A Very Short History of the Israel–Palestine Conflict

Without full global recognition of the Palestinians’ right to wage a liberation struggle, the bloodshed in Israel and Palestine will continue.

The Hamas fighters who stormed into Israel on 7 October were largely young people who learned the language of violence from the bombs that Israel dropped on them. This is not a justification of what they did. But we should not be so certain that, had we been subject to the same trauma, with no resolution in sight, we would respond much better.

the British violated a promise made to the Palestinians that they would be treated the same as other fledgling nations, i.e. they would be able to exercise a right of self-determination and obtain independence. It also made the British complicit in the eventual 1948 ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Even in 1949, the US had joined other countries in condemning the Israeli decision to make West Jerusalem its capital, and hence violating the terms of the UN’s Partition Resolution, which envisaged Jerusalem being an international city. And so, right up until Donald Trump’s presidency, the US embassy was in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem.

Today Arab Jews form one of the largest voting blocs for right-wing parties in Israel, and are often the most vociferous advocates for violence against Palestinians. They have proven themselves as the most unyielding partisans of Zionism – even if they still haven’t achieved equality.

After the Holocaust, where over six million Jews perished across Europe, European powers, eager to wash their own consciences clean, had even less sympathy for the Palestinians. This was not out of any particular concern for Jews – at least 250,000 Jews languished in Displaced Persons Camps in Central Europe long after the war had concluded. But the future of the Jewish people, in the eyes of Britain and the USA, had to be settled. Many survivors of the Holocaust no longer had any homes to go back to in Europe.

Places of particular religious and strategic importance would remain under provisional British rule through the mandate system until treaties were agreed between Britain and the two new states. As for the remaining Palestinian population in the land earmarked for the Jewish state, roughly a quarter of a million people, it proposed transferring them to Transjordan. It is not surprising that the Arab Higher Committee rejected this recommendation entirely.

To survive the new epoch, they thought, Jewishness had to be a nationality, not a religion.

C'è poco in comune tra questi due fronti, che potremmo definire Stato di Israele e Stato di Giudea. Lo Stato di Giudea è quello dei coloni, formatosi negli insediamenti ebraici in Cisgiordania. Ormai è un'importante forza politica israeliana e mira a trasformare Israele in uno Stato più razzista, fascista e teocratico. Sul fronte opposto c'è lo Stato di Israele. È il vecchio Israele, che si vanta di essere "l'unica democrazia del Medio Oriente", una società laica e pluralista. Il fatto che ciò valga solo per la popolazione ebraica non turba troppo la sua coscienza.

Dove andarono i palestinesi espulsi? Israele riuscì a mandare i palestinesi dell'Est verso la Cisgiordania occupata e la Transgiordania. Quelli del Nord furono respinti in Siria e Libano. Ma a sud l'Egitto rifiutò di aprire i suoi confini ai palestinesi. Verso la fine della guerra, Israele "risolse" questo problema creando quella che oggi conosciamo fin troppo dolorosamente come la Striscia di Gaza. Era un piccolo rettangolo ritagliato nella Palestina storica (il 2 per cento del paese). Fu istituita per accogliere le centinaia di migliaia di palestinesi espulsi da Israele delle zone centrali e meridionali della Palestina. Allora era il campo profughi più grande del mondo. Lo è ancora oggi.

All'inizio del mandato britannico, gli ebrei costituivano circa l'11 per cento della popolazione. Ma era stata loro promessa la Palestina come patria futura, dalla Società delle Nazioni e dalla Costituzione per la Palestina redatta dagli inglesi. Negli anni del mandato, il governo britannico cercò di ottenere il consenso dei palestinesi alla perdita del proprio paese offrendo "soluzioni" come la partizione, la federazione e la formazione di uno Stato binazionale. Non propose di rispettare il principio mandatario secondo cui la maggioranza della popolazione di un paese ha il diritto di decidere del proprio futuro, com'era avvenuto in tutti gli Stati arabi vicini.

We need to change how we talk about Israel and Palestine. There is no point in talking about peace, as if both sides are equally at fault, when the process we’re really talking about is decolonisation. Historical Palestine has been subject to settler colonialism for over a century, at great cost. Decolonisation is closely associated with other terms that mainstream political discourse in the West avoids when it comes to Israel and Palestine: liberation and reconciliation.