The Conquest of Palestine, 1947-2002
by John O. Sutter

Until 1948 the native Muslim and Christian Arabs had free run over most of their Palestine homeland, which had been ruled as a League of Nations Mandate after the British seized the territory from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

By 1931 as Zionists encouraged Jews to migrate to Palestine and buy up Arab land, out of Palestine’s population of 1,033,314, 174,606 were Jews; the vast majority were native Muslim and Christian Arabs. After World War II as the people in League mandates pressed for independence (which they were ill prepared for by the imperial powers), and the number of Jews migrating to Palestine rose, the question of partitioning Palestine arose. After the British turned the task over to the United Nations, in 1947 it put forward the Palestine partition plan shown in Map A. This gave the new Jewish and Arab states each three enclaves (with two crossover points). The majority Arabs would get only about 42% of the land, and the minority Jews about 55%, with the area around Jerusalem administered as an international zone.

Although the Jewish Agency signed the partition offer of the U.N., it (like the Arabs) was not satisfied with what it had been given. Its paramilitaries, who had long been mobilized, armed, and trained, planned to convert all of the Palestinian homeland into Greater Israel. In 1948 they not only seized most of the Arab communities that were to remain inside the Jewish state, but also -- fending off ineffective troops from neighboring Arab countries -conquered half of the territory earmarked for the Arab state, leading to the ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, after which Israel claimed to be a democracy.

Meanwhile, Count Folke Bernadotte, sent by the United Nations to arrange a cease-fire and mediate the conflict, advocated dividing the former Mandate into two intact states, with the Jews taking much of the coast and northern territories and the Arabs, much of the heartland and the southern territories including the Negev Desert. (Map B). For his efforts he was assassinated by the Stern Gang.

The new State of Israel held onto the expanded territory between 1949 and 1967 (Map C), bringing their possessions to about three-quarters of the old Mandate of Palestine. Their leadership defeated, the Palestinians became administered by Jordan (for the West Bank of the Jordan River) and Egypt (for the Gaza Strip).
In 1967 Israel invaded and conquered the Sinai of Egypt and east bank of the Suez Canal, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the rest of Palestine. Thenceforth, as it ruled the Palestinian territory as its own colony, it confiscated Arab lands and destroyed Arab homes, planting in their place colonies segregated for Jews only. This situation worsened as over 225,000 migrants were settled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and 170,000 in East Jerusalem by Year 2001.

Under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israel in 1993 signed a peace declaration with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat (Oslo I). This led in 1995 to Oslo II, which expanded Palestinian self-rule, and to Rabin’s assassinationby an Orthodox Jew. In January 1996 the Palestinians elected their own parliament, the Palestine Authority, with Arafat as President.

From Barak - Clinton’s “Generous Offer” to Sharon-Bush’s Mirage

President Bill Clinton tried to move the peace negotiations forward at Camp David in 2000. However, even under the Labor Government of Ehud Barak, Israel was determined to keep the Palestinians from having a viable state free from Israeli occupation. In May Barak offered a plan that would have continued the strangulation of Palestine (Map D), reducing it to several Bantulands separated by fortified Jewish colonies and “Jews only” highways. The Palestinians would have been left with only about 13% of their old country under the Mandate. Though pressured and maligned in some quarters, Arafat turned down what Israel’s supporters called "Barak's generous plan." Later Barak and Clinton offered plans that didn't eat up quite so much of the Palestinian territory but still left sizeable areas inhabited by Jewish colonists and occupied by Israeli forces. Sort of Vichy France under Nazi Germany. Even then, Palestinian land occupied by two-thirds of the settlers would be annexed by Israel, while the lands occupied by the remaining settlers would be retained by them as privileged communities within Palestine!

Robert Fisk exposed both the offer by Barak and Clinton at Camp David of “96% of the Palestinian occupied territiory” and Israel’s huge P.R. campaign to convince the international community of its generosity. He pointed out that the offer represented 96% of the land over which Israel was prepared to negotiate -- not 96% of the entire occupied territory! It excluded Arab East Jerusalem (illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 war), the huge belt of Jewish settlements around the city, and a 10-mile wide military zone around the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians would be obligated to lease back the illegal settlements on Arab land to Israel for 25 years. This left only 46% of Palestinian land from which Israel was prepared to withdraw --- a far cry from the 96% touted after Camp David. See also Gush Shalom’s “Barak’s Generous Offers . . .” in www.gush-shalom.org/generous/generous.

The Palestinians have long anticipated their own free State that had been promised to them in 1947. They looked forward to it in 1979 (at Camp David I) and again in 1993 and 1995 (with Oslo I and II), which was supposed to bring liberation by 1999. But it is all a mirage. Sharon, for whom Human Rights Watch called for criminal investigation into his role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in 1982, became Prime Minister in March 2001. Abetted by “the world’s only superpower,” Sharon appears successful in his plan to finish off the Palestinian state.

Note: World Federalists are opposed to wars and crimes against humanity.