native Arab Muslim and Christian population. The first Zionist leader in Palestine, Ben Gorion, stated clearly that no nation would open its doors to another nation to settle in which was in fact the position of the Palestinians who resisted the Zionist project and have declared revolution after revolution since that period. The Zionist solution was clear, a policy of forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, which remains a popular policy with Israeli politicians up to the present day.
What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state or as much as was possible.
The native Palestinians, as they became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land-buying because both posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project could never have been realized without the military backing of the British. In short, Zionism was based on an innately flawed colonialist worldview, which stated that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, stated this in his work Der Judenstaadt to help win European support, writing, "For Europe we shall constitute there [in Palestine] a sector of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as the vanguard of culture against barbarism."
Herzl's statement, in the words of left wing Israeli activist Uri Avnery, showed "in 22 German words the worldview of Zionism, and our place in it was laid down." I would recall here that Herzl's words were written 102 years ago and if we remember much of the literature which appeared after the September 2001 terror attacks and the active part of Zionists in agitating against Arabs and Muslims we would better understand Zionists' position, one in which, to use the words of Tony Cliff, an anti- Zionist Jew, Zionists "if not for sale, were always for hire".
The Palestinians' and other Arabs' opposition to Zionism was never based on anti-Jewishness, as Palestinian and Arab culture has no history of anti-Judaism as Europe has, but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people. The state of Israel, declared in 1948, was accomplished by a terror campaign, which drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. The paradox of the Zionist movement is that, while introducing and marketing itself as a national liberation movement, it has allied itself wholly since the beginning with the imperial powers.
It is natural to ask, therefore: what kind of national liberation movement allies itself in every case and at every period in its history with the powers of world imperialism? What national liberation struggle built its very existence on the colonization of another people, on the obliteration of that people's history, their culture, and their land? The founding fathers of Zionism were much more honest about what they stood for. One word appears over and over in their writing: not national "liberation," but "colonization." Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the founding fathers of the Zionist movement, wrote in 1923:
[It is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law that knows of no exceptions, a law that has existed at all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must 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 attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not "difficult," not "dangerous" but impossible!... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, 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 colonization." in his diary, Sharet, quotes a conversation with Army chief Moshe Dayan in may 1955.
"We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years...Reprisal actions, which we couldn't carry out if we were tied to a security pact, are our vital lymph...they make it possible for us to maintain a high level of tension in our population and in the army. Without these actions we would have ceased to be a combative people... "
Sharett concludes: "The state.... must see the sword as the main if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may – no, it MUST -- invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge.... And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space."
Defining and emphasizing the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a conflict between the native Palestinians and the racist Zionist ideology is essential because the form which any solution takes depend on how the conflict is defined. In the area of conflict theory, we need to differentiate between two types of conflicts, the interest conflict, which can occur on a disputed island or the like, and the value conflict which is a total confrontation on a different level. The struggle of the ANC in apartheid South Africa, for instance, belonged to the value conflict category; in other words, it was a conflict between the theory of the white minority, based on the idea if its retaining a power monopoly, and the rights of the oppressed majority of native Africans. My argument is based on the fact that the Palestinian Israeli conflict is basically a value conflict between the eastern European settlers who adopted the Zionist ideology and the native Palestinians .It argues that a just and lasting peace in historic Palestine is only possible once the Jewish community in Palestine realizes the destruction Zionism has brought to them, as well as the native Palestinians. The boycotting of the State of Israel and the use of international pressure could be an effective tool in the process of de-zionising Palestine. Unfortunately, however, despite the fact that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1975 passed Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, the State of Israel has managed, as with almost all the UN resolutions against it, to escape any serious consequences resulting from its policies due to Western nations' support, with the US's support being the most powerful and important for it. In my view the two state solution idea has failed due to several reasons, the main one being that there is no place to establish a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank which is full of Zionist settlements, preventing any territorial connection between its parts, in addition to the issue of the separation wall built on Palestinian land.
The Palestinian question belongs in my view wholly to the value conflict category. It is, as I explained earlier, a conflict between the invading overseas Eastern European Zionists and the native Muslim and Christian Palestinians. One of the great wrongs regarding the Palestinian question, therefore, is its portrayal as a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims. In Palestine, where a tiny group of Jewish community co-existed harmoniously side-by-side with Palestinians for centuries, there was never any conflict with the local Jews before the Zionists' arrival in the country on an imperial boat. A statement issued by "Jews against Zionism "asserted that the Balfour Declaration approving the establishment of a Jewish homeland "was the reason for the deterioration in the good relations between Jews and Arab inhabitants". The Palestine Liberation Organization made it clear as far back as 1964 that the Palestinian struggle is directed against the Zionist invaders. the PLO made clear distinction between Judaism as a faith and Zionism as a racist ideology. It also proposed the one state solution whereby all can live in peace and on an equal footing in a secular and democratic Palestine.
History has demonstrated beyond doubt that fascistic ideologies have ultimately brought destruction to the people they claim to represent; Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy are just two examples of this. Zionism has succeeded in brainwashing many Jews to believe in the viability of its deadly project, bringing them to the heart of the Middle East to go from war to war in the hope that it can eventually impose a 'Pax Romana' type of peace in the region. Yet, even after 60 years, it has failed in achieving this goal despite its military power and the wars it won against Arabs in 1948, 1956, 1967,1982, 2002 and 2006. In most of these wars, Israel expanded its borders firstly by occupying more territory than was allotted in the partition plan of Palestine in the year 1947, then by continuing the same expansionist policy, which has been always the cornerstone of its strategy. From the very beginning up until the present day, Palestinians have rejected the Zionist status quo and insisted on their rights, despite the massive power disparity between Palestinians and Israel. The collapse of South Africa's apartheid regime should have taught Israeli the lesson it needs to learn, that that there is no way to end the cycle of violence in Palestine and the Middle East without breaking with its Zionist policies; only then, as occurred in South Africa which became a state for all its citizens, will the road towards peace in Palestine be truly opened for all the communities there.
Since the 1993 Oslo Accord we have moved from one negotiation to another while the destructive Israeli machine is at work almost daily in the West Bank and Gaza and while the world, to use former President Carter's words is witnessing "a terrible human rights crime in Gaza" where 1.5 million human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air or land. An entire population is being brutally collectively punished. The prospect of peace has never been as far away from the region as it is now.
The Palestinian Israeli Oslo negotiations have inflicted great damages on the Palestinian interest by taking this question outside the United Nations. We know that one of the best ways to test an idea is to experience it in socialistic reality. In other words, it is possible to judge the idea when it converts from the area of theory to the area of reality. We do not know any negotiation in the history of the national movements that took so long of a period without leading to any results except in the Palestinian case. It has been proven, beyond any doubt, that the absence of international community has weakened the Palestinian party, keeping in mind the imbalance of forces between the Palestinians and Israelis. We have no illusion about this question; Israel will reject the intervention of the UN because it will not be in it's favor. But for Palestinians, the UN resolutions, including the 194, must always be one of the political weapons which presses Israel to honor the UN resolutions. There is no doubt that this matter won't happen overnight, but at the same time insisting on taking the question back to the UN would be a great step towards realizing the Palestinian people's rights. The 15th of May is not only a day to remember the tragedy of Palestine; it is a time to rethink the policies done in the past decades.
In her book "Married to Another Man," Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian-British professor, argues that "the only way forward for both Palestinians and Israelis" is not a two-state solution where the Israelis control four-fifths of the land while the Palestinians will have the remainder, if any, but, "The only possible solution that can provide dignity and equality will be that of a single state in an unpartitioned land where both peoples may live together."
60 years ago Palestine was there. We were farmers, fishermen, merchants, drivers, shopkeepers, etc. Israel today celebrates its independence from those farmers and fishermen, with Zionists even portraying those indigenous Palestinians as the occupiers. In reality, however, Israel is celebrating 60 years of my nation's misery. And what are they truly celebrating? Seven wars, one third of Palestinians have been in Israeli prisons. Four million Palestinian refugees, 60 years of violating human rights, more than 600 check points, around half a million settlers and moreover, 60 years of ethnic cleansing? Is this the way to bring peace to the Middle East or, as I believe, is it simply sowing the seeds of more wars and more conflicts.
* Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. He wrote this analysis for a lecture he delivered at the Indonesiam State University on May 14, 2008. |
