A Brief History of Palestine and Israel

Adapted from a speech delivered at a Cambridge teach-in for Gaza, October 2023

Palestinian refugees, Cambridge University Press, 1989 (Benny Morris)

When we discuss the history of Palestine and Israel, we are saying that the present reality was born of a violent history and is sustained by continuing that history. Any attempt to discuss this present without that context does a gross injustice not just to Palestinians but also to peace everywhere for everyone.

I first want to emphasise that the Nakba of 1948 – in which 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, never to return – is not so much a historical event as a state policy. The Zionist militias that cleansed villages were integrated into an Israeli military that protects their new inhabitants and prevents old ones from returning. The use of terror and home demolitions as a tool of ethnic cleansing continues to squeeze Palestinians out of villages into refugee camps and ghettoised enclaves. The Israeli ‘Law of Return’ enabling any Jewish person to freely claim Israeli citizenship sits alongside the lack of the right of return for any Palestinian refugee. By the 1960s, Palestinians had lost 78% of their land while the Jewish population nearly quadrupled in the wake of the Holocaust. It was in this context that armed groups like Fatah - the political party that leads the Palestinian Liberation Organisation or PLO - began fighting back. 

This leads to the 1967 war pitting Israel against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, during which Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza (where many Nakba refugees had fled) and places  them under military occupation. After this devastating loss, Arab support for Palestine dwindles: Egypt seeks negotiations, while Jordan, Lebanon and Syria all crack down on PLO bases, kicking the PLO out to Tunisia. By the mid-1970s, the PLO moderates, calling for an end to their international attacks on Israeli civilians and signalling willingness for a two-state solution, but is denied entry to negotiations. Over this time, desperation grows. The PLO is an increasingly distant, unaccountable government-in-exile barred from negotiations, while Palestinian people live under permanent military occupation, watching settlements eat into their land. In this context, Islamic social institutions such as the Muslim Brotherhood grow more popular, basically by providing the welfare Palestinians can’t get under occupation.

Mounting frustration and despair leads to the First Intifada in 1987, a spontaneous Palestinian uprising which shocks both Israel and the PLO (given they’re still based in Tunisia). Though beginning largely peacefully and involving many children, the Israeli defence minister’s response is an order to ‘break the bones’ of Palestinians. Over 30,000 children needed medical care; some choked to death on tear gas, so young their lungs couldn’t take it; others were tortured in interrogation. As per the minister’s wishes, 10,000 had broken bones. This radicalises Palestinians, who feel powerless. Consequently, the Muslim Brotherhood forms a political wing, Hamas, and groups on the ground who are frustrated with an exiled PLO incapable of protecting Palestinian civilians, step up armed resistance.

With mounting pressure to end the Intifada and stop armed groups, Israel and the PLO sign the Oslo Accords, which they hope will lead to a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, with the newly-created Palestinian Authority as its government. But talks stall as it becomes clear this isn’t the case: deadlines aren’t met and instead the number of settlers doubles, violent crackdowns on demonstrations, targeted assassinations, and military raids continue. Hamas members, excluded from the process and seizing on Palestinian frustrations, begin to launch suicide bombings to exert pressure, particularly following the 1994 Hebron Massacre by an Israeli settler and the 1995 assassination campaign against Palestinian fighters. 

The peace process collapses and Oslo becomes permanent. The Palestinian Authority ends up not an autonomous government but a powerless police force for Israel, repressing the Palestinians it was created to protect. The occupied territories, meant to be a Palestinian state, are a patchwork of ghettoised Palestinian refugee camps and villages, separated by Jewish settlements, military checkpoints, and roadblocks. In much of this area, Israel controls the freedom of movement, supply of water, aid, imports, housing units, work permits and more. Amid this effective chokehold, the PA is roughly as useful as when they were in Tunisia, while most Arab states have turned away in exasperation. Prevailing hopelessness leads Palestinians to see armed resistance as the only means of self-defence against Israeli military raids and settler attacks. 

To describe to you what this looks like: 

When I talk about military occupation I mean military raids where soldiers break down your doors and windows in the middle of the night, pull your children out of bed in their pyjamas and throw them in solitary confinement. They’re blindfolded, beaten, stripped and told to get on their knees, get their genitals touched, and tortured into confessions. I mean parents begging and waiting months to get their dead children’s bodies back. I mean a network of military checkpoints where people start queueing at 3 am for over 2 hours, in cages so tight that people often break their arms waiting and risk suffocating. Soldiers stick rifle butts into pregnant women’s bellies when they try to go to the supermarket. Cancer patients can’t get to appointments in time.

When I talk about terror and ethnic cleansing I mean armed citizens who poison wells and slash water pipes, set fire to farms and beat Palestinian shepherds with clubs, steal electricity generators and fertilisers, raid houses and throw out possessions into the street. This is all protected by the military, who use tear gas and stun grenades in support, who bulldoze Palestinian homes. I mean gangs quite literally menacing and threatening Palestinians until they flee their villages or remain in one of the 31 refugee camps across the occupied territories.

When I call the Nakba state policy, I mean that the Israeli state is a continuous refugee-making and resistance-inflaming machine. I mean that for one group to control a land, it must continuously push the other into smaller portions of it, by literally terrorising refugees to keep fleeing.

When Palestinians try to explain this, there is a tendency to say, “oh you’re Palestinians, you’re biased, you’re arguing for one side”. No, no, they are Palestinians. This is their reality. They are the story.

When you see 2.3 million Palestinians being shelled out of Gaza toward Egypt, know this is not just counterterrorism or self-defence, this is decades of Israel unsustainably pushing Palestinians to the fringes of their land and life. In doing so, it has fomented a backlash that effectively prioritises Jewish supremacy over Jewish security. This violence is not going to be undone by continuing to periodically flatten Gaza, to carve up the West Bank and to leave Palestinians to languish in refugee camps every time they resist. This is going to be undone by undoing the supremacist attitudes with which it began. 

When we talk about a ‘Free Palestine’ from the river to the sea we mean the right to live in freedom, in dignity, in peace. To say goodnight to one’s family and expect to see them in the morning. To expect to see the morning. I don’t think that’s an outrageous demand and I don’t think it’s an impossible one either. But we’re not going to achieve it by pretending we can go on as we have been. This illusion is long past its expiry date.