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Colonisation was the major factor
End-game of the British mandate in Palestine has similarities with the final phase of its Indian empire.
- By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:33 May 15, 2008
On May 14, 1948, the Jewish Peoples' Council proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel recalling amongst the major milestones in the journey to statehood the First Zionist Congress that asserted the right of the Jewish people to national birth in their own country, the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 and the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947 containing the Plan for Partition.
The proclamation unambiguously stated that the new state "will be open for Jewish immigration and for the 'Ingathering' of the Exiles".
The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 had been told by the Zionist representatives that the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and the River Litani in Lebanon would be essential to the economic foundations of the future state.
But for the heroic resistance of the Hezbollah, Israel's control over that river would today be as firm as over the other territories claimed in Paris.
The end-game of the British mandate in Palestine has many correspondences with the final phase of the independence movement in India.
There were similarities in the political initiatives such as parliamentary investigations and high powered commissions tasked to draw up a road map for dilution of the British mandate or its eventual termination.
But three distinctive features in Palestine loaded the dice against the Palestinians. One, the Indian freedom fighters had major internal contradictions that led to the partition of 1947 but no externally backed project to bring in foreign colonists in ever increasing numbers.
Two, there was nothing comparable in India to the Jewish terrorist gangs such as Irgun and Stern.
Three, political mobilisation of Palestinians did not match that of the Indian peoples. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah created viable profiles of potential national entities.
In the greatly stressed environment in Palestine the enemy was able to suck the Palestinians who lacked such organisation into battles for which no serious preparations had been made. The Jewish people both in the Holy Land and in the Diaspora had a 50- year lead in this regard.
The Palestinian revolt in 1930s was marked by great valour but it also showed up major weaknesses. There was little support from outside as the major Arab states were themselves grappling with problems created by the colonial powers that had filled the post-Ottoman void.
The British suppressed the revolt with considerable force leaving the Palestinians greatly debilitated for the fateful struggle rekindled by the partition resolution; 5,000 Palestinians lost their lives.
Majority
Israel needed a decisive Jewish majority that Haganah achieved through ethnic cleansing. The surviving leaders of the revolt of 1936-39 tried to fight back with Palestinian irregulars and the Jayish Al Inqadh Al Arabi composed of poorly equipped volunteers from other Arab lands.
The infamous massacre in Deir Yasin took place on April 9, 1948. Abd Al Qadir Al Husayni, the legendary hero of the earlier revolt and the son of Moosa Kazim Al Husayni, a towering figure of Palestinian nationalism, was martyred the same day in the battle for the village of Al Qastal.
Just before he laid down his life, he had made an unsuccessful visit to Damascus to secure better arms from the Arab League. In April-May 1948 the Jewish armies expelled up to 350,000 Palestinians, a figure that got more than doubled in the months to come.
This was Al Naqba, the great catastrophe. The Jewish army achieved massive dispossession of Arabs and gained strategically by seizing contiguous land to stop the Arab armies that intervened in a haphazard manner upon the birth of the new state on May 15, 1948.
The best organised Arab fighting force, Jordan's Arab legion, remained reluctant to attack the UN-designated territory of Israel.
The political and military incoherence in the war of 1948 reflected the disunity and divided counsels of the revolt of 1936-39. In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain's government convened a conference of Arab representatives at St James Palace while negotiating separately with the Zionists.
The Palestinians invited to the parleys were visibly divided and the delegations of Arab states did not have a unified and comprehensive brief. Regrettably, this asymmetry between Israel and the Arab stake holders has tended to persist and work against Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Colonisation was the major driver of the Naqba. When the last white Paper of the British government included a provision to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine, the Zionists turned their guns on the British.
In the last 60 years Israel has successfully resisted determination of its final frontiers and, since 1967, incrementally built colonies in the West Bank and around occupied Jerusalem.
After grabbing 78 per cent of Palestine, Israel has treated all post-1967 negotiations as a matter of sharing the remaining 22 per cent with the Arabs.
The suppression of Hamas and the destruction of Gaza are but two aspects of the same objective. The facts created by Israel on the ground make the present talk of a two-state solution almost incomprehensible.
The Naqba is a perennial condition of the Palestinian lives. The Arabs won some tactical concessions through the Camp David accords of 1978, Madrid 1991, the Oslo Agreement of 1993 and Clinton's Camp David conference of 2000 but were never successful in reversing colonisation, Israel's appropriation of the water resources and its inflexible policy on the refugees' right of return.
US President George W. Bush sidelined Oslo and demanded a democratic transformation of the Palestinian side. Because of his rejection of Hamas's victory, the democracy project has only added to Palestinian disunity.
In the dying months of his presidency, Bush has tasked his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pull off a "virtual" agreement that can be put on a shelf till the two sides are ready to implement it.
The question now is if 2008 will result in this "shelf agreement" that perpetuates the status quo or push the region into another war with unpredictable consequences. Meanwhile Naqba continues unabated.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan.
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