Decolonizing Palestine - website summary/bullet points

The operations of October 7 conducted by Hamas, and the subsequent carpet bombing on the Gaza strip did not happen in a vacuum. This is an attempt to contextualize these events and spread awareness on Palestinian history and resistance efforts.

Most of the information here comes from the decolonizingpalestine.com website. Some additional info has been added for clarity - with hyperlinked sources. This link is accessible to anyone. Feel free to add suggestions to the document to make it more comprehensive (with sources), and I will incorporate the information after fact-checking.

The Zionist Movement

What is Zionism?

A colonial movement supporting the establishment by any means necessary of a national state for Jews in historic Palestine
Zionism is a nationalist, political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state. Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jew, is considered the “father” of political Zionism. The Zionist movement started in the late 19th century, amidst growing European anti-Semitism.

Zionist talking points usually define Zionism as “right to self determination in the Jewish homeland” - which doesn’t sound too bad on its own. But what is often obscured from this definition is that it is at the EXPENSE of indigenous Palestinians. In practice, Zionism facilitates forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. More on this in this video by Jewish creator Clio.
1897: in Basel, Switzerland the first Zionist congress was held with 200 delegates from all over Europe. Theodor Herzl was the president. Although there were other Zionist movements that settled in Palestine, this was the first attempt to organize colonization in a centralized manner.
In 1901, Herzel co-drafted a letter for the Jewish Ottoman Land Company which included the principle of the removal of inhabitants of Palestine to “other provinces and territories of the Ottoman Empire”
1917 - (November 2) Balfour Declaration made by Arthur James Balfour, Britian’s Secretary of State.. A promise by the British, who had a mandate over Palestine at the time due to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, to the Zionist movement that it would help them establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine… aiming to establish an exclusive Jewish ethnocracy. (the words “Palestinians” or “Arabs” do not appear in the sixty-seven words of the declaration. Arabs, comprised of 94% of the population, were promised only ‘civil and religious rights’, not political or national. In contrast, Balfour ascribed national rights to the Jewish people, which at the time only constituted 6% of the country’s inhabitants)
1917 - British troops occupy Jerusalem in December and banned publication of news of the Balfour declaration and did not allow newspapers to reappear in Palestine for nearly two years after. Therefore, the Palestinian reaction the declaration came quite late.

British Mandate over Palestine

1900-1910 - A large proportion of the Jews living in Palestine were still culturally quite siilar to and lived alongside city-dwelling Muslims and Christians. They were mostly ultra-Orthodox and non-Zionist, mizrahi (eastern) or Sephardic (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain), urbanites of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin. They were not foreigners, nor were they European or settlers: they were, saw themselves, and were seen as Jews who were part of the indigenous Muslim-majority society.
1922 - British mandate officially started in Palestine
With Balfour’s support, Zionists set up a proto-state called the Yishuv. The British helped them suppress any Palestinian movements and looked the other way as they continued with Zionist expansion which led to conquest and destruction of many Palestinian villages and neighborhoods. Already, it was a tense political climate.
The issue was never with the idea of Zionists moving to Palestine, but rather that from the onset, the Zionist movement was not interested in coexistence. There is ample evidence -recorded by the Zionist pioneers themselves- that the native Palestinian population was welcoming of the first Zionist settlers. They worked side by side, and the Palestinians even taught them how to work the land, despite Zionists seeing the Palestinians as inferior and uncivilized. Only after it became clear that these settlers did not come to live in Palestine as equals, but to become its landlords, as the Jewish National Fund Chairman Menachem Usishkin said, did Zionism come to be perceived as a threat. For example, Zionist leadership went out of its way to sanction settlers employing or working with Palestinians, calling Palestinian labor an “illness” and forming a segregated trade union that banned non-Jewish members.
1936-1939: The Arab Revolt, eventually crushed by the British, during which 14-17% of the adult male indigenous population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. Consisted of general stikes and peasant-led resistance movement (fellahin) who were impoverished after WWI.
1932-1939: A massive wave of Jewish immigration as a result of persecution by the Nazi regime in Germany raised the Jewish population in Palestine from 18% to 31%
By 1948, the British mandate was ending. Despite Zionist efforts to purchase as much land as possible and maximize the number of European settlers, they still only controlled 5-6% of the land and constituted a third of the population. These were not favorable conditions to establish an exclusively Zionist state.

UN Partition plan of 1947, 1948 War and Nakba

United Nations General Assembly resolution of 1947: This is when the idea of partitioning Palestine into an Arab state and a Zionist state started. The UN proposed this solution after the end of the British mandate as a solution to peace/end of violence. This was a recommendation that was non-binding. The Security Council did not arrive at a consensus when trying to implement it. In the mean time, Israel was declared a state while they were still debating. The plan was never implemented.

The plan alloted 56% of the land to Zionists, including most of the fertile coastal regions. Palestinians rejected this plan - the majority of Jews in Palestine at this time have barely been there 20 years (most Jews immigrated between 1924-1939). This is where the idea of Palestinians “refusing peace” came from, and that the Yishuv agreed to it.
However, the Yishuv meetings paint a different picture - the Yishuv rejected it. They only publicly accepted to gain strength before expanding.
Ben Gurion was the leader of the Yishuv and Israel’s first Prime Minister. He said any acceptance of the partition would be temporary until the formation of a large army that can expand to the whole of Palestine.

In 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Zionists were constantly worried about the native population. In 1944, Plan D was created and adopted in May 1948. The plan entailed the expansionism of the Zionist states even beyond partition lines, and vowed to destroy/expel Palestinians in any village within those borders - even villages and cities that were supposed to be part of the Arab Palestinian state outlined by the UN.
Late 1947-1948: Arab-Israeli war. Egypt, Transjordan,, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon reluctantly intervened even though they were not interested in a war given that they had just came out of colonialism themselves. But they had their own motives.

Jordan wanted control of the West Bank as a stepping stone to greater syria. There was collusion between them and the Israelis - Israelis gifted them parts of the West Bank in exchange for non-interference in other areas.
Egypt joined to try and counter the Hashemite power-play
They only fought in the “Arab” state parts, not the Jewish state part.
In March 1948, the US asked for ceasefire and asked Israel to postpone declaring statehood to give time for negotiation. It was rejected by Ben Gurion because he knew that it meant that recently expelled refugees would return to the “Arab” part of the UN partition map. He also wanted those lands outside of the partition plan.
By end of war/Nakba there were 800,000 displaced palestinians, 530 villages/communities ethnically cleansed. Ethnic cleansing continued well into the 1950s.
“Green line” is the de-facto borders of the Israel state, minus West Bank and Gaza who came to be ruled by Jordan Egypt respectively. 80% of the Palestinians within the green line were expelled.

FROM NAKBA TO NAKSA (the setback)

Israel was declared a state in mid-May 1948.
In the 1950s, Israel issued the “Absentees Property Law” which stated that all property (even bank accounts) of Palestinian refugees would be seized if not contested/claimed - but Palestinian refugees were not able to return so…
“Land Acquisitions Law” allowed the transfer of Palestinian economic assets to Israeli state - they gained control of agricultural land, houses, workshops. This dropped the cost of resettling a zionist family from $8000 to $1500.
1956: Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, threatening the interests of many colonial powers. France, Britain, and Israel participated together to attack Egypt. This was a strategic route for Britain and India, and France wanted to also participate in anger for Nasser’s support of Algerian freedom fighters. Nasser was also a threat due to his pan-Arabism and popularity.

It was a military victory for Britain and co, but political defeat as the 3 countries withdrew their troops after international and US outcry. Nasser became even more popular.

1964: Palestine Liberation Organization would be formed with sponsorship form the Arab League. This was a refugee-led leadership. People claim that this was when Palestinian identity was “invented” - they were called terrorists.

The 1967 War or Six-Day War or Naksa

1966: Israel ended martial law for Palestinian villages inside the green line, but imposed them on West Bank and Gaza.
June 5, 1967: Israel launches a surprise attack on Egypt’s air force (but claims it was self defense). Even the US didn't know - and in just two days after that, there was supposed to be a meeting in the US to de-escalate tensions between Egypt and Israel regarding the Tiran straits. The war lasts less than a week. Israel conquers the West Bank and Gaza strip, as well as Egyptian Sinai Desert and Syrian Golan Heights. Israel was interested in provoking these wars particularly to gain these territories that were not conquered in 1948. This also explains why Israel rejected any de-escalation efforts with Egypt at the hands of the UN or US.
A lot of Zionist talking points/propaganda say that this war had to be done because Israel was under “existential threat.”
Israeli Minister Mordecai Bentov frankly admitted a few years after the war that the “danger of extermination” story was fabricated to justify the annexation of more Arab land. Basically, the war was a cover for more ethnic cleansing.
Now, Israel controlled all of mandatory Palestine - Egyptians, Jordanians pushed out of Gaza and West Bank - new areas now subjected to military occupation. 100,000 Syrians were also ethnically cleansed from the Golan Heights. Eastern part of Jerusalem was captured.
The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967, calling for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”. It emphasised “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security”.

Many see this resolution as something that actually legitimized Israeli takeover of Palestinian lands.
The resolution did not specifically state which lands Israel should withdraw from - should it only be the recently conquered lands or all land since 1948 that wasn’t in the partition plan allocation for Zionists?
It only mentioned Palestinians as refugees, and not as people with national rights.
It did not penalize Israel’s acts of war

The “Allon colonization plan”

Named after Yigal Allon
The plan was to take over vast territories in the West Bank through settlements and military installations, and give large Palestinian population centers some nomial autonomy or transfer control to Jordanians.
Today there are over 200 settlements in the West Bank and Golan heights, with 600,000 Israeli settlers living on stolen and occupied territory. According to international law, these settlements are illegal and a violation of the Geneva conventions.
This dissection is so severe, that the West Bank has jokingly come to be known as the West Bank archipelago, where small pockets of Palestinians are surrounded by Israeli controlled zones.

The war of 1973 and Camp David

Nasser had died at this point, but Anwar Sadat (leader of Egypt) and Syrian leadership conspired to take back their occupied lands - hence the 1973 war. Egypt came from the west and Syria from the north, but ultimately they were pushed back by the Israeli army.
1978 Camp David Accords: the Sinai would be returned to Egypt in exchange for peace/normalization/recognition of Israel. Settlements in Sinai would be dismantled. Egypt was the first Arab state to recognize Israel and started orienting itself more towards the US/West.

Part of the Egyptian demands in the Camp David accords were that the rights of Palestinians to be recognized, but it was vague. It paved the way for secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel.
Syrian Golan Heights remain occupied and in fact got annexed.

Two Intifadas and Two States

Conditions for occupied Palestinians were bad: collective punishment, repression for any tiny act of resistance, daily humiliation was rampant.
Palestinians were also used as cheap labor in Israel - around 35-40% of the Palestinian work force worked within the green line. Things were tense sometimes.
December 9, 1987: IDF truck crashed into a Palestinian vehicle killing 4 workers. This led to massive protests, civil disobedience, boycotts… This was the start of the Intifada (”the shake off”). Palestinians burned Israeli products, refused to pay taxes, formed decentralized committees to serve as alternative administrative units and provide services and practice self-reliance.
Israel responded with extreme violence, deploying tends of thousands of soldiers to the West Bank and Gaza and implemented the “Iron fist” policy to break the arms and legs of protesters. They assassinated Intifada leaders. Farms and businesses were destroyed to force people to buy Israeli products. More people took to the streets as education institutions were closed. International sympathy was generated, and Israel’s image began to be tarnished.
Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 was attempt at negotiating a settlement. But the PLO was to be part of the Palestinian delegation due to Israeli objections, but they coordinated with the delegation anyway. Very little came out of this. But behind the scenes, there was the Oslo negotiations.

The Oslo Accords - 1993

Between PLO and Israel directly for the first time - attempt to carve out a two-state solution
It was agreed to set up the Palestinian Authority as an “interim government” for 5 years although the word “state” was never mentioned
It was supposed to kick-start a peace process, but it didn't really happen.
1994: Wadi Araba Treaty, Jordan-Israel normalization
In September 1995, there was Oslo II which took place in Taba, Egypt. This divided the West Bank into three areas:

Area A: under Palestinian Authority Control, civil and security. 18% of West Bank, 55% of Palestinian population. Includes Ramallah.
Area B: Under Palestinian civil control but Israeli security control - many Palestinian villages fall here. Contains 21% of West Bank land and 41% of Palestinian population
Area C: Under full Israeli control - 61% of the West Bank - mostly for settlements - as they are abundant in resources/ease of access to water and there are few Palestinians. Israeli officials call for the complete annexation of area C and they make life as difficult as possible for Palestinians in this area to encourage them to leave.
However, these distinctions matter little - there are still settlements in area B and Israel operates freely in area A.
Also part of the agenda was to talk about the refugee question, but internal documents reveal that it wasn’t seriously discussed.

Bundled with the Oslo Accords was the Paris Protocol with a set of economic policies for Palestinians which essentially subjugated the Palestinian economy, giving the Israelis immense control over the Palestinian market. “Domination and exploitation rebranded as cooperation”.
These were deeply unpopular because the focus was on the pre-1967 borders (UN partition plan), not the 1948 root. Also, “good” fertile land and water resources were heavily favored for Israelis. That means Palestinians lose 80% of their land. Palestinians were pressured to “compromise” for peace.
This is the whole premise of the two-state solution, that Palestinians must compromise on their rights to be granted a small, powerless sham of a state in part of their homeland. Israel, of course was not asked to compromise on anything substantial.
Palestinians agreed to these terms - even though the Israelis did not really want there to be a Palestinian state. the PA was supposed to last for 5 years, its still there today.

The Second Intifada

Started in September 2000 due to rising tensions because of increased settlements and stalemate in negotiations. Triggered by visit of Ariel Sharon (AKA butcher of Sabra and Shatila as minister of Defense) to al Aqsa Mosque, escorted by hundreds of armed troops. in a show of power. It was intended to be provocative and to crush any response, that Israelis believe would give them an edge in negotiations and lower demands of the PA. This intifada destroyed much of what the Palestinian Authority had built over the years.
The Palestinians employed similar resitance tactics as the first intifada, but Israeli response was much more aggressive - they shot to kill, and the intifada became militarized with guerilla warfare and suicide bombings.
Ariel Sharon became Prime minister from 2001-2006. Under his rule, Israel reoccupied Palestinian territories under the control of the PA such as Nablus and Ramallah. He also began constructing the infamous Israeli segregation wall, which is considered illegal. Gaza and West Bank would be completely shut off to each other. Palestinian Authority security forces were decimated. IDF grip on the occupied territories grew.
But Israeli army and settlers withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005 due to heavy Palestinian resistance. But it was placed under siege. Israeli talking points claim that see, its not really occupied, and withdrawing from it didn’t stop the “violence” on Israel - so why should they withdraw from the West Bank?
Yasser Arafat, leader of PLO/PA, died in 2005 - the PA became much more obedient after that.
5000 Palestinians died in this intifada, and 1000 Israelis.

Palestine today

Gaza today

Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006, beating Fateh who was the more traditional leader of the PLO and Palestinian Authority. International community/Israel said Hamas is terrorist. Fateh and Hamas formed a unity government but it crumbled from internal and external pressures. Hamas took military action in the Gaza strip to take control of it from the Fateh-dominated government bodies and security forces in 2007. Now, the west bank and gaza were also politically separated.
Gaza under siege and serves as testing ground for Israeli weapons.
Gaza is mostly consisting of refugees ethnically cleansed from nearby villages - it cannot support its # of people and according to the UN it is becoming unlivable.
Gazans did the Great March of Return in 2018 - peaceful march brutally crushed.

West bank today

PA was severely weakened after the 2nd intifada, the failure of Oslo to result in anything tangible, and Hamas winning the election and taking over in Gaza - they had a crisis of legitimacy. The PA cracked down on dissent and bolstered its security forces - with help from the US. They would essentially become a subcontractor to the occupation due to security coordination with Israel, and with time their language did not include liberation or right to return but more autonomy.
PA never really had any real power - they just dealt with administrative stuff the Israeli authorities didn't want to deal with.

East Jerusalem

Palestinians in Jerusalem are granted a special “residency” permit that can be revoked at the flimsiest reason - such as them going to study abroad. They’re always trying to force them to move to the West Bank.
Ethnic cleansing of the city of Palestinians with building of new colonies for settlements
Discrimination in services and resource allocation: Palestinian neighborhoods are underserviced, poorer, dirtier.

Palestinians inside the green line

Israel distinguishes between citizenship and nationality - nationality is determined by ethnicity and it cannot be changed and it subjects you to different rights. So Arab Israelis don't have the same privileges.

Law of Return and Absentees Property Law are examples

There were efforts to petition the Supreme Court to recognize an Israeli nationality without discrimination of ethnicity, but the Supreme Court rejected it because it would “undermine Israel’s Jewishness” - discrimination is seen as a cornerstone of Israeli society, reinforcing its colonial ethnocratic nature and undermining any claims of actual equality.
Half of Palestinian citizens of Israel live under poverty line and they face discrimination in almost every aspect of life
They cannot access land inside the green line even, as its controlled by the Jewish National fund which develops lands and leases only to Jews. So Arab Israelis cannot purchase, rent land/property from the JNF which controls 13% of land.
Regional and local councils also have control over land and have say to block anyone from settling in an area if they are “not a good fit” - for example a religious community might not want a secular person there. In practice, of course no one wants the Arab Israelis.
Almost 80% of the entire country is off limits for lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Palestinians in the diaspora

Most are still in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and inside Palestine and continually denied the right to return despite having deeds/keys to their old houses
Israel is trying to change the meaning of “refugee” and deny refugee status to descendants of the original refugees - contrary to every refugee population in the world or legal norms.
Because their expulsion formed the basis to establish Israel, the return of refugees is a really important topic in the Palestinian question - this is the root cause/solution. But Israel tries to ignore this by talking about the 1967 borders as a starting point.