Originally published in the November 2015 issue of Liberation Newspaper.
The graphic shows the expansion of the Israeli state over time, as it consumed a greater and greater share of Palestinian land.
In 1946, there were small Jewish settlements throughout Palestine. Some were Zionists who wanted to expel the Palestinians, but many were Jews who had been living there for generations. Contrary to the corporate media narrative of a religious conflict lasting “thousands of years,” Jews and Muslims in Palestine lived together in relative peace for centuries before the racist and exclusivist state of Israel was created. Beginning with the 1947 United Nations partition plan, and continuing through to the present, Israel grew rapidly through wars and illegal settlements, and Palestine shrank.
In 1948, Zionist forces launched a genocidal wave of attacks to displace Palestinians. It is referred to as “Al-Nakba”—“The Catastrophe” in Arabic. In the 1967 war, Israel extended its occupation over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
This settler-colonialism—the racist project to take over territory and expel the Indigenous people using terrible violence—is similar to what European settlers did to the Indigenous people of North America. People of conscience around the world, led by the Palestinian people themselves, are now standing up to this injustice and demanding an end to the occupation.
