Nasir Khan, February 10, 2015
What do we mean by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? In my understanding the notion ethnic cleansing of Palestine covers all those major historic events and the policies that were used to take possession of the land of another people. What happened and how it happened at the hands of Zionists is part of the story historians call the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (e.g. Ilan Pappe).
The Palestinians who opted to become the citizens of Israel had no choice but to accept that a foreign power had taken over their land. If they didn’t like it then they could follow others who were forcibly driven out of historic Palestine and had became refugees in the neighbouring countries.
However, ethnic cleansing here does not imply that all Palestinians were physically eliminated. Some were killed. This still going on in the occupied territories as we saw in Gaza in the summer of last year. But this is part of the Israeli strategy to suppress any voice that stands for the restitution of the political rights of these people to their land, by expropriating and confiscating more land that is still in the hands of Palestinians. This is incremental Israeli expansion in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and keeping Gaza under siege.
The people of Palestine had a land. But a foreign colonial settler state made them a people without a land. The Zionist logic is simple here: No country called Palestine. Therefore, no people who can be called Palestinians! But this is a totally false claim based on lies and deception.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate