Settler-colonialism in Palestine

ON November 29th and 30th, 2022, the Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Malaya, organised a 2-day conference with the theme, `Ending Settler Colonialism in Palestine'.

The choice of the theme was partly due to a report produced by the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, on October 18. She stated that it is essential to "dismantle Israel's settler-colonial occupation and its apartheid practices" to realise the inalienable right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.

For Albanese, the situation in the occupied territories is obvious. According to her, Israel's objective is also apparent; Israel is attempting to erase the Palestinian identity there. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is tantamount to "persecution" and "collective punishment".

During the conference, many presenters highlighted the injustice that is taking place in Palestine. All the speakers agree that Israel is a settler-colonial project, hence the brutal crackdown on any Palestinian resistance because that will frustrate the Zionist project's ultimate objective.

The usage of the term settler-colonialism to describe the situation in Palestine is not new. In a paper entitled `A Century of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Zionism's Entangled Project', Tariq Dana and Ali Jarbawi of Birzeit University explain how, throughout the past century, the Zionist movement constructed the most sophisticated settler-colonial project called the State of Israel. They describe Zionist settler colonialism as similar to other settler-colonial projects, which, as defined by the prominent scholar of settler-colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, is centred on the need to eliminate the native population to be replaced by the new settlers. In the case of Palestine, the natives are the Palestinians, and the new colonists are Jews from Europe.

One of the foremost Jewish scholars of the modern history of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, similarly describes Israel as a Zionist settler-colonial project which is similar to the settler-colonial projects in the Americas, Australia and South Africa. According to Ilan Pappe, there is a never-ending conflict in Palestine simply because the Zionist settlers' wish to create a new homeland for the Jews clashed with the aspirations of the local native Palestinian population.

Pappe explains that unlike the cases of the Americas and Australia, where there was almost total physical elimination of native populations, this has not happened in Palestine due to steadfast Palestinian resistance. Therefore, the situation in Palestine is similar to South Africa, where settlers placed the indigenous population in closed areas, or enclaves, and imposed an apartheid system.

Dr Peter Slezak, an advisor to the Hashim Sani Centre, explained during his presentation how the settler-colonial project in Palestine was assisted in no small measure by the British. The imperial power officially endorsed it on November 2 1917, when its foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, announced the British government's support for the idea of a "national home for the Jewish people" without "prejudice" against the "civil and religious rights" of the "non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

According to Ilan Pappe, the roots of the British support for the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine was the evangelical Christian Zionist dogma that emphasised the religious significance of a Jewish "return" to Palestine - a precursor for the Second Coming of the Messiah.

The settler-colonial project made more progress when Herbert Samuel, a pro-Zionist Anglo-Jew, was appointed as the first British high commissioner of Palestine in 1920. He was instrumental in implementing policies that facilitated the inflow of more Jewish settlers into Palestine by purchasing lands from absentee Arab landowners. According to Palestinian scholar the late Ismail Faruqi, the landowners were awarded the land decades earlier by the Ottoman government, often without the knowledge of Palestinians who had lived on the lands for hundreds of years earlier.

Fortunately, the Palestinians were aware that the arrival of Jewish settlers to their land was not a form of ordinary immigration but part of an attempt to displace them. They understandably and bravely resisted the effort to steal their homeland with popular and violent means.

Unfortunately, the British military was better equipped than the Palestinian resistance and could crush the latter. Many Palestinian leaders were killed, wounded or expelled. One of them was Sheikh Izzudin Al Qasam, whose name has been adopted by the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

By 1948, the Zionist movement was militarily strong enough to conduct operations to displace the natives without the help of the British. Zionist paramilitary gangs committed atrocities for that purpose, including massacres; the most famous was at a village called Deir Yassin. They murdered more than a hundred Palestinians, including women, children and the elderly. In other words, the settler-colonial project also involved the process of ethnic cleansing.

According to Ilan Pappe, the Zionists expelled half of Palestine's population by this time, demolished half of its villages and depopulated most of its towns. On their ruins, the Zionists built scores of Jewish `kibbutz' or communities. They also planted European pine trees to erase the Arab nature of Palestine.

Those Malaysians who do not understand the logic of settler-colonialism and are unaware of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine are now visiting those kibbutzes and admiring the `resourcefulness' of the Jews in transforming the `desert into green and fertile' areas. Those Arabs who are similarly unaware or chose not to be aware are normalising relations with Israel, a betrayal of the highest order to the cause of justice in Palestine.

It is high time for citizens of conscience worldwide to convince their leaders that all attempts to negotiate peace with Israel will be futile until there is a focus on Palestinian human rights and their right to self-determination. We must also pay heed to the BDS movement's call to the world community to boycott Israel as long as the latter does not fulfil three demands:

• End its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in 1967 and dismantle the Wall

• Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and,

• Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

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* Prof Nazari Ismail is Director of Hashim Sani Centre for Palesine Studies, University of Malaya and Chairman of BDS Malaysia

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.