“It is a part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.”
Edward
W.Said
The Palestine-Israel conflict has always been a topic treated with great interest and strongly debated. The next three articles go back to the roots of this conflict and reflect my personal views supported by historical arguments.
The
Zionist claim to Palestine is as invalid as anyone’s claim to the place, other
than the natives that had inhabited the land before the Zionist project was launched. It is common knowledge that Palestine was already a home for a large
population, mainly Arab, strongly bonded with the land. It is absurdly unfair
to sneak into one’s home and even more absurd to treat it as your own. Moral or
not, that place will never truly become your home.
Firstly, was it
Palestine itself an aim for the Zionist from the very start?
Whereas Zionism
of Hovevai Zion that was manifesting in some Russian cities in 1881 promoted
the immigration and the settlement activities in Palestine, the father of the modern political
Zionism, Theodore Herzl, in his book “The Jewish State” never regarded
Palestine as the definitive aim, taking also into consideration places such as
Argentina or Kenya[1].
“The Jewish
state” represented the basis of the future Zionist project and the modern
solution to the Jewish question, giving a perfect blue print for a Jewish “home”.
However, the book left open the question of the land, whether this should be
Palestine because of its historic associations, or any other place that might have been obtained easily[2]. Therefore, Palestine
wasn’t even a definite aim at the start of the Zionist project.
The strong
belief that Palestine should be the land of the Jewish community was expressed later on, in 1897, at the 1st World Zionist Congress in
Basel, Switzerland. This was also the moment when the World Zionist
Organization was created and the goal of Zionism was defined: “the creation of
a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law.”[3] Although the word “home”
was used instead of “state”, the aim was clear: a state for the Jewish people
in Palestine. The importance of the Congress was emphasized by a quote from
Herzl’s diary: “ At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out load
today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, and
certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.”[4] We definitely know it today...
So, the Zionist
decision of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was taken in 1897, even
though they were aware of the fact that the land was already inhabited. There
was no such thing as the Zionist slogan “a land without people, for a people
without land”. The reality was completely different according to the two rabbis
who were sent to see the land: “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to
another man”[5].
However, nothing managed to stop the Zionists from fulfilling their goal.
Therefore, we can easily realize from the start that all the Zionist project
has been based on a continuous denial of the reality of the ground. So, the
Zionist claim was invalid from the very start.
To be continued...
[1]
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall:
Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), 2-3.
[2]
Theodore Hertzl, Der
Judenstaat (Leipzig and Vienna: M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung,
1896).
[3]
Shlaim, The Iron Wall:
Israel and the Arab World, 3-4.
[4]
Idem.
[5]
Ghada Karmi, Married to another man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine
(London: Pluto Press, 2007).
No comments:
Post a Comment