The question is an important one to consider at a time when Israel celebrates turning 60 and the West gets moralistic with China, writes NICK FERRIMAN
As the Olympic Games in Beijing draw near, the spotlight is on the plight of the Tibetans. In Southeast Asia, there is concern for what is happening in Burma. We in the West congratulate ourselves on our human rights concerns, but we would do well to remember our perfidious track record. Nowhere is this more unjust than in Palestine.
On the 14th of May, Israel will celebrate 60 years of independence. This is an event many will celebrate. For the Palestinians, however, it is a time of mourning. They call their eviction from their homeland 60 years ago the Naqba. The West had a hand in this catastrophe.
In 1947, in the haste to right the wrongs of the Holocaust, the UN disregarded one small matter. The land they had ear-marked for Jewish colonisation was inhabited. Over a million Palestinians, descendants of an ancient mix of people who predate Islam, and the Israelites, already tilled the soil. They had subsisted on this land for millennia. The land was not empty.
This did not stop the UN, in complete disregard of its own charter, from being persuaded to hand over 55% of Palestine to Jewish settlers, a mere 20% of the population. Strong arm tactics from the US forced many South American countries, and others, against their own sense of natural justice, to vote for the iniquities inherent in the Partition Plan.
When confronted, US President Harry Truman said, "I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents." A domestic political agenda decided the fate of the Palestinians.
But these Palestinian fellahin had farmed their land for generations. Under the suzerainty of the Romans, and later the Ottoman Turks, security of tenure was assured. It was this way for centuries. With the end of colonialism after World War II, it should have been enough to guarantee independence. But fate left them stranded under British rule in 1920.
And contrary to the myths of Israel, this land was never a barren desert. Palestine is at the western end of the Fertile Crescent which stretches from Mesopotamia to the shores of the Mediterranean. From this rich and productive farmland, the Palestinians had exported Jaffa oranges long before the Zionists seized their orchards. This is after all where the agricultural revolution started.
The first Zionist settlers didn't arrive in Palestine until the middle of the 19th century. They then bought up land, made deals with distant landlords, and established a bridgehead. At no time was it ever envisaged that the land would be shared; certainly not with a peasant underclass. From the beginning, the goal was the establishment of a Zionist state across the whole of Eretz-Israel, the land of King David, a kingdom that had lasted a mere 75 years.
Yes, the planned Zionist state would appear democratic in form, but it was to be predicated on a Jewish majority. The only way this Jewish majority could be assured was by the physical removal of the Palestinians. This was always the intention. When it came to pass, there would be nothing modern, secular or democratic about its execution.
The Zionist enterprise would never have succeeded without outside help. The most important break-through was to secure the support of the British government during World War I. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised the Jews a national home in Palestine in exchange for support for a faltering war effort.
At the same time, British treatment of the Arabs was very different. They were quite happy to encourage the Bedouin, under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia, to revolt against the Kaiser's ally, the Turks. But when it came to deliver on their promises, they had already sold their inheritance.
In the 1930s, under the British Mandate, Orde Wingate, the charismatic leader of the Chindits in Burma in World War II, set up combined British and Jewish squads to suppress Arab nationalism. As an ardent pro-Zionist, he set about his task with a vengeance. The use of "excessive" force against the Arabs earned his Special Night Squads a fearsome reputation for brutality.
Many members of Hagannah, the armed wing of the Jewish Agency, and the forerunner of the IDF, benefited from their operational experiences under Wingate. Future military commanders included Moshe Dayan, the architect of Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-day War, who said Wingate had taught him all he knew. Wingate's legacy is on display today in the brutality of the Occupation.
In 1938, confident in their new offensive capabilities, learnt from Wingate, Hagannah pushed deeper into Palestinian territory and constructed numerous "stockade and watchtower settlements" way out beyond the Jewish zones. Each of these fortified settlements, like the one at Hanita, was set up almost overnight. The aim was to create facts on the ground in an all-too-familiar scenario seen in the West Bank today.
Then, as now, these illegal settlements provoked an aggressive response from the local Palestinians. But with many of their weapons confiscated by Wingate's squads, they were powerless to do anything about it. A decade later, these same settlements were used as part of the bogus evidence presented to the UN of a long-established and legitimate Jewish presence in the area.
By late 1947 events were building to a head. Ethnic cleansing loomed. A combination of three factors - large-scale Jewish immigration, the end of the British Mandate, a UN sponsored two-state solution - unleashed the violence. Unwilling to ever countenance a Palestinian state, the Zionists struck hard. In only a few short months, up until April 1948, they depopulated and destroyed over 400 Palestinian towns and villages. Nearly three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced to flee and up to 15,000 of them may have died.
A few weeks later, on 14 May 1948, in a document that makes no mention of the massive Palestinian exodus a few weeks earlier, the Israeli unilateral declaration of independence perversely called on the Palestinians to stop their onslaught. How could they? They had fled.
This perversion of the facts continues today. The myths and legends built up around Israel are used to deny the Palestinians their freedoms. But we must remember that in 1947 the UN mandated a Palestinian state as well. Where is that state? We have a duty to see it established.
If you wish to learn more about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, there will be a panel discussion sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Thailand on Saturday 10 May 2008 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. Speakers include Professor Kraisak Choonhavan, the Shadow Minister for Social Development and Human Security. The venue is on the 2nd Floor, Political Science Building 3 Annex, Chulalongkorn University.
Nick Ferriman is a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Thailand.
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