Author: Gregory C. Jenks

Part of a series of post offering a perspective on the conflict in Palestine

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion—who was then Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine—proclaimed the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. This was to take effect when the British mandate expired at midnight on the same day.

The declaration did not specific the borders of the Jewish State, but it was indicated that this new state would exist within the provisions of UN Resolution 181.

Military forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq attempted to intervene to prevent the partition of Palestine as agreed by the UN plan, but their forces were defeated, and the 1949 armistice agreement saw Israeli control over a much larger area. That territory is commonly described as the “pre-1967 borders.” 

During the conflict an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from areas under Israeli control. Many found of them refuge in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They came under the care of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian Refugees. In 2021 UNRWA continues to support almost 6 million Palestinian refugees, including the children and grandchildren of those displaced in 1948 as they have not been allowed to return to their homes.

This left around 150,000 Palestinians inside the area of Palestine controlled by Israel, of whom around 35,000 were internally displaced persons. These IDPs found refuge in major Arab centers such as Nazareth, whose population grew from 15,500 in 1946 to 20,000 in 1951 and 25,000 in 1961. 

The Palestinian population within Israel lived under strict military rule from 1950 until 1966. Under these regulations, Palestinians could not leave their own village without permission from the military governor. Since 1966 there has been freedom of movement within Israel (and at times after the June 1967 war, within the whole of historic Palestine). In many cases their villages were razed, partly being used for military training to prepare for future conflict with Israel’s neighbors. The iNakba app provides details of some 500 villages which were erased by the Israeli state after 1948.

Neither the internally displaced Palestinians nor those who fled to neighboring countries to escape the conflict have been allowed to return to their homes or reclaim their property. In many cases their former homes were given to Jews who had also been displaced from areas remaining under Arab control or arriving from overseas.

As part of the wider disruption across the Middle East following the partition of Palestine, around 800,000 Jews relocated from Arab nations to Israel.

For Israeli Jews, the war of 1948 is known as the War of Independence, while for the Palestinians it is known as the Nakba (The Catastrophe).

Although the UN partition plan envisaged the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state, this was not created at the time. Egypt remained in control of Gaza at the SW edge of Palestine, Syria held some territories in the far north, and Jordan controlled the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Declaration of Independence was only finally proclaimed on 15 November 1988.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

Part of a series of brief posts offering a perspective on the conflict in Palestine.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

During World War One, Britain encouraged both Arab nationalism and Jewish Zionism as part of their military struggle with the Ottoman Empire. Both were promised national independence in Palestine in return for the support of the British war effort.

During World War One, the Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman ruled was led by Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca and his three sons Abdullah, Faisal and Ali. In return the British had promised support for an independent Hashemite state stretching from Syria to Yemen. 

Meanwhile, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 indicated that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and promised to “use their best efforts to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine …”

While this declaration had no legal status under international law, it did represent an explicit endorsement of the idea of a Jewish national home within historic Palestine. 

Delivering on the declaration was one of the terms for the mandate given to Britain by the League of Nations to provide “administrative advice and assistance … until such time as they are able to stand alone.” The British understood their role to include the establishment of a national home for the Jews while also preserving the civil and political rights of Palestinian Arabs, but this became increasingly fraught as tensions grew between the two local communities in Palestine.

In 1921—as a partial fulfilment of their promise to Hashemites, and despite their commitment to creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine—the British Mandate authorities established the portion of Palestine east of the Jordan River as the Emirate of Transjordan, ruled by Abdullah I as its first Emir. This emirate remained a British protectorate until 1946 when it gained its independence and adopted the name “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” 

With the establishment of the United Nations, Britain relinquished its mandate to develop the autonomous political and social infrastructure of Palestine.  Resolution 181 (II) on 29 November 1947 agreed to a partition plan to create separate independent Arab and Jewish states within Palestine, while reserving Jerusalem and its suburbs as a special International Zone (‘Corpus Separatum’) outside either national state. Although Arabs comprised 67% of the population, they were allocated just 43% of the territory. The partition was accepted (with some reservations) by Jewish groups but was rejected by the Palestinians and all other Arab nations.

After the war of 1948 (see next post), Palestine was divided: with 78% of historic Palestine under Israeli control and the remaining 22% split between areas controlled by Jordan (East Jerusalem and the West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza). Following the Six-Day War in June 1967, all of historic Palestine was under one power, although expressed through a Military Occupation in the areas beyond the ‘Green Line’ of the 1949 Armistice. The Green Line is widely regarded as the de facto international border between Israel and Palestine following UN Resolution 242

Under the Oslo Accords, the areas occupied by Israel in 1967 were divided into three categories: Areas A, B and C. Area A was designed to be exclusively administered by the Palestinian National Authority, while Area B was to be jointly administered by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Area C was to be administered solely by Israel. These arrangements have not been fully implemented, as Israeli military forces routinely enter Area A.

During the Second Intifada (2000–2005), Israel constructed a physical barrier more or less along the Green Line to prevent easy movement of people from the West Bank into Israel and Jerusalem. The wall cuts deep into Palestinian lands on the West Bank to include Israeli settlements as well as natural water reserves, and in places separates Palestinians from their fields or other members of their family.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

Part of a series of posts offering a perspective on the conflict in Palestine

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

As European powers asserted their freedom to act within the notionally Ottoman territories of Egypt and Palestine in the late nineteenth century, there was a growing sense in some circles that a Jewish nation state might be created in Palestine, on a portion of the so-called ‘biblical lands.’ 

One of those circles was an influential set of Evangelical Protestant beliefs known as ‘Restorationism.’ With roots in Puritan millenarian speculations between 1640 and 1660, this view proposed that by restoring the Jews to their ancient homeland the Protestant powers of Europe could defeat a feared (but non-existent) alliance between the Catholics and Turkey, while ensuring the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, and preparing for the return of Christ. That was quite an agenda and variants of it have been seen in recent Evangelical support for Israel. For a while fear of Communism displaced the Ottoman Empire, but fear of Islam persists among many Christian supporters of Israel.

Evangelical missionary groups such as the London Jews Society (LJS) promoted these ideas in leading British circles, including Lord Shaftesbury (1801–85), whose 1839 essay “State and Restauration (sic) of the Jews” in the Quarterly Review argued “the Jews must be encouraged to return in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee … though admittedly a stiff-necked, dark hearted people, and sunk in moral degradation, obduracy, and ignorant of the Gospel … [They are] not only worthy of salvation but also vital to Christianityʼs hope of salvation.”

As a Canon emeritus of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, I should acknowledge that the origins of the Anglican Church in Jerusalem lie in just such attitudes. The establishment of the Anglo-Prussian bishopric in 1841 was a Protestant political initiative to promote Jewish settlement in Palestine and oppose Catholic France’s close relationship with the Ottomans.

William Hechler (1845–1931) was a son of LJS missionaries and served as chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna. In 1894 he published The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine in which he argued that rather than seeking to convert the Jews, Christians should assist them to return to Palestine. 

Hechler was an advisor to Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who was the leading activist seeking to secure European support for a Jewish national home.  Herzl convened the World Zionist Congress that assembled for the first time at Basel in 1897, and he is widely recognized as the founder of Jewish Zionism. The anti-Jewish sentiments of Herzl’s Christian Zionist allies are not so widely recognized.

Palestine was not the only potential location for the proposed Jewish homeland, but it was eventually endorsed in preference to other colonial locations such as Argentina and Uganda.

A fund to finance the purchase of properties in Palestine for Jewish colonies was established by the fifth World Zionist Congress in 1901 although the idea had been under consideration since the very first Congress. Over time it has developed into a major instrument for Jewish colonization in Palestine, and it now known as the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, or KKL). It currently owns at least 13% of all the land in Israel and has become a major—if at times controversial—Jewish institution alongside the State of Israel.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

This post draws on lectures I gave as part of the “Apocalypse Then and Now” class for the Brisbane College of Theology Master of Theology program in 2008: Christian Zionism

The third post in a series offering a perspective on the conflict in Palestine.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

For most of the past 5,000 years Palestine has been a remote province in a vast empire whose capital was far from Jerusalem. Despite the legends of an extensive empire ruled by David and Solomon, there has never been a powerful society based in Palestine with the capacity to project its power over anyone beyond a few small regional city states. Even then, the local warlords only had such opportunities when there was no dominant empire.

The empires which have dominated Palestine during the past 5,000 years include Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Alexander the Great and his successor empires (the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria and Mesopotamia), then Rome, the Byzantines, and a series of Islamic dynasties (Umayyad, Abbasid, Seljuk, Mamluk and Ottoman). The most recent of these great empires were the Ottomans, who dominated the area from 1517 to 1918.

The next empire is yet to emerge.

We are in one of the periods of chaos between empires.

It is just over 100 years since the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but as yet no new empire has arisen in the region. In this intermediate period the smaller powers are flexing their muscles and experiencing a brief moment of autonomy. 

In the case of Israel that has been based almost entirely on the strategic support of the US which has provided diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN Security Council while ensuring it has the latest weapons to maintain military supremacy within its immediate neighborhood.

Some analysts suggest that the next regional empire to control the Middle East generally, and Palestine in particular will be based either in Egypt, Iran or Turkey.

While Israel may survive as a nation state within the larger political arrangements of the Middle East, it will also need to come to terms with its location in that region and cease imagining itself as a European nation with a strange zip code. Sooner or later the longer term regional dynamics will reassert themselves after the short-lived interruption of Anglo-American supremacy following two global wars during the twentieth century.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

This is the second in a series of posts offering a perspective on the conflict in Palestine.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine

Due to the convergence of several tectonic plates, Palestine is part of a ‘land bridge’ which allows movement between Africa, Europe and Asia. For millennia this has encouraged migration, trade and military campaigns. The major river valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia facilitated the development of highly-organized societies, which typically projected their power northwards into Palestine (in the case of Egypt) or southwards to the southern edges of Palestine (in the case of the northern and eastern powers).

In more recent times, European powers such as Napoleonic France, Great Britain, Germany and even Mussolini’s Italy have seen the strategic value of this region. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 the economic and political advantages deriving from easy access to the Gulf, India and the ‘Far East’ were clear. During the twentieth century, the vast oil reserves between Saudi Arabia and Iraq ensured continued interest in Palestine and Egypt.

During the 35 years or so after the end of World War Two, the global rivalry between the US and the USSR (often called the ‘Cold War’) ensured that both blocs invested in this region. While Britain, France and the US gave solid support to Israel, the USSR tended to support the Arab nations opposed to Israel. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this global power competition has become less significant, but can still be seen in the Russian support for Syria as well the continuing American support for Israel.

Palestine in general, and Jerusalem in particular, also has some of the most significant religious sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims. It attracts pilgrims from around the globe, as well as locals for religious festivals.

Human rights and the future of Palestine | Location location | A time between empires | Zionism as a colonial project | Jewish migration to Palestine | Dividing Palestine | The war of 1948 | Wars and rumors of war | Palestinian resistance | Creating a shared future in Palestine