Don't the Palestinians, dispossessed of their homeland by Zionism, which thrives on British support, even have the right to be angry?

Maden in Europe: Zionist Nationalism

Nationalism is the belief in the independence and greatness of a people, often in an angry way. It includes feelings of anger and hatred towards foreign rulers or threatening foreigners "No foreigner can push us around". All people of the world, including Americans, are nationalists to a greater or lesser extent. Nationalism teaches that it is very wrong to be ruled by foreigners. The seeds of nationalism were sown wherever the French Revolution and the Napoleonic armies travelled. The French invasions gave life to European, especially Spanish, German and Russian nationalisms (read Tolstoy's War and Peace to see how a Francophile Russian learnt to hate the French and became a Russian nationalist). In time, the whole of Europe became "nationalist". The 19th century's fashionable concept of nationalism also awakened the "stateless" Jews. According to the teachings of nationalism, everyone should have a homeland. In the late 19th century, Jews began to form their own nationalism, Zionism. The Dreyfus Case in France in the late 1890s (a French state official of Jewish origin was accused of spying for Germany and was executed on the basis of fabricated evidence. This event divided the French against the Jewish community in France. The Conservatives insulted the Jews, while the Liberals defended them. Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Jewish journalist, was horrified by the outrage and brutality of the Dreyfus Affair. He began to argue that Jews could only be safe in their homeland. With his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), published in 1896, he became the chief advocate and founder of Zionism. In 1897 he organised the first Zionist Congress. There he predicted, with only one year of error (1948), that within 50 years the dream of a Jewish state would be realised. 

When Tsarist Russia opened the way for acts of violence against the Jews in Eastern Poland, which had the largest Jewish population in Europe, Jews emigrated from there to Western Europe and America, and the majority of those who embraced Zionism settled in Palestine. In 1900, Palestine was a quiet part of the Ottoman Empire with a predominantly Arab population. In Palestine, the small but well-organised Zionist movement, under the slogan "the land without people will become the landless people", began buying land, establishing farms (kibbuktzim and moshavim), digging canals, reviving the desert, and using the almost extinct Hebrew language not only for prayers but also as a spoken language. In 1903, Tel Aviv (Spring Hill), today the capital of Israel, was founded as a modern Jewish city on an empty plot of land by the sea. 

The Endless Game Plans of the British with the Arabs, Zionists and Palestinians and Their Results

Meanwhile, Arab nationalism was beginning to revive. Like the Zionists, Arab nationalists sought refuge in British power for their national future. In the First World War, Britain turned both the Zionist and Arab nationalist movements into a competition for land ownership. 

Despairing with the First World War and beginning to realise that the sun would set on it, Britain played the Arab and Zionist nationalism card in order to win new allies. It made promises to the Arabs and the Zionists and, regardless of whether these promises were kept or broken, whether they overlapped or contradicted each other, it prepared the ground for the countless angry armed conflicts that later emerged and which today are taking place between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. A brief mention of some of these is both illuminating and instructive for understanding the present.

The McMahon-Hussein Letters

Between 1915 and 1916, ten letters went back and forth between Sir Henry McMahon, the British boss in Egypt, and Sharif Hussein, encouraging the Arabs to rise up against the Turks. McMahon agreed with Hussein that the Arabs should have their own territory, but did not specify the exact boundaries. Hussein wanted the entire Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia (including Palestine). McMahon was evasive, but the Arabs thought they had reached an agreement. A British officer, T.E Lawrence, instigated an Arab uprising in 1916 to drive the Turks out of the Fertile Crescent. The Arabs, led by Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca and Medina, thought they were fighting for their independence. After the war, Britain and France divided the Fertile Crescent between them. They did not even pay attention to Arab protests.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

At the same time, Britain, France and Russia secretly agreed to divide the Ottoman Empire between them after the war. The Arabs could have the Arabian Peninsula, but Britain and France wanted to divide Mesopotamia between them. The British would get Palestine and Mesopotamia, the French Syria and Lebanon. The Bolsheviks published the agreement to show how vile the imperialists were. The Sykes-Picot Treaty was completely different from the agreement between McMahon and Hussein.

Balfour Declaration: 

Meanwhile, on the one hand, the British were encouraging the Zionist movement. Their aim was to spread Jewish ideas in America and Russia in order to gain support for the war effort. In the autumn of 1917, the British cabinet issued a declaration, named after the foreign secretary, with the intention of gaining the support of Jews all over the world for the war:

"His Majesty's Government welcomes the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. It will do its utmost to realise this goal. Nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Although the Declaration does not explicitly promise to establish a state for the Jews, it is clear that tacit support is given. However, it is also stated that the rights of the Arabs will be protected. How many people can you promise the same land to?

Establishing the State of Israel

After the war, the British honoured the Declaration for a time in order to allow the Jews to have a home in Palestine. From 1919 to 1931, about 10,000 Jews arrived every year. The Palestinian Arabs were outraged at the betrayal they had suffered at the hands of the British and feared that the Jews would take over their country through this immigration. Already in 1920 and 1921 they rose up against the Jews. In total, about 100 people from both sides lost their lives in the clashes. Thus began a fierce enmity between the two communities. 

In the 1930s, anti-Semitic regimes in Germany and Poland accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine. The purchase of more land by Jewish organisations led to the Civil War of 1936-1939 between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. A Jewish defence force, the Haganah, was formed, which later became the core of the Israeli army. The kibbutzniks cultivated the land by day and fought off attacks by Palestinians at night. By 1938 the Jewish population in Palestine had reached 413,000. 

During the Second World War, when German agents incited the Arabs to revolt against the British, Britain put the brakes on Jewish immigration from 1939 in order to pacify the Arabs. The White Paper banning Jewish immigration was published. On the other hand, the reality of the Nazi death camps, the events of the war, and immigration transformed Zionism from a romantic dream into a fierce desire to establish a Jewish state. At the end of the war in Europe, the survivors of the Nazi camps demanded that they be allowed to enter Palestine, and the Zionists demanded the establishment of a Jewish state. 

Britain, emerging from the war with a shattered country and a tired nation, proposed to the UN Commission on the Palestine question that Palestine be divided between Arabs and Jews, with Jerusalem remaining neutral. The UN General Assembly accepted this proposal. 

The Jews, who constituted about a third of the Palestinian population, accepted the partition. But the Arab states and Palestinian Arabs were against it. Meanwhile, the British mandate ended on 14 May 1948. Ben Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel. Five Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon) mobilised against the newly established Israeli army. 

The Israeli Army meant the 40,000-strong Haganah. The Zionists, who had foreseen the outbreak of such a war from the very beginning, were well prepared for it. They had begun to produce their own weapons. Their most powerful weapon was their instinct to protect their new homeland and their high morale. Israeli military doctrine was based on ayn brayra (no other option). They defeated all Arab armies except Jordan. They could not defeat the Jordanians, who, together with the West Bank, held East Jerusalem, the Old City and all the holy places. Israel was left with West Jerusalem. But it had captured 80 per cent of the Palestinian territory. The rest is the history of Palestine's loss, which continues to this day. 

The wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 exhausted the hopes for Palestine. Today, Palestinians, who have become a nation without a homeland, stateless and ostracised everywhere, have embraced Palestinian Nationalism under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Although it seems to be the fate of the Palestinians to live a life abandoned to the mercy of the Israelis in their ancestral lands, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel's expansionist policy, which does not recognise their right to live, continues to lead to the loss of more and more Palestinian lands and the destruction of their homes. The Hamas attack of 7 October is an expression of hatred against the Zionists and Israel. In return, the Israeli army's indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza with more than 6,000 bombs in 6 days is nothing but the rain that feeds this hatred. 

Conclusion

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were initially based on a two-state solution. This solution was first proposed in 1937. Three major issues remain obstacles to reaching a satisfactory agreement and realising a two-state solution.

First, Israel would have to give up much of the West Bank in order to create a Palestinian state in the neighbouring territories. Many Israelis, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, refused to accept this and continued to expand settlements. I believe that they have no intention of stopping until the last Palestinian land has been seized.

Second, the Palestinians want to return to their homes, to their ancestral lands, to live humanely, to be restored to their rights, which they were forced to leave with the creation of Israel in 1948. The Israelis do not agree to a fair share, as they are worried that with the return some of their assets will be given to the Palestinians. Return means the end of the Zionist policy of expansion and territorial gains for more than 100 years. The return of the Palestinians is seen as the end of these gains.

Thirdly, the Palestinians continue to insist on gaining sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The Israelis, on the other hand, claim that all of Jerusalem belongs to them forever. Therefore, they continue to use violence to intimidate Palestinians, forcibly evict them from their homes and confiscate their property in order to expel Palestinians from East Jerusalem and take over this historic and 'holy' city. 

What is happening in Gaza today has also cancelled the possibility of any serious progress on these three issues. At present, peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis seems unlikely. The blood and tears on the screens every day do not offer hope for the time being.

Reference

Michael G. Roskin, Nicholas O. Berry, "Uluslararası İlişkiler", (Çev: Özlem Şimşek), Liberte, Ankara, 2014. s.175-192