The History of Palestine and Israel, Part One: How Israel Came To Be
Contrary to how the mainstream media portrays it, the conflict between Palestine and Israel did not begin on October 7th, 2023. For over 75 years Palestinians have been losing their land, rights, and dignity at the hands of the Israeli government. So much has happened over the course of those years that it is impossible to understand what’s currently going on in Palestine. So, this article is part one of three that aims to give an overview of the events that have lead up to and have directly resulted in the terrible events of October 7th, and the months of decimation Gaza has faced since. To understand the plight faced by the Palestinian people, we must go back to the First World War, before the nation of Israel was even founded.
Before WWI, Palestine was a region within the Ottoman Empire. As the war started and it was clear the already fading Ottoman Empire would not be able to hold on to its Middle Eastern territories, the French and the British began planning its colonization. In 1916, two years before the war would even end, British and French diplomats agreed on a plan to carve up the Middle East after the inevitable fall of the Ottomans in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Though by the end of the war the agreement was rendered mostly irrelevant in terms of implication, it does testify to the colonialist intentions the two countries had for the region after the war (Wilson Center). It is that imperialist mentality of the British when it comes to Palestine that makes it worth mentioning here.
Middle East under the proposed Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1919
One year later, in 1917, British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour wrote a letter to prominent Zionist leader, Walter Rothschild, in which he declared that the British government did in fact:
“view in favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…” (United Nations).
The Balfour Declaration, 1917
This letter became known as the Balfour Declaration. This declaration was the direct result of the World Zionist Organization’s lobbying and gathering of influence within Britain, and encouraged many of their prospects of replacing Palestine with a “Jewish national home.”
Once the war finally ended in 1918, the British took Palestine and ruled it under a military occupation for the next four years. Very quickly the Palestinians realized that the British were there not as peacekeepers of an post-war Palestine, but for the express intention of creating favorable conditions for the creation of a “Jewish State” on Palestinian land. Almost immediately after taking control of the region, the British began facilitating the mass migration of Zionist Jews from Europe to Palestine. Seeing the ideals of the Balfour Declaration being put into practice, prominent Palestinian voices began speaking out against the British practices in Palestine as early as 1919.
Khalil Sakakini, a writer and teacher from Jerusalem, described Palestine following The Great War as,
“A nation which has long been in the depths of sleep only awakes if it is rudely shaken by events, and only arises little by little … This was the situation of Palestine, which for many centuries has been in the deepest sleep, until it was shaken by the great war, shocked by the Zionist movement, and violated by the illegal policy [of the British], and it awoke, little by little.” (Al Jazeera)
British Conquest of Palestine, 1918
In 1919, Woodrow Wilson commissioned an inquiry into the indigenous feelings towards European Mandate rule in Palestine and Syria, which was mandated to the French. This was called The King-Crane Commission, and its reported conclusion was that the people of Palestine were vehemently opposed to the Zionist plan of replacing the prospect of a Palestinian State with a “national Jewish homeland.” Not only did the commission clearly document the opposition of the native population to the Zionist plan, but in its concluding recommendations the report cautioned against the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, citing the upheaval and human rights violations that would be necessary for its creation (IEPQ). The report clearly stated the intentions and consequences of the Zionist plan:
“For a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conferences with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete disposition of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine…” (King-Crane Commission).
Despite the clear disapproval of the indigenous population, the British continued laying the groundwork for the creation of a “Jewish State” on Palestinian land. In 1922 the League of Nations officially approved and issued the British Mandate of Palestine, authorizing the British to rule Palestine. The prominent goal of the mandate is clearly stated on the very first page where it is stated:
“The Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, but the Government of his Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” (United Nations).
And so, the British continued its policy of facilitating the mass immigration of Zionist Jews to Palestine. As more and more land was taken up and, as stated in the King-Crane report, the Zionists made it increasingly clear that their goal was the displacement of the indigenous Palestinians, naturally the Palestinians revolted against British rule and Zionist aggression. In the 1930’s Palestinians began forming poorly armed groups to defend villages from Zionist aggression and to carry out what meagre attacks they could against the British military occupation. A six month long general strike also took place as Palestinians banded together in an attempt to prevent the British from profiting off their occupation. The British cracked down harshly on the protests and even began training and arming Zionist paramilitary groups to fight against the Palestinians (United Nations).
Eventually the British caved and Winston Churchill issued the British White Paper in which it was acknowledged that the immigration of Jewish settlers to Palestine was not peacefully sustainable. The document signaled a change in policy to slow Jewish immigration, but not stop it altogether. While somewhat limiting the immigration of Jewish settlers, the British White Paper made no changes to the British policy of transferring Palestinian land over to Jewish settlers. The document reaffirmed that,
“no restriction has been imposed hitherto on the transfer of land from Arabs to Jews” (Yale).
While this fell far short of meeting Palestinian demands, it did quelled some of the Palestinian unrest. At the same time however, it stirred up the Zionist militias and gangs that had been formed in Palestine, some of which were armed and trained to help fight Palestinians in an official capacity in the 1930’s. As a result, the Zionist gangs rose up and throughout the 1940’s carried out attacks against the British, while continuing their attacks on Palestinians as well.
With the Palestinian uprisings followed by the Zionist ones, and the continuous civil unrest between those two groups themselves, the British finally resigned from their mission in Palestine and announced their intention to withdraw from the area. Their new plan, in the wake of The Second World War, was to turn the issue over to the newly established United Nations. The UN’s plan was to split the land into two states, a Palestinian one and an Israeli one. As a result of the British policy of facilitating the mass migration of Jewish settlers to Palestine, the Jewish population had increased from being just over 3% of the population before the British occupation to just over 30% in 1947. Despite that fact, the UN Partition Plan put forward in 1947 called for over half of the land (52%) to be designated as a “Jewish State” and the rest (48%) to be left for a Palestinian state(United Nations).
UN Partition Plan of Palestine, 1947
On May 14th, 1948, the last British ships left Palestine. On the same day, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared in Tel Aviv the creation of the State of Israel along the border of the UN Partition Plan. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians found themselves living in a new country where they were not welcome. Within hours of the declaration, statements of recognition and support came in from many nations around the world. Two of the most noteworthy were from The United States and The Soviet Union.
The next day, May 15th, 1948, the neighboring Arab nations of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, all relatively new independent nations themselves, declared war on Israel over what they saw as a theft of Palestinian land. Over the next year and a half, the First Arab-Israeli War was fought, or as it is known in Israel, “The Israeli War of Independence.” With overwhelming military and financial support from the western world, Israel not only beat back the Arab nations, but used the war as a cover for claiming even more Palestinian land than had originally been allotted them in the UN Partition Plan. This new state of Israel now had control of 77% of Historic Palestine, with the West Bank and Gaza Strip making up the remaining 23%. In that 23%, no Palestinian State was formed as it should have, but rather the West Bank fell under Jordanian administration and the Gaza Strip fell under Egyptian administration.
This naturally resulted in the mass displacement of Palestinians from their land, and as a result May 15th has been commemorated as “The Nakba” or “The Catastrophe.” (United Nations) According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, The Nakba resulted in over 750,000 Palestinians being forcibly displaced, dozens of documented massacres of Palestinian villages, the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages altogether, and the death of over 15,000 Palestinians. These numbers do not include, but are in addition to, the roughly 300,000 Palestinians that had already been displaced by Zionist militias in the six months between the proposal of the UN Partition Plan and the establishment of Israel (IMEU).
UN Partition Plan including land seized by Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948
Thus the State of Israel was created, and its aggression towards Palestinians and exorbitant human rights violations have continued for the last 75 years, despite repeated UN resolutions calling for peace and justice for the Palestinian people. As early as 1949, UN resolution 194 called for and reaffirmed “The Right of Return” for Palestinians displaced before, during, and since the Nakba. As the longest running unresolved refugee crisis in modern history, Human Rights Watch and various other reputable human rights organizations have since stated that due to the unique duration of this crisis, the Right of Return applies not only to those Palestinians who were directly displaced, but their descendants as well.
“The right is held not only by those who fled a territory initially but also by their descendants, so long as they have maintained appropriate links with the relevant territory. The right persists even when sovereignty over the territory is contested or has changed hands” (Human Rights Watch).
Yet, Israel has ignored these UN resolutions and rulings, and to this day has still not recognized this right of Palestinians to return to their land. Instead, their actions work in the opposite direction as they go on to claim and occupy more Palestinian land over the next 75 years through a combination of wartime land grabs and their ever-expanding settlement programs within Palestinian territories.
This is the first of three parts to our series of articles, “The History of Palestine and Israel” which is aimed at giving readers the full picture and context of the current escalation and genocide occurring in the region. We are dedicated to providing accurate information and making what is often billed as a “complex and confusing history” easily accessible and understandable for our readers. Understanding our history has always been a vital part of understanding the present and improving our future. To that aim, if you notice any inaccuracies in this article (or any of our articles) please reach out via the contact page of our site and let us know! In your message, please include a quote from the article which you are claiming as inaccurate, as well as any relevant sources backing up you claim.
Check back soon for parts two and three of this series!
