The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Dr. Ilan Pappe - Part 3

http://www.ilanpappe.org

The present dismal reality unfolding in the Middle East has clear historical roots and a journey into the past may help to illuminate what lies behind the destructive policies of Israel in both Palestine and Lebanon.

Zionism arrived in Palestine in the late 19th as a colonialist movement motivated by national impulses.

The colonisation of Palestine fitted well the interests and policies of the British Empire on the eve of the First World War.

With the backing of Britain, the colonisation project expanded, and became a solid presence on the land after the war and with the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine (which lasted between 1918 and 1948).

While this consolidation took place, the indigenous society underwent, like other societies in the rest of the Arab world, a steady process of establishing a national identity.

But with one difference. While the rest of the Arab world was shaping its political identity through the struggle against European colonialism, in Palestine nationalism meant asserting your collective identity against both an exploitative British colonialism and expansionist Zionism.

Thus, the conflict with Zionism was an additional burden. The pro-Zionist policy of the British mandate there naturally strained the relationship between Britain and the local Palestinian society.

This climaxed in a revolt in 1936 against both London and the expanding Zionist colonisation project.

At the end of November 1947, the UN offered to divide Palestine into two states almost equal in their territorial space. The Jews were only one third of the population by 1947 and most of them had arrived in Palestine only a few years earlier.

The categorical Palestinian refusal to go along with this deal, backed by the Arab League, allowed the Zionist leadership to plan carefully the next step. Between February 1947 and March 1948, a final plan for ethnic cleansing was prepared.

The Zionist leadership defined 80 percent of Palestine (Israel today without the West Bank) as the space for the future state.

This was an area in which one million Palestinians lived next to 600,000 Jews.

The idea was to uproot as many Palestinians as possible. From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighbourhoods demolished.

Half of Palestine's population was uprooted and half of its villages destroyed. The state of Israel was established in over 80 percent of Palestine, turning Palestinian villages into Jewish settlements and recreation parks, but allowing a small number of Palestinian to remain citizens in it.

The June 1967 war allowed Israel to take the remaining 20 percent of Palestine.

This seizure defeated in a way the ethnic ideology of the Zionist movement. Israel encompassed 100 percent of Palestine, but the state incorporated a large number of Palestinians, the people who Zionists made such an effort to expel in 1948.

The fact that Israel was let off easily in 1948, and not condemned for the ethnic cleansing it committed, encouraged it to ethnically cleanse a further 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

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[lambentye]

"West bank", very deceptive words, it is a huge territory , not a mere river bank; there is no systematic cleansing of Palestinians, Arab citizens can vote in Israel, in Arab lands Jews are barely allowed to live

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

The people who fled because of pressure, because of fear of Jewish terrorism and massacres still have the right to return, if Israel refuses the right of return it's ethnic cleansing per UN definition.

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

It was almost exactly these words that I used, since they wanted to establish a Jewish-majority state, it was impossible to do it without ethnic cleansing.

"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country.

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

(contd, shameless Benny Morris justifying ethnic cleansing)

"That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population."

""I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

IDF archives document how they used terrorism to kick people out and scare them out. Even if they were scared to abandon their homes, that's ethnic cleansing according to UN, and they have the right of return.

Zionist apologist Benny Morris:

"...when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

The Zionist terrorists openly admit that and document that in the record, you didn't refute anything. Morris said that ethnic cleansing occurred and he says that it was justified because the Zionists had to make it a Jewish state.

[optimistsRUS]

@optimistsRUS

More than 500 villages destroyed by Zionist terrorists and you ask for one example? Read IDF archives or read Ilan Pappe's book or Benny Morris, the shameless Zionist "leftist" who says that it was not a bad thing.

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

More lies from a ZioNazi, Christian Arabs were equal victims (except that neighboring Arab countries gave Christians refugees better treatment than Muslim refugees), but Zionist terrorists killed them with equal barbarity.

George Habash was a Christian whose family was kicked out of Palestine in 1948 and he did not welcome the murderous invaders, his family was never allowed to go back, he was the mastermind of hijacking passenger airplanes, it was about freedom, not about religion.

[optimistsRUS]

@kreplach3

Native Americans welcomed European murderers, so did Chinese, Indian (Asians) and South Africans, only the Palestinians are frustrated by home demolishing murderers who evict the natives to settle foreign settlers...

[flumoxed2]

@optimistsRUS

the propagandist who is stalking you under various accounts is a predator -

as evident watch?v=y1dir7h_anU

Shlomo Kreplekh aka kreplach2/kreplach3,4,5,6,7,8,­9, etc has been found guilty of having multiple IDs for the purposes of  spamming, stalking and altering info.