There was never really a time when Zionist ideologues hoped for or expected a peaceful colonisation of Palestine. The matter was debated seriously at the end of the 19th century - might there be a peaceful assimilation of European Jews into existing Palestinian society, or was it necessary to fight against that society in order to replace it?
Many European Jews were opposed to a move to Palestine anyway. Members of the Jewish Workers’ Bund, for example, argued that European Jews were citizens of Europe and should be working for emancipation alongside their non-Jewish co-workers.
Co-existence
A Jewish population, the Arabic-speaking Mizrahim, had of course existed in Palestine since biblical times. They had co-existed with Christians and Muslims, to a greater or lesser extent, during the Ottoman Empire. Even during the last years of the British Mandate, many individual European Jewish migrants to Palestine were also assimilated without conflict. Often the Palestinians welcomed and befriended the European newcomers, teaching these traditional urban-dwellers the ways of the land, and selling them farmland to till.
But for hardline Zionists, there was never really an argument about co-existence. The land was to be theirs by right. Large-scale settlement would take place and it would be done by force. Zionist terrorism had began even before the end of the Mandate and led directly to the violent dispossessions effected during the Nakba of 1947-8. It was made clear, by David Ben-Gurion and others, that the ultimate aim was the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and culture. This has been demonstrated time and again during the last 77 years, and is emphasised by the spokespeople of the current Israeli regime.
‘Peace process’
The so called two-state solution has been proposed over the years, often by Western politicians, as the stated aim of a tenuous, everlasting, ongoing ‘peace process’. But Israel has always wanted the entire territory, from the river to the sea. This was demonstrated dramatically in 1967 with the Six-day War - known to Palestinians as the Naksa - when Israel occupied the whole country by military force.
It was shown again after the Oslo Accords of 1993, which had seemed to be edging towards some kind of partition but on which Israel reneged by continuing to build the illegal West Bank settlements. Today, the Israeli regime still seems implacably opposed to a Palestinian state in any form.
However illegal it may be, a single Jewish state now exists, from the river to the sea. This must be the starting-point. But is there still that fork in the road which was rejected in 1948? Which way does the future lie - the too-easy but hugely costly path of hatred and violence? Or can there be another, more humane direction?
Colonisation
Throughout history, many nations have been colonised by other, stronger ones. The colonisers have sought the exploitation of the colony’s resources, including its human ones. Its representatives have tended therefore to exist in a symbiotic, though dominant, relationship with the indigenous people. The British in India have been a prime example.
Settler-colonialism is somewhat different. The aim here is for the colonisers to live in and possess the land in its entirety. In this scheme, the colonised people have little or no place, and must be pushed to the edge of extinction. The colonisation of the USA and of Australia were examples of such settler-colonialism..
Settler-colonialism demands that local people be demonised, so they can be treated with hostility and disdain. Forcible transfer, ethnic cleansing and genocide are the main strategy. An apartheid regime controls any that remain. Land and property are taken over with all necessary violence. To achieve this, a military force is deployed at high cost, in both money and lives, creating injustice at home and instability abroad. And ideological support is given by propaganda and misinformation, which may be echoed by other governments with matching neo-colonial interests.
Another way
If Israel is not to go further down this morbid route, the self-perpetuating cycle of oppression has to be broken. Whatever alternative is aimed at - the so-called two-state solution, or a single liberal state with equal rights for all, or a multi-cultural federation of states, or something else entirely - an entire system has to be dismantled and rebuilt. It is a huge task, but how many more victims are to be killed, and how many oppressors are to continue to de-stabilise society, before the politicians of the so-called ‘international community’ begin to put humanity before self-interest, and put an end to a century of injustice?
Picture: Original ‘Coexist’ logo by Polish designer Piotr Mlodozeniec
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