From the Ottomans to the nakba (1880s–1948)

The basis for the Israel-Palestine conflict was laid with the emergence of the modern Zionist movement late in the 19^th century (Sayigh 1997, 1), and in particular with the publication of The State of the Jews by Theodore Herzl in 1896 and the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. These events marked the proper beginnings of the creation of the modern Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, which hold that “Jews all over the world constitute a single nationality” and that their rightfully owned homeland is Eretz Yisra’el, or Land of Israel, which coincidentally refers to the same area as Palestine (Hajjar, Rabbani, and Beinin 1989, 102).⁹³ In the years following the congress in Basel, the incipient Zionist movement started purchasing land in the three Ottoman provinces making up Palestine, to which

93 See Figure 2 on page 84 for a political map of occupied Palestine, Israel, and the neighboring states.

European Jews migrated in increasing numbers (Singh 2011, 31).⁹⁴

As a result of this strategy, the number of Jews residing in Palestine more than doubled from 35 000 in 1880 to 75 000 in 1914 (Robinson 1997, 5). Palestinian tenant farmers who were expelled as a result of the Zionist purchases of the land they worked on unsurprisingly came to resist the influx of European Jews. By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, there were organized efforts from the Palestinians to protest and prohibit the sale of land to the Zionists (Singh 2011, 32). The resistance intensified toward the end of the First World War, and in particular with the publication of the Balfour Declaration by the British Foreign Secretary in 1917, which promised to aid the Zionist project of establishing a “Jewish national home in Palestine” (Schneer 2010).

Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, the territory of Palestine fell to Britain, which in 1920 obtained endorsement from the Allied powers to rule the territory as the British Mandate over Palestine, a state of affairs ratified by the League of Nations in 1922 (Sayigh 1997, 1). Partly because of the mentioned Balfour Declaration, Palestinians feared that their new rulers were partial to the Zionist project, and consequently the opposition to both intensified in the interwar years. Both in 1920–21 and in 1929, violent anti-Jewish riots took place in Palestine, prompting the British, via the so-called 1930 White Paper, to alleviate the volatile situation by limiting the influx of European Jews to Palestine (Abboushi 1977, 23).⁹⁵

However, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933, the situation deteriorated again. Fearing the spread of antisemitism in Europe, the Zionists increased their purchases of land in Palestine, which in turn prompted further violent clashes with the Palestinians.

Eventually, the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine broke out, with the Palestinians attempting to both stem the influx of European Jews and gain independence from British rule (see Abboushi 1977 for details). Although the British successfully—and brutally—suppressed the revolt, the uprising was not a complete failure; it proved beyond a doubt that the Palestinians had national aspirations of their own, that they were willing to fight the British to gain independence, and that they would not sit idly by watching the Zionists take over their land.

Partly because of this, the British published yet another white paper in 1939,⁹⁶ in which the 94 Crucially, Zionism gained many adherents as a consequence of the spread of antisemitism throughout much of Europe at this time, exemplified by the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the Dreyfus Affair in France, and later with the Holocaust (Hajjar, Rabbani, and Beinin 1989, 102).

95 Also known as the Passfield White Paper, after its author, Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield.

96 Referred to as the MacDonald White Paper, after Malcolm MacDonald, the then Colonial Secretary who

British government limited further Jewish immigration and promised that Palestine would become an independent state in ten years. Moreover, it

declared unequivocally that the government had no intention of creating a Jewish state in Palestine. It explained that the creation of a Jewish state had never been promised to the Jews either by the Balfour Declaration or by the Mandate Agreement, and that such a notion was in fact contrary to those two documents (Abboushi 1977, 45).

However, with the outbreak of the Second World War that same year, the British suddenly had far more pressing issues to focus on than what to do with Palestine in the future; it had to defend its territories in the Middle East and North Africa against German and French Vichy invasion forces. And at the same time, Zionist paramilitary organizations intensified their resistance to the newly adopted British policy position, carrying out a number of armed operations targeting British servicemen.⁹⁷ By the end of the Second World War, it had become apparent for the British that the situation in Palestine was untenable; the Holocaust had led to a dramatic increase in the number of illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine, and although the British tried to contain the influx, it was obvious in the immediate postbellum period that the international community had to take on a larger responsibility to solve the ongoing crisis (Sayigh 1997, 3).

It fell on the newly established United Nations (UN) to intervene, and already in November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, titled United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.⁹⁸ The partition plan divided the former British Mandate over Palestine between the Zionists and the Arab Palestinians, and each “state was to occupy a little under half the territory, leaving Jerusalem in an enclave under UN supervision” (Sayigh 1997, 3). While the Zionist movement largely seemed to accept the plan, it was refused by both the surrounding Arab states and the Palestinian national movements. Only days after the General Assembly passed Resolution 181, fighting between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish setters broke out.

By April 1948, the Zionist forces obtained control of most of the territory provided for a Jewish state according to the partition plan, and in the process it had displaced some 200 000

presided over it.

97 Maybe the most crucial of these attacks was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, in which 91 people died and a further 46 were injured. The bombing was perpetrated by Irgun, a precursor to the current right-wing Likud party in Israel.

98 The Resolution passed with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and ten abstentions.

to 300 000 Palestinians (Sayigh 1997, 3; Singh 2011, 33).⁹⁹ On May 14, 1948, the Zionist leaders proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, to become independent with the termination of the British Mandate over Palestine. And as anticipated, Britain formally evacuated from the territory the following day, prompting the neighboring Arab states to intervene in an attempt to retake the territory claimed by the Zionists (Sayigh 1997, 3). The Arab states failed in their attempt, however, and when the armistice agreements between Israel and the various neighboring states were concluded by late July 1949, Israel had added an additional third to the territory it initially was allotted under the UN partition plan.

Importantly, when successfully claiming these additional territories as its own, Israel displaced a further 500 000 Palestinians from their homes, making the total number of Palestinian refugees surpass 700 000. Most of these fled to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or to one of the surrounding Arab states (Morris 2004, 603–4). In the end, of the estimated 900 000 to 950 000 Palestinians residing in the areas now making up the state of Israel, only 150 000 remained (Sayigh 1997, 4).¹⁰⁰

The establishment of the State of Israel on much of the territory of the Mandate of Palestine and the ensuing Palestinian exodus became known as the nakba, meaning catastrophe, among Palestinians. The nakba soon became—and still remains—a crucial marker of Palestinian identity and nationalism. The conflict with Israel therefore constitutes a major uniting force for Palestinians, largely superseding opposing loyalties and potential identity conflicts between different socioeconomic classes, families, clans, religious groups, ideologies, and cultural traditions (R. Khalidi 2010, 194).¹⁰¹ In short, the exclusiveness of Palestinian nationalism—i.e., who is and who is not a Palestinian and where the territory of Palestine is—

has been largely uncontested since the establishment of Israel: The territory of Palestine is what used to be the British Mandate over Palestine, and all who lived there prior to the influx

99 The issue of the Palestinian exodus of 1948 has attracted both politicized and scholarly attention. Consult Glazer (1980) for a brief overview, and see the first couple of contributions in the edited volume by Karmi and Cotran (1999) for more details.

100 While the war was still ongoing, the UN General Assembly reacted to the imminent refugee crisis as part of its Resolution 194, stating in Article 11 that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” (UNGA 1948).

Interpretations of this statement diverge, with the Palestinians using it as the legal basis for their claim to right of return for their refugees, a claim Israel vehemently refuses to accept. It should also be mentioned that the scale of the refugee problem was such that the UN established a specialized agency to deal with it, called the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

101 As discussed in Robinson (1997, 1–8), the dominant Palestinian political class was traditionally the

“notables,” i.e., rich families with strong standings in the local communities.

of the Zionists are Palestinians.¹⁰²