LECTURE - [Summary]

To better situate the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Dr. Rachad Antonius, sociology professor at UQAM gave a brief history of Zionism (and anti-Semitism in Europe) as well as its development in Israel and the occupied territories.

The socio-cultural changes that affected Europe after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution gave rise to hopes for Jews to constitute a Jewish state. At the same time, anti-Semitism developed with pogroms and killings of Jewish people in Europe and tsarist Russia.

The Dreyfus Affair, which takes its name after the Jewish French officer falsely accused of treason and spying for Germany, was a significant event that affected Theodore Herzl. With his book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), he founded Zionism, a movement for the creation of a Jewish state.

Herzl attempted to convince the Ottoman sultan to establish a Jewish state on Palestinian territory, territory that Herzl considered not populated. Because of the Ottoman Empire’s economic problems, Palestinian territories were gradually sold to Jerusalem and Beirut’s influential businessmen. These territories became mainly the property of the Jewish National Fund, an organization especially created for the purpose of funding a Jewish state.

The purchase agreement with which the Jewish National Fund bought the territories stipulates that those territories would be emptied of their inhabitants. But the farmers that had lived there for generations and that paid their taxes to the sultan did not need to leave their lands. The contrary happened, though, with the new owners of territories. This was the first manifestation of violence against the Palestinian people. The expulsion done with the aid of British soldiers caused the displacement of 750,000 to 950,000 inhabitants.

With the end of the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations gave Britain and France the mandate to help the provinces of the empire achieve their independence. Only Palestine was designated by mandate to become a state for the Jewish people. In 1947, the United Nations recognized the partition of territories in two distinct lands, Israel and Palestine. This took place after the many conflicts and disputes that occurred from the end of the First World War. At the beginning of the last century, the Jewish population on the territory reached 6%. Antonius says that the goal of immigration strategies was for that proportion to reach 33% and that the partition plan gave 58% of the territory to Israel.

According to Antonius, after the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, Israel used Jamal Abdel Nasser’s bellicose discourse to attack its neighbours and realize its expansionist ambitions by maintaining its presence in the occupied territories. Neither the United States, nor Britain, nor Canada recognizes Israeli’s occupation of the territories. And Israel never returned to the armistice line recognized by a majority of states in the world including the Arab states.

In 1993, the Oslo Accords constituted a step forward. For the first time, the two parties officially recognized themselves. However, during that same year Israel continued expanding its colonies in the occupied territories. Antonius underlines the fact that Palestinians who are citizens of Israel have more rights than any citizen in any Arab country. He however regrets that all citizens do not have the same rights in Israel and that there is a state of apartheid in the country. Notwithstanding today’s dark state of affairs, Antonius envisages one country where Israeli and Palestinian citizens would be united and have the same rights.

Ali Paknezhad