A most outlandish claim was made by Israel’s ambassador to the UN about the connection of that key international institution to Palestinian movement Hamas. The Israeli ambassador then went a step further and said the UN was a terrorist organisation. He was upset that the UN General Assembly voted 143-9 in favour of granting more rights to the Palestinians at the UN.
Israel is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu told CNBC that a “two state solution would be a reward for terrorists.” This belies his assertion that Israel is fighting a war of self-defence against Hamas in Gaza.
In Israel, the Palestinian flag cannot be displayed. Not to be cowed down, Palestinians observed the Nakba (“catastrophe”) by holding watermelons cut in half, since the colours match those of their flag.
Opposing the creation of a Palestinian state is contrary to the UN General Assembly’s resolution in November 1947. It called for the partition of the British Palestine mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish National Federation of Palestine that nineteen turbulent centuries after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews were returning to Zion. At the midnight hour, the state of Israel would come into being.
But Israel’s creation did not end the turbulence. It gave it a second wind. In Palestine, only 6% of the land was owned by Jews. The UN resolution raised that to 55%. The Palestinians were supposed to live on 45%. Israel’s creation triggered a war with its Arab neighbours. When the war ended, Israel was occupying nearly 80% of the land and it was filling up fast with Jews from Eastern Europe.
Only the West Bank and Gaza remained in Palestinian hands. Shortly thereafter, Jordan took control of the West Bank and Egypt took hold of Gaza. The Palestinian state had disappeared altogether.
Ehud Barak, a former Prime Minister, knowing the horrid living conditions of the Palestinians, had once observed that had he been born into a Palestinian family, he would have eventually joined a “terrorist organisation”
Some 700,000 Palestinians were pushed out of Israel into neighbouring Arab states, mostly to Jordan. Some 160,000 remained in Israel but they were turned into second-class citizens, who could neither buy nor lease the land they had previously lived on. Contrary to its ‘democratic’ image in the West, Israel had turned into an apartheid state, straight in the South African mould.
The creation of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians was contrary to the UN Charter, which promised the right of self-determination to all people. How did such an inequitable phenomenon come about?
In The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Professor John Mearsheimer writes, “Had American Jews not organised on Israel’s behalf and convinced important politicians to support their objectives, Israel might never have been established.”
President Truman, who did not have even a college degree, and who knew little about global matters, became Israel’s biggest ally. In November 1945, US diplomats warned him not to adopt a strong pro-Zionist stance. He said: “I am sorry gentlemen…but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands of who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”
As Israel’s war machine continues to devastate Gaza today, it rekindles the grim memories of ethnic cleansing. Since 27 October, more than a million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza.
Additionally, it has starved two million Palestinians and denied them electricity, mobility, health care, and sanitation. Worse, more than a hundred thousand Palestinians have been killed, injured, or maimed for life. South Africa, which had experienced apartheid first hand, has charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice.
The analogy to the Nakba of 1948 can now even be found in mainstream US media. TIME magazine ran a multi-page article an article on the solemn history of the Palestinians.
Israel is not even listening to the advice of its patron state, the US, let alone world opinion. Contrary to Biden’s advice, it has begun rampaging through Rafah without providing a plan to relocate the civilians.
Professor Rashid Khalidi notes in The Hundred Years War on Palestine that the Zionists “called for creating a large Jewish state and a smaller Arab state with an international corpus separatum encompassing Jerusalem… This was essentially, an international declaration of war….a blatant violation of the principle of self-determination that’s embedded in the UN charter.”
On Israel’s creation, Palestinians disappeared into neighbouring Arab states, most notably into Jordan, which absorbed the West Bank. None of the Arab states rose to the defence of the Palestinians. They continue to neglect the plight of the Palestinian diaspora in their midst. Why? Because Jordan’s King Abdullah was slavishly pro-British and in cahoots with the newly created state of Israel.
In Collusion Across the Jordan, Avi Shlaim states that “extensive clandestine contact took place between Abdullah and two Zionist leaders who would go on to become prime ministers of Israel, including Golda Meir.”
Historian Albert Hourani’s worst fears were realised. Creating Israel on land that Palestinians had lived on for centuries was a terrible injustice and it “could only be carried out at the expense of terrible repressions and disorders…with the risk of bringing down in ruins the whole political structure of the Middle East.”
Even Moshe Dayan, an Israeli defence minister, had recognised that forcing Palestinians to live in refugee camps and turning “into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived would have consequences….without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.”
Ehud Barak, a former Prime Minister, knowing the horrid living conditions of the Palestinians, had once observed that had he been born into a Palestinian family, he would have eventually joined a “terrorist organisation.”
76 years after its creation, Israel seems unable to understand that peace will only prevail – and turbulence cease -- if it ends the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Its history is the ultimate validation of George Santayana’s adage, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”