Arabs have always regarded Zionism as a colonial enterprise led by European immigrants seeking to dispossess the native Palestinians of the land they inhabited. In ’17, the colonial power of Great Britain made clear its support for a Jewish state in Palestine. When numerous anti-Zionist Palestinian revolts flared (most famously in ’29 and ’36), the British retracted from their earlier promises to influential European Jews. But the void was filled by other great powers like the United States and the Soviet Union, who took up the cause of Zionism for their own reasons and who aided Israel in its bid for statehood. In ’56, Israel launched a war with Great Britain and France–the two colonial powers that had previously ruled Africa and the Middle East–against Egypt, an independent African nation. This war convinced many in the Arab world and across the “third world” that Israel was a strategic outpost forsuperpowers. Israel went on to oppose Algeria’s bid for independence from France, siding with a European nation that had brought much misery–not to mention economic exploitation–to African states.

Israel also developed an intimately close relationship with apartheid South Africa, trading economic, military and nuclear information with the Boer state. Israel even helped South Africa avoid political and economic ramifications for its apartheid system. Simha Erlich, Israeli Finance Minister, visited South Africa in ’78 and explained the significance of their relationship. "Israel would serve as a convenient way station for South African products, which would be exported first to Israel and then re-exported (as Israeli-made) to the USA and EEC countries, avoiding higher taxes and political boycotts to the benefit of both countries," he said. In addition, Israel helped South Africa attain nuclear capability, when both countries held a joint nuclear test on Sept. 22, ’79 near South Africa’s southern tip. In December ’87, Raphael Eitan, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, said the following: "I don’t understand this comparison between us and South Africa. What is similar here and there is that both they and we must prevent others from taking us over. Anyone who says that the blacks are oppressed in South Africa is a liar. The blacks there want to gain control of the white minority just like the Arabs here want to gain control over us. And we, too, like the White minority in South Africa, must act to prevent them from taking us over. I was in a gold mine there and I saw what excellent conditions the black workers have. So there is separate elevators for Whites and Blacks, so what? That’s the way they like it."

Arab intellectuals and leaders have long made the comparison between Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa. When some African leaders expressed admiration for the self-sufficient Israeli kibbutz movement at a conference in Casablanca in ’61, Arab leaders explained that the kibbutzim had been used as a type of creeping colonialism, comparable to the settlements of English and Dutch farmers in South Africa. Those African leaders, including the influential Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, revised their opinions of the Jewish state at the conference. When the United Nations declared Zionism to be racism in ’75, African and Asian states (including India) enthusiastically favored the decision. Nelson Mandela, whose ANC was for years on the United States’ list of terrorist organizations and who after ’61 advocated using terrorism in fighting the South African system, took a particularly harsh stand against Israel for its support of apartheid. In one of his first speeches out of prison, Mandela compared black South Africans to Palestinians, who were also "fighting against a unique form of colonialism." In ’89, Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited Jerusalem and made numerous comparisons between South Africa’s treatment of blacks and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. "I am a black South African," Tutu declared to the chagrin of Jewish leaders, "and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, could describe events in South Africa."

It is no longer debatable that the Palestinians are victims of a historical tragedy. Numbers cannot accurately explain the misery of the Palestinian nation, but they may lend credence to the seriousness of the matter. Between ’48 and ’93, the Palestinian death toll was a staggering 261,000, with‘6,000 wounded and 161,140 disabled. The refugees displaced in ’48 and ’67 (a war launched by Israel as a "pre-emptive" strike) have been gravely mistreated by Arab governments, and now number over five million. The 3.5 million refugees who are still living in the hell on earth that is a Palestinian refugee camp currently constitute the world’s largest and longest lasting refugee crisis. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes that in Israel the local idiom for "go to hell" is quite simply, "go to Gaza."

In May of 2000, the World Bank reported that the Palestinians were among the three poorest populations on earth. This was before the current Intifada, during which their poverty rate has tripled. Two generations of Palestinians within Israel proper were raised under martial law, in which they were deprived of their rights while Jewish immigrants enjoyed institutionalized privileges. The current Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the second longest military occupation in modern times (second only to Japan’s occupation of Korea) and it has meant that three generations of Palestinians have been raised under Israeli military rule. The Israeli annexation of large parts of the occupied territories and the systematic expansion of settlements are war crimes under the fourth Geneva Convention. Israel has had thirty-four years to give Palestinians their rights, to allow them participation in the democratic process, to improve their miserable conditions.

On July 14, ’68, a proposal arose in the Israeli government to extend social services to the recently occupied Palestinians. That proposal was rejected by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dyan, who stated that improving the lives of Palestinians would "clash with our intention to encourage emigration from both [Gaza] Strip and Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration—-let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand." The result of this is the situation we have today: Jewish Israelis live in what is a developed, “first world” country while Palestinians live in poverty stricken, third world ghettos. Moshe Dyan himself understood that this was a recipe for violent hatred. In a funeral oration for an Israeli farmer killed by a Palestinian in April ’56, Dyan declared to the mourners: "Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived."

For twenty years, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza protested peacefully against Israeli rule. (Terrorism faced by Israel in this period came from militant refugees in Lebanon and Jordan). In ’79, Israeli Prime Minister Menachen Begin signed a deal with Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat that called for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. Begin never followed through on that part of the agreement, instead choosing to increase settlements in the occupied territories. When PLO guerrilla terrorists continually attacked Israel out of south Lebanon, Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon led the Israeli army into Lebanon. The ’82 invasion, which was initially celebrated by hordes of Lebanese villagers fed up with PLO tactics, tur
ned into an indiscriminate slaughter. Within two months, the Israeli army had killed 17,500 Lebanese civilians and had allowed armed Phalangist militias to enter the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila. When US President Ronald Reagan asked Menachen Begin to end the siege of Beirut and alleviate the suffering of its civilian population, Begin responded negatively. He wrote back, "I feel as though I have sent an army to Berlin to wipe out Hitler in his bunker." Arab intellectuals used the quote to accuse Begin and Israel of oppressing the Palestinians as a way of avenging the Holocaust.

In ’87, the Palestinian youth uprising was characterized by rocks directed at Israeli soldiers and not bombs directed at civilians. In ’93, when the Palestinians thought they were finally getting a state, they quieted down and ended their uprising. An overwhelming majority of them supported the Oslo Accords, in which Palestinians recognized Israel’s right to exist on 78% of historic Palestine. The peace process begun by Oslo has almost completely broken down today. We know that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis want an end to the bloodshed and the beginning of a reasonable peace settlement. But, there remain powerful factions on both sides who refuse to accept peace with the other. Hamas and Islamic Jihad reject the right of Israel to exist on any part of historic Palestine and the politically influential settler movement in Israel rejects the notion of any type of freedom for the Palestinians, insisting that God gave the whole land to the Jews.

Leaders on both sides have shown a refusal to take on their extremist elements. For a brief stint in ’96, Yassir Arafat went after terror groups, imprisoning their leaders and active members, but within months, he let them out of prison. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is the only Israeli leader in history to challenge the settler movement by imposing a freeze on settlement building. He was shot over the issue by a fundamentalist student of Jewish law named Yigal Amir. Since the "peace process" was formally established in ’93, Palestinian guerilla groups have increased their terrorism against Israel while Israeli settlements (essentially, colonies) in the heart of Palestinian territory have more than doubled. Ehud Barak, a visionary peace maker, increased settlements more than any other Israeli prime minister and insisted at Camp David that 80% of settlers remain. To this day, Israeli governments have refused to build a security fence along the highly porous border between Israeli proper and the West Bank. This despite the fact that the head of Shin Bet (Israel’s security force) Avi Dichter declared on February 13 of this year that only a physical barrier between Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank can stem the tide of suicide attacks. The opposition to such a project comes most vocally from right wing Israelis and the ultra-orthodox settlers, who fear that any physical separation between Israel and the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria) will imply an abandonment of the settlers and will be used in the future to draw the borders for a Palestinian state. For Israel, the conflict in the West Bank is not just about security, it is also about settlements and expansionism.

[This article is the second installation of a three part series that provides a brief overview of the Arab Israeli conflict. The final section will focus on the recent waves of violence in Israel and the occupied territories. For the first section, please go to

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~thepress/april25/ColonialConflict.htm