The History of the Colonization of Palestine

Summary: Mass Zionist immigration to historic Palestine began in the early 1900s and it was endorsed by the British and the Nazis. The Zionists formed terrorist organizations to attack the indigenous population of Palestinians, and the British failed to protect Palestinian rights and land when they created the new Jewish state.

1897 The Origin of Zionism

Zionism is a political ideology created by Theodor Herzl in 1897. He was a Jewish man born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he became the president of the Zionist Organization. The Zionists debated where to set up their Jewish nation state, and at first failed to get support for their idea to colonize already existing countries. Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, liked the idea of colonizing Uganda, but their idea failed. Herzl endorsed Jewish immigration to historic Palestine, but he died in 1904, and their plans were temporarily paused.

Zion was the name of a hill in Jerusalem called Mount Zion, it was a relic of the Biblical period. However, Zionists had an ambivalent relationship with religion, and Zionism contrasts with the tenets of Judaism, including the Rabbinic teaching about the invention of a Jewish state. It was only supposed to occur during the messianic times, initiating the return of Jews to the homeland. In Judaism, the messiah was not Jesus Christ, and their messiah has not appeared yet.

The Zionists had to reinvent Judaism to fit their needs to create a Jewish state; Jewish themes were morphed into plans and actions to colonize. The Yishuv, the ultra-Orthodox community of Jews in Jerusalem, were anti-Zionist, so the Zionists built their capital elsewhere, naming it after a Babylonian city: Tel Aviv. They could live in an ethnically homogenous area instead of having to live amongst others.

1917 The Balfour Declaration

The British debated about the future of historic Palestine and what they could do about the Zionists’ ambitions. They used input from Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews but did not consult Palestinians. At the time, Palestine was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a letter called the Balfour Declaration to Lord Walter Rothschild, a British banker of the famous Rothschild family and a Zionist.

The Balfour Declaration proclaimed: “His majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” but with the condition that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

It was a simple page-long declaration of public support for the Zionists. The Balfour Declaration caused the continued Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestine.

Theodor Herzl, via Wikimedia Commons

1920 The San Remo Resolution

The League of Nations and the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers agreed on the San Remo Resolution on April 25, 1920. The Resolution was to place the British and French in control of the territories of the former Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after the end of World War I. The land of Syria and Lebanon became the “French Mandate,” and Palestine and Transjordan became the “British Mandate.”

The San Remo Resolution stipulated that Palestinians should not face discrimination, and it called for the Zionist Organization to be the representative agency of establishing a Jewish state, among other things. Borders were drawn, the Balfour Declaration was incorporated, and the British effectively controlled Palestine from 1923 to 1948 as Mandatory Palestine.

1933 The Ha’Avara Agreement

The Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in Germany, ultimately signing the Ha’Avara Agreement in 1933, or the Transfer Agreement, which was criticized by Nazis, non-Nazi Germans, Zionists, and anti-Zionists alike. The Agreement was for the economic benefit of Germany and Palestine. German Jews who wished to immigrate to historic Palestine were required to give a significant portion of their assets to pay for German goods to be manufactured and exported to Mandatory Palestine.

In six years, about 105,000,000 Reichsmarks ($35,000,000 in 1939) had been paid to German industries. The Ha’Avara Agreement allowed about 60,000 German Jews to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in between 1933 and 1939, and Nazis saw this as a resolution to the “Jewish problem,” while Zionists saw it as a way of actualizing their goals of colonizing Palestine. The Nazis devised several plans to relocate the Jewish population before they decided on the Final Solution to just kill them all, one plan was even to forcibly relocate them to Madagascar.

1936-1939 The Arab Revolt

Decades of tensions, nationalism, and attacks from both the Israelis and the native Arabs led to the Arab revolt of 1936-1939. The Palestinians wanted independence so they revolted against the British colonial forces and the immigrant Zionists which had already formed terrorist cells at the peak of Jewish immigration.

At first, the Arabs revolted in the form of a popular resistance and general strike, but it turned into an armed resistance, both of which the British suppressed. The Arab Palestinians only numbered up to 3,000 troops until 1938, and then their forces rose to more than 22,000, most of whom fought “part-time.” On the other side, there were up to 50,000 British soldiers, almost 3,000 Palestinian police on their side, and about 37,000 Jewish troops, including 17,000 Zionist terrorists from the Haganah and Irgun.

The British and Jewish forces suffered less than 800 deaths and a few hundred wounded, while the Arab death count was over 5,000, with 15,000 more wounded, and over 12,000 detained.

British Forces use Palestinians as Human Shields During the Arab Revolt of 1936, via Wikimedia Commons

1939 The White Paper

Tensions continued to rise as the hate for the Israelis stewed and Zionist terrorism escalated. And, as a result of the Arab Revolt, the British published the White Paper of 1939 which only increased the Zionist’s hatred and goal for colonizing the land. The White Paper was a policy statement meant to govern Mandatory Palestine and resolve the conflict between the Arabs and Jewish immigrants. The White Paper limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 in 5 years, and called for a binational state, otherwise a two-state solution, but with a majority governance of the Arabs.

1944-1948 The Jewish Insurgency

The Arab revolt from 1936-1939 was a catalyst for the Jewish insurgency by the Zionist underground, sometimes called the Palestine Emergency.

A few Zionist terrorist organizations like the Irgun and Lehi (self-proclaimed terrorists) rebelled against the British within historic Palestine because the British placed immigration limits for Jews wishing to immigrate.

The Haganah, another Zionist terrorist group and the largest of the belligerent groups in this insurgency, tried suppressing the other groups because of their opposition and attacks on the British. The Haganah actually formed in the 1920s to defend their right to colonize land, and in 1948 the Haganah became the Israeli Defense Force when the Jewish state formed in 1948.

The Zionist troops numbered almost 30,000, and they fought against more than 100,000 British troops and police. The Zionists took hostages, bombed trains and railways, bridges, military buildings, civilian buildings, and other acts of terror which left civilians dead and wounded.

1946 The King David Hotel Bombing

The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22^nd, 1946, because the administrative offices of the British authorities were housed there. A total of 91 people were killed and 46 were injured in the terrorist attack. They were attempting to destroy any documents housed in the administrative headquarters that might incriminate the Zionist organization called the Jewish Agency in any attacks on the British during the Jewish Insurgency.

A map of Palestine before and after the colonization by the Jewish State, via It’s History

1947 The Partition Plan and the First Arab-Israeli War

The British created the 1947 Partition Plan which divided the land and created the state of Israel to solve the “Question of Palestine.” They created Israel so they could pull their forces out of historic Palestine and hand the reins over to the Jewish immigrants.

Before the Partition Plan, non-Jewish Arab Palestinians owned over 90% of the land, while Jews only owned about 7%. The Partition Plan gave Arabs a territory of about 42% of their own homeland, and the new Jewish state of Israel about 56% of the land, with the last 2% composed of the international zone of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Britain and America both participated in propping up the Israeli state for this Partition, and the US recognized Israel upon its declaration of independence in 1948.

In 1937, before the Zionist takeover, the Palestinian land was seen as “insufficient space for implementing their aspirations,” but their leader, David Ben Gurion, knew “that it was tactfully beneficial not to spell out these annexationist dreams,” (On Palestine, 2015). Ben Gurion knew they had to tell the Palestine Royal Commission (a British Royal Commission of Inquiry) that they were “content” with the area of Palestine they were given for the Zionist project.

After being allotted most of the land in 1947, they still wanted more and knew they would eventually change the borders. The Israelis started a war in 1948 and ended up colonizing almost 60% of the land given to the Arabs in 1947, in addition to the land they were given.Since then, they have created the plan for “Greater Israel” which includes the colonization of significant parts of Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, most of Syria, and all of Jordan and Lebanon. They were never going to settle; their aim is colonization.

Map of Jewish Settlements by James Day, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Arab-Israeli War is called the War of Independence in the state of Israel, and it was the culmination of the 1947-1948 civil war. The civil war began on November 30, 1947, the day after the United Nations voted to create the Partition Plan for Palestine, which would create the state of Israel in historic Palestine.

The Arab population fought the civil war, supported by the Arab Liberation Army, against the non-Arab Jewish population, and the British planned to withdraw from the land that they had been in control of for decades. The Arabs were obviously opposed to the creation of Israel, and when the UN announced their plan, the Arabs quickly mobilized and organized a short general strike, and then more violence ensued.

There is a myth that the Arabs attacked the newly-created state of Israel on its first day as a nation for no reason. It was during the civil war in which both sides were harming each other’s civilians, and then the UN declared that they would be taking land from Palestinians to give it to the immigrants to create a Jewish state. Arab armies were defending historic Palestine from the colonizers, but their armies were much smaller.

The Zionists colonized historic Palestine because they consider it their ancestral homeland. They called Palestine “a land without a people for a people without a land,” which is entirely sinister because there were millions of people who had been there for millennia, yet the Zionists promoted the propaganda that the land was left open for them.

Palestine was primarily Muslim, but Christians and Jews lived in harmony for centuries. In order to take over they needed to expel upwards of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and off their farms, forcing them out of the country or into constantly-shrinking refugee areas. Palestinians had actually welcomed the Jews escaping from Europe before and during WWII to their country, sometimes offering them a place to stay in their own homes, but the peaceful co-existence ended when the Zionist terrorist groups took control.¹

Israel can only exist through violence, and it was always about colonization.