Early 20th Century Imperialism and Zionism: The situation for the Palestinian people is what Nelson Mandela calls ‘The greatest moral issue of our age’. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, after visiting the Occupied Palestinian Territories declared that ‘it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa…the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.
Modern Palestine and its predicament have their roots in the historic link between Zionism and imperialism. Prevalent in the early 20th century, Zionism was founded upon the idea that Jews and non-Jews are incompatible and that it would be possible to establish, with the backing of the world’s great powers, a Jewish state in an ‘undeveloped country’ outside Europe. This state would be where Jews could settle unopposed as they would build a ‘civilised’ European society, an ally to the great powers. Zionism’s character was conservative, exclusivist and colonialist.
The Zionist colonisation of Palestine was legitimised by Britain in the 1917 Balfour declaration. Britain knew the Zionists were anti-Marxist and could act as a buffer for British power against Arab Marxism. Over the next 20 years the settler community set about building the base upon which Israel would be founded, building a Jewish ‘enclave’ economy and boycotting Arab goods. Anti-colonial Arab nationalism swept the region and many Palestinians hoped for a union with Syria. Britain chose to side with the settlers in their conflict with the Palestinians. While publicly criticising both sides, Britain in fact suppressed Palestinian protests and helped the settlers establish a Zionist militia. Jews working for the British were paid much higher wages than their Arab counterparts, and any British officials opposing Zionist policies were removed. Britain’s policy in Palestine was classic colonial ‘divide and rule’. While Britain had formal relations with the settlers, they courted reactionary Arabs, fixing elections so that anti-imperialist anger was diverted towards the settlers and away from the British. In the 1920s and 30s, Jewish purchasing of land and British concessions to the Zionists, combined with the accelerated Jewish immigration left the Palestinians with very little.
Intellectual Arab society organised a mass movement of non-cooperation with the British and the Zionists in 1936 to oppose the increasingly desperate situation. The movement was met with extreme brutality by the British and after the Arab leadership surrendered, activists went to the hills as guerrilla warriors. Air strikes on villages, the execution of captured guerrillas and a large-scale demolition of insurgent villages ensured military rule prevailed. Settler economic power and confidence soared as they raced ahead of their neighbours, becoming suppliers to the British war effort to the extent that by 1945 the whole settler community was part of the Zionist military apparatus. Meanwhile, Arab Palestinians were disarmed and politically paralysed by the killing or imprisonment of its leaders.
By operating within the limits of British Middle East concerns the Zionist movement had strengthened massively. It now had land, an economic and military base and an intelligence service which could form the basis of an exclusively Jewish state. Zionist leaders knew that to gain an independent state, a final conflict with the Palestinian Arabs was necessary.
Israel is born…the 1948 war
In the post-war world, the Zionists knew that the US, not Britain would be the major power broker in the Middle East. The Zionists undertook a successful campaign of lobbying the US congress, who, like Britain, favoured a pro-western presence in the region as they were worried about Soviet communist influence. The US government was influenced by reports of the Nazi holocaust, which generated sympathy for the Zionist cause. In 1947, the UN approved by 33 votes to 13 the partition of Palestine and the recognition of a Jewish state. US and Russian lobbying, which included the threat of a withdrawal of aid to any countries not agreeing, helped gain the Zionist victory. Unequal clashes between Arab Palestinians and well-organised Jewish militias intensified. The momentum was with the Zionists and on May 14th 1948 the state of Israel was declared, recognised by the US 11 minutes later.
Expulsions and ethnic cleansing soon began. It took only a month for the first Palestinian village to be wiped out. Israel seized as many British military and civilian installations as possible, and set about removing as many Palestinians as possible from the new state. Explosions and sniper fire terrorised citizens. Fears were heightened by massacres in towns and villages, while Israeli commanders believed they could commit atrocities which would be vindicated retrospectively by Israeli leaders. By May 1948, when the British left, a third of the Palestinian population had already been evicted. Israel, obtaining arms from Eastern Europe, intensified the campaign with random air bombardment of civilian targets and heavy shelling of neighbourhoods in mixed towns.
Within Israel, rural Palestine almost completely disappeared. People refusing to leave villages were forced on to Lorries and driven to the West Bank. A typical Israeli tactic was to execute a few inhabitants of a village in order to scare the others in to leaving. Any forceful Palestinian resistance led to the village being blown up. Spared villages were used for cheap labour.
During the winter of 1949, out of the 850,000 Palestinians living in land designated by the UN as Israel, only 160,000 remained on or close to their land and homes and they became Israel’s Palestinian minority. Urban Palestine was similarly crushed by massacre and humiliation. Towns that remained intact were overpopulated by refugees. Three quarters of a million Palestinians became refugees, mainly in tents provided by international charities, and with a UN promise of a return home.
The war left Palestine with three political entities: The West Bank; annexed to Jordan with no popular consent or enthusiasm, the Gaza Strip; in limbo under military rule, its population prevented from entering Egypt proper, and Israel. This period is known as the Nakbah, or catastrophe, in which Israel set about Judaizing every part of Palestine, uniting the Palestinians in to a national movement. Arab nationalism and socialism grew in the 1950s, and here Israel proved its worth to the West as an ally that could defeat and deter any Arab army. In 1959, the US made its first military loans to Israel. American military loans increased steadily in the 1960s, and by 1967 Israel’s armed forces were superior to the combined power of the neighbouring Arab states. The opportunity to test this firepower in a Western-backed conflict came in 1967.
The 1967 War
The six day war in June 1967 saw Israel destroy much of Egypt’s army and air force and cripple Jordan and Syria. Israel seized the West Bank of the Jordan River from Jordan (half a million Palestinians in the West Bank were now living in Israel), the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and all of Jerusalem. This was a near-total victory for the now-nuclear Israel. The Zionists had long coveted these territories, and the occupation allowed them to divert the flow of water in to Israeli towns, killing off Palestinian farming communities. Israel also gained valuable markets for its goods and a cheap labour market of Palestinians (via checkpoints) for menial jobs. Israel erected fortified walls throughout its new territories, and built new roads, enabling illegal settlements to be built. The Israeli government made it illegal to fly the Palestinian flag or read ‘subversive’ literature. Protestors against the situation were killed or wounded, imprisoned without trial and their homes were demolished. While Israelis prospered with new construction projects, Palestinians lived lives of abject poverty, with more and more refugees living in increasingly over crowded camps. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) stopped aiming for repatriation and resettlement, and became simply a relief agency that spent less than 13 dollars a year on each refugee. People had to survive on 1,500 calories a day from flour, sugar, rice, pulses and oil. Less than four dollars per person a year was spent on health and less than 12 dollars on education. Post-1967, these amounts were reduced. In 1966, the head of UNRWA had described the living conditions of the refugees as ‘unfit for human habitation’.
After 1967, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) became a regulator of life in the refugee camps. Its welfare service assisted the families of those killed in the struggle, dealt with unemployment, provided a hospital service and ran workshops that made household commodities. Their guerrilla raids in to Israel and their declaration that the way to maintain a Palestinian identity was to struggle against the oppressor made the PLO a political force. The PLO had been created by Arab leaders who were worried about the destabilising impact of the Palestinian movement regionally and wanted a moderate group to represent the Palestinians.
Frustrated young Palestinians were attracted to Fatah, a resistance group advocating mass struggle to increase the pressure on Arab leaders to act against Israel. Fatah was committed to acting through Arab regimes, but not toppling them, expressing Palestinian aspirations within the limits of Arab nationalism. After the 1967 war, Fatah’s guerrilla troops fought with some success against the Israeli forces. In 1969, Fatah took leadership of the PLO, boosted by Arab funding which pushed the PLO to centre stage. In 1970, the PLO was based in Jordan, but its popularity was perceived as a threat to King Hussein. When the King’s forces, backed by Israel and the US, attacked the PLO, 3,000 Palestinians were killed and much of the PLO’s infrastructure broken up. This defeat to one of the weakest regimes in the region highlighted the fundamental problem of the PLO from the outset: it wanted to work within the system, while the people it claimed to represent needed it to work against the system. The situation dictated a confrontation between the PLO and the Arab-Israeli alliance, but the Fatah leadership was unwilling, and moved to the refugee camps of Lebanon even more insistent that Arab rulers should be respected. This ideology was enforced by Fatah’s links with the police state of Saudi Arabia, who armed Fatah on the condition that they were pursuing policies the Saudis approved of.
1973 War
In 1973, a joint Egyptian-Syrian attack nearly defeated Israel as the two countries attempted to reclaim what had been lost in 1967. While the conflict didn’t directly affect the Palestinians, it did mark a significant swing to the right in Israeli politics towards the Likud party.
After the 1973 war, the US offered the PLO a ‘mini state’ in the West Bank and Gaza in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel within the 1948 borders. Fatah accepted this proposal, dropped their principal aim of liberating Palestine, and accepted Zionist domination. This massively unpopular move meant that most Palestinians would never see their homes again and that their ‘mini state’ would be policed by Israel and the Arab regimes. In return, the PLO was recognised at the UN as the representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO was now locked in a web of diplomacy in which Arab leaders would fund them but not exert any pressure to gain concessions from Israel.
War in Lebanon
In 1975, Lebanese right-wingers attacked Palestinian refugees in the camps of Beirut. Fatah maintained its policy of non-interference until it was forced to fight back when Syria sent 40,000 troops to aid the Lebanese forces. The PLO emerged damaged and was confined to small areas of Lebanon, which was controlled by Syria.
In 1982, an Israeli blitzkrieg attack on Lebanon laid siege to Beirut. It is estimated that 14,000 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed and 20,000 wounded in just two weeks. According to UNICEF, 10 children were killed for every one Palestinian fighter killed. The PLO found itself isolated as not one Arab ally offered tangible assistance. Palestinian fighters left Lebanon by ship, but the women and children stayed behind in the camps. Led by future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel carried out the cold blooded massacres of between 3000 and 3500 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. The elderly, women and children were systematically murdered. No evidence existed that there was a single terrorist in the camps. The UN General Assembly called it ‘an act of genocide’. In Israel, Sharon was hailed as a hero.
In 1983, the ‘mini state’ idea was dropped by the US, who had no intention of pressing Israel to make concessions. Supported by Israel, President Assad of Syria was intent on the destruction of the Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps. Only the determined resistance of PLO guerrillas prevented further massacres.
Palestinians were now more vulnerable than ever. In 1987, the Arab League did not even have Palestine as a major item on its agenda for discussion. Likud had come to power in Israel in 1977, and increased the number of settlements so that by 1988 55 per cent of West Bank land and 30 per cent of the Gaza Strip were in Israeli hands, guarded by the Israeli army and settler militias.
Israel seized the water resources of the West Bank. Between 1967 and 1983, not one Palestinian received permission to drill a well, while Israeli settlers could drill up to 27 new wells. Hundreds of water pumps were shut off and at least one irrigation canal was bulldozed, destroying Palestinian communities. Palestinian rural employment dropped massively as the Israelis wanted Palestinians to provide cheap labour and undertake jobs even the least privileged Jews did not want (despite large numbers of Palestinians having had secondary education). Palestinian workers could not join unions and did not have pensions, unemployment insurance, injury compensation or extended child benefit. Workers were forbidden to stay overnight in Israel and were forced to go through check points to get to work in a society from which their people were excluded. The balance in taxes raised in the occupied territories but not spent on Palestinians was kept by the Israeli state. Israel systematically discriminated against Palestinians, manipulated tariff barriers in favour of Israeli goods, allowed only Israeli banks to exist (which kept Palestinian industry small scale), and used the growing populations of the West Bank and Gaza for its second largest export market. Meanwhile, Israel pushed for ‘moderate’ Palestinian politics by attempting to assassinate any leaders who could be the focus of opposition to Zionism. The violence continued against the Palestinians, and infrastructure was allowed to decay to the extent that Palestinian health and education systems were on the verge of collapse.
The first Intifafa
In 1987, the intifada (uprising) put Palestine back on the international agenda and showed that the Palestinian people could not be physically eliminated or totally marginalised. The intifada was an uprising of non-compliance and protest against the occupation expressed in nationalist terms across the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and among Palestinians living in Israel. The racist division of labour, the occupation and the failure of Palestinian leadership to express the concerns of the Palestinian people triggered events. Workers refused to travel to Israel, and strikes, demonstrations, boycotts of Israeli goods and the development of self-help initiatives were widespread. As all Palestinian leadership had been repressed, Israel had no way of mediating the conflict, so it responded by detaining over 30,000 Palestinians by the end of 1988, placing 5,000 in administrative detention and holding 1,100 in extremely harsh conditions at the Ketziot camp.
While Israel was clearly worried by the intifada, and Palestinian confidence was boosted, the Israeli economy was never seriously threatened because replacement cheap labour was found and many Palestinians simply couldn’t afford to strike for too long. Israeli society was united in its response, with no working class or left-wing movement questioning Israel’s right to decide the fate of the Palestinians. The PLO, despite leading the intifada, didn’t offer a way forward which could channel the anger and political energy of the Palestinians, who were increasingly drawn to Islamic organisations. The PLO had been given freedom from Arab leaders by the intifada, but its leader Yasser Arafat pushed the organisation back in their direction. Palestinians were a symbol around the region of the struggle against Israel, misery and degradation but, because of its ties to the Arab regimes, the PLO didn’t call for regional solidarity. Instead the PLO opted to declare a state of Palestine in the occupied territories and recognised the state of Israel.
International negotiations began, but on Zionist terms. Fatah accepted Israeli and Western definitions of the Palestinian national movement, equating the violence of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressor. While the populations of the occupied territories were opposed to the ‘mini state’ ideas, the PLO were becoming increasingly distant from those they were supposed to represent, at pains to show the world that a Palestinian state would not disturb the status quo. At the same time, the Israeli government hardened its stance and increased the settlements on the West Bank. Settler militias promised civil war if their right to West Bank land was questioned. They were championed by Ariel Sharon, who viewed Jordan as the Palestinian state and saw nothing wrong in the idea that Palestinians should be transferred there if they wanted their homeland.
Talks were pushing Palestine towards being a Luxembourg or San Marino of the Middle East: no army, no power, a pool of cheap labour for the dominant Israelis. The PLO proposed formalising this situation, its leadership so conservative that at the top of the agenda in 1989 was how to stop Palestinian terrorism.
1993 Olso Talks
By 1993, Arafat had shifted the three precepts of a Palestinian national ideology (the refugees’ right of return, stopping the illegal settlements and Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine) so that they were now negotiable factors. The Oslo declaration left these three issues to be dealt with at a later date, only addressing with the issues created by the 1967 war, and ignoring those generated in 1948.
In 1994, Israel increased the pace of settlements and land confiscations in breach of the Oslo document. Settler evictions were now highly unlikely. Article 31 of the agreement had stated that the West Bank and Gaza Strip was a single unit and their status must be kept until further negotiations take place. However, Israel built bypasses and tunnels to divide the areas, creating an alternative map in which Jews now lived, literally, above Palestinians, protected by military barriers. The Palestinian Authority was created at Oslo, and the Palestinians were given the symbolism of flags and Arabic place names, but no substantial improvement in their lives. Gaza had become effectively a huge prison guarded by Israeli soldiers. In response to the growing popularity of Islamist organisations, borders were kept closed. In violation of the Oslo document, life carried on as normal and Israeli soldiers and police were able to inflict physical and mental abuse with impunity at checkpoints.
After Oslo…the second Intifada
Much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip came under occupation and were in conflict with Israel. By 1995, Palestinians had written off the Oslo agreement as an act of imperialism and as conditions worsened under Israeli occupation, Islamic militants began their terror campaign and the first Palestinian suicide bombings took place. A tunnel for tourists (mainly Jewish) was built under Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest site. When Ariel Sharon visited the site surrounded by 1,000 police officers, the second intifada was sparked. Israel’s retaliation (‘Operation Defensive Shield’) was stronger than ever, and included a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp.
At Camp David in 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians withdrawal from 12 per cent of the occupied territories, said Israel would never give back any part of Greater Jerusalem, stated that most illegal West Bank and Gaza settlements would stay, and suggested that the Palestinians would have to forever give up their right of return. This would have left Palestine as 15 per cent of what it had been pre-Israel. The international response, endorsed by the US, EU, UN and Russia, was the Road Map in 2003. Offering little to the Palestinians, the suicide bombings continued followed by Israeli re-occupations. Israel maintained its domination of Palestinian life through border closures, house demolitions, assassination of political activists, mass arrests and the building of a wall separating the West Bank from Israel. Gaza was experiencing unemployment at 75 per cent, 50 per cent of houses were in ruins, lawlessness reined and people couldn’t travel or safely reach hospitals, schools or businesses.
The second intifada saw the growth in popularity of Islamic resistance. Although at odds with Islamic principles, suicide attacks were the Palestinian response to Israeli F-16s, Merkava tanks and Apache gunships, and the only way the Palestinians had found to strike fear in to Israelis. Martyrs were recruited from a people living a life of military occupation, poverty and deprivation with no hope for a political solution. There was a massive increase in numbers of those willing to fight and martyr themselves for Hamas, a resistance group popular because of its strong message against the occupation, its social wing and its potential to be a pragmatic political party.
Hamas implemented a ceasefire, as they knew any attack on Israel would be met with a brutal response. This lasted for 18 months. When Israel assassinated Hamas leader Mahmud Abu Hanud in 2001, they knew this would shatter the ceasefire. Hamas attacked Israeli settlements near the Gaza Strip. The Israeli response was predictable: military attacks against Palestinians and political assassinations. Ariel Sharon had become a popular Prime Minister who planned the future Palestine to consist of Gaza Strip and half of the West Bank; a dependency with no sovereignty or economic infrastructure. Each time it looked like the Palestinians were willing to pacify the situation, Israel would assassinate a Palestinian activist. When Hamas showed willingness to participate in the 2006 elections, many of its prospective candidates were arrested.
Palestinian democracy
In 2006, in free and fair parliamentary elections, Hamas were elected to office. They had already shown their pragmatic side, willingness to recognise Israel and had a long-standing ten year ceasefire offer for the Israelis. Despite this, the Palestinians were punished for voting for Hamas. Millions of dollars in taxes owed to the PA by Israel and aid promised by the EU was withheld. A humanitarian crisis engulfed the Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, 1.4 million people, mainly children are ‘living in a cage’ according to a senior UN official, cut off by land, sea and air, with no reliable power, little water, hunger, disease and incessant attacks by Israeli planes and troops dominate their lives. Palestinians starve to death because they freely voted for Hamas. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy reports that ‘there are thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people unable to receive any treatment…the shadows of human beings roam the ruins…they only know the Israeli army will return and what this will mean for them: More imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions’.
In June 2006, Israeli warships fired on families picnicking on a Gaza beach, killing seven people, including three children, shattering the latest ceasefire. Attacks like this are part of Israeli policy, as is starving the Palestinians. Dov Weisglass, adviser to Prime Minister Olmert joked that ‘the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet’. The victims of this policy are mostly children. After the Hamas victory, the US House of Representatives voted 361-37 to cut off aid to non-government organisations that give to the occupied territories. According to the Geneva Convention this is a crime against humanity. In 2004, the British Medical Journal reported that in the previous four years ‘Two thirds of the 621 children killed by the Israelis at checkpoints…on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half the cases to the head, neck and chest – the sniper’s wound’. One quarter of Palestinian infants under five are acutely or chronically malnourished and the Israeli wall is isolating people from the medical care they need. Soldiers are known to refuse to let seriously ill children pass to get to hospital.
The Gaza Strip has a population of which half are children. A Gaza community health project revealed that 99.4 per cent of the children they studied suffer trauma, 99.2 per cent had had their homes bombarded, 97.5 had been exposed to tear gas, 96.6 per cent had witnessed shooting and a third had seen family members or neighbours injured or killed.
Tom Charles works for Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East in the UK. He has a Master's degree in International Politics from the university of Sheffield.
