Annexation and Expansion...Displacement and Reallocation: The Zionist Israeli Agenda

Statement by Land Research Center on the 47th Palestinian Land Day, 30 March 2023

In 1976, the Israeli occupation masterminds came up with a plan to develop the Galilee (designated by the UN partition plan to be part of the Arab state in Palestine) as “Jewish” by continuing the expropriation of the land of Palestine occupied as of 1948. The targeted lands belong to the mere 10% of the Palestinians who remained steadfast in their land after the Nakba under an oppressive occupation that confiscated every inch of the expelled Palestinian refugees’ land left behind. The new Government of Israel illicitly transferred them to the administration and control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an apartheid-chartered parastatal organization, to ensure the appropriated lands remained “Jewish.”

All these lands were freely given to immigrant Jewish colonists coming from all around the globe to create a “people” for a fabricated “country.” To support this narrative, they falsified historic facts and tried to appropriate Palestinian culture and heritage. As much as this constructed narrative seems implausible, many unwitting politicians believed it; even the liars believed their own lie. And today the Finance Minister of Israel Smotrich is supercharging those lies, claiming that the Palestinian People was “invented” to destroy the Zionist Movement.

However, is a fact known to historians that the Zionist Movement was actually anachronistically created as an offshoot of moribund European colonialism to, on the one hand, implement their geopolitics in Arab territories and appropriate their resources and, on the other, sow conflict between the region’s people. This occurred amid the downfall of the Ottoman State, the “Sick Man of Europe” before its complete collapse at the end of the first World War in 1918.

Just in time, the Zionist Movement found common cause with, and manipulated the Great Powers. It achieved recognition of its colony as a state by the United Nations, which, against sacrosanct principles of international law, handed them 56% of lands administered by the All-Palestine Government, the governing body of Palestine under the British Mandate at that time. That development allowed thousands of European Jews, including those eventually fleeing Nazism, to enter Palestine and live in peace among the Indigenous Palestinian People. However, instead of returning the favor, in 1948, the Jewish refugees and colonists occupied more than half the area of Palestine and, in 1967, occupied the West Bank and Gaza by force.

At the beginning, they claimed it was a temporary solution, until the situation would be resolved. Then the Military Government of Israel claimed to set up a “civil administration” of an “ungoverned” area. Finally, their true intentions were revealed by spreading the false claim that this acquired land belonged to them, and was merely occupied by Palestinian Arabs, and the colonizers finally achieved freedom in their long-occupied land.

Nowadays, a new narrative is in circulation, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, insisting that the Palestinian Peoples is only an invention. His claim to the “land of Israel” includes the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Their clandestine project and the Zionist dream are now exposed and displayed in a public slogan “Hey, Israel, Your Land is from Euphrates to Nile.” For so long, Palestinians have been warning the world of these actual Zionist intentions, as the Israeli flag’s star was appropriated from the ancient Arab heritage – a six-pointed geometric figure – between two blue lines representing the Euphrates and Nile Rivers.

The Zionist political parties since their inception worked side by side for this objective, all these manipulations were to gain additional time, to build more infrastructure, and strengthen their military-and-security system. And, today, after 47 years since the Land Day uprising that cut down six Palestinian martyrs, the occupation continues to kill Palestinians. From the beginning of this year alone, 88 martyrs were killed by Israeli violence, and the occupation government has confiscated 2.3 million dunums (230,000 hectares) of West Bank land for their colonial projects. The racist Government of Israel has encouraged and enabled ever-greater levels of settler violence, illustrated by the recent arson and violent attacks on al-Hawwara village and so many Palestinian homes across the West Bank.

Israeli colonies and outposts established illegally and in contravention of international legitimacy, has reached 572 in number, inhabited by 850,000 illegal Jewish settlers, uprooted more than two million trees that used to stand as a testament to this land’s Arab and Palestinian nature, and demolished more than 12,350 Palestinian houses in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territories.

The ongoing demolition operations are not restricted to only this part of Palestine. In fact, doing the bidding of the Jewish National Fund, the Israeli military and police have demolished al-`Araqib village inside the 1948 borders 214 times, while Israeli institutions have dried Lake Houla, stolen Jordan River water, and now are drying the Dead Sea.

Today, on the occasion of this Land Day (30 March 2023), we call the world to stand against this occupation that violates universal laws and norms. It is a shame to support it. A silent witness is a partner in crime.

On this glorious day commemorating the first Land Day uprising, we call on a silent world to rise up.

The blood of the Palestinian martyrs, like the roots of the olive, never dries, never to die.

A lie cannot survive, and a land cannot lie. As Palestinians, we hear our land sing its hymn: I am the mother of the Palestinian. From my womb my children were born, and will always live free within my reach.

Land Research Center – Jerusalem

Arab Studies Society

Jerusalem, Palestine

Land Day, 30 March 2023

Photo: Palestinian women raising the national flag over their land on Land Day. Source: Arab America.