State of Palestine

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia that is almost entirely occupied by the Zionist Entity leaving only Gaza and parts of the West Bank under Palestinian control. The West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, is located in the east of Palestine bordered to the east by Jordan and is currently being illegally settled by Israel. Gaza, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement, is located in the southwest of Palestine bordered to the southwest by Egypt and is currently being invaded by Israel following the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood.

History

Medieval history

During the Mamluk Sultanate, the Palestinian city of Jenin was a central station for the postal service between Cairo and Damascus.

Ottoman rule

The Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine for 401 years, starting in the 16th century.

Early Zionist settlement

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a movement known as Zionism was formed, advocating a homeland for Jewish people in the, then British occupied, land of Palestine. At the same time, the majority Arabic population, who had lived in Palestine for generations, desired independence from the British in the form of an independent Arabic state. In 1917 the British released the Balfour Declaration, which expressed full support to the Zionist movement. The Palestinian people, angered by the British completely ignoring their interests, began protests and rioting against Jewish occupation as early as 1920. These protests were largely led by Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

British rule

Arab Revolt (1936–1939)

Starting April 19, 1936, a mass strike against the British instatement of Zionism in the region was formulated. The strike was organized by the Arab Higher Committee, a Palestinian independence movement under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini. This strike eventually led to violent insurgency against British rule in the countryside. The British reacted to these strikes as any imperialist power would; through violent suppression. The British seized and searched property, often without warrants, tortured Palestinian prisoners, and deported Palestinian people from their homeland. There were also many violent encounters between Palestinian resistance, the British army, and Zionist paramilitary groups.

By the time it concluded in September 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, over 300 Jews and 262 Britons had been killed, and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded.

Lastly, these strikes resulted in the further deterioration of Palestinian resistance, which gave the Zionists easy access to the Palestinian rural areas, intensifying their ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Partition plan (UN Resolution 181)

Plan

Unable to resolve the conflict between Palestinians and settlers, Britain withdrew from Palestine in February 1947 and transferred the matter to the UN, which in turn created and entrusted it to UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) in May 1947.

While UNSCOP did deliberate about the possibility of a democratic one-state solution, whose future would be determined through democratic organs, they ended up adopting a partition plan which divided Palestine into two states: "Israel", occupying 56% of all Palestinian land and containing the Eastern Galilee, a coastal area (including Haifa, Tel Aviv, and most fertile lowland plains) and most of the Negev, and Palestine, consisting of the remaining territories, except for Jerusalem, which was to be considered corpus separatum. Additionally, it is also worth mentioning that even within the UN-proposed state, settlers owned only 11% of the land and were the minority in every single district, further adding to the absurdity that was this plan.

After November 1947, as a way of protesting against the blind-eye that the UN was turning to the Palestinians who overwhelmingly rejected the proposed plan, the Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee decided to boycott further negotiations with UNSCOP.

Palestinian response

As stated earlier, the Arab League further refused to negotiate with UNSCOP. This fact is often used to support the argument that Palestinians would have a better state had they accepted the Partition Plan. However, this couldn't be further from the truth, as in order to say this one has to ignore the entire history of the Zionist movement, its settler-colonial ambitions, very much aligned with European Imperialist nations, and how it always advocated for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from their own land. By allowing this plan to come into fruition, the UN had fundamentally violated its own human rights charter.

Several leading Palestinians also attempted to get the International Court of Justice (ICJ) involved in order to question the ethics of the plan, namely if the UN had the authority to forcefully execute the resolution without the approval of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians violated the UN human rights charter; a counter resolution was passed to give the UN the authority to do so.

Furthermore, it is natural that Palestinians rejected this plan, as it went directly against their interests (and violated their right of self-determination) and would further intensify the ethnic cleansing operations. Therefore, it is obvious that such a plan could only be enacted by overwhelming force, since it is obviously impossible to forcibly expand the colonizer's reach from 6% to almost 56% of all Palestinian land without Palestinian support.

Zionist response

While the Zionists had adopted the idea of a "Jewish Commonwealth", a maximalist idea, since the Biltmore Conference, David Ben-Gurion was more than keen on accepting the Resolution. However, this did not stop him from making claims that the UN had given very non-Zionist conditions to work with, therefore the final borders of "Israel" would be decided by force.

Colonization of Palestine from 1947 to 2005

Only Area A (green) remains under the control of the Palestinian Authority while the rest is directly occupied by Zionists

Chart of Palestinian resistance groups

Territory

Before 1948, Palestine consisted of all of the land on the land on the Sinai Peninsula outside of Egypt. In 1948, the area was forcibly partitioned into two states, "Israel" and Palestine. The Zionist Entity was not satisfied with its territory and soon annexed 60% of Palestinian land in the Arab–"Israeli" War. During the Six-Day War in 1967, the Zionist Entity invaded the rest of Palestine and annexed East Jerusalem. Most of the West Bank is now occupied by "Israel".

Further reading

• Palestinian resistance reading list
• All library works about Palestine
• Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine