Injustice

If the theme is injustice, then I have to write once more about Palestine, because there is possibly no greater injustice being perpetrated in the world right now than that against the Palestinian people. It seems an ancient and intractable problem and yet somehow a solution has to be found. I hope you're in it for the long read.

Those of you who know me in person or via these blogs should understand that I have no prejudice when it comes to race or religion. I'm neither pro nor anti Jew or Arab, Judaism or Islam. However, I cannot abide it when people of whatever ethnicity or belief become fanatical, intolerant and inhumane. 

I am not antisemitic but I have a strong objection to Zionist imperialism, by which I mean the concerted attempts over more than 75 years by the Israelis to drive the Palestinian Arab people off the lands where they had lived and farmed for hundreds of years, leading up to the latest campaign of territorial acquisition and genocide in Gaza and on the Left Bank. In case you've lost the thread of this conflict or were genuinely unaware of the history of those 75 years, let me recap on a few facts.

Up until just after the end of the Second World War, the whole area was known as Palestine and was inhabited by 1.7 million Palestinians, of whom 1 million were Muslims, half a million were Jews and 200,000 were Christians, all co-existing under British jurisdiction as they had been since the end of the First World War when the Ottoman Empire had been defeated, and as they had been under Ottoman rule for four hundred years prior to that. 

   

olive grove near Bethlehem in Palestine, 1924

What changed was the growth of a Zionist movement in the late 19th century that had as its aim the acquisition of Palestine as the land on which to establish a Jewish State.

It is important to remember that what became the State of Israel when it finally and unilaterally declared independence in 1948 had started off as a terrorist organisation, fighting both the Arabs in Palestine and the British who governed the territory under international mandate. That terrorist organisation was funded by wealthy American Jews who believed in the Zionist dream (in much the same way as wealthy Irish Americans helped fund arms for the IRA to fight for a united Eire). 

American money enabled the Zionist terrorists to buy up military equipment that had fallen into the hands of arms dealers as Italy and Germany began to lose the war. That Jewish American lobby also ensured that the USA was the most powerful voice in advocating the concept of a Jewish 'homeland' in the Middle-East, a movement that gained wider support in the wake of the atrocities conducted against Jews in Europe in the 1930s and then during the Holocaust. 

It also effectively played into the hands of US foreign policy, for it promised an American ally on the doorstep of the Arab world. And in truth, it is American money, armaments and political power that both underpinned the creation of the State of Israel and has ensured its survival in the face of continuing opposition ever since.

For of course the Arabs in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world deplored the creation of the State of Israel. They thought that Palestine, like Jordan at the same time, should become an independent country in its own right when the British Mandate ended, with the 1.7 million Christians, Jews and Muslims continuing to co-exist just as they had in the area of Palestine for the previous four hundred years.

Instead, when that unilateral declaration of independence was made, with Hebrew the national language and Judaism the state religion, the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) invaded Palestine to try and avert what they foresaw happening, the progressive ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from the area. 

So began the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, with fighting lasting into 1949. As stated, Israel was abetted (unofficially) with funds, expertise and ordnance from the United States, along with other nations, notably Czechoslovakia and France. Israel won that war, established its 'green line' borders which encompassed 78% of the territory of Palestine and proceeded to expel 750,000 Arabs from their homes and land in a wave of ethnic cleansing. 

Those homes and lands were taken over by an influx of holocaust survivors and other European and American Jews. Netanyahu still lives in one such confiscated house today. 

The disenfranchised Palestinians called it the 'Nakba', the catastrophe. Within months, largely due to American pressure, the United Nations recognised Israel as a sovereign state and member of the UN despite opposition from all the Arab countries in the world. The 250,000 Arabs still living in Israel found themselves second class citizens in an apartheid state. As for the 750,000 displaced Palestinian Arabs, they settled in Gaza (under Egyptian control) and on the West Bank (controlled by Jordan). Palestine was suddenly a country no more, its indigenous people expelled and stateless. Even the British government was appalled by this turbulent turn of events.

But the striving by the displaced Palestinians for justice, reparation and international recognition continued in the wake of the Nakba. In 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organisation was formed with the aim of reclaiming Palestine for its displaced people, and nearly twenty years after the first Arab-Israeli war, Egypt, Jordan and Syria launched another attack on the country they continued to regard as an unconstitutional usurper of the land of Palestine. 

However, by the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 Israel had become a formidable military force, thanks to America of course. The Arab assault was repulsed and the war ended with Israel annexing both Gaza and the West Bank plus some land in the south of Syria (the Golan Heights), meaning that it now controlled a bigger footprint than the original Palestine. 350,000 more Palestinian Arabs were expelled from the West Bank and Israel began a decades long process of building Jewish settler communities in the newly occupied territories.

It did cede Gaza back and pulled its troops out as part of a deal to seal a lasting peace with its neighbours in the United Arab Emirates via the Oslo Accords of 1993, but it still controls those annexed lands to the north and west, plus part of southern Lebanon which it has occupied since that country also engaged in a war with Israel in 2006. And although under international law Israel has no right to the annexed territories within its expanded borders, as mentioned above it continues to build Jewish settlements in the occupied lands beyond its 'official' borders, engaging in systematic attempts to try and force the remaining Palestinians out of their homes, farms and businesses by blatant acts of aggression such as arbitrary curfews, intimidation, occasional acts of murder and the setting of Palestinian olive groves on fire, all well-documented if you care to research as I have done.

Palestinian olive trees set on fire by Israeli settlers, 2024

The more this policy of displacement has been pushed, the more Palestinians have ended up living in the coastal territory of the Gaza Strip, corralled by the Israelis, their port blockaded by Israeli warships and their borders highly controlled by the Israeli military. Gazans have been largely dependent on international aid for more than a decade now. Hamas is the democratically elected government in Gaza, although it is regarded by Israel and many western governments as a terrorist organisation (ironically the same sort of terrorist organisation that founded the State of Israel). Since Iran has emerged over the last quarter-century as a formidable force in the region, it has been taking hits at Israel by proxy, providing the weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. And while I didn't condone the Hamas raid into Israel in October 2023, if you ghettoise a people as the Israelis have ghettoised the Palestinians in Gaza, it shouldn't come as big surprise if the cornered party attempts to strike back.

It was reported at the time of the October attacks that the Egyptian intelligence service had warned Israeli intelligence that such an attack was imminent. I find it highly suspicious that the Israelis allowed the worst disaster to befall them in peacetime to unfold as it did. If I'm being cynical, I think they were prepared to let it happen so that they could go into Gaza exactly as they have done, looking to wipe out the opposition in an act of war under the guise of 'self-defence'. Some Israelis even advocate expelling all Palestinians from Gaza and incorporating the territory into the State of Israel. Whether that happens or not, it is genocide that the IDF has been indulging in, such has been the unrelenting assault, the proverbial sledgehammer cracking a nut, nearly 50,000 dead in retaliation for the 1,000 Israelis who died as a result of last year's Hamas incursion.

Rewind to the millennium, when at Camp David talks brokered by Bill Clinton between Yasser Arafat of the PLO and left-leaning Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak almost led to the PLO recognising Israel's right to exist in exchange for the establishing of an internationally recognised Palestinian State in Gaza and the West Bank. It was a prospect too preposterous for the powerful Jewish lobby in the USA or the right-wing opposition of Netanyahu in Israel to accept and when Bush and Netanyahu swept to power in their respective countries the plan for peaceful coexistence was dead in the water.  Thirty years on, we are seeing the continuing strife and suffering that stems from the hard line Zionists' refusal to compromise or accommodate the Palestinians' aspirations for a fair and lasting peace.

And it seems it will only get worse for the Palestinians now Trump has won the US election. Among the frightening appointments he looks set to make is Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, the same Mike Huckabee who is on record as saying there's no such thing as Palestine. At a rally of right-wing Israelis in the West Bank in 2017 he elaborated with these words: "There is no such thing as a West Bank - it's Judea and Samaria. There's no such thing as a settlement. They're communities. They're neighbourhoods. They're cities. There's no such thing as an occupation." That sort of brazen attempt to rewrite the truth of what's going on is nearly as bad as Holocaust denial, and some of the actions of the Israelis are as shocking as those perpetrated upon their own forebears in the concentration camps of Europe.

the plight of millions

The UN estimates that two million Palestinians were living in the Gaza Strip before the latest Israeli offensive began a year ago, and of those over 80% have been made homeless by the incessant Israeli bombing. They are in makeshift camps living in appalling conditions, entirely dependent on the trickle of humanitarian aid being allowed in. Meanwhile on the West Bank, violence against Palestinians intensifies with each passing month. 

It is a second catastrophe for disenfranchised Palestinians, and a moral injustice which is felt by the thousands in countries across the world where pro-Palestine marches and protests have become a regular fact of life in the last twelve months. Many Jews and even some Israelis feel a repulsion at how the leadership of Israel has been acting in this regard, but it is not clear what the solution might be, if indeed there is one.

An internationally agreed cease-fire would be a start, to allow humanitarian aid into the region. Mutual recognition of the right of Israelis and Palestinians to live peaceably in the region would be another. The establishing of a contiguous Palestinian State comprising the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and some land in between, a country in its own right recognised by the UN, might be the minimum that is required to enable a permanent cessation of age old hostilities. Who knows if that might ever happen.

Here's my latest poem. I'm not totally happy with it yet. The third stanza might need some more work.

Who Torched The Olive Branch?

From the river to the sea,

Palestinians were forced to flee,

their homes, their farms, their villages

usurped by an influx from the west

complicit in catastrophe.

What an unholy land it has become

under the oppressor's iron hand.

The hawk has driven off the dove,

ideology displacing humanity,

rigid codes reinforcing 

millennia of antipathy and mistrust,

blood and hope spilled 

in the dust of stolen fortune,

olive groves in flames.

What chance remains, watching world,

complicit in this latest Nakba,

for peace, accommodation, regeneration, 

Palestinians' dreams of being free

from the river to the sea?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)