The focus of this blog is an attempt to show why I am of the opinion that the history of Israel and Palestine must be view as a classic example of colonialism. This history must be seen like the relationship between the horse and the rider; the Jews of Israel are the riders, while the people of Palestine are the horse.In order to fully understand and interpret the history of Israel and palestine, it is important to answer the following questions: What is Zionism? How does Zionism relate to Jewish settlement on the West Bank of Palestine? Zionism can be defined as the belief that Israel has a fundamental right to exist. The Zionist movement is the Jewish national movement that was formed to establish a homeland for the Jews who were scattered all over the Diaspora. Zionism in this sense can be equated with colonialism.According to Ilan Pappe (2007) Jewish colonization of Palestine was a little different, in that the Jewish colonizers "acquired the land to settle on" (p. 73). The Zionist movement bought land from Palestinian Arabs and establish something called Kibbutz; a sort of a collective community that was traditionally based on agriculture. On these communal farmsthey also formed the "histradut" (p. 81), a kind of Jewish labor organization. It is important to note that the Zionist movement excluded the Arab Paloestinian majority form this labor movement. In fact they argue that " a necessary condition for the realization of Zionism is the conquest of all jobs in Palestine by Jews" (p. 84). This arrangement to monopolize for the Jewish workers was a clear indication of the exclusion of Palestinian workers from the new society in the making. By this time, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) was massively engaged in purchasing land form the Palestinians and otheher landowners and these lands became the collective property of the Jewish people, it could only be "sublet and then, only to Jews" (p. 85). This arrangement had three aims according Pappe: internal colonization, land nationalization, and corporation, and resolved to establish in Palestine settlement cooperatives (p. 85). This segmentation of the labor market by exclusion of Arab competition determined the separate Jewish identity. Thus, we can see the formation of the Jewish state on Palestinian land without regard of the destiny to the plight of the Palestinian people.Can colonization be any different? You tell me.
TBC*References:Pappe', Ilan (2007) The Israeli? Palestinian Question. A Reader. 2nd Edition. Routledge- Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York.Gilbert, Martin (2008) The Routledge Atlas of The Arab-Israeli Conflict. 9th Edition. Routledge-Taylor and Francis Group. London and New York
ok it's Iraq but it's interesting
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Here is a link to a blog put up by Morgan on a different Blog. There are a
number of entries that tie more to your topic than theirs. Enjoy.
16 years ago
I agree that the Palestinian/Israeli issue needs to be viewd from a colonial perspective. Especially because most people dont know of the history of British rule over the region. One of the biggest factors that created this problem was the British playing to both sides. With the Balfour declaration, the British government allowed for the legal buying of palestinian lands by emigrating jewish zionists. This led to the mass emigration of Jews from all over the diaspora to "Eretz Izrael." At the same time the British wrote numerous "white Papers" which limited immigration and said a Jewish state would never be established. The british played to both sides and then threw the problem to the UN when they started losing their empire after WWII.
ReplyDeleteThe history of this conflcit is so ancient an the recent history so jumbled that I am not sure that I can sign on to a colonialist inerpretation of the Jewish migration to Israel. The fact that the Jewish people retained a tie to the land and a wish to return for nearly two thousand years, the fact that the land was ofically colonized by the British, and the fact that the Palestinian people had no more or less leagal claim to the land than did the Zionists all complicate the issue to the point where while the situation does indeed bear some strinking similarities to a colonial situation, neither the history of invasion of an established nation nor an expoliation in terms of resources are present in this example leading me to be very cautious to lable this situation one of colonial explotation.
ReplyDeletehttp://dissidentvoice.org/2008/12/the-great-land-giveaway-neo-colonialism-by-invitation/
ReplyDeleteI found Tolo's ideas on considering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a colonial lense pretty intriguing. In many ways I can see the rationale, although I first considered the concept of neo-colonialism to be more relevant to this situation. In it's broader sense, neo-colonialism simply refers to a more powerful country's interference in the affairs of a less powerful country. This would certainly be reflected in Israel's domination of Palestine, and this process can now be seen through the lens of economic imperialism. I don't necessarily agree with Adam's point that there is no resource exploitation going on. The aquifer and water issues being posted about show that there is a struggle going on regarding Israel and Palestine's appropriation and control of water. In addition, Israel's efforts to gain land through the deliberate shifting of the wall's delineations are telling. While the land may not be being put to use in the pursuit of resource exploitation now, it may in the future. In any regards, this process of land grabbing is clearly interfering with many Palestinian farmers continued crop cultivation, therefore interfering with and degrading/destroying their (the "others") livelihood.
The article above gives a very interesting explanation of the new form of exploitation happening all over the world: agro-imperialism.
It states explicitly that at this point in time, Israel is exempt from this label, due to their continued use of force to subjugate an entire nation. However, this form of imperialism relies on the introduction of a free market and investment opportunities: not an impossible dream to turn into reality. The future of Israel and Palestine's inter-relationship may develop in any number of ways, but I think it's worthy to consider not only the ways in which peacebuilding may occur, but also the potential economic relationships that may develop, and how they will be dealt with.