Damage caused by Israeli air attack on arab city.

The history of the Palestinian people is a sad and chequered one. In 1922 668,000 Arabs owned and lived on 98% of the land of Palestine. Today their entire country is controlled by the Jewish state of Israel and the Palestinians are scattered throughout the Arab countries. While international negotiators wrangle over talks to discuss the Palestine question and Israel creates new settlements on the occupied territories of the West Bank, a whole generation of young Palestinians who have never seen their homeland is growing up in squalid refugee camps.

One of the greatest myths surrounding any consideration of the Palestine question is the purported "historical rights" of Jew's in Palestine. Despite the fact that the founders of the Zionist movement considered several sites, including Argentina and and Uganda, for the Jewish "homeland", many people believe that Jews have "historical rights" to live in Palestine. Actually the Palestine arabs of today are mainly descendants of the early native population of the area - Philistines, Canaanites, Hittites etc., and were long established there when the Hebrews invaded the land in about 1500 BC. They not only survived this occupation but retained possession of most of the country through-out the Israeli period. They remained in the land after the Hebrew dispersion and were intermingled with the arab conquerors, then the crusaders, and continued to occupy the land until the Zionist invasion of 1948.

So if this history and their brief residence in Palestine is sufficient to give the Jews claims on Palestine, why don't the arabs have claims on Spain or Sicily which were once integral parts of the Islamic empire?

Balfour Declaration

In any debate of the Palestinian question a large number of declarations and letters are usually cited by each side as proof that the group they support has 'historical rights' to Palestine. For instance, Zionist claims to Palestine rest heavily on the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 in which the then British Secretary of Foreign Affairs pledged British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." This is a fine example of the completely opportunist role the British have played in the region. Before the Declaration the British Government had made several promises to the Arabs of support for their independence (including Palestine) in return for Arab help in the war against the Turks. Moreover the original Balfour Declaration pledged to protect the rights of non-Jews in Palestine, yet on August 11, 1919 Balfour wrote:

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.." as control of the Suez canal, and later oil interests, assumed greater importance, British pledges to the Palestinians were conveniently forgotten and the coincidence of the interests of Zionism and British imperialism led to British support for the Zionist cause.

So how did Israel come into existence? After World War One, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine, against the wishes of the Palestinian people. This mandate lasted from 1922 until the "State of Israel" was declared in 1948. Throughout this period Jewish immigration to Israel continued apace. - 1922, 83,794 Jews. 1931 174,610 Jews, 1944 554,000 Jews The Jewish Settlers attempted to purchase large amounts of land but met with strong resistance from the Palestinians. Most of the 100,000 acres they did succeed in buying (mainly from absentee owners) became the property of the Jewish National Fund. This land was then regarded as the inalienable property of the Jewish people and the leaseholder was forbidden to employ 'non-Jewish. labour.'

Meanwhile the Palestinians stepped up strikes and armed struggle against the British administration, and the increasing Jewish colonisation continued. The Zionists formed terrorist organisations (including the Irgun, of which current Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin was leader). These well-armed organisations used violence as part of the Zionist moves to seize Palestine.

The largest single such act of violence occurred on 22 July 1946 when a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, housing the Government secretariat and part of the military headquarters was blown up, causing the death of about 100 people (including many Jewish and Palestinian civilians).

In 1947 the British Government announced that the mandate had proved unworkable and rejecting arab proposals for independence (which included guarantees for Jewish minority rights) it placed the Palestine question before the United Nations.

Partition

A General Assembly Special Committee drew up a resolution (the 'partition resolution.) which divided Palestine into 6 principal parts. 3 of these parts (56% total area and most fertile land) were reserved for a Jewish state, the other 3 (43%) for an Arab state, with Jerusalem to be an international zone.

The Arabs (2/3 majority of country) rejected the partition on the grounds that it violated the provisions of the UN charter which gives a people the right to decide its own destiny. Zionists placed enormous pressures on member states opposed to partition. For instance, a Liberian delegate reported to the US State Department that the manner in which he had been approached to support partition amounted to "attempted intimidation."

On November 29, 1947 the General Assembly adopted the plan of partition (33 - 13, 10 abstentions), and violent demonstrations broke out throughout Palestine. The UN met to consider suspending the partition plan and the Zionists decided to take the law into their own hands. Violence increased and the Irgun led by Begin, attacked the village of Deir Yassin; 254 men, women and children were massacred. In six months the Zionists drove 400,000 Palestinian arabs from their homes. Refugees poured across the borders into adjacent arab countries and to protect the Palestinian Arabs, arab armies entered Palestine.

In May 1948 the 'State of Israel' was declared; by the time armistices were concluded in early 1949 Israel controlled ¾ of the total land area of Palestine. As Moshe Dayan has said (Maariv 16-2-73)"to have a Jewish state one sovereignty must take the place of another, and Jews must take the place of arabs." The Zionists took the unusual step of not declaring the boundaries of the state and David Ben Gurion, the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, later stated that they extended "from the Nile to the Euphrates". It was obvious Israel's expansionism was not at an end.

The period from the signing of the armistice agreements in 1948-49 until the June war of 1967 was characterised by bloody incidents across the armistice demarcation lines - Israeli occupation of demilitarized zones, disregard by Israel of UN resolutions relating to the refugees and to Jerusalem and the 1956 attack on the Suez canal by Israel and her allies.

In 1956 David Ben Gurion declared "The Armistice with Egypt is dead, as are the armistice lines and no wizards or magicians can resurrect these lines." Israel's leaders continued to state their expansionist aims, foreign 'aid' poured into Israel and the growth of her military continued apace.

1967 War

In April 1967 it was believed by Soviet intelligence Israel was planning to attack Syria the following month. Moscow warned Egypt of this and, with Soviet encouragement, Egypt mobilized and concentrated it's troops on the Sinai border with Israel.

Then, without consulting Moscow, Nasser (then President of Egypt) proclaimed a blockade of the Straits of Tiran, i.e. Israeli ships could no longer pass these straits. The Israelis played up the blockade as a mortal danger to their economy (which it wasn't) and replied by mobilising their forces and moving them to the frontiers. However, in response to a Soviet warning that Egypt must not be the first to open fire, she took no precautions against the possibility of an Israeli attack. Thus, on June 5, Israel struck the pre-emptive blow and demolished the entire Egyption air force on the ground, and the famous 6 day war began. Day by day the Israeli tanks moved westward into the Sinai peninsula, eastward into Jordan and finally into the Golan Heights in Syria and within 6 days Israel had destroyed the combined military might of these three arab nations.

Despite the fact that the UN Security Council Resolution (242) of 22 November 1967, called on Israel to withdraw from the newly occupied territories (Gaza Strip, West Bank and the Sinai) it refused, claiming they were needed for "strategic purposes". The state of Israel as we now know it includes these territories and Prime Minister Menahem Begin has stated categorically that they will never be relinquished. Today Israel actively pursues a policy of establishing new settlements there. Recent attempts to obtain a settlement of the Palestine question have concentrated on these territories and rest on Israel's giving up some or all of them, this land then being used to create a separate Palestinian state. If Israel did give up these territories that would be an important gain for the Palestinian people. But to look upon that as the ultimate solution to their problem is to overlook the fact that all of Israel is occupied territory which has been taken by force from the Palestinian people. It is not a question of Israel giving up some of her war gains. It is a question of an end to expansionism and of self-determination for all Palestinian people - Jewish, Muslim and Christian alike.

Israel's Discriminatory Laws

There is no law in Israel which prevents discrimination against non-Jews. All such discrimination is completely legal. It is legal for a person to refuse to let a flat to an arab for instance. Insidious discrimination against non-Jews, such as this condoned by the law, is an everyday fact of living for Palestine arabs living in Israel.

As well as this unwritten discrimination, many of the actual laws of Israel are essentially anti-non-Jew. Some of these were passed soon after the 'State of Israel' was declared in 1948 and have never been repealed.

The Law of Return (1950) allows any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate to Israel and to reside there, yet Palestinian refugees do not have this right. Any Jew arriving in Israel automatically gains Israeli Nationality (Nationality Law 1952) yet a Palestinian arab must be 'naturalised' and fulfill stringent conditions to gain citizenship.

A series of land laws passed between 1945 and 1950 enabled vast areas of land belonging to Palestinian arabs to be confiscated. For example The Emergency Land Requisition (Regulation) Law, 1949 allowed government-appointed "competent authorities to requisition land or buildings needed for a number of purposes, including state defence, public security and the absorption of immigrants. Defence (Emergency) Regulations, 1945, article 125 granted military Governors the power to declare specific areas closed. Palestinian arabs were thus forbidden to enter those areas to cultivate their land. These "uncultivated" lands could then be confiscated by the Minister of Agriculture under Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste (Uncultivated) Lands) 1949. Then, under Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 1953, ownership of this confiscated land could be transferred to the State of Israel.

Palestinian arabs living in Israel are struggling against the oppression under which they suffer Frequently reports of strikes, demonstrations land violence leak out. But these arabs are not struggling alone. There are many non-Zionist Jews within Israel who support the concept of a democratic and secular Palestine in which Muslims, Christians and Jews would share equal rights. One such 'dissident' Youssef Wuksman, summed up the situation when he said, "We have to reach a state whereby we struggle, side by side with the oppressed arabs against the regime.... We are against any settlement which entails robbing the population." (Maariv, 11-4-72).

The Israeli Government is making every attempt to suppress such dissidence. For instance, Mrs Felicia Langer, a Jewish Civil Rights lawyer who was defending Israeli soldiers (some of whom had refused to take part in repressive measures in occupied arab territories) has been deprived of her licence to represent Israeli military personnel in Israeli military courts.

Despite the government's actions, the resistance struggle continues within Israel, and the Palestine National Council meeting held in March this year sent a message of greetings to "those Israelis fighting for democracy" and emphasised the necessity of forging links with democratic forces in Israel.

Powerful Foreign Friends

Israeli propaganda often tries to paint a picture of Israel as a weak unarmed country fighting alone. This is not true. The basis of the state of Israel is aggression. It is supported with arms, ammunition and funds by the USA, West Germany, Great Britain and France. In fact it is the watchdog of these countries in the Middle East and in 1968 Israel received about 10% of all aid given to under-developed countries. In 1972 there was an estimated $US760 million given to Israel in gifts, $US950 million in loans and US$12 million in investments. Only 3% of this flow of capital into Israel is in a form which calls for a return outflow of dividends interest or capital. In short, Israel is a client state of imperialism.

Israel is the principal military power in the Middle East. In periods of full mobilisation it can field as many soldiers as its three principal bordering states. It has more tank specialists and pilots than all the arab countries put together. Furthermore Israel possesses nuclear reactors and has produced plutonium stocks estimated at enough for 20 bombs. Although consistently cagey on the question of its nuclear capability a delegation of 13 US Senators were recently refused permission to visit one of Israel's nuclear research reactors at Dimana in the Negev, a move which is seen as putting Israel's "peaceful" nuclear intentions in doubt.

Anti-Semitism?

Unfortunately many people are uneasy about supporting the Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination because they feel that in doing so they are some way being anti-Jewish and supporting the actions of Hitler. But Israel was not born of the Nazi persecutions. The foundations of Israel were laid during the late 19th Century (the first wave of immigrants disembarked in 1882). There is no way Palestine could ever have absorbed the 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazi regime. Jews living in Palestine were saved from genocide not because they were living in the 'Holy Land' but, like NZ Jews, because Hitler did not conquer the Middle East. It is the western "democracies" who would not open their borders to refugees from Nazi Germany who must really take responsibility. Further it is important to draw the distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. To be anti-semite is to be racist, and must be fought by attacking the roots of racism in society. To be anti-Zionist is the struggle against the Zionist movement - this movement projects the gathering of the Jews in Palestine to establish a monocultural Jewish state there at the expense of the native Palestinian population Thus the struggle against the policies and structures of the Zionist state of Israel is an anti-colonialist struggle to restore to the Palestinians their national rights in their country.

The PLO

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is the umbrella organisation comprised of a number of Palestinian groups, which represents the Palestinian people and has been recognised as their sole representative by the UN and by a range of countries including Finland, Malaysia and China.

The main aim of the PLO is the creation of a democratic secular state of Palestine, in which Muslims, Christians and Jews would share equal rights. It would not, as is commonly thought, mean Jews would be 'thrown into the sea, but, as the Palestinian National Council reiterated in March this year "All Israeli Jews who rejected the sectarian and discriminatory basis of Zionism would be free to remain as citizens of the new state".

Conclusion

In recent years the Palestine question has been increasingly in the news, and more and more people are aware of the sad plight of the Palestinian people. - a whole people either under occupation or uprooted from their homes. The justice of their struggle for self-determination is being realised. Even US President Jimmy Carter has mentioned the need for a Palestinian homeland. It seems that at last we are removing from the Palestinians the stigma of a forgotten people and from ourselves the shame of having forgotten them.