Congratulations on printing Mia Swart’s most recent column, it is good to see another side to the unresolvable Israel-Palestine conflict (“No place to hide — the Gaza war through the lens of occupation”, October 24). However, in my view the issue reaches back to before World War 2.
Jewish people had for many years moved into the Palestine mandated territory in dribs and drabs and settled among the Arab/Palestinian people, largely without friction. As I understand it, at that time most Jews looking to settle elsewhere than their present locale preferred to emigrate to the US, and to a lesser extent England or parts of South America.
Then came the Nazi German persecution of the Jewish population of Europe and the Holocaust. The US prefers to forget that its pre-war policy was to deny immigration to many Jews. After the war and the utter defeat of Nazi Germany there was a vast flood of refugees from all over central Europe, and the attraction of Palestine, the biblically declared homeland for Jewish people, was obvious and irresistible.
The Western world, wracked with guilt for its pre-war treatment of Jewish people, banded together through the UN to create the State of Israel and assuage its collective guilt. The reality that Arab people were long settled on land given to the new nation was largely ignored, as they had no effective political and organisational power after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.
Understandably the Palestinians were fed up, and the newly created surrounding Arab states regarded this high-handed Western action as an affront to their people and the Muslim religion. Inevitably the Arabs got together and attacked Israel, starting the day after its formation in 1948.
They lost. The Arab states were not then willing to accept the huge number of Arab/Palestinian refugees into their territories as a result of their actions, and are still not. This does not change the fact that the majority of Jews in Israel are colonists, some there for three generations, and the Palestinians are still dispossessed of their land and property.
This does not excuse the recent Hamas atrocities. Sadly, the reality is that nations ultimately hold their land by force of arms (ask the Ukrainians). The Palestinian problem is exacerbated by the fact that the primary antagonists are also divided by their religious beliefs.
Robert Stone
Via email
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