Palestine-Israel:

the basIc facts1897 A European Jewish political movement, the Zionist movement, has for some years been seeking to secure a national home for the Jewish people. After considering homelands in Africa and S America, the Zionist conference of 1897 settles on Palestine, then part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire.

1917 The Balfour Declaration: the British Government promises Lord Rothschild a ‘national home’ for Jews in Palestine, while upholding ‘the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities’. (At this time 95% of the population are Palestinian Muslims and Christians.)

1918 Britain occupies Palestine and from 1918 to 1948 sponsors Jewish colonial immigration from Europe and the US. Britain crushes all Palestinian revolts.

1948 After numerous terrorist attacks by Zionist militias, Britain leaves, after handing the matter over to the UN, which assigns 55% of Palestine to the proposed state of Israel (map 2 below). At this time Jews constitute only one third of the population and own only 6% of the land.

1948–49 Israel kills 13,000 Palestinians and drives 750,000 from their towns and villages in the Nakba (‘Catastrophe’), occupying 78% of historic Palestine (map 3). Descendants of these refugees live today in some 100 refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. UN resolution 194 calls on Israel to allow the return of the refugees; the resolution is ignored. Over 400 Palestinian villages are subsequently razed to the ground.

1967 Israel occupies the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (the ‘Occupied PalestinianTerritories’, or OPT) during the 6-day war with Egypt, bringing all of historical Palestine under Israeli control. UN resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw from the territories. It fails to do so.

1987 Israeli settlement of the OPT grows steadily, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Palestinians rise up in the first non-violent Intifada (‘uprising’).

1993–5 US brokers a series of agreements between Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. The ‘Oslo Accords’ are

Find out more from Palestine Solidarity Campaign: www.palestinecampaign.org

Partition, occupation and annexation of Palestine

intended as a step towards Palestinian self-rule, with a staged withdrawal from the OPT by Israel. However, illegal Israeli settlements double in number during the ‘peace process’.

2000 Israel’s increasingly brutal military rule and ongoing seizure of Palestinian land ignite a second Intifada. Thousands are killed as Palestinian towns and refugee camps are invaded, shelled and bombed.

2002 The Arab governments declare they are prepared to recognise Israel within the pre-1967 borders at the Beirut Conference. Israel ignores this offer, violently invades every Palestinian city except Jericho and starts building a separation wall, largely on Palestinian land.

2005 Israel pulls out its 8000 settlers from the Gaza Strip (home to 1.4 million Palestinians) — and settles another 30,000 in the West Bank. It then seals off the Gaza Strip.

2006 Hamas wins free and fair elections in the OPT. Israel abducts 35 Palestinian MPs, imprisons many Hamas supporters and subjects Gaza to major attacks, destroying the only power plant. Backed by Western powers, Israel imposes a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip.

2008–9 Israel breaks a ceasefire with Hamas and for three weeks bombs Gaza, destroying 25% of the buildings, including homes, schools, mosques and the university. About 1,400 Palestinians are killed, including over 300 children. 13 Israelis are killed. The UN-sponsored Goldstone Report condemns Israeli actions as war crimes.

2010–12 An international flotilla taking aid to Gaza is attacked in international waters by Israeli forces and 9 peace activists are shot dead.

2012 Heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza result in 158 deaths, mainly civilians, and massive damage to the infrastructure. In November Palestine’s request for non-member observer status at the UN is agreed by an overwhelming majority. Israel responds by withholding taxes from the PA and announcing huge new settlements east of Jerusalem.

Palestine before the creation of Israel

UN partition plan for Jewish and Arab states. Rejected by Arabs

Israel occupies Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Timeline:

What you can do

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is the main UK-wide organisation campaigning on the Palestinian issue, with a network of over 45 branches. PSC:

• organisespublicmeetings,filmshows,conferences,debates, boycott events and demonstrations at local, national and international levels

• lobbiesthemedia,institutions,theBritishgovernmentand MPs

• promotesrelationsbetweenBritishandPalestinianorganisations and communities

• workswithfaithgroups,othercampaigningorganisations and trade unions (the TUC has now called for a boycott of firms complicit in the Occupation)

Members receive our quarterly magazine, fact sheets, updates and action alerts.

Find out more, visit:

www.palestinecampaign.org

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Return to: PSC, BM Box PSA, London WC1N 3XX. Please contact psc.admin@palestinecampaign.org or 020 7700 6192 for more information.

KEYRoute of wall, completed and projectedJewish settlement areas inside wallJewish settlement areas outside wallIsraeli settlementsPalestinian areas

WEST BANK LAND ALLOCATIONIsraeli settlements outside wall 8.0%Land now on Israel side of wall 9.5%Jordan Valley (under Israeli control) 28.5%Palestinians 54.0%

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the situation today

Israel’s 230 illegal settlements now house well over 500,000 settlers. The network of settler-only highways across the West Bank and the hundreds of checkpoints and barriers

mean that Palestinians find it hard to get to their work, school or hospital. Farmers are harassed – sometimes killed – in their fields by armed fundamentalist settlers, who are protected by the Israeli army.

Palestinian families, especially in East Jerusalem, are being forced out by a variety of means, from settler takeover of homes to demolitions to pseudo-legal tactics.

Israel has taken control of the scarce water resources in the West Bank (many Palestinians now have to buy back their water from the settlements). Homes are being destroyed and thousands of olive and fruit trees uprooted. A UN resolution of 2004, backing a judgment of the International Court of Justice, called on Israel to remove the Wall and to compensate the Palestinians for their losses. It continues to be ignored.

The Jordan Valley – approximately one third of the West Bank – is undergoing a process of slow ethnic cleansing. 94% of it is now under the control of 9,500 settlers. The 250,000 Palestinians who lived there before 1967 have been reduced to only 60,000.

It is clear that the Israeli government is committed to annexing much of the West Bank, making a viable, independent Palestinian state virtually impossible. The most likely outcome appears to be an apartheid, theocratically-based state of Israel, within which Palestinians will be confined to a few crowded ghettos.

the international scene

the ‘Arab Spring’ initially gave the Palestinians hope that Egypt would no longer cooperate with Israel in maintaining the blockade of Gaza. However, the Egyptian military

retains close links with Israel and Gazans still live in a state of semi-siege, depending on the clandestine tunnels between Gaza and Egypt to bring in essential goods.

Western governments have failed to react to decades of Israeli violations of international law. But grassroots support for Palestinian rights is growing, in the UK and around the world. PSC is at the forefront of campaigns to boycott all economic, cultural and sporting links with Israel until it agrees to abide by international law. Another major campaign issue is the inhuman treatment of political prisoners and child prisoners by Israel.

Professor Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Rights has said that what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people “constitutes a new kind of crime against humanity”. President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, after visiting the OPT, have both referred to the situation there as ‘Apartheid’ – even worse than the system that afflicted South Africa, according to Archbishop Tutu.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu