Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Palestinians should take Israeli citizenship

Iqbal Jafar | 27.04.2002 11:51

[This article first appeared in the Pakistani newspaper, DAWN]
The Palestinians do have a choice - they should renounce violence, accept the reality of the existence of Greater Israel, and declare themselves to be its citizens

In the wake of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948-49, about 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were encouraged by Israel to leave. Some were forcibly ejected from their villages which were then demolished. James McDonald, the first Ambassador of the United States to Israel, described the plight of the refugees thus: they are "a huge and pitiful multitude, uprooted, exploited and helpless". This was just the beginning.

Now that the Palestinian problem is fast moving towards a final solution the world helplessly watches the endgame as it did 60 years ago when an attempt at another final solution was underway in the Nazi-dominated Europe. There is, however, some difference. On the previous occasion the world did, temporarily and for good reason, feel helpless but was not in a state of morbid paralysis. The authors of the previous attempt at final solution had to pay a very heavy price as the collective wrath of almost the whole world descended upon them, and continued unabated till they were destroyed.

The present scenario is totally different. This time round those who can intervene are in no way helpless, but are in every way unhelpful. In fact there are many among them who, under the influence of a potent brew of racial and religious antipathy, have chosen to take a passionately dispassionate view of the fate of the Palestinians.

This antipathic indifference to the fate of the Palestinians has a long tradition, but let us go no further than the Balfour Declaration (1917) that officially and formally committed the British government to the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Its author, Arthur Balfour, justified the new covenant with the Jews with this magisterial pronouncement: "The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or be it wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."

Arthur James Balfour, whose mind worked in rather devious ways, had just the right credentials to make that kind of pronouncement. While he supported the creation of Israel for a people who lived elsewhere, he was an implacable opponent of home rule for the Irish whose rights there had an "age-long tradition".

In fact, as chief secretary for Ireland, he suppressed the insurrection in Ireland with such ruthlessness that he came to be known as "Bloody Balfour". One would like to add that he was kept aloft in politics by an indulgent electorate for an interminably long period of 50 years, due undoubtedly to the fact that the British public has always been rather suspicious of politicians who sound intelligent or clever.

That the Palestinians don't matter or don't even exist has been a constant theme in the Zionist lore. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the leading lights of the early Zionists, argued that the Palestinians were "aliens", and their "transfer" if not accomplished voluntarily would have to be achieved against their will.

Then there was that curious case of a popular book, From Time Immemorial by Joan Peter, massively promoted by the Israeli lobby, claiming that there were no native Arabs before the Zionist immigration into Palestine. This book was shown to be a colossal fraud by Norman Finkelstein, himself a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors. Again, as late as 1969, when asked about the Palestinians in an interview with The Sunday Times of London, Golda Meir brushed aside the question with contempt: "They do not exist", she said.

Having talked for a while about what exists and what doesn't, we are, I hope, prepared to face a question in the same vein that hasn't been asked at any time since 1948: Does Palestine exist? The short answer is: Palestine doesn't exist. In fact it ceased to exist within a few days of its birth as there was no legal or political authority, or organization, to take control of the state demarcated by the British under the partition plan.

Consequently, there was a scramble for land among the neighbouring countries, and the contenders took whatever they could. Egypt took the Gaza strip (bigger than the present one); Jordan (then Trans-Jordan) occupied the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem; and Israel took the rest, the most and the best. In the next phase (1967) the Israelis ejected the Egyptians from the Gaza Strip and much else, and the Jordanians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli occupation of the whole of Palestine (and Golan Heights in addition) was, thus, complete in 1967.

Leaving aside the Gaza strip (140 sq miles), one has only to look at the map of the West Bank (2,200 sq miles) to see that it is a rather complicated mosaic, consisting of five different kinds of areas: areas under the Palestinian control; areas under a joint Israeli-Palestinian control; areas under the Israeli civil and security control; areas consisting of Israeli civil and military facilities; and the Jewish-Israeli settlements (175 so far) scattered all over the place.

The word "area" can be misleading as none of these five kinds of areas is in one piece. Each of the different kinds of areas consists of numerous bits and pieces. Areas under the Palestinian control, for example, consist of enclaves joined by roads that are under Israeli control. Now that the Palestinian Authority has been dismantled, even this confusing, fractured and erratic Palestinian control over the designated bits and pieces doesn't exist anymore.

Thus, the best-kept secret of our times is that Palestine doesn't exist, and Greater Israel has come into existence. In fact, Greater Israel has been there since June 1967. But why, one may ask, Israel doesn't tell the truth by formally inaugurating Greater Israel? Well, there is a problem. The problem is that while Palestine doesn't exist, the Palestinians do. There are more than three million of them in the areas that are supposed to constitute Palestine, and about a million in Israel itself.

Even if the Palestinian refugees in the neighbouring countries (2.3 million) are not allowed to return, there would be 4.3 million Palestinians (Jews 5.5 million) in Greater Israel. Hence the existence of Greater Israel will be acknowledged only when the Palestinians are reduced to a small minority. This is what Ariel Sharon in now trying to accomplish through "one-way ticket" not only to Yasser Arafat but to as many Palestinians as can be persuaded to leave in the years to come. The Israelis are in no hurry. They are the best at any game of patience.

Meanwhile, we should get used to the fact that the Israeli forces will not withdraw from the West Bank or Gaza strip; the Palestinian Authority won't be resurrected out of the rubble; the Palestinian refugees won't be allowed to return; and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank will not be dismantled, but would continue to proliferate.

This, then, is a brief, perhaps the briefest narrative of the continuing Palestinian diaspora, pain and suffering begun more half a century ago. In the course of their travails they have been attacked and slaughtered by the Jews (Palestine), by the Christians (Lebanon), by the Muslims (Jordan), and expelled (Kuwait) from what they thought was a sanctuary.

At the present moment when even their young girls have been driven to acts of extreme despair; when their leaders are being surrounded, pursued, captured, tortured and branded as terrorists; when their houses are being bulldozed; there is no relief in sight. No country or group of countries is going to launch a rescue operation any time soon. They stand alone and forsaken.

But even in this darkest hour of their history, the Palestinians do have an option: they should renounce violence in all its forms and manifestations, accept the reality of the existence of Greater Israel, and declare themselves to be its citizens.

Iqbal Jafar
- Homepage: http://www.tehelka.com/channels/currentaffairs/2002/apr/25/ca042502pales.htm

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. A Citizen of Peace — Penny
  2. another way of looking at it — lenin
  3. Oh yeah Israel will have them — are you stupid?
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech