The Modern Occupation
Shashwat Sinha
[Continued from Liberation February 2011.]
The history of inception of Israel can give further perspective to the current nature of the state of Israel. Israel started as a colonial project with political Zionism at its roots that took shape in the late-19th century Europe under Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist. In 1896, Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), offering his vision of a future state; the following year he presided over the first World Zionist Congress. The first large wave of "modern" immigration, known as the ‘First Aliyah,’ however had taken place much earlier in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Europe, including Russia. The Palestinians helped them settle in the region and mingle with Arab population. The Jews settling were not all Zionists and many were quite progressive and regarded Zionism as a fringe movement. The early Zionists had considered several sites—Uganda, Argentina and Palestine—as their future homeland, but ultimately settled on Palestine, basing their claims on existence of Jewish kingdoms 25 centuries before! In the words of writer Erich Fromm, himself Jewish, “If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.” The two Austrian rabbis who came to investigate Palestine wrote to the first World Zionist Congress that “the bride is beautiful but married to another man;” in other words, another people already inhabited Palestine. Undeterred by this the Zionists indulged in the racist propaganda that Palestine was “a land without people for people without a land.” It had striking similarity to Spanish conquistadors and European settlers in the Americas who claimed America was a vast ‘wilderness’ but at the same time mercilessly slaughtered the natives. A British diplomat at the time had surveyed Palestine and had reported that every piece of arable land in the region was under cultivation. Herzl and other Zionist leaders were aware that settlements alone could not bring their colonial project to fruition. They actively sought sponsorship and protection of the then imperial powers promising them to support their interests. It was the British who played the key role in giving material shape to Zionist ambitions.
At the start of the twentieth century much of what is the Middle-east today was part of Ottoman Empire based in Turkey. The shameful World War I which was fought mainly to divide the territories for exploitation had imperial nations Britain, France and Russia secretly signing the Sykes-Picot agreement for dividing the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the war. Following the Revolution of 1917, Russia renounced its territorial designs and made the despicable Sykes-Picot agreement public. This however did not prevent Britain and France from dividing the Ottoman Empire after World War I—as a result the French’s booty comprised Lebanon and Syria while the British occupied Palestine, Trans-Jordan and modern-day Iraq. In November 1917, came the infamous Balfour Declaration in which the British ‘legitimized’ the existence of a Jewish state in the heart of Palestine declaring that the ‘non-Jewish’ people had a right to co-exist. These ‘non-Jewish’ people comprised 92 per cent of the population and were Arabs. After the Arab Hashemite King Hussein—with whose critical help the Ottoman Empire was defeated— back-stabbed, the Arab aspirations of having independent state were buried, and instead the region was divided into several statelets like Kuwait, Jordan etc. As compensation British made Hussein’s sons kings of two of its colonies: Iraq and Jordan. Thus, the British conquest of most of Middle-east in 1918 and Balfour Declaration in 1917 set the stage for the Zionist project to take off. With the help of the French, in 1920, Greater Syria was dismembered and Arab nationalism was completely crushed. The British saw the establishment of a Jewish state in the heart of Arab lands to be of immense benefits to them strategically and economically, providing them with a means to control the Suez Canal. It was under these ‘auspices’ that the project of Israel grew roots.
The land for settlement was initially purchased from absentee landlords who mainly lived in Jerusalem, and with the British sponsorship and US funding, the settlements grew rapidly. The Zionist movement shared a great deal with the reactionary, nationalist and fascist movements in Europe after World War I and was amenable to the British. Though Palestine was a British colony, a de-facto Jewish government was established in Zionist-controlled areas. While there were inevitable clashes between Zionist leaders and British (as we see today between Israel and the US) but their essential relationship was of two colonizers, one big and the other small. Ben Gurion who became the major Zionist leader, proudly called the settlers ‘the conquistadors.’ The dispossession of an entire people was not possible without violence and Palestine was no exception. The Palestinians resisted the occupation. The most famous and protracted uprising (Intifada) of Palestinians during 1936-1939 that occurred mostly in rural areas against British colonialism and Zionist settlements was finally crushed with a massive British military force. The defeat and repressive laws post revolt left Palestinians largely eroded of their militancy. On the other hand, World War II greatly strengthened Zionist forces. The US and other western imperial powers hardly paid any attention to genocide of Jews at the hands of Nazis and in fact favoured Hitler for their own anti-Semitism and smashing of labor unions in Germany. The mass murder and persecution of Jews had almost 400,000 Jews queuing to immigrate to the US but the US closed its doors to them fearing they would bring with themselves radical ideas of socialism and communism. As Winston Churchill wrote in one of his articles: there were ‘good Jews’ who were Zionists and then there were ‘bad Jews’ who were socialists. Supporting the establishment of Israel as a land of Jews was a more convenient solution—and though the US was itself anti-Semitic at the time along with other powers, it greatly supported the cause of Israel. It deflected the progressive Jews. The World War II left British bankrupt and they handed their colony of Palestine to the UN and the UN without consulting with Palestinians passed a resolution for its partition in 1947. Intense US pressure played a key role in voting in the UN. The Soviet Union supported this UN resolution 181 mistakenly thinking that Israel would be a friend, most of its population being pro-socialist. The basic colonial character of establishment of Israel and its leaders was overlooked.
The Soviet support of Israel was a deathblow to Arab and Palestinian national movements as well as communist parties in the region. Despite owning only 6 per cent of land and 35 per cent population, Israel was awarded 55 per cent of the Palestinian land. Only 44 per cent of the land was given to Arab Palestinians with 1 per cent labeled as “international zone” which included Jerusalem. It was the most humiliating and debilitating non-military attack on Palestinian identity and sovereignty. The declaration of Partition meant war. The armed militia Haganah had already formed by the Second World War under Ben Gurion who came to be the first Prime Minister of Israel. For Israel, 55 per cent of the land was not enough, and it immediately began military expeditions to seize as much land as possible. The trained Israeli forces defeated poorly equipped and mostly spent Palestinian forces in the 1948 war and “declared” their independence. The ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians had begun and was to continue for decades to come. The colonial project was in place and the modern occupation had entrenched its roots firmly in Palestinian soil with pro-active support of Britain and the United States. India was among the first nations to recognize the state of Israel.
With the US and France support in 1950s-60s, Israel developed nuclear weapons which to this date it refuses to acknowledge. When Nasser of Egypt nationalized Suez Canal in 1955, Israel, with the help of British and French, launched an attack on Egypt under the false pretext of ‘retaliation’ for a fabricated Egyptian attack. By this time, stern threats of the US and USSR forced Britain, France and Israel to withdraw their forces in a humiliating defeat. The 1956 Suez War led to the turning of Israel completely over to the US camp. Israel now recognized its new master. By its next war in 1967 against Arabs, Israel was closely allied and supplied by the US military. In a lightning strike in 1967, famously called the Six Day War, Israel captured the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine. It was a coordinated strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan with full backing of the US forces and its navy. Ten years back, Gen. Mattiyahu Peled who took part in Six Day War told Haaretz: “The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only a bluff which was born and developed after the war.” The Prime Minister of Israel of the time, Menachem Begin, an extreme Right winger, also later exposed the utter falsity of the claim of retaliation. The Six Day War convinced the US that Israel could be a highly effective weapon against Arab liberation and nationalist movements. Israel proved to be a loyal watchdog of US interests (oil) in the region when the US was pre-occupied with Vietnam War. Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza only in 2005 facing intense criticism and pressure from international community. However, Gaza still remains militarily surrounded and cut-off from the rest of the world. The free movement of Palestinians is almost impossible and Gaza remains, as the British Prime Minister David Cameron described when condemning the Israeli attack on Gaza aid flotilla, as “the biggest prison camp in the world.”
The resistance to occupation however continued in forms of PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) formed in 1964, and much active after 1967 War, Fatah, PFLP, DFLP and other women’s and youth organizations along with armed resistance. The battle of Karameh, Jordan, in 1968 had an electrifying effect on renewing armed struggle and wiping out the memory of defeat in Six Day War. Later Jordan, under King Hussein, a puppet at the hands of the British and the US, bombed Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan; the Palestinian refugees comprise two-thirds of Jordanian population. The Syrian government hesitated to intervene for fear of Isareli air-strikes, and as a result over 15,000 PLO fighters were killed by Jordanian army. Following this defeat the epicentre of struggle of Palestinian resistance shifted to Lebanon. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War was the only one not initiated by Israel in which Egypt and Syria launched coordinated attacks on Israel to regain lost territories and gained some initial victories. They were finally repulsed by Israel owing to massive military and arsenal aid by the US. This war led to a nuclear flashpoint which was prevented only when USSR threatened retaliation. It greatly enhanced the Palestinian cause. The captured Sinai Peninsula was finally returned to Egypt in 1979. The 1973 war finally led to Camp David Accord brokered by Jimmy Carter and was a disaster for the Arab world. Though hailed in the West, it led to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and an occupation of Lebanon for 18 years costing thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian lives. Later the 1987 ‘Intifada’ began in Palestinian refugee camps gathering momentum, paving the way for the Oslo Accord in 1991 to determine status of all parties and regions involved. However, nothing came of it. Relentless repression led to al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 and the struggle has continued since then.
The Israel-Palestine issue is striking by the fact that when countries were overthrowing the yoke of colonialism in the first half of the twentieth century and gaining independence, Palestine was surreptitiously and insidiously being colonized. When colonies seem a thing of distant past, here we have a live and bleeding Palestinian colony.