Palestine

Palestine   (Country)
Location	Middle East
Type	nation state
Interest of	Max Blumenthal, Dan Cohen, Jonathan Cook, Andrew Feinstein, Jacob de Haan, Hamas, Jeremy R. Hammond, HonestReporting, Rania Khalek, Gideon Markuszower, Alison Weir, Hilary Wise
Member of	Arab League, International Criminal Court

Palestine, recognised officially as the State of Palestine by the United Nations and other entities, is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia claiming the West Bank (bordering Israel and Jordan) and Gaza Strip (bordering Israel and Egypt) with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative centre is currently located in Ramallah.

The entirety of the State of Palestine has been occupied since 1948, first by Egypt and Jordan and then by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestine has a population of 5,051,953 as of February 2020, ranked 121st in the world.

Origins

This week on History of Israel Explained, we’re dissecting one of the most famous documents in Israeli history - the Balfour Declaration - and asking what made this 117-word letter so important and so controversial. The Declaration was written in 1917 by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur James Balfour, and sent to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of Britain’s most illustrious Jewish citizens. It expressed the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. So why did it take another 30 years, until the United Nations passed UN Resolution 181, for a Jewish state to finally be established? Why was the Balfour Declaration so controversial? Why was it written so ambiguously and did the British even have the right to promise the Jews a homeland in British Mandate Palestine?

Full article: Middle East

Full article: Asia

While it was already inhabited for centuries before, deep politics first became part when religion became slowly integrated into human culture when Israel was officially vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established with Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has come under the sway or control of various entities. Many groups from Arabs, Persians, Ottoman, Romans and a dozens of other conquered the state, it was one of the first central-economical hub in the middle east and often was a symbolic place after the emergence of religion even before the start of the first millennium.

Full article: Israeli–Palestinian conflict

World War 2 and the Balfour Declaration caused the formation of a Zionist deep state of Israel at the will of Zionists whom largely settled in the 1800s. Israel was founded in 1948 and remained and expanded ever since, despite numerous attacks.

Leadership

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is an organisation founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle.

It is recognised as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed observer status at the United Nations since 1974.

The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organisation until the 1991 Madrid Conference, even though Israel funded Hamas in the meantime;

“Israel first encountered Islamists that would later form Hamas in Gaza in the 1970s. Back then they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel.

Israel realized that it could use the organisation to help splinter Palestinian society in the Gaza strip and hurt the Palestinian Liberation front which dominated Palestinian politics. So Israel helped and even gave funds to Hamas in the 1980s so it could establish itself in Gaza. The Israeli government officially recognized the precursor to Hamas, called "Mujama Al-Islamiya" back then, registered the group as a charity and even supported it with funds to help it spread its influence in Gaza and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

At the time, Israel's main enemy was the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, which formed the heart of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Fatah was secular and cast in the mold of other revolutionary, leftist guerrilla movements waging insurgencies elsewhere in the world during the Cold War. Israel's military-led administration in Gaza in the 1980's looked favorably on Hamas, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank. Documents from the 1980's show that Israel enabled Hamas to act in the first Intifada in order to enable it to strengthen, thus to cause a splitting of the Palestinian nation – in order to weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which was responsible for the Intifada.

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” says retired Israeli official Avner Cohen , a former Israeli official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades in an interview to the Wall Street Journal. Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”).

General Segev himself even admits to funding Hamas himself with Israeli taxpayers money that was later used to kill the same people who were funding them.”
Dispropaganda (2021) 

Censorship

The Intercept reported in 2021 that Facebook is deleting accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments.

Facebook representatives and the Israeli government have conspired at least since COVID-19 determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country. The predictable results of those meetings are now clear and well-documented. Ever since, Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders: Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests and officials even boasted about FBs "help".

Controversial laws

In 2023, a law was passed in the Knesset that gave "nationalistic" acts of rape harsher sentences targeted at Arab on Jewish rape while maintaining lower sentences for people in a forced sexual act of the same ethnicity and/or religion.

Ethnic bioweapons

According to a 1998 report in the Sunday Times, Israel is developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected. The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.

The "ethno-bomb" program is based at Israel's Nes Ziona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes.

A scientist there said the task was hugely complicated because both Arabs and Jews are of semitic origin. But he added: "They have, however, succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people." The disease could be spread by spraying the organisms into the air or putting them in water supplies. `

Prisoners as guinea pigs

The Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky tells how prisoners were brought to black sites for experiments in the 1970s-1980s, never to come out alive:

It was Uri who enlightened me regarding the Nes Ziyyona facility. It was, he said, an ABC warfare laboratory — ABC standing for atomic, biological and chemical. It was where our top epidemiological scientists were developing various doomsday machines. Because we were so vulnerable and would not have a second chance should there be an all-out war in which this type of weapon would be needed, there was no room for error. The Palestinian infiltrators came in handy in this regard. As human guinea pigs, they could make sure the weapons the scientists were developing worked properly and could verify how fast they worked and make them even more efficient.

The "hospital in Baltimore" is presumably Johns Hopkins:

Years later I met Uri again. This time he was in the Mossad, a veteran katsa in the Al department, and I was a rookie. He had come back from an assignment in South Africa. I was then a temporary help desk man in the Dardasim department in liaison, helping him prepare for a large shipment of medication to South Africa to accompany several Israeli doctors who were headed for some humanitarian work in Soweto, a black township in Johannesburg. The doctors were to assist in treating patients at an outpatients clinic for the Baragwanath hospital ...The hospital and the clinic were supported by a hospital in Baltimore, which served as a cut-out for the Mossad.

"what is the Mossad doing giving humanitarian assistance to blacks in Soweto?" I remember asking him. There was no logic to it; no short term political gain (which was how the Mossad operated) or any visible monetary advantage. "Do you remember Nes Ziyyona?" His questions sent shivers up my spine. I nodded.

This is very much the same. We're testing both new infectious diseases and new medication that can't be tested on humans in Israel, for several of the Israeli medicine manufacturers. This will tell them whether they are on the right track, saving them millions in research.

Nelson Mandela on Palestine

In 1990 Nelson Mandela visited the United States for the first time after being freed from 27 years of imprisonment in apartheid South Africa.

Here, in sectioned out footage of Ted Koppel's interview on ABC News, Nelson Mandela sets out his forthright views on Palestine, Israel and Yasser Arafat, and thanks Fidel Castro of Cuba and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya for their unconditional support in the ANC's struggle against apartheid:

Nelson Mandela speaks about Palestine

 

An example

Page name	Description
Two-state solution	Private Eye's two-state solution in October 2023: A state of war... and a state of more war

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	“There had already been a significant increase in violence by Israeli settlers this year, even before the Hamas attack, according to UN data, with more than 100 incidents reported each month and about 400 people driven from their land between January and August. Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem told the BBC that since the attack, it had documented "a concerted and organised effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank". Partial data compiled by B'Tselem, covering the first six days after the Hamas attack, recorded at least 46 separate incidents in which it said settlers threatened, physically attacked or damaged the property of Palestinians in the West Bank. "A lot of shepherding families and communities have fled because they were threatened in the past week by settlers," said Roy Yellin, a spokesman for B'Tselem. "Settlers have been giving residents a deadline to leave and telling them if they don't they will be harmed. And some villages have been totally emptied out."”	BBC Joel Gunter	2023
George Carlin	“Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it’s a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. “You believe in God?” “No.” Boom. Dead. “You believe in God?” “Yes.” “You believe in my God? “No.” Boom. Dead. “My God has a bigger dick than your God!” Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred.”	George Carlin
Election/Fraud	“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake. And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”	Hillary Clinton	2006
Sigrid Kaag	“Happily there were pro-Israeli demonstrators in Tel-Aviv that said the road of Benjamin Netanyahu, that soundbite, with an almost racist demagogue.... about the Palestinian peace-partner that has been isolated. But look at their environments, day in, day out, 1 million people are prisoners.”	Sigrid Kaag	10 June 1996
Daniel Pipes	“There can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both. To think that two states can stably and peacefully coexist in the small territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to be either naive or duplicitous. If the last seventy years teach anything, it is that there can be only one state west of the Jordan River. Therefore, to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel.”	Daniel Pipes	April 1990

 

Events

Event	Description
1948 Palestine war
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	Hamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11", while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7	Hamas attacks Israeli settlements in Southern Israel, mass raping and abducting, which get called an Israeli "9-11" by CCM. The NYT and Al Jazeera claimed the Israeli government knew of the impending attack, ignored warnings, shot some of their own civilians, made up several stories and used the resulting increased death toll to go on a revenge killing spree in the 2023 Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Bombing of the King David Hotel
Itamar attack

 

Group

Group
Palestinian Liberation Organisation

 

Citizens of Palestine on Wikispooks

Title	Born	Died	Description
Ziad Abu-Amr	1950		Double Bilderberger Palestinian leader who attended Georgetown
Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini	9 September 1965
Nihad Awad	1964
David Ben-Gurion	16 October 1886	1 December 1973
Levi Eshkol	25 October 1895	26 February 1969
Ahmed Jibril	1938	7 July 2021
Mohammed Nashashibi	1925	27 January 2020	Finance minister in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, went to the 2001 Bilderberg.
Abu Nidal	May 1937	August 2002	Terrorist known for his attacks creating spectacularly a bad image for the Palestinian cause. Was probably recruited by the Mossad, and for decades used to commit assassinations and bombings under false flag.
Edward Said	1 November 1935	24 September 2003

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
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Document:Batley and Spen by-election: Palestine becomes potential dealbreaker	Article	18 June 2021	Alex MacDonald	According to Coral, Galloway is currently on 50/1 odds to win, compared to 2/1 for Leadbeater and 2/5 for Conservative candidate Ryan Stephenson. William Hill has the Conservatives on 1/3, Labour at 5/2 and the WPGB at 33/1.
Document:British Jewish Zionist MP Gerald Kaufman says Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza	Speech	January 2009	Gerald Kaufman	"However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."
Document:Condemnation of mass killings in Gaza	Article	15 May 2018	Hans Köchler	"The deliberate targeting of civilians by the Israeli army – inside the territory of Gaza – constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity. Those responsible must be brought to justice – in conformity with the Statute and on the basis of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of which Palestine is a State Party."
Document:Existence vs Expansion	blog post	21 July 2024	Craig Murray	The International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion is extremely lucid and decisive. The ball is now back in the court of the UN General Assembly, which requested the Opinion. The General Assembly now should move to suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations. That is the next project on which I shall be working.
Document:Former Labour leader honoured by Palestinian Forum	Article	19 December 2021	Steve Walker	Jeremy Corbyn receives award for ‘remarkable efforts’ to support Palestinians against oppression
Document:Goliath's Revenge - Israel and Apartheid South Africa	Article	5 January 2024	Christopher Nicholson	"During the apartheid years I practised as a human rights lawyer and one of my colleagues defended a young boy, charged with assaulting a police officer. He had thrown a stone at the man, who was on board a tank-like military vehicle, but had arrogantly left his helmet off. A law in force with regard to firearms required a warning shot to be fired in certain circumstances. The prosecutor then demanded of the latter-day David: ‘Why did you not throw a warning stone?’"
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Document:ICC issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant	Statement	21 November 2024	Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC	The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant each bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts; and for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.
Document:Jeremy Corbyn leads cross-party push in Parliament for immediate recognition of Palestine	Article	4 September 2024	Joe Connor	Early Day Motion 71 "Calls on HM Government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine in accordance with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of 2024, which recognised that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip constitute a single territorial unit the integrity of which is to be respected."
Document:Jeremy Corbyn says “I Condemn Violence Against All Civilians, Why Can’t Keir Starmer?”	Article	12 October 2023	Jeremy Corbyn	In an interview with LBC, Keir Starmer was asked whether “cutting off power and water” to 2 million people, half of whom are children, was appropriate. He agreed that Israel “has that right”. Where is the empathy for Palestinians who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their futures? What happened to the universal application of international law?
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Document:Keir Starmer's ‘antisemitism’ sacking is a signal that Israel is safe in his hands	Article	29 June 2020	Jonathan Cook	Crackdown by UK Labour leader on left-wing rival will subdue critics of Israel in his party ahead of Israel's annexation move
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Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:Open Letter To The Judges Of The International Criminal Court	Letter	7 October 2024	Yanis Varoufakis Brian Eno
Document:Open letter to Ban Ki-Moon from Richard Falk	open letter	7 February 2016	Richard Falk	On-the-button open letter from Richard Falk to Ban Ki-moon about Israeli attacks on the latter for his modest, reasonable and accurate criticism of Israeli policy - Schadenfreude would be understandable in light of Richard Falks experience at Moon's hands.
Document:Outside In: The Trump Administration’s Plan to Remake the Middle East	Article	10 October 2018	Ted Snider	Benjamin Netanyahu refers to his doctrine as Outside In: first you pacify the Outside and ally with the Sunni Arab states (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) outside of Israel, then, in exchange, you extract a peace plan out of them that you then impose Inside on a Palestine now devoid of allies and leave it helpless to hold out against a peace plan forced on the Palestinians by Donald Trump.
Document:President Abbas’ Rebuke to Theresa May over Palestine	blog post	24 September 2017	Craig Murray	The ignored part of the Balfour Declaration to which Abbas referred is of course: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
Document:The Dog That Didn't Bark	Article	30 November 2017	Israel Shamir	The Jared Kushner-Mohammed bin Salman peace plan for Palestine is likely to misfire, as have all MBS plans, from pressuring Qatar to vanquishing Yemen. A lot of blood and a lot of money will flow, adding to miseries in the Middle East and elsewhere. The only satisfaction is that now you know who owns the dog that did not bark.
Document:The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face	Article	30 April 2024	Jonathan Cook	"The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance by Israel and the United States. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making their plan a reality."
Document:The White Book And The Isratine Proposal	Book	8 May 2003	Muammar Gaddafi	The White Book's Fundamental Historical Solution: “Isratine” – a single-state solution for Jews and Palestinians to live in peace. Call it the Federal Republic of the Holy Land.
Document:The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher	blog post	31 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	In July 2024, researchers to The Lancet medical journal very conservatively estimated that the total number of Gazans who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.
Document:U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study	article	10 September 2001	Rowan Scarborough
Document:UK Government Should Cancel Prince William’s Visit to Apartheid Israel	Article	18 April 2018	BDS National Committee (BNC)	UK Government Should Cancel Prince William’s Visit to Apartheid Israel
Document:Watch the West continue to make a mockery of international law	blog post	19 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	The World Court concludes that the Palestinians are owed massive reparations. At a bare minimum, western governments must recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories.
Document:We Are The Bad Guys	blog post	12 August 2024	Craig Murray	In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are. But find one and take one.
Document:What is Left for Palestine?	blog post	17 May 2021	Craig Murray	It was a beautiful day in Glasgow yesterday for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demo, and it was great to be able to meet up again with so many magnificent and public-spirited people. It was an especially young crowd, which was excellent, and I was able to meet many Palestinians who drew comfort from the public support at a traumatic time.
Document:‘Turning Gaza into ashes’: Israel propaganda vs the world	Article	1 November 2023	Ramzy Baroud	It is time to speak about Palestinian rights, Palestinian security and the Palestinian people’s right – in fact, obligation – to defend themselves.
Document:‘What about the Israeli army killing unarmed Palestinian civilians’	Article	27 April 2018	Ken Loach	Ken Loach asked the Belgian prime minister: “Mr Michel is a lawyer, did he wonder about Israel’s failure to comply with international law? Has he asked the question of colonisation of the Palestinian territories? Has he asked the question of unarmed Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli army? Has he asked the question of refugees living under the protection of the United Nations?"
File:Children in Military Custody.pdf	report	June 2012	9 UK govt. appointed legal experts
File:Company-Occupied territories trading.pdf	Database	12 February 2020	UN/Human Rights Council	Database of all business enterprises involved in the activities detailed in paragraph 96 of the report of the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem - Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
File:Targeting-israeli-apartheid.pdf	book	January 2012	Tom Anderson Georgia Clough Therezia Cooper Jack Curry Pete Jones
File:The Inheritance of Abraham-Revised.pdf	report	18 May 2013	Church and Society Council
File:The-Inheritance-of-Abraham.pdf	report	May 2013	Church and Society Council
File:Un-escwa-israel-apartheid-report.pdf	report	17 March 2017	Richard Falk Virginia Tilley	The Apartheid nature of the Israeli State in its treatment of its non-jewish Palestinian population

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