The Palestinian-Israeli Tragedy : Two Stories, Both True, Mutually Incompatible:
A Very Short Reference Atlas Part I
ENVS 144 Blood and Oil Alan Richards The perspective—mutual tragedy—adopted in this presentation is written up in my essay, “American Thinking About Violence in the Middle East”, UCSC Spring Foundation Forum Lecture, June, 2005. (See syllabus, Lecture 1).
See especially the section, “Rejecting Paradox” p. 10ff.
(2004 version at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgirs/ CGIRS-2004-9/ )
Palestine, 1914
• http://www.zionism- israel.com/maps/ Turkpa1.gif The British Mandate, Post-World War I
• http://upload.wikimedia.org/ wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/ BritishMandatePalestine1920.png/ 400px- BritishMandatePalestine1920.png The Israeli Story
• For Israelis (and many Jews), Zionism is Jewish nationalism. • This nationalism first arose in Central & Eastern Europe. • Like all nationalisms, it draws on history and religion for its formulas. • Like all nationalisms, it is “constructed”. • Zionism is, among other things, a perfectly understandable response to the long history of vicious persecution of Jews, especially in Europe. Jewish Expulsions and Migrations, Medieval Period Jewish Expulsions and Migrations, Medieval Period The “Pale of Settlement” From 1791 onward a "Pale of Settlement” was created after Catherine II restricts Jewish residence to either the territories annexed from Poland along the western border or to the territories taken from the Turks along the shores of the Black Sea. Later, other annexed territories were added to the Pale and Jews permitted to settle there as "colonizers." From the old Russia, Jews continue to be barred. The Nazi Holocaust Jewish Emigration from the Middle East, post-1948 One Geography of Fear
“Violence provokes fear, and people who are afraid will rarely act well.”
(Mark Kurlansky, Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. NY: Modern Library, 2008, p. 163) The Palestinian Story
• For Palestinians, Zionism is a form of settler- colonialism. • For them, Israel is a settler-colonial state (like the U.S., Canada, Australia, or South Africa under apartheid). • This colonialism is an heir to the long history of Western forcible seizure of land from non-Western peoples. • Palestinian nationalism—like most nationalisms– developed in response to a rival nationalism: Zionism. It, too, is “constructed.” Palestine, 1947: Population & U.N. Partition Plan A Second Geography of Fear Slow Death of the “Two-State Solution”? Slow Death of the “Two-State Solution”? Fear of Dispossession • http://media.ft.com/cms/ca244c5c-12c3-11dc-a475-000b5df10621.gif