HISTORIC & CULTURAL BACKGROUND
BEHIND ISRAELI HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
by David A. Kirshbaum
(C) Israel Law Resource Center, March, 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
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I. Introduction: Basic Problem – The Creation of a Foreign Minority-Controlled Democracy
A. Foreign Minority-Controlled Democracy Requires Crimes Against Humanity:
The Zionist organizations that started the State of Israel were created in Europe by European Jews. Following centuries of suffering in Europe from anti-Semitism and then one of the worst man-made catastrophes to befall a single group of people (the Nazi holocaust), these European Zionist organizations then set out to create a democratic country where Jews could live in safety, recover from the atrocities, and thrive, but unfortunately, they picked an area of the world far from their European origins where there was already a much larger non-Jewish native population in residence.
Thus, the Zionists came to Palestine with two primary goals:
Thus, their goal of creating a democratic state which they would control was problematic because they were in the minority in the area they picked for their new state, and true democracies are controlled by the majority, with protections for minorities.
The goal of creating a Jewish State special for the Jews was problematic because it required them to set up systems that gave special benefits to Jews over the native people that already lived in the region – which meant legalized systems of discrimination, Apartheid, which are no longer acceptable in these modern times.
The result was that if they were to accomplish their goals, they would have to commit “crimes against humanity” in order to accomplish them and “war crimes” in order to defend them against the native majority who had a right to their own land as per law and morality:
Thus the Zionist groups that came from Europe are the origin of the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. This is in contrast to other Jews who have lived in Palestine with no problems with the Arabs who have also lived there. There are two examples:
What differentiates the Political Zionist groups from these other groups of Jews is that the Political Zionist groups were willing to commit crimes of humanity and war in order to accomplish their goals, and obviously this would lead to intense conflict with the native Palestinian Arabs, who felt very threatened by the Zionist goals and actions.
B. Regional Demographics:
Demographic studies show how the Zionists remain the minority in the region despite intense efforts to bring in Jews from across the world, and this is reinforced by the fact that the native Arab populations have a much higher birth rate than the Jewish population.
The sources of the demographics are:
Here are the data tables gathered from these sources:
CHART COMPARING JEWISH PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL PRE-STATEHOOD POPULATION IN PALESTINE ACCORDING TO BRITISH-SPONSORED POPULATION SURVEYS |
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(Abu-Lughud, 1987) |
This stats show that despite massive Jewish immigration to the area throughout the years that the British Mandate government was managing the region, the Zionists were never able to achieve majority status in the region. This is due to both lower birth rates than the native population, and minor Arab immigration to the region.
On the US Central Intelligence Agency website we see that this demographic situation continues where the Jewish population continues to be the minority when the population that was driven from the region or left during the 1948 fighting and now waits on the border in neighboring states to return to their homes is taken into consideration.
| CHART COMPARING 2006 DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS FOR PALESTINE & ISRAEL | ||||||||||||||||
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CHART COMPARING 2006 DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS FOR PALESTINIAN ARAB REFUGEES** |
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TOTAL POPULATION PER ETHNIC GROUPS FOR ISRAEL + OCCUPIED TERRITORIES: TOTAL POPULATION PER ETHNIC GROUPS FOR REGION (INCLUDING PALESTINIAN ARAB REFUGEES IN REFUGEE CAMPS SURROUNDING ISRAEL) |
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| *The statistic on the CIA website for total population of the State of Israel is 6,352,117, but they state this includes 384,000 Israeli settlers who actually live in the occupied territories.
**It is probably not too far-fetched to assume that the Palestinian Arab population outside the occupied territories and Israel also have birthrates higher than the Jewish population. |
European Psychosocial-Cultural Movements that Influenced the Development of Zionism |
Developmental Stages of Zionism |
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| (1) THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: This movement in 1800’s Europe was distinguished by the development of political-philosophical ideals such as freedom and equality and democracy, mostly embodied in the Socialist Movement. |
| (2) NATIONALISM: This movement arose as a by-product of the Age of Enlightenment – as the freedom to be proud of one’s group – to put one’s group’s survival and freedoms and prosperity above everything else including the rights of others. This movement had negative implications, and hence brought the dark side of the new ideas about freedom of expression and belief. |
| (3) ETHNOCENTRISM: Even though Europeans created concepts such as freedom and equality and democracy, they had a somewhat difficult time applying them equally to other cultures, especially primitive ones. Thus most Europeans saw their society and culture as the highest point of human development, and that they thus had a right to try to change other cultures and impose their system on them. |
| (4) IMPERIALISM: The most intensive expression of European ethnocentrism was imperialistic expansionism where the various European governments felt they had a right to take over the rest of the world and exploit it for economic gain while imposing European cultural and organizational and religious forms on them. The underlying attitude behind such policies was the belief that Europeans were superior to everyone else on earth – a racist belief. |
Thus the Political Zionists, who were Jewish nationalists, who started the State of Israel had the ideals of freedom and equality and democracy, but unfortunately they also had European Ethnocentrism, and thus they had little problem not applying those same democratic and liberal ideals to the non-European native population of Palestine.
Many people actually believe that the Jewish settlements that the Zionists started, and continue to develop in the occupied territories in the present, are technically actually imperialistic colonies because of the way they settle a foreign population in a foreign land, exploiting and displacing native populations. An important difference is that other imperialist colonial efforts only meant to exploit the native populations. The Zionist plans also required them to drive the majority of the native population from the area, which required an additional set of immoral illegal actions.
III. Zionism - Stages Of Development
Zionism is the nationalist movement of Judaism, whose goal is to preserve and protect and support Judaism’s prosperity. But like all movements, this movement has different stages of development which often have different goals and methods for accomplishing those goals. We can also see in the study of these stages of development how Zionism developed from a victim of anti-Semitism into an oppressor itself, and thus began to actually motivate anti-Semitism even more:
| 1. CULTURAL ZIONISM: The initial form of Zionism arose in the middle of the 19th century, and was mainly inspired by the European Enlightenment and other nationalist movements that were developing at that time. Thus Cultural Zionism believed in the new values of the Enlightenment – freedom, equality and democracy, and hoped that these would bring the end of European anti-Semitism which had plagued European Jews for centuries. Cultural Zionists tended to believe that with the Enlightenment (and the advancements in European science, the arts, philosophy and culture), it could truly be said modern Western Europe at that time was the height of human civilization, and they were determined to bring Judaism into this new modern age, reform it, and combine it with this new European culture. They mostly did not believe that it was necessary or right to start a Jewish State elsewhere – that the answer was in modern cosmopolitan Europe. They also believed that Judaism could assimilate into modern European society without losing its identity. Achad Haam was one of the main founders of this movement. This form of Zionism focused merely on strengthening Jewish culture and cultural institutions, and did not seriously focus on the idea of creating a Jewish homeland (Avishai, 1985). In fact, Achad Haam came to disapprove of the creation of a "Jewish State" as he saw it involve violations of Jewish morality in the way it treated non-Jews in Palestine (Childers, 1987). | |
| 2. POLITICAL ZIONISM: When Zionists saw that this new age of enlightenment did not bring an end to anti-Semitism, then a new form of Jewish nationalism developed as they became disillusioned with European society, and began to think that the only way to save Judaism was for Jews alone to save themselves, and began to think that the only way to accomplish that was for Jews to create a Jewish State which would be controlled by the Jews, and be focused on saving Jews. Even though they considered locations in Africa and South America, the overall consensus was that the best place to start the Jewish State was in Palestine, which Jews were beginning to migrate to, and which Jews feel a spiritual and physical/historic connection to. Political Zionism was led by very charismatic writers and leaders such as Leo Pinsker, Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weitzman (Avishai, 1985). Unfortunately, the political Zionists also held the attitudes of European Imperialism and Ethnocentrism which meant they had no respect for the Palestinian peoples’ humanity and human and civil rights. | |
| 3. LABOR ZIONISM: The democratic Socialist ideals of the Age of Enlightenment combined with Jewish nationalism most clearly in the form of Labor Zionism, whose main focus was the return of the Jewish people to the land, and working on the land (in agriculture), in Palestine. In fact many believed that this was the path to spiritual redemption in this modern age – hard work cultivating the land and achieving self-sufficiency. Thus this group focused on migrating to Palestine and starting agricultural communities called Kibbutzim. Later they started the Israeli trade unions to protect and advocate for laborers, and created the major liberal political party in Israeli politics, called the Labor Party. Because of their high ideals and liberal outlook, this group experienced significant conflict with the elitist, oppressive beliefs and practices of their culture and society (Avishai, 1985), but their leaders eventually participated fully anyways in supporting those measures, for example building Israeli settlements on Palestinian-owned lands in the occupied territories in direct conflict with international law. The leaders of Labor Zionism became leaders of the State of Israel, such as David Ben Gurion, who clearly supported the practices of discrimination and ethnic cleansing we find in Israel to this day. | |
| 4. CONSERVATIVE ZIONISM: Following the establishment of the State of Israel, more conservative Jews began to migrate to Israel who had no interest in the democratic/socialist ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. Mainly they wanted to just survive and thrive economically in their new homeland. Thus their main focus was on supporting security and conservative economic policies. Many of these new immigrants were from Russia and African and Arab countries. They supported the more conservative parties in Israeli politics – such as the Likud. | |
5. RELIGIOUS ZIONISM: The Religious Zionists are those who believe in the creation of Israel as the Jewish State for religious reasons – that God has given Palestine to the Jews exclusively. They have gotten this idea from narrow, literal interpretations of certain sections of the Torah, the most important spiritual text in Judaism. For example in verses 1-6, Chapter 26 of Genesis, the Torah reads:
Thus, for example, they are the strongest supporters of the Settlement movement building Israeli communities on confiscated Palestinian-owned lands in the occupied territories in direct conflict with international law. Because they see themselves as obeying divine command, they therefore care nothing for either the rights of the native Palestinians or international law. They have even opposed the Israeli government when it has moved to close settlements such as when it withdrew from Gaza, or closed small outposts in the West Bank. In fact often they do things which normal segments of society would actually consider to be immoral such as physical harassment of innocent Palestinians walking in the streets of their own villages. They have also turned the struggle against Zionism for liberation and justice for the Palestinian people into a struggle between fundamentalist messianic religion versus secular real-world man-made law (Rose, 2005). Thus they are saying that their interpretation of the Torah supercedes international law and the resolutions of the United Nations. This is very dangerous because with their ongoing success against the UN, with the support of the USA, then the only opposition is from the other religious extremists - of Islam for example. With international law and the UN undermined, we find ourselves thus descending into a cycle of violence and chaos. |
It is important to note that Zionism itself is not oppressive by nature, it is its origins in Imperialistic Europe that led to its oppressive aspects. Someday hopefully Zionism will once again return to its origins as simply a champion of the Jewish people which then supports the liberation of all of the world’s minorities and the spread of equal rights and democracy worldwide. It is interesting to note that in the 1980’s while Jews in America joined the fight to eliminate apartheid in South Africa, the State of Israel was partnering with the apartheid government of South Africa in trading security methods and weapons and tactics.
IV. History of The Zionist-Palestine Conflict
A. Introduction:
Thus with both the high ideals of democracy, but driven by the fear and trauma of anti-Semitism, and especially the experience of the Nazi Holocaust, the Zionist strove to achieve their goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. But in order to achieve this goal, they had to violate the rights of the native peoples of the area, and also kick most of them out if they were to make their new country a democracy ruled by the majority of inhabitants. It is theorized that it is their origin in imperialistic Europe that gave them the attitudes toward the Arabs that were necessary to feel ok about such actions.
Examination of the Zionist claim to Palestine, as well as the European and international documents that supported the Zionist cause shows how these attitudes manifested in legal documents and on the ground.
B. The Zionist Claim to Palestine:
The Zionists claim that they have a right to establish a Jewish State in Palestine because the Jewish people had previously occupied the area and established a monarchy there over 2000 years previously, and had been in the region substantially up to about 2000 years previously (135 AD), during which they had then also established a spiritual connection to the land because that was where major political, developmental and religious events had occurred in the growth of the Jewish people and their religion and culture.
This historic and spiritual connection to the land is understandably very special to them, but it does not qualify them to a legal right to the land, and especially not to militarily conquer the land and kick out the native people who have lived there continuously for probably about 5000 years (there is no evidence of any discontinuity in the Arab habitation of the land of Palestine since before 3000 BC).
The historic facts are that:
Such talk and plans were understandably very threatening to the native Arab population, and thus led to the violent conflict we have today, as the Arabs strove to defend their ancestral homeland.
As individuals, Jewish people undoubtedly have a right to live in the region, but there they must obey the local laws and respect other peoples and cultures and religions that also reside in that region. They should also have the right to organize non-government organizations to help each other, and they should have the right to participate in the government of the region, but they do not have the right to take over the government unless the majority population were to agree to it according to democratic decision-making procedures. But the main thing is that governments belong to their people and should be controlled by their people equally. The Zionist mistake is making their government responsible for functions that should be the responsibility of non-government community organizations.
And if the Zionists were to become a majority they have the right to then control the government, but even then they never have the right to legalize discrimination against minorities that also reside in the country, and to violate their human rights and civil rights in any way. Governments should be for all their citizens equally.
C. The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Thought and Planning:
Since the beginning of Political Zionist planning for the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, they have wondered about what to do about the fact that the area was already inhabited by a huge native Palestinian Arab population.
They knew that they wanted to create a democracy where everyone would have democratic rights but they also foresaw a major problem: if they were going to have a democratic Jewish State, then the Jews would have to be the majority population because they were sure that a majority Arab population would not vote for a State that favored the Jewish people over themselves. Over the years this has been referred to as the “demographic problem” and is aggravated by the additional fact that the Arab population is not only the majority in the region, but also has a higher birth rate than the Jewish population. The result was that most Political Zionists believed that the only solution was to transfer most of the Palestinian Arabs out of the State to neighboring areas, and some of the more radical Zionists wanted to transfer ALL of the Arabs out of the future State. A small number of Zionists knew that such an action – deporting against their will a native population out of their own country where they had lived for thousands of years – was immoral, and that instead the Zionists should cooperate with the native population to create a single State where everyone would have equal rights and everyone would prosper, but they were a tiny minority amongst the Zionists. This belief in a single state solution is called “bi-nationalism”.
The vast majority of Zionists believed that transfer was the only solution, and only differed as to the degree or combination of whether it should be voluntary or compulsory, whether there should be compensation, and/or whether there should be an inducement to transfer, either negative or positive.
The Political Zionists also were fully aware of the immoral nature of transfer because often they called for discretion in discussing the idea in public whenever it entered the conversation in official circles. Thus, you find most discussion of transfer in internal and private documents, while you find most discussions of learning to live with the Arabs in a Jewish State in most public documents. The epitome of this is the 1895 diary entry of the founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who wrote:
| “When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” |
Other sample quotes are:
There was also some support for transfer amongst the international supporters of the Political Zionist goals.
In the 1948 fighting, transfer plans were realized to a large extent because approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were driven out or voluntarily left the area that became the State of Israel leaving only about 150,000, which amounted to about 20% of the population of the State of Israel, and then the Israeli government passed laws forbidding those refugees from returning, and thus the Jews became the majority.
But demographic concerns and transfer activities continued because the Arab birthrate was so much higher, and because there was constant pressure to allow the Arabs that had left because of the 1948 fighting to return to their homes, which was universally seen as the moral thing to do, as demanded in international law (Geneva Conventions articles 46-49) and numerous UN resolutions. These transfer activities included:
In 1967, in a military action they claimed was defensive, the Israeli military took over adjacent Arab areas - the West Bank, Gaza, the Syrian Golan and the Sinai Peninsula. They soon returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement with that country, but the other areas they maintained a military occupation of up to this day (Gaza they legally released in 2006, but have maintained military control of the area).
Israel claims this occupation is defensive and temporary, and will end when a peace treaty is signed, but their actions do not reflect such policy. Since the occupation began, Israel has annexed into itself major sections of these territories (the entire Syrian Golan and East Jerusalem), and has moved its own population onto 60% of the rest of the occupied territories and tied these Jewish-only communities to Israel legally and economically, thus creating a form of pseudo-annexation. In addition they have surrounded the Palestinian communities with Israeli-controlled land usages and structures, cutting them off from each other and the outside world, confiscating natural resources, strangling them economically and halting their natural physical growth.
Even though the Israeli military has withdrawn its occupation from Gaza, it has since then maintained military control significantly interfering with basic services such as food distribution, medical services and have destroyed their electrical grid and major economic assets so that social order has broken down and malnutrition is spreading across the area.
Many interpret these policies as showing that the occupation is not defensive but instead is an effort to slowly take over these areas, and drive the native population out (another example of transfer).
D. Legal Legitimization:
There were many obstacles to the Zionists achieving their dream of establishing a Jewish State in Palestine. Thus one of their sub-goals was to gain legal recognition of their dream despite the fact that it contradicted international law and principle by seeking to establish a foreign minority rule over a democracy at the expense of the native majority population.
The Zionists sought this legitimization from the major powers in the world at that time (late 1800's - early 1900's) which consisted primarily of the western European nations such as England, France and the USA, who later established the United Nations.
They succeeded in gaining legal support for their cause primarily from England, the USA and then the United Nations, expressed in a series of documents:
This last point is a mystery because it is in direct violation of the basic principles of international law, and the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Charter of the United Nations, which declares its mission to be to support peoples’ achieving political and economic independence and then their own self-governing self-determination over their own lands. In the case of Palestine however, the international community gave away over half of the land of the Palestinian people to a foreign entity from Europe, and then tolerated that entity taking over almost all of the rest of it first in 1948 and then again in 1967 with the occupation.
And the land of Palestine has not seen peace since.
An important and interesting contrast to these documents are the White Papers and supporting Royal Commission findings which were published by the British government during the British Mandate years in Palestine. These documents overall blame the violence on Arab fears and rage due to the conditions created by the Zionist project described above, which occurred in order to accomplish their nationalist goals:
The legal documents listed above are briefly described first, and then the White Papers and Royal Commission Reports:
1. BALFOUR DECLARATION: The Balfour Declaration, of 2 November, 1917, is the first public official support of the Zionist cause by a government – the British Government. Its main part says:
But to the disappointment of the Zionists, this document does not give the strong unconditional support that the Zionists had hoped for. The declaration contains 3 parts:
The end result was the first example of official recognition of Zionist goals, as well as the rights of the Palestinian people but minus their right to independent rule of their own ancestral lands. |
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| 2. BRITISH MANDATE: The British government was awarded the “Mandate” to administer Palestine by the League of Nations at the Lausanne Conference at the end of World War II, to start in 1922.
In the Convention of the League of Nations, which all members sign, and which defines the terms and regulations of membership, these Mandates were designed to assign an established nation to mentor and supervise regions which were in the process of becoming independent, self-sufficient nations, with the purpose of guiding them toward that objective, as described in article 22 of the Convention:
But the Mandate agreement for Britain in Palestine was different than any other of the Mandate agreements because whereas all of the other Mandate agreements were designed to bring an end to European colonization with the beginning of the independent self-sufficient rule of the native peoples over their own lands, the Mandate agreement for Palestine was designed to support the take over of at least some of the native lands by a European entity against the wishes of the native people, in direct contradiction to Article 22 of the Covenant which states specifically for territories formerly of the Turkish Empire (which included Palestine) that the “wishes of these communities must be a principle consideration…”. Instead, it was as if the European Zionists were being treated as the native people at the expense of the actual native peoples. This is clear because this international document actually states in the second paragraph of the Preamble support for the British document declaring British support for the Zionist cause (called the Balfour Declaration), and then actually quotes that declaration in its entirety. This is the second example of official recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, minus the right to rule over their own ancestral lands, and this time it is done in direct contradiction of the official goals and ideals of the entity issuing this agreement, the League of Nations, a contradiction not repeated at any other time in its 23 year history. And thus the British Mandate years in Palestine were rocked by almost continuous violent protest because of this ignoring of a basic right of a people (the Palestinian people) to rule over their own ancestral lands, plus the fact that the British had been making contradictory promises to both the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, and the European Zionists who wished to establish a Jewish State there. Surprisingly, this violence confused the British government, so numbers of times through the years of their Mandate service, they commissioned studies of the conflict to try to find an explanation for the violence, and a solution. The result was 4 “White Papers” (and related documents). |
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| 4. UN RESOLUTION 181 (III) PARTITION PLAN FOR PALESTINE: Following World War II, in 1945, the international community established the United Nations to replace the League of Nations, and soon after the British announced that they were quitting their Mandate over Palestine, which had been rocked by almost continuous violent conflict.
The United Nation took over responsibility for the conflict, and established the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). UNSCOP studied the conflict and recommended a partition plan to divide the area between the two groups. Their plan gave a majority of the area (55%) to the Zionists (when they only owned about 6%) and were only about 43% of the population). The Palestinians and Arabs rejected this plan, but it won anyways over another plan recommended by the Arabs which suggested a single nation with equal rights for all. The United Nations Partition Plan once again repeated the same mistake as other international documents pertaining to the conflict – it defended Palestinian civil rights except for their rights of self-determination and control of their own ancestral lands, and instead awarded that control to more than half of their lands to a foreign group from Europe whose ancestors had not inhabited the region substantially for almost 2000 years. In contrast, the Arabs had inhabited the region continuously since before 3000 BC – approximately 5000 years. |
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| 5. UNITED NATIONS MEMBERSHIP AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL: The State of Israel was awarded membership in the United Nations only upon the condition that it respect the rights of the Arab population in Palestine as is called for in the Charter of the United Nations. Israel agreed to do so, and was promptly accepted into the United Nations. But Israel continued to pass laws violating the civil and human rights of the Palestinian Arabs in violation of this agreement, but the UN never did anything about it, largely due to the pressures of the United States, which was a permanent member of the Security Council. |
BRITISH WHITE PAPERS: the White Papers (and accompanying reports of Royal Commissions of Inquiry) were published by the British government as part of their attempt to understand why their Mandate mission in Palestine was going so horribly wrong, descending into an almost continuous spiral of violence. To a large extent, these studies were independent of political pressure, so it is important to note how they differed from the other documents described above tracing the development of international support for Zionist goals.
Thus, it is important to note that mostly the White Papers described below attributed the source of the violence to Arab rage and fears caused by the massive Jewish immigration and the taking of their lands and then exclusion from usage of it and employment on it (causing a significant Arab homeless population), (as well as the Zionist boycotting of Palestinian shops and businesses which actually is not named in these documents). Such Zionist policies were pursued by the Zionists to help establish the Jews as the majority population in the area.
| Haycraft Royal Commission of Inquiry (October, 1921): |
| Churchill Memorandum (White Paper of 1922) (June, 1922): |
| Shaw Royal Commission of Inquiry (March, 1930): |
| Simpson Royal Commission of Inquiry (October, 1930): |
| Passfield White Paper (October, 1930): |
| Murison Special Commission (December, 1933): |
| Peel Royal Commission of Inquiry (August, 1936): |
| White Paper of 1939 (May, 1939): |
| Joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (April, 1946): |
E. A Chronology of Ethnic Cleansing:
Thus the Zionists sought to achieve their goal of establishing a Jewish democratic state in Palestine, which they would rule over even though they were a demographic minority in the region. And thus, because their goal required them to be the demographic majority, the steps were required to include ethnic cleansing.
In his 1992 reports on the Serbian efforts to rid former-Yugoslavia of its Muslims, United Nations Special Rapporteur Mazowiecki defined ethnic cleansing as “… rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force and intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Thus, he included dozens of different kinds of actions under the word ethnic cleansing because they all shared the same goal – driving the Muslims from the country.
In Palestine, we find a similar thing – the Zionists using a wide range of methods for driving the Palestinian Muslims from the area. Overall we count 7 major methods:
Here are more details for each of these types of ethnic cleansing, arranged according to three time periods – (1) Pre-Statehood (1897-1948), (2) Statehood (1948-present) and (3) Occupation (1967-present):
(1) Pre-Statehood 1897-1948 |
| 1. Discrimination in land leasing and employment by the Jewish National Fund displaces Palestinian farmers and farm workers:
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was the land acquisition and development wing of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the main organization of the Political Zionists. The JNF began purchasing land in Palestine in 1910. As its methods developed, it required three things:
These policies can be viewed in JNF leases and the Memorandum of Association of the JNF, and in the special Covenant that the JNF signed with the Israeli government. |
| 2. Discriminatory practices in land registration by the British Mandate Government displaces Palestinian land-owners:
Land sales to Zionists was a huge issue for Palestinian Arabs. Mostly the only ones who did it were absentee land lords who did not live in Palestine. Local landowners mostly did not sell their lands. This is why the Zionists were only able to acquire around 6% by 1948. But unfortunately, many Palestinian landowners lost their lands anyways because they had followed different rules of land registration set up by the Ottoman Empire, or ignored them because of corruption or opportunity. Then when the British modernized the land registration to European forms and standards, and then did not assist Palestinian landowners with the change over, then many of the Palestinians who had not sold to the Zionists, lost their lands anyway to the British, who then made the lands into State lands, which they made known would later be transferred to the Jewish State when it was established and the Mandate was over. Palestinian land registration disputes with the British were also sometimes exploited by the Zionists to acquire lands that otherwise would not have been sold to them. |
(2) Statehood 1948-present |
| 3. The UN Partition Plan gave most of the land of Palestine to the Zionists (55%), when they only owned about 6% and only were about 43% of the population. Then in the 1948 fighting, the Zionist forces took another 15% of the land, and the UN did nothing about it:
This was another example of an official international document impacting the Palestinian Arab people which completely ignored their rights of self-determination and to control their own ancestral lands (actually except for 45% of those lands), in favor of a group from Europe, in violation of the most basic principles of the United Nations and its Charter. All of their other rights were protected in the document. But then the Zionists ignored this document when they took additional lands during the 1948 fighting that ensued once the British had departed, and then set up their own state which incorporated many legal structures systematically violating Palestinian civil and human rights also in violation of this document and of the UN Charter. |
| 4. Prior and during the 1948 fighting, the Zionist Military drove many Palestinian Arabs from their homes (and many fled on t heir own or were ordered to leave by their leaders), but then the new Israeli government passed laws forbidding them from returning to their homes even though they wanted to, and then the Israeli government redistributed their belongings to Israeli citizens:
Once the UN Partition Plan was passed by the General Assembly and endorsed by the Security Council, against the wishes of the Palestinian people (the local population whom the UN were supposed to promote and protect), Arab rebellion and fighting began in earnest. The Zionist fought back to protect themselves. But so often their operations were so extensive, that many now believe that t heir intention all along was to take over more land than originally allowed in the UN Partition Plan. Often they destroyed entire villages and committed massacres. Sometimes they also practiced psychological warfare techniques to drive away Palestinian Arab villagers. Pro-Israel advocates have claimed that Palestinian Arabs left only because their leaders had ordered them to do so, and that many Zionist leaders had actually tried to get them to stay. This is only partly true – it was war – so every variety happened. These things happened, but the villagers were also driven from their villages by Zionist forces – this is completely documented by Israeli scholars based on war documents stored in Israeli government archives. But it is also very well documented that the Zionist forces perpetrated numbers of massacres, chased out of the area hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and eventually destroyed over 400 Palestinian Arab villages, including many Islamic holy places. But the real crime was when the Israeli government would then not let those people – innocent civilians – return to their homes after the fighting had ended, which is considered to be a crime against humanity. This made an estimated 750,000 people homeless refugees. This was the major action of the Israeli government that established their own people as the majority in their democratic country so that they could control it. Pro-Israel advocates say the main reason they did not allow the Arabs to return to their homes was for security reasons, but many now believe that the real reason was so that they could establish a Zionist majority in the democratic State of Israel. |
| 5. Within Israel, the government passed laws facilitating taking the land from the Palestinian landowners who lived there, such that now in rural areas of Israel, the Palestinian Arabs live on less than 5% of the land:
After the 1948 fighting had subsided, there were still approximately 150,000 Arabs left in Israel, in both rural and urban areas. The urban areas were generally well-established. Many were mixed Arab-Jews, and others were divided into Arab and Jewish sections. But the rural areas were contested because the Zionist culture and the Israeli government greatly valued and emphasized agricultural settlements for both economic and spiritual redemption. In addition, the Zionists also felt that Jewish ownership of land in Israel was extremely important and thus passed laws saying that once land had fallen into government hands it could not be sold or transferred elsewhere except to other government agencies or the JNF (Basic Law: Israel Lands (1960)). These two factors then motivated the Zionists to continue to take Palestinian-owned lands which were now within the State of Israel. Then, once acquired, they then refused to lease the land back to Palestinians for residence or business purposes, as per JNF policies (with some exceptions, and then this was outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2003, but the Knesset still has not passed a law to that effect). They did all this under many different legal pretenses, but the end result was that now in rural areas, the Palestinian Arabs now live on less than 5% of the land of Israel while they make up almost 20% of the population, and at one time owned a huge percentage of the lands that now make up the State of Israel. These small areas are then discriminated against by the Israeli government in the awarding of development grants and other government services to help impoverished communities, and thus the rural Arab areas are amongst the poorest in Israel. |
(3) Occupation 1967-present |
| 6. With the advent of the 1967 military occupation, the Israeli military annexed into itself large areas of occupied land (East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan) and expropriated most of the rest, such that now Palestinian Arabs in the occupied West Bank live on less than 40% of their own land:
However, the Israeli government has returned to Egypt the occupied Sinai Peninsula, and withdrew from Gaza in 2006, although it maintains military control. The Israeli-controlled expropriated lands in the West Bank are arranged strategically so they largely surround Palestinian areas, such that now the West Bank is cut in half, and almost in thirds, making a Palestinian State realistically impossible. In addition, the surrounded Palestinian communities are then cut off from each other and the outside world, and strangled economically and socially because of the harassment they experience at the checkpoints between the areas. Thus these areas are amongst the poorest in the world with an unemployment rate around 60%. Many believe this reflects an effort of the Israeli government to make living in Palestine so uncomfortable that many Palestinian Arabs will leave. |
| 7. In year 2003, the Israeli government passed laws forbidding Palestinian spouses who live in or are visiting the occupied territories from rejoining their families living in Israel (with a few exceptions):
Many believe that this represents an effort by the Israeli government to disrupt Arab family life in Israel because of the high birthrate of the native Arab population, and to make family life in Israel so uncomfortable for Arabs, that many will then choose to leave. The Israeli government claims they are doing this for security reasons, but have admitted that over the course of the last few years, the population affected by this (consisting of many thousands of families) has resulted in only 25 security interviews, and no arrests or convictions. |
F. International Peace Efforts:
There have been twelve major peace efforts since 1948 (and a few minor ones). But all twelve repeat the same problem: protection of Palestinian civil and human rights, while denying Palestinian right of self-determination and right to inhabit and control their own ancestral lands as the native and majority population in favor of a minority European-based program with a claim to their land that is not legally valid. These 12 plans are:
Here are brief descriptions of these 12 efforts at peace and the positions they proposed on behalf of both parties:
| 1. Armistice Agreements (1949): the 1949 Armistice Agreements were temporary agreements signed between Israel and its opponents in the 1948 fighting, which followed the passage of the UN Partition Plan and the declaration of Israeli statehood. The main point of the agreements was agreement to Armistice lines - temporary borders (the Green Line) to the new State of Israel until permanent peace agreements could be signed at some future date: Israel-Egypt (24 February 1949); Israel-Lebanon (23 March 1949); Israel-Jordan (3 April 1949); Israel-Syria (20 July 1949); Israel-Iraq - no agreement, its positions in West Bank were taken over by Jordan. |
| 2. Geneva Conference 1973 (opened 21 December 1973): peace conference called for by UNSC resolution 338 in response to 1973 Arab-Israeli war – no real agreement was reached. Major issues - implementation of UNSC resolution 338, establishing Palestinian representation at Conference - Syria withdrew because PLO was not accepted, and USA and Israel would not accept the PLO because it would not recognize right to exist for Israel. Egypt's main focus was regaining territories lost in 1967 war. Other major participants were Jordan and USSR. No real agreement was reached. |
| 3. Camp David Peace Accords (signed 17 September 1978): Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli PM Menachem Begin and US President Jimmy Carter - in exchange for Egypt's recognition of Israel and allowing Israeli passage through Suez Canal, Israel would withdraw its military and civilian settlements from Sinai, they would establish normalized relations, and USA would provide billions of dollars in aid to both countries. Also, Eqypt and Israel agreed to a set of "associated principles" governing relations between Israel and her Arab neighbors, and to a framework for future negotiations implementing UNSC resolution 242 and establishing an autonomous self-governing Palestinian governing agency for the occupied territories. But one result of this agreement was the ostracization of Egypt in the Arab world for giving up so much without gaining more for the Palestinians. This even was believed by the Egyptian people who regarded Israel as an enemy nation. |
| 4. Madrid Conference (convened 30 October 1991): hosted by Spain, co-sponsored by USA & USSR, and included Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Led to no concrete results, but did lead to a format for future negotiations such as the Oslo Accords, a peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, and important negotiations between Syria and Israel. |
| 5. Oslo Peace Accords (signed 13 September 1993): Israel (PM Yitzhak Rabin), PLO (Chairman Yasser Arafat) and US President Bill Clinton, officially titled, "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles (DOP)"; called for limited Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian democratic self-government, postponement of major issues such as Jerusalem, division of occupied territories into 3 sections - Area A - full Palestinian control, Area B – Palestinian civil control & Israeli Military control, and Area C - full Israeli control. A Joint Economic Cooperation Committee was also created to implement joint economic plans and projects. This effort was undermined by both Israeli increase in settlement building and increase in Palestinian violence against Israel (which Israel blamed on Arafat). |
| 6. Wye River Memorandum (completed 17 November 1998): signed by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, with US President Clinton witnessing. Involved agreements for further implementation of the Oslo Accords - further redeployment of Israeli military in occupied territories in exchange for further control over terrorist groups by PA, and building cooperation in security and economic issues, and to start permanent status negotiations right away. But implementation was cancelled by start of the 2nd Intifada. |
| 7. Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum (signed 4 September 1999): by Israel (PM Ehud Barak) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, witnessed by US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. This summit attempted to resume permanent status negotiations which would have implemented UNSC resolutions 242 and 338, including further Israeli military redeployments and reduction of Palestinian violence. Also discussed were release of Palestinian prisoners, protecting Gaza sea and air ports, and a timetable for further permanent status talks was agreed to. |
| 8. Camp David Summit 2000 (convened 11 July 2002): another attempt to negotiate a final status settlement to the Oslo Accords, by US President Clinton, PA Chairman Arafat and Israeli PM Barak. Talks failed because even though Israel offered huge percentage of occupied territory (about 85%) to PA to establish a state on, Israel would still have controlled all borders, water supplies and airspace, which Arafat felt would not have allowed for a truly viable independent state, but then Arafat walked out without offering a counter offer. |
| 9. Saudi Proposal (published 2 March 2002): called for Israel to (1) withdraw to 1967 borders, (2) provide a just solution for refugees, and (3) recognize the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as capital, and in exchange all Arab states would recognize Israel, and sign peace agreements and normalize relations. No real progress has been made on this effort because Israel has too many criticisms. |
| 10. Road Map to Peace by the Quartet (introduced 24 June 2002): introduced by the Quartet (USA, Russia, UN, EU) – requires Israel end settlement activities and support Palestinian statehood, in exchange the PA will institute democratic reforms and renounce terrorism. Roadmap based on a 3-part performance-based plan: (1) ending Palestinian violence, instituting Palestinian political reforms and elections, Israel ending settlement activity and withdrawing troops. (2) convene an International Conference on Palestinian economic recovery, and begin negotiations on outstanding issues such as refugees, Jerusalem and water issues. Despite scattered efforts, Israel did not withdraw or halt settlement activity, and Palestinian violence did not reduce. Then Israel implemented unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and Bush sent Sharon a letter denying Palestinian right-of-return, okaying settlements, and stating that establishing a Palestinian state by 2005 was unrealistic. |
| 11. Geneva Accords (introduced 1 December 2003): non-government peace proposal which gave Palestinians most of occupied territories including East Jerusalem in exchange for recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and limiting right-of-return to occupied territories (except a small number which Israel would agree to). Acceptance of this agreement was low from both governments and civilian populations. |
| 12. Sharm el-Sheikh Summit (convened 8 February 2005): Egypt, Jordan, Israel, PA, and USA - support for the Road Map, and soon after Bush made statement saying borders have to be a mutually agreed to, and that Palestinian State needs to include continuous unbroken territory in the West Bank (seen as an anti-settlement statement). But its progress was interrupted by Israel fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and against Palestinians in Gaza, followed by the Hamas electoral victory to lead the government, and then an Israeli media expose of continuing government-financed settlement expansion in the West Bank. |
G. Genocide in Gaza:
The legal definition of Genocide as laid out in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (article 2), and the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (article 6):
… genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
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In Gaza, you have a demographic situation which the Israeli government cannot do anything about in that it contains one of the densest populations in the world, which are all non-Jews. Thus there really is no room for Israeli settlements to grow, and the native population refuses to move, and refuses to stop rebelling against the Israeli military domination, and there is no legal rationalization for Israel to use now that imperialistic arguments are no longer accepted. Thus in 2006, the Israeli government unilaterally pulled its settlements out of Gaza, and handed over government functions to the Palestinian Authority. Most around the world cheered Israel for this move, except for those with in-depth knowledge of the situation. They knew that –
Thus eliminating Israeli presence within Gaza was irrelevant in practical terms. With the huge population in Gaza non-compliant in their imprisonment and not surrendering, Israel seems to be implementing a policy many interpret as genocide according to the official legal definition given above:
The result is the spread of malnutrition across the area, and a general breakdown of law and order. This is leading to an overall breakdown of Palestinian society in Gaza. Israel may have pulled its military forces and settlements out of Gaza, but in other ways it is doing more destructive things than ever. Many people consider this to be genocide committed against the people of Gaza “… deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part … with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a (this) national, ethnical, racial or religious group” because Israel could not get rid of them any other way.
VII. Conclusion: There is a Solution
The Political Zionist project in Palestine is flawed at an essential level:
The Political Zionists are pursuing this project for the sake of the Jewish people – they believe this is the best thing to do for the Jewish people. And therefore they claim that criticizing their project (the State of Israel), is anti-Semitic because it opposes something they associate with the Jewish people, which they believe will help the Jewish people. But there are and have been many devout Jews that disagree with this – that do not support the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. Plus they view the subsequent actions of the Jewish State to be immoral according to Jewish morality.
Thus it is not ok to call critics of Israel anti-Semitic because they may actually really love the Jewish religion and people, but they disagree with the Zionists over the best way to help them and represent them.
All people have the right to criticize government policies – of any country, but especially of democratic countries, which both Israel and the USA claim to be. In fact, we have an obligation to criticize our governments. When we criticize the State of Israel, and its military, we are clearly criticizing a government and its policies and practices, and we are clearly saying nothing about a religion, even if that government and its supporters attempt to associate themselves with a religion. We are not criticizing that religion – its beliefs and practices, and in fact criticize that government and its supporters for making that association.
Thus the solution is to pursue a path that has been used for many years now to stop and correct government systems of discrimination and oppression and exploitation – economically and socially attack that government until it changes its policies of discrimination and oppression and exploitation.
But in order to better understand how to force the Israeli government to change, we first must examine the Israeli systems we want to change.
Thus we follow this section with sections on:
The solution will probably be painful, and involve considerable risk, and there will be set-backs and mistakes, but people are intensely suffering and dying right now – children are suffering intensely and dying right now, so we must not let these risks and dangers keep us from taking action on possible solutions – we must start now, so that the future might be free of this burden sooner than later.
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(C) Israel Law Resource Center, March, 2007.