A HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT: THE ISRAEL OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE

History has it that Ottoman Empire conquered the region where Palestine is, since 1517 and it remained so until the fall of the empire. The British army conquered and ruled Palestine since 1917 until a civil admiration was established in 1920 and a League of Nations (the then United Nations) approved Palestine as British mandate in 1922. Then came the Balfour Declaration, a public statement issued by British government in 1917 announcing its support for establishment of a 'National Home for the Jewish people' in Palestine which has small minority Jewish population. It will interest you to know that a British census of 1918 estimated 700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews.

In 1920, the Third Palestine Congress in Haifa decried the British government's plans to support Zionist project and rejected Balfour Declaration as a violation of International Law and of the rights of the indigenous population.

The British pay no heed to the Palestinians' concerns and began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. The Jewish population between 1922 to 1935 rose from 9% to nearly 27% of the total population.

During the Arab revolt of 1937, independence from British rule and pursuing foreigners from their land were the primary objectives, Jewish population were attacked in the process, a move which brought about creating a Peel Commission which initiated the partition discussion into Arab and Jewish states.

The Commission suggested a land and population transfer involving the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in a future Arab state. The Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the partition as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestines, including most of its best agricultural land, to recent immigrants - foreigners.

In April, 1947, The Britain referred the case to United Nations, but it's worthy to note that by this time, the Jews already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II. Moreover, the British allowed the Jews to establish self-governing institutions, such as the Jewish Agency to prepare themselves for a state when it came to it, while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so; paving the way for the elimination of indigenous Palestinians. 

The United Nation's special committee that was formed came with two proposals; thus, the formation of two separate states (Arab and Jewish) joined economically, and with Jerusalem internationalized or formation of a single binational state made up of autonomous Jewish and Palestinian areas. The Jewish community approved of the first of these proposals, while the Arabs opposed them both. A counterproposal by the Arab including a provision that only those Jews who had arrived before the Balfour Declaration (and their descendants) would be citizens of the state.

Immediately after the withdrawal of British mandate in Palestine, Jewish state declared their statehood of Israel on 15th May, 1948 and this led to the escalation of the crisis involving neighbouring Arab States. Israel expanded to 77% of the territory of mandate Palestine, including the larger part of Jerusalem. Over half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled from the axis. The sequence continuous as you can see from the below territorial map expansion from the 1947 partition till date.

The Palestinians on the other hand, persisted in their struggle to #FreePalestine from the illegal occupation of the Zionists and protect their homeland.

The Palestinians are in a triangular war physically, politically and in media. Israel and its allies are so hellbent on turning the facts and making Israel the victim despite these series of persecutions they subject Palestinians over the years. To further their agenda, since 1999, the US government signed a MoU through which it committed to providing Israel with at least US$2.67 billion in military aid annually, for the following ten years. In 2009, the annual amount was raised to US$3 billion; and in 2019, the amount was raised again, now standing at a minimum of US$3.8 billion that the US is committed to providing Israel each year. 

Let me end this piece with a statement by the Secretary General of United Nations, Antonio Guterres where he said on 25th October, 2023:

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing."