Chronicle Editor
For any intellectual in Africa, the trouble in understanding the “Question of Palestine” in the world system is finding a reliable source of what exactly is happening and why it is happening. There are three major sources of information and understanding of the “Question of Palestine.” The first source is the religious and faithful Christian discourse which holds that Israel is the chosen nation that is rightfully dealing with Palestinians, the Philistines, that are corrupting the promised land.
The second source is that of Palestinian nationalism that holds a patriotic history of victims of Israeli conquest and occupation in Palestine. The third source is that of Euro-American apologists that believe that Islam and the Muslims, especially the Arabs, are terrorist pollutants that should have no place in the modern world.
These three sources are fundamentally limited in their view and are misleading. They are partial and partisan in their truth and may not lead us to an understanding of the war in Gaza and Israel now.
What is helpful, I think, is a decolonial and historical analysis of where the conflict comes from and what it might turn out to be the way things are in the world system. The conflict, in my view has to do with land, identity, resources and political power. It is an existential conflict where both sides believe defeat is the end of the world.
Both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, have powerful supporters and backers that will defend them to the last of them. Religion and culture have been brought in here as an alibi and an excuse for the political interests and activities of the belligerents and the disputants. Zionism as an ideology of Jewish “promised land” politics and antisemitism as the ideology of hatred of Jews by their political enemies are two forces that have come to play in the seven significant wars that have happened between Israel and Palestine in modern history.
From Africa we can peel the layers of the onion of history and understand what exactly is happening in Gaza right now, without falling for the persuasions of Zionists, Euro-Americanists, and the antiSemites. Africans can introduce humanist thinking into this imbroglio of the “Question of Palestine” that has troubled world history.
As I write, the Ukraine versus Russia war has been overtaken in terms of attracting world attention, by the bombings in Gaza and in Israel, and as usual the United States of America is pledging to defend Israel to the last Israeli against those that are called terrorists. It will be important to understand what interests America has in Israel to lead to so much protectionism of one state by another.
History and the coloniality of power
War cannot arise where power is not at stake. And power is at stake when politics and economic resources are involved. Culture, religion and history are brought in by the belligerents and the disputants to explain what they are fighting for. Once upon a time there was the Turkish Ottoman Empire that ruled large parts of the Middle East from 1516 to 1917.
The Ottoman Empire ruled over the Jews, Palestinians, and Christians that co-existed peacefully and celebrated their diversity under one flag. Judaism, Islam and Christianity existed along each other in peace and order, no one felt threatened and had their existence questioned for hundreds of years. There was no nationalist passion that fanned conflict among the three identities that co-habited the land.
When the Ottoman Empire fell to the Allied Powers in 1918, the Empire fell with the Central Powers. When the League of Nations came into being two years later, in the name of ensuring world peace, it granted Britain power over Palestine that had been orphaned of the governance of the Ottoman Empire.
In short, Britain achieved Palestine as its colony to administer. It is surprising that the British colonialism of Palestine is little or not mentioned at all whenever the “Question of Palestine” is mentioned.
According to the records of the League of Nations, British rule of Palestine was meant to be temporary, to last until Palestine managed to as a nation have its own state recognised as such by the League. That Palestinian dream of nationhood and statehood was never realised. Britain made sure the dream did not come true. What happened is, according to the United Nations records, that Britain had also assured the Jews in Palestine that they will have a state and a nation of their own. Thus, British rule created two nationalist movements in Palestine, one Arabic and other Jewish. As this happened, Jews from Germany and other European countries that were fleeing anti-Semitism, discrimination and mass-murder flocked to Palestine which was a small place where Jews enjoyed peace. The increasing population of Jews naturally irritated Palestinian nationalists in Palestine. Jews began to suffocate the Palestinian population as they became favoured and promoted by the British, given land and financial empowerment.
In 1917 the British announced what is called the Balfour Declaration that mandated the creation of a Jewish sate in Palestine. This declaration was silent on the Palestinian nation and their desired state. As a result, there was an Arab rebellion which the British tried to calm by promising the Arabs that they will have their state after the World War. The Arab Revolt exploded in 1936. Britain was forced in 1937 to appoint what was called the Peel Commission that recommended that Palestine be divided into three spaces, the Arab state, the Jewish state and a space for the holy places of both nations that was to be neutral territory.
This was the birth of the idea of the so-called two states solution in Palestine. Britain rejected this proposition of the Commission, probably in fear of the rise of an Arab state. The Commission had also proposed a regulation of the flooding of Jews from elsewhere into Palestine. The British put their objections in writing in a White Paper of 1939, proposing that only after some ten years can the Arabs be considered for statehood by the comity of world nations.
Tension was escalating between the Arabs and the Jews. These were the roots of the war that is taking place now, historically. In 1947, the British took the matter to the newly formed United Nations, the successor to the League. The UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended the two states solution once again. Notably, the Arabs at the time also did not like the two states solution. Silently, Britain was helping the Jews build the institutions that they needed for statehood. In 1948 Britain gave up its colonialism of Palestine and in the same year Israel was declared a state. The leaving of the British and their army left the Jews and Arabs at war. When David-Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel declared the Jewish State a fierce war broke out and the Arabs were defeated by a state that had British and western support. Gurion led Israel in annexing more Arab land as part of the spoils of military victory. The Arabs lost a huge part of the land the UN had given them in 1947 to a victorious and triumphalist Israel that was in everything a western protectorate.
Arabs were exiled, dispossessed and displaced. Some continued fighting and resisting. In 1967 there broke out another big war that led to a big defeat for the Arabs. Once more Israel annexed more land from the Arabs as part of its victory spoils. The United Nations declared this an illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.
To date, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip remain under illegal Israeli occupation, as Israel looks set to annex more Palestinian territory and exile and dispossess more Arabs. This might spark a reaction from other Arab states as the United States of America seems to be preparing to join the war on the side of Israel.
From this history, which is not Christian history or is it Zionist history, but academic historical observation, the United Kingdom led the West in creating a Jewish state in Palestinian land and created a divide and rule political set up that is responsible for the war today. That is coloniality of power. The West prevented an Arab state in Arab land and promoted a Jewish state in the same place.
That there was a promised land that the Jews have claimed from Arabs is a historical mythology. The truth is that colonial powers chose one ethnic group over another and created a political and military division that haunts the “Question of Palestine” today. The West wanted a foothold and a strong one in the Middle East and created Israel for that purpose. That might not be a problem, the problem is that another possible state, the Arab state, was prevented from coming to existence. Up to today, the Arabs in Palestine, militant ones, disagree that they are terrorists that we know them as and believe that they are liberation war fighters. Several militant groups with extremist political ideas and military tactics have arisen to challenge Israeli occupation of Palestine. The wars have cost Palestine, Israel and humanity many lives. This has happened under the watch and support of the West now led by the United States of America.
Why Israel and Why the USA?
Industrious journalists such as Lisa Beyer have done great work excavating the history that I have briefly outlined here to expose the coloniality of power that has defined the conflict in Palestine. Beyer, in particular, has noted that the USA first adopted Israel for Cold War purposes to use it to push against Soviet Union incursions and influence in the Middle East. There are also Jews that have become financially and politically important in the US economy and polity, right inside America.
The USA, in my view, has Israel as its existential possession in the Middle East. Without Israel, the US would not be an Empire in the Arab world in which Israel is enveloped. There are also Republicans in the US that buy into the mythology that the Jews that have occupied Palestine are God’s chosen nation.
That Israel is a Zionist, but not Christian nation does not worry them, Israel will always be right by God and man even if they commit crimes against humanity, violate human rights and give a middle finger to the UN. The West are also guilty about how they treated Jews in history and would do anything to atone for their crimes by pampering Israel which is the spoilt little brat of the West.
Africans can only see themselves in Palestine and in Israel, as what the powerful in the world can use and abuse and not relate with in equality and justice. We are all raw materials that make the ingredients of world power. We are also the debris of wars of the powerful superpowers that profit from the wars that punish us. Africa, Palestine, Israel and some other parts of the world exist as spheres of influence and theatres of war.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected]
Sidumisile Mabena