Jewish settlers settled in Palestine long before Israel was officially created in May 1948. How can Palestine pay for Europe’s crimes? How did the Jews manage to form a kingdom in a country where they were a small minority?
In the latest bloodshed chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli military has ordered thousands of civilians to leave Gaza City as it prepares for a ground offensive.
Although the modern contours of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are well-known – the Palestinians say Israel was established in their homeland by force, and Israel claims they have every right to remain in their biblical homeland – how did Jewish immigration to ‘Israel’ begin? Before the official announcement of the creation of Israel in May 1948, how was the stage set for it? What role did the British and Arab countries play in it?
Antisemitism and Zionism
According to the Hebrew Bible, ‘Israel’ is the name given by God to Abraham’s grandson Jacob, who is considered the father of all three ‘Abrahamic’ religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham’s descendants settled in Canaan, which would roughly become part of modern Israel.
After being part of many empires (Greeks, Romans, Persians, Crusaders, Islamists, etc.), the land of Canaan was part of the Ottoman Sultanate for millennia until the late 19th century. Adherents of Judaism, or Jews, lived in many countries – they were a wealthy minority and suffered persecution in many places, especially in Europe.
In Tsarist imperial Russia, there were pogroms targeting Jews in the 1880s. In France, the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, in which a Jewish soldier was wrongly convicted of passing vital information to Germany, highlighted the anti-Semitic prejudices of the day. A feeling began to grow among the Jewish community that they would not be safe until they had a country to call their own. This movement – seeking to establish a Jewish homeland – became known as Zionism.
In 1896, the Austro-Hungarian Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet entitled ‘Der Judenstaat’, outlining his vision of a Jewish state. This pamphlet became so popular among Jews that Herzl is considered the father of political Zionism.
Initially, countries such as Uganda and Argentina were considered potential sites for a Jewish homeland. However, that place was confirmed to be Palestine, where the biblical home of the Jews once stood, and where many of their holy places are still located.
Before the First World War
Shortly thereafter, Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Palestine began. The first wave from 1881 to 1903 is known as the first aliyah. The settlers bought a large amount of land and started farming. Soon, it became the loss of the indigenous Palestinians, even before the conflict took shape.
At this time the vast territory of Palestine was only a province of the Ottoman Empire without a proper administrative system. Ottoman subjects did not want to see themselves as Arabs, Muslims, or ‘Palestinians’ in ethnic and tribal terms. “Absentee landlordism” was common. Thus, landowners who did not live in those parts and Ottoman officials who did not hesitate to accept bribes sold land to Jews. The local people and the actual cultivators of the land – the rural, the poor and the very illiterate – had no part in it.
As the new settlers arrived, it quickly became clear that they were not to get along with Palestine. Unlike the Jews who lived in Palestine, these new settlers only dealt with each other and avoided speaking Arabic as much as possible. Earlier, Arab laborers were employed on their farms, but as more and more Jews poured in, that too became rare. And, formerly, when the land changed hands, the tenants remained there to work under the new master. But when the Jews bought the land, the Arab tenants were often excluded, and their homes and communities were displaced from the places where they lived.
Jews marked their distinct – ‘superior’ – status in many other ways. Agriculture was mechanized and electricity was introduced. They did not go local ways with the task of creating an ideal homeland. Their towns and settlements followed European ideals – Tel Aviv, founded in 1909, is one example – and stood out from their Arab neighborhoods. The enterprise in Israel is financed by wealthy Jews abroad, such as the Rothschild family.
Local unrest and resentment against the new arrivals grew. Ottoman officials forbade the sale of land to foreign Jews, but the order was never effectively enforced. In 1908, after the revolution of the Young Turks overthrew the Ottoman Sultan, Jewish immigration efforts became more efficient.
Outside of Palestine, Jews in other countries worked to gain international support for their cause.
Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 changed the face of the West forever. A letter from a British official to a wealthy British Jew sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The British government needed Jewish support in its World War I efforts. To cement it, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour supported the Zionist cause.
His letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild stated: “The British Royal Government favors the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, and will support the achievement of this objective, without prejudice to the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or do anything to prejudice the civil and religious rights, including the rights and political status, enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” Understood.”
It became the template for many future resolutions on Palestine – although there would always be some line about “Palestinian rights”, very little would be implemented.
By then, Palestinian nationalism had begun to grow. Various groups and organizations protested the growing Jewish influence. However, these were mired in sectarianism and lacked the organization and determined focus of the Jewish community.
Furthermore, the prolonged conflict has created lingering animosity and mistrust between the two communities and has occasionally erupted into violent incidents.
The British Mandate and World War II
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the territories under its control were divided among the Allies, with the aim of promoting self-rule. Palestine came under the British. Three decades of various commissions, white papers and resolutions under British rule saw violence erupt and thousands of lives lost, finally bringing the ‘Palestine question’ to the UN in 1947.
After World War I, Arab frustration and feelings of betrayal erupted into attacks on civilians in Jewish settlements, railroad tracks, etc. They also opposed the British, believing that independence from the British was necessary to solve the Zionist problem.
The Jews already had efficient intelligence agencies and trained, disciplined militias.
Moderate Jews have long advocated the granting of Arab rights. However, they started losing influence in society.
On the Arab side, two broad rivals emerged under the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, and the influential Nashashibi family in Palestine. Armed resistance groups were often completely separated from political resistance groups.
There were some attempts to negotiate between Jews and Arabs, and although the 1919 agreement was notable, it soon failed.
World War II and the Holocaust brought international sympathy to the Jewish cause. Training with British soldiers helped Jewish armed groups achieve greater discipline and lethal force.
In the years 1936 to 1938, the British carried out mass executions in Palestinian villages and Jews carried out murders. The Palestinians attacked the Jews and the British and the Palestinians called this period ‘al-Tawra al-Kubra’ or the Great Revolt. One of the armed groups led by Izzedin al-Qassam was called the Black Hand, . The military wing of Hamas is today called the Al Qassam Brigades.
At this time, the Peel Commission set up by the British suggested partition as the only solution to the problem. The Jewish side negotiated better terms, but the Palestinian side boycotted the proposal. The White Paper issued by the British in May 1939 was more favorable to the Palestinian side. However, the divided Palestinian leadership did not seize the opportunity.
Finally, let trouble break out and then die down, as the British did during the partition of India. done In 1947, with neither side agreeing to partition or any other solution, and with mistrust and hostility at an all-time high, the British announced that the problem would be resolved by the UN and that they were leaving Palestine.
UN resolution and wars
Throughout this period, one thing was clear – the determination of the Jews to fight and win. The Jews were a very small minority, but they dominated whenever violence broke out. A crucial factor was that they also provided better medical treatment facilities, and for Palestinians, even treatable injuries meant disaster.
British journalist Ian Black in his book ‘Enemies and Neighbours’ quotes the Haganah, a Zionist military group, as saying, “‘…the place where the foot of a Jewish immigrant, the blood of a Jewish defender has been spilled, will never be abandoned by its architects and defenders.”
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and Jerusalem came under UN control. According to Ian Black’s book, “The proposed Jewish state was to cover 55 percent of the country, including the largely uninhabited Negev desert. Its population would include approximately 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs. The Arab state was to have 44 percent of the land and 10,000 Jews as a minority. Arab areas include the West Bank and Gaza.
The outraged Palestinian side rejected the resolution. On the other hand, Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. The entire period was marked by civil war, and Israeli military groups were able to expel large numbers of Palestinians. Palestinians call Israel’s creation the Nakba, or catastrophe, and see it as the day they lost their homeland.
Shortly after Israel’s declaration of independence, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon invaded. But a determined Israel, with weapons and funds from the US, was able to defeat them.
This was followed by more Arab-Israeli wars, with Israel seizing more territory.
Today, of the 193 member states of the United Nations, 139 recognize Palestine and 165 recognize Israel. Gaza and the West Bank are under Israeli military control.
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2023-10-18 12:16:04
