Palestine

Facts about Palestine and Israel Presented by: World Islamic Network

Introduction First of all, it is necessary to state that this booklet is presented only to highlight the usurping activities of Israel in Palestine and our aim is not in anyway to hurt the feelings of the Jewish community. Through this small presentation we only wish highlight the plight and sufferings of Palestinians in their own homeland. Palestine is located on the East coast of the Mediterranean Sea, West of Jordan and to the south of Lebanon. Between 3000 and 1100 B.C this area was inhabited by Canaanites who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews in 2nd century A.D. The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D. made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin. How long has Palestine been a specifically Arab country? “Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the 7th century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics - including its name in Arabic, Filastin - became known to the entire Islamic world. Following the war of 1948 this land was divided into three parts: the state of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Origin of Zionism In the 19th century Jews began to develop a national consciousness, and mobilized to achieve national goals. Because Jews were spread across the world (in diaspora), their national movement, Zionism, entailed the identification of a place where Jews could come together through the process of immigration and settlement. They chose Palestine since it was the site of Jewish origin. The Zionist movement began in 1882 with the first wave of European Jewish immigration to Palestine. The World Zionist Organization, established in 1897, declared that the aim of Zionism was to establish “a national home for the Jewish people secured by public law.” Zionism drew on Jewish religious attachment to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel). But the politics of Zionism was influenced by nationalist ideology, and by colonial ideas about 2

Europeans’ rights to claim and settle other parts of the world. At that time, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. According to Ottoman records, in 1878 there were 462,465 subject inhabitants of the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts: 403,795 Muslims (including Druze), 43,659 Christians and 15,011 Jews. In addition, there were perhaps 10,000 Jews with foreign citizenship (recent immigrants to the country), and several thousand Muslim Arab nomads (bedouin) who were not counted as Ottoman subjects. Jewish Notion Rejected Jewish claims to this land are based on the biblical promise to Abraham and his descendants, on the fact that this was the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel (which was destroyed by the Roman Empire), and on Jews’ need for a haven from European anti-Semitism. Palestinian Arabs’ claims to the land are based on continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years and the fact that they represented the demographic majority. They reject the notion that a biblical-era kingdom constitutes the basis for a valid modern claim. If Arabs engage the biblical argument at all, they maintain that since Abraham’s son Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, then God’s promise of the land to the children of Abraham includes Arabs as well. They do not believe that they should forfeit their land to compensate Jews for Europe’s crimes against them. The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs’ inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today. Actually the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a

situation which continues to the present). The Arab community strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arabs in Palestine. In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs’ opposition wasn’t based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossesion of their people. The mythic “land without people for a people without land” was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This was the root of the problem. Birth of the state of Israel During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned into refugees. The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either destroyed their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish population. This was the birth of the state of Israel. The indigenous Jews “Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to a community that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s. The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs. (John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice”) The British Mandate in Palestine By the early years of the 20th century the Ottoman Empire was weakening, and European powers were entrenching their grip on areas in the eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine. The Arab revolt, led by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and Husayn’s son Faysal, was successful in defeating the Ottomans, and Britain took control over much of this area during World War I. In 1917, the British Foreign Minister, Lord Arthur Balfour, issued a declaration (the Balfour Declaration) announcing his government’s

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support for the establishment of “a Jewish national home in Palestine.” After the war Britain obtained a mandate over the areas which now comprise Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan. In 1921, the British divided this region in two: east of the Jordan River became the Emirate of Transjordan, to be ruled by Faysal’s brother ‘Abdullah, and west of the Jordan River became the Palestine Mandate. This was the first time in modern history that Palestine became a unified political entity. Throughout the region, Arabs were angered by Britain’s failure to fulfill its promise to create an independent Arab state. In Palestine, the situation was more complicated because of the British promise to support the creation of a Jewish national home. The rising tide of European Jewish immigration, land purchases and settlement in Palestine generated increasing resistance by Palestinian Arab peasants, journalists and political figures. They feared that this would lead eventually to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. In the 1920s, when the Jewish National Fund purchased large tracts of land from absentee Arab landowners, the Arabs living in these areas were evicted. These displacements led to increasing tensions and violent confrontations between Jewish settlers and Arab peasant tenants. European Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, leading to new land purchases and Jewish settlements. Palestinian resistance to British control and Zionist settlement climaxed with the Arab revolt of 1936-39. After crushing the Arab revolt, the British issued a White Paper (a statement of political policy) limiting future Jewish immigration and land purchases. The Zionists regarded this as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and a particularly egregious act in light of the desperate situation of the Jews in Europe, who were facing extermination. The United Nations Partition Plan On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The territory designated to the Jewish state would be slightly larger than the Palestinian

state on the assumption that increasing numbers of Jews would immigrate there. Publicly, the Zionist leadership accepted the UN partition plan, although they hoped somehow to expand the borders allotted to the Jewish state. The Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states rejected the UN plan and regarded the General Assembly vote as an international betrayal. Some argued that the UN plan allotted too much territory to the Jews. Most Arabs regarded the proposed Jewish state as a settler colony and argued that it was only because the British had permitted extensive Zionist settlement in Palestine against the wishes of the Arab majority that the question of Jewish statehood was on the international agenda at all. The 1948 War Fighting began between the Arab and Jewish residents of Palestine days after the adoption of the UN partition plan. By the spring of 1948, the Zionist forces had secured control over most of the territory allotted to the Jewish state in the UN plan. On May 15, 1948, the British evacuated Palestine, and Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel. Neighboring Arab states invaded Israel claiming as they sought to save Palestine from the Zionists. During May and June 1948, when the fighting was most intense, the outcome of this first Arab-Israeli War was in doubt. But after arms shipments from Czechoslovakia reached Israel, its armed forces established superiority and conquered territories beyond the UN partition plan borders of the Jewish state. In 1949, the war between Israel and the Arab states ended with the signing of armistice agreements. The country once known as Palestine was now divided into three parts, each under separate political control. The State of Israel encompassed over 77 percent of the territory. Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine (the West Bank). Egypt took control of the coastal plain around the city of Gaza (the Gaza Strip). The Palestinian Arab state envisioned by the UN partition plan was never established. Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews? “Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the

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ruling body - a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to selfdetermination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the twothirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter.” (Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”) Public vs private pronouncements on this question. “In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that ‘after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine’ (Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”) Zionists’ disrespect of partition boundaries “Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution.” (British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The Arabs and Israel.”) The Palestinian Arab Refugees As a consequence of the fighting in Palestine/Israel between 1947 and 1949, over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees. The precise number of refugees, and questions of responsibility for their exodus are sharply disputed. Many Palestinians have claimed that most were expelled in accordance with a Zionist plan to rid the country of its non-Jewish inhabitants.

Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism David Ben-Gurion urged, ‘let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.’ The truth was that ‘politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside’ (Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”) The 1967 War and Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza On June 5, 1967 Israel preemptively attacked Egypt and Syria, destroying their air forces on the ground within a few hours. Jordan joined in the fighting belatedly, and consequently was attacked by Israel as well. The Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies were decisively defeated, and Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: ‘In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.’ (“Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”) What happened after the 1967 war ended? “In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel’s military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security forces.” (Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation,” ed. Lockman and Beinin.) World opinion on the legality of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. “Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel’s occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel’s action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza

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Strip was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a ‘serious and increasing threat to international peace and security.’ (“John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”) All Jewish settlements in occupied territories are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed. “The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention’s Article 49, which states, ‘The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’” (John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”) Jewish Criticism of Zionism “Albert Einstein - “‘I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain’... “In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: ‘The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.’ (“Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”) “A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail.” (Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in

Jerusalem, quoted in “Like All The Nations?”, ed. Brinner & Rischin.) “It is no longer my country” “For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I can’t bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs...All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their own...I can’t do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell without me.” (Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement periodical, “The Other Israel”, August 1998.) Zionism and the Holocaust The U.N. decisions to partition Palestine and then to grant admission to the state of Israel were made, on one level, as an emotional response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Under more normal circumstances, the compelling claims to sovereignty of the Arab majority would have prevailed. This reaction of guilt on the part of the Western allies was understandable, but that doesn’t mean the Palestinians should have to pay for crimes committed by others — a classic example of two wrongs not making a right. The Holocaust is often used as the final argument in favor of Zionism, but is this connection justified? There are several aspects to consider in answering that question honestly. First, we will examine the historical record of what the Zionist movement actually did to help save European Jewry from the Nazis. Wasn’t the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust? “In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine.” (John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”) In any case, Palestine was not Britain’s to give away; it was already occupied. “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...There is not a single community

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in the country that did not have a former Arab population.” (Israeli leader, Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s “Original Sins.”) General Considerations “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?” (David Ben-Gurion, quoted in “The Jewish Paradox” by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress.) “Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.” (Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel”) Some arguments used to justify Zionism “There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization of a whole people. The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago! The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews. They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge. A ‘benign’ occupation? “Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running an ‘enlightened’ or ‘benign’ occupation, qualitatively different from other military occupations the world has seen. The truth was radically different.

Like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation.” (Israeli historian, Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims.”) The Occupied Territories Israel established a military administration to govern the Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Under this arrangement, Palestinians were denied many basic political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of political association. Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank and Gaza have included extensive use of collective punishments such as curfews, house demolitions and closure of roads, schools and community institutions. Hundreds of Palestinian political activists have been deported to Jordan or Lebanon, thousands of acres of Palestinian land have been confiscated, and thousands of trees have been uprooted. Since 1967, over 300,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned without trial, and over half a million have been tried in the Israeli military court system. Jewish settlement on a hill top in the West Bank. Israel has built hundreds of settlements and permitted hundreds of thousands of its own Jewish citizens to move to the West Bank and Gaza, despite that this constitutes a breach of international law. Israel has justified the violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international laws governing military occupation of foreign territory. Jerusalem The UN partition plan advocated that Jerusalem become an international zone, independent of both the proposed Jewish and Palestinian Arab states. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel took control of the western part of Jerusalem, while Jordan took the eastern part, including the old walled city containing important Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious sites. The 1949 armistice line cut the city in two. In June 1967, Israel

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captured East Jerusalem from Jordan and almost immediately annexed it. Israel regards Jerusalem as its “eternal capital.” Arabs consider East Jerusalem part of the occupied West Bank and want it to be the capital of a Palestinian state. The Intifada In December 1987, the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza started a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. Under the leadership of Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, Israel tried to smash the intifada with “force, power and blows.” Army commanders instructed troops to break the bones of demonstrators. From 1987 to 1991 Israeli forces killed over 1,000 Palestinians, including over 200 under the age of sixteen. US Vetoes Cast Against UN Security Council Resolutions on Palestine Since 1948 the UN Security Council has adopted 58 resolutions on the issue of Palestine but the implementation of the Security Council resolutions have proved to be very difficult, as Israel, one of the main parties of the conflict, customarily ignores the resolutions, and continues breaching international regulations and laws, such as the 1949 Forth Geneva Convention, the UN charter, and UN Security Council resolutions. For instance, resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 are two key resolutions that Israel has refused to comply with. The resolution furthermore calls for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in the 1967 war, and emphasizes the need for “a just settlement of the refugee problem”. A number of resolutions with similar wording have since then followed, and have likewise been ignored by the Israeli authorities. Israel’s blatant ignorance of the Security Council resolutions is likely much due to the unconditional support the country has been given by the US. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the US has the privilege of the veto power. By means of its veto power, the US has managed to protect Israel from numerous resolutions condemning Israeli actions, policies, and its refusal to comply with UN resolutions and international law. 21 of the vetoed drafts are directly concerned with the

issue of Palestine or attacks on Palestinian targets, and include sharp criticism against Israeli human rights violations, calls for the cessation of collective punishment, home demolitions and deportations, and denouncement of Israeli establishments of illegal settlements (for more information, see below). The US use of the veto has furthermore prevented the establishment of an UN observer force, on-site monitoring of the situation, and enforcement of earlier resolutions. In addition to the drafts that have been vetoed, the threat of the US veto has shield Israel from criticism by forcing the members of the Security Council to settle with a statement instead of a resolution. Palestinians About 3 million Palestinians now live within this area, which is divided between the state of Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza; these latter areas were captured and occupied by Israel in 1967. Today, over 700,000 Palestinians are citizens of Israel, living inside the country’s 1949 armistice borders. About 1.2 million live in the West Bank (including 200,000 in East Jerusalem) and about one million in the Gaza Strip. The remainder of the Palestinian people, perhaps another 3 million, lives in diaspora, outside the country they claim as their national homeland. The largest Palestinian diaspora community, approximately 1.3 million, is in Jordan. Many of them still live in the refugee camps that were established in 1949, although others live in cities and towns. Lebanon and Syria also have large Palestinian populations, many of whom still live in refugee camps. Jordan is the only Arab state to grant citizenship to the Palestinians who live there. Palestinians in Arab states generally do not enjoy the same rights as the citizens of those states. The Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel Palestinian Arabs who remained in the area that became the state of Israel were granted Israeli citizenship and the right to vote. But in many respects they were and remain second-class citizens, since Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people and Palestinians are non-Jews. Most of them were subject to a military government that restricted their movement and other rights (to speech, association and so on). Arabs were not permitted to become full members of the Israeli trade union

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federation, the Histadrut, until 1965. About 40 percent of their lands were confiscated by the state and used for development projects that benefited Jews primarily or exclusively. All of Israel’s governments have discriminated against the Arab population by allocating far fewer resources for education, health care, public works, municipal government and economic development to the Arab sector.

Mahatma Gandhi on the Palestine conflict – 1938 “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...” (Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in “A Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr.)

Conclusion Palestinians have displayed singular resistance against Israeli occupation while the standard position of the Islamic world is also that the indigenous Palestinians must not be dispossessed of their land and they should be given autonomy to govern their areas. It is the standing demand of all the Arab countries that all the refugees who have fled due to hostile conditions must be resettled in their land. Also a referendum should be held under the auspices and under the supervision of UN to form a government that is necessarily representative of people of all major religions residing within the boundaries of the disputed territories.

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