The following article has been extracted from a Facebook post with permission.
Walter Brynjolfson
I was recently asked by a couple friends to explain the Palestinian perspective in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Having lived and studied in the occupied Palestinian territories for a couple years, I thought I might have something to contribute in this area. If you likewise feel confused by the flurry of often-contradictory messages in the media and are curious to know how Palestinians might see things, I invite you to read on. Even if only as an exercise of empathy and curiosity (both values worth having in our increasingly polarized world).
Bear in mind a few caveats: Firstly, this rather simplistic summary is intended for a North American audience (with a bonus to people living in my local area). Anyone reading it who lived in Israel or Palestine might, for good reason, be put off by its reductive simplicity and the fact that I, a non Palestinian, have the gall to be a self-appointed ambassador. I hope the need for brevity is enough to justify the simplicity, and as for the latter concern, I feel Palestinians have bigger fish to fry right now than to try to explain their perspective to a bunch of suburbanite Vancouverites. So I hope my I/P readers will forgive me. Secondly, I want to give the caveat that if you'd like to learn the Israeli perspective, I have not included much of it here. However, you should be encouraged to know that since the pro-Israel perspective tends to be the default among North American political parties and news organizations, you won't have to look too far! In fact, it already might be entrenched in how you view the conflict. Finally, I'm pretty certain I have primary and/or secondary sources for all the historical claims and figures I mention below, so if you'd like to see any of those please don't hesitate to comment.
So, without further ado, here is my summarized Canadian white-boy understanding of the Palestinian perspective.
I was recently asked by a couple friends to explain the Palestinian perspective in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Having lived and studied in the occupied Palestinian territories for a couple years, I thought I might have something to contribute in this area. If you likewise feel confused by the flurry of often-contradictory messages in the media and are curious to know how Palestinians might see things, I invite you to read on. Even if only as an exercise of empathy and curiosity (both values worth having in our increasingly polarized world).
Bear in mind a few caveats: Firstly, this rather simplistic summary is intended for a North American audience (with a bonus to people living in my local area). Anyone reading it who lived in Israel or Palestine might, for good reason, be put off by its reductive simplicity and the fact that I, a non Palestinian, have the gall to be a self-appointed ambassador. I hope the need for brevity is enough to justify the simplicity, and as for the latter concern, I feel Palestinians have bigger fish to fry right now than to try to explain their perspective to a bunch of suburbanite Vancouverites. So I hope my I/P readers will forgive me. Secondly, I want to give the caveat that if you'd like to learn the Israeli perspective, I have not included much of it here. However, you should be encouraged to know that since the pro-Israel perspective tends to be the default among North American political parties and news organizations, you won't have to look too far! In fact, it already might be entrenched in how you view the conflict. Finally, I'm pretty certain I have primary and/or secondary sources for all the historical claims and figures I mention below, so if you'd like to see any of those please don't hesitate to comment.
So, without further ado, here is my summarized Canadian white-boy understanding of the Palestinian perspective.
Palestinians trace their lineage and connection to the land as far back as pre-biblical times. Even in the Jewish Holy scriptures, the Torah (specifically the book of Genesis) it talks about how when Abraham first arrived to settle the land he encountered people who were already living there known as the Canaanites. One group of Canannites were the Philistines. It’s from these influential people where the name Palestinian is derived. In fact, the Arabic language doesn’t have a “P” sound so to this day Palestinians call themselves “filastiniun”. That said, current day Palestinians see themselves as a mix of various people groups who came and settled in the fertile crescent over the course of 2 millennia of trade, war and settlement. For example, my landlord in Bethlehem had red hair and blue eyes and believed he was a descendent of a European crusader.
Fast forward a bit. During the mid to late 19th century Palestinians were living under the rule of the Ottomans. At the time, about 5% of the population was Jewish-Palestinian, 30% was Christian, and the rest were Muslim. All of these people lived, for the most part, very peacefully with each other. They hadn’t formed a concept of Palestinian national self-determination, per se, (the idea of a nation state arrived relatively late in the Middle East compared to Europe and the Americas) but the yoke of Ottoman oppression was heavy and the concept of an Arab nation was beginning to foment. It’s important to know that Palestinians did have a distinct identity with their own culture, Arabic dialects, and traditions.
Enter the Jewish settlers. Bolstered by the Zionist movement and a hope for a Jewish state, they began to arrive from Russia and Europe. They were escaping harsh persecution (mostly pogroms, like in Fiddler on the Roof) and were desperate for peace and safety, but the way they chose to interact with the locals was inherently problematic. Imagine if thousands of Syrian refugees arrived in Langley, bought huge chunks of land in Brookswood from absentee landlords, then isolated themselves in religiously and ideologically zealous communes. Then imagine those refugees refused to participate in Canadian society, refused to learn our language, and generally treated everyone with suspicion and derision. Then further imagine that they often boasted about their belief that they would someday conquer all of Canada, and they continued to immigrate en masse to do so (with the help of extremely powerful foreign countries, I should add). Everything I described is pretty much exactly what the Palestinians experienced, or at least, how they saw things. Under these conditions, it seems understandable that the locals would become a bit frustrated. After all, to the natives of Palestine, this is basically the all-too familiar history of settler colonialism.
The British didn’t help with their colonial scheming either. They convinced the Arabs to help them fight the Ottomans, and in return, promised to give them national self-determination on the land where they lived. This strategy worked and they pushed back the Ottomans (see Lawrence of Arabia for a fun depiction of this) but they simultaneously promised the land to the Jewish people (see Balfour Declaration). Turns out the Brits just wanted it for themselves. Go figure. And the British administration was terrible. Conflict between Arabs and Jewish Settlers started getting violent in 1913 and quickly escalated into general strikes and occasional riots (1910s, 20s, and 30s). At this time the idea of Palestinian National Self Determination was growing very strong and widespread (as shown by primary documents like Palestinian newspapers). I mention this point just to contrast with the Israeli narrative that says “Palestine never existed” or “there was never a country called Palestine.” While the latter claim has some truth, neither was there a nation-state called Israel in modern history. Both existed in the minds and hopes of their forbearers.
By the late 40s, Jewish settlers, many of whom came to flee the furnaces of the holocaust, had by now taken huge chunks of previously-held Palestinian land. Jewish immigrants now made up a sizeable portion of the demographics of the British Mandate of Palestine. The settlers were also often very well armed. Understandably, the Palestinians were feeling increasingly resentful of the British occupiers and the threatening Jewish immigrants. Then in 1948 the colonizing Brits did what colonizers do best and started arbitrarily drawing up territorial boundaries without consulting the locals. They divided the land between Israelis and Palestinians, giving the most fertile lands to the Israelis. Then the Brits left.
The sudden power vacuum resulted in what Palestinians Call “Al Nakba”, or “the Catastrophe” in Arabic. In the ensuing war, the well armed Zionist forces expelled around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages (approximately 500 villages in total), creating what is still to this day the largest refugee population in the world and perpetrating crimes on the scale of ethnic cleansing. They also took more land than was originally given to them by the British. So if we imagine the Refugees in Langley Scenario that I described above… that would be everyone in Langley, Surrey, and Maple Ridge suddenly forced to flee for their lives. Those of us who live in Langley would lose everything and have to start from scratch in a shanty town. All because some colonizers decided to give your land to a bunch of fundamentalist and violent refugee immigrants (that is, at least, how the Palestinians saw things).
Luckily, the neighboring Arab countries tried to join in the fight and help, but the fighting ultimately ended in a stalemate with a long contentious ceasefire line known as the "green line." This line is now the internationally recognized border between Israel and Palestine.
Fast forward to 1967. War breaks out again between Israel and neighbouring Arab countries. This “war” (I put that in quotes because it only lasted 6 days) was used as an excuse by Israel to steam-roll into the rest of Palestine and occupy it all. The result was another huge refugee crisis (estimated 300,000 refugees). More towns were depopulated. It was another catastrophe.
When I talk about these facts and figures it’s hard to really understand the tole of human suffering. These are people who had worked for generations on their land. They had centuries-old olive trees on their properties that had been planted by their great-great-great grandfathers. EVERYTHING was suddenly lost, leading to a society-wide collective trauma on a scale that we as Canadians could never truly understand.
I go into all this detail because it’s important to understand the sheer level of injustice and despair felt by Palestinians. On top of that, they felt completely alone. The international community generally sided with Israel (being as the Jewish people had just barely survived the worst atrocity in human history) while the political leaders of Palestine’s old allies Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon had mostly lost interest in their cause. With this context, it’s easy to understand how so many Palestinians eventually became susceptible to the extremist and violent messages of groups like Hamas.
After the 1967 war, fully occupied by the Israeli military, things only got worse and worse in the occupied Palestinian Territories. People were being crushed under the boot of military oppression. Land was arbitrarily taken. People were arbitrarily arrested, harassed or beaten. Settlers kept pouring in and taking all the remaining fertile lands from peasant farmers. Despite all of this, Palestinians had no recourse since Israeli Military Law courts dolled out lopsided justice. All of this led eventually to the Intifadas (“tremors” in Arabic). These were masss uprisings. Every single Palestinian living in the OPT participated in these massive protests, from the grandmas to the little kids. Despite what is often portrayed in the media, only a small minority of people who participated were violent. Most people resisted non-violently and were subsequently beaten or arrested for going on strike, refusing to obey curfews, waving Palestinian flags, and even doing things as innocuous as milking their own cows (see a wonderful documentary called the Wanted 18).
Some Palestinians started to retaliate with extreme violence perpetrated against civilians. For example, the first bus bombings started to happen in 1994 as a retaliation against a mass-shooting that happened in a Hebron Mosque. A right-wing extremist Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein walked into the mosque of Abraham and shot a crowd of worshippers, killing 29 people. After this Hamas called on people to begin explosively violent retaliation.
At this time, Israeli officials kept blaming Palestinian leaders. They claimed (and continue to claim) that Israel was trying to support a two-state solution and they blamed Palestinians for refusing to negotiate… but the reality is, when you look at what the Israelis were willing to concede, it was often insultingly insufficient. If we go back to the Refugees in Langley scenario. Imagine those refugees have now occupied and terrorized all of the lower mainland including Vancouver with their extremely powerful army. Then imagine they offer peace by saying they will concede Whalley and Aldergrove. Would you be willing to accept that offer?
Eventually an agreement was reached in the 90s (mediated by Israel's long time ally, the USA). It stipulated, in part, that Israel would gradually pull out of the occupied Palestinian territories. In reality, the very opposite happened. Even as these negotiations were happening Israel continued to build illegal settlements. At no point did Israel show any signs of relenting its expansionist policy. To this day, if you visit the OPT, there are massive sprawling Israeli settlements all over the place. Hundreds of them. The sheer scale of construction revealing Israel’s true intentions, to stay forever in the OPT.
Throughout all of this, and especially after the 1967 war, the international community gradually began to realize the hypocrisy and injustice of Israel’s actions. Several UN resolutions were made to declare the illegality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and their settler expansionism, but to no avail. With the determined support of the U.S. (who had veto power in the security council), Israel continued to get away with everything.
So now, imagine you’re living in a refugee camp in Aldergrove. Your camp used to be a hastily built tent-city on some farmer’s land, but over the decades it became a sprawling concrete jungle of badly built 7-story cement buildings. You and your family depend on the UNHCR for basic provisions and education for your kids. There’s a massive 18 foot concrete wall with barbed wire running down Fraser Highway. The economy is piss-poor and there’s a family of your "enemy" living in your home. Not the most pleasant experience to say the least.
Now, fast forward to today. It is estimated that over 80% of children in Gaza have PTSD. Despair and hopelessness have become cultural norms in Palestine. The news and peoples’ Facebook feeds are constantly bombarded with stories of arbitrary arrests, police brutality, land confiscations, home demolitions, settler expansion, and to make matters worse, global apathy. Mix a bit of religious zealotry in there, and you can see why people might be motivated to throw stones at tanks, launch crudely made rockets at a global military superpower, and otherwise behave like any living creature would when it's been threatened, cornered and abused.
Sadly the story of the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah (a neighborhood of East Jerusalem) that led, in part, to all the violence we see now, was a straw that broke the camels back. These kinds of evictions happen all the time. Here in the West, we only catch glimpses of daily reality for Palestinians.
Anyways… this could somewhat be qualified as the Palestinians perspective. Though it mostly consists of the Palestinian perspective of the people I met, who might not be representative of the entire population. For example, I don’t believe I ever met any Hamas supporters, so they might summarize their perspective differently.
Fast forward a bit. During the mid to late 19th century Palestinians were living under the rule of the Ottomans. At the time, about 5% of the population was Jewish-Palestinian, 30% was Christian, and the rest were Muslim. All of these people lived, for the most part, very peacefully with each other. They hadn’t formed a concept of Palestinian national self-determination, per se, (the idea of a nation state arrived relatively late in the Middle East compared to Europe and the Americas) but the yoke of Ottoman oppression was heavy and the concept of an Arab nation was beginning to foment. It’s important to know that Palestinians did have a distinct identity with their own culture, Arabic dialects, and traditions.
Enter the Jewish settlers. Bolstered by the Zionist movement and a hope for a Jewish state, they began to arrive from Russia and Europe. They were escaping harsh persecution (mostly pogroms, like in Fiddler on the Roof) and were desperate for peace and safety, but the way they chose to interact with the locals was inherently problematic. Imagine if thousands of Syrian refugees arrived in Langley, bought huge chunks of land in Brookswood from absentee landlords, then isolated themselves in religiously and ideologically zealous communes. Then imagine those refugees refused to participate in Canadian society, refused to learn our language, and generally treated everyone with suspicion and derision. Then further imagine that they often boasted about their belief that they would someday conquer all of Canada, and they continued to immigrate en masse to do so (with the help of extremely powerful foreign countries, I should add). Everything I described is pretty much exactly what the Palestinians experienced, or at least, how they saw things. Under these conditions, it seems understandable that the locals would become a bit frustrated. After all, to the natives of Palestine, this is basically the all-too familiar history of settler colonialism.
The British didn’t help with their colonial scheming either. They convinced the Arabs to help them fight the Ottomans, and in return, promised to give them national self-determination on the land where they lived. This strategy worked and they pushed back the Ottomans (see Lawrence of Arabia for a fun depiction of this) but they simultaneously promised the land to the Jewish people (see Balfour Declaration). Turns out the Brits just wanted it for themselves. Go figure. And the British administration was terrible. Conflict between Arabs and Jewish Settlers started getting violent in 1913 and quickly escalated into general strikes and occasional riots (1910s, 20s, and 30s). At this time the idea of Palestinian National Self Determination was growing very strong and widespread (as shown by primary documents like Palestinian newspapers). I mention this point just to contrast with the Israeli narrative that says “Palestine never existed” or “there was never a country called Palestine.” While the latter claim has some truth, neither was there a nation-state called Israel in modern history. Both existed in the minds and hopes of their forbearers.
By the late 40s, Jewish settlers, many of whom came to flee the furnaces of the holocaust, had by now taken huge chunks of previously-held Palestinian land. Jewish immigrants now made up a sizeable portion of the demographics of the British Mandate of Palestine. The settlers were also often very well armed. Understandably, the Palestinians were feeling increasingly resentful of the British occupiers and the threatening Jewish immigrants. Then in 1948 the colonizing Brits did what colonizers do best and started arbitrarily drawing up territorial boundaries without consulting the locals. They divided the land between Israelis and Palestinians, giving the most fertile lands to the Israelis. Then the Brits left.
The sudden power vacuum resulted in what Palestinians Call “Al Nakba”, or “the Catastrophe” in Arabic. In the ensuing war, the well armed Zionist forces expelled around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages (approximately 500 villages in total), creating what is still to this day the largest refugee population in the world and perpetrating crimes on the scale of ethnic cleansing. They also took more land than was originally given to them by the British. So if we imagine the Refugees in Langley Scenario that I described above… that would be everyone in Langley, Surrey, and Maple Ridge suddenly forced to flee for their lives. Those of us who live in Langley would lose everything and have to start from scratch in a shanty town. All because some colonizers decided to give your land to a bunch of fundamentalist and violent refugee immigrants (that is, at least, how the Palestinians saw things).
Luckily, the neighboring Arab countries tried to join in the fight and help, but the fighting ultimately ended in a stalemate with a long contentious ceasefire line known as the "green line." This line is now the internationally recognized border between Israel and Palestine.
Fast forward to 1967. War breaks out again between Israel and neighbouring Arab countries. This “war” (I put that in quotes because it only lasted 6 days) was used as an excuse by Israel to steam-roll into the rest of Palestine and occupy it all. The result was another huge refugee crisis (estimated 300,000 refugees). More towns were depopulated. It was another catastrophe.
When I talk about these facts and figures it’s hard to really understand the tole of human suffering. These are people who had worked for generations on their land. They had centuries-old olive trees on their properties that had been planted by their great-great-great grandfathers. EVERYTHING was suddenly lost, leading to a society-wide collective trauma on a scale that we as Canadians could never truly understand.
I go into all this detail because it’s important to understand the sheer level of injustice and despair felt by Palestinians. On top of that, they felt completely alone. The international community generally sided with Israel (being as the Jewish people had just barely survived the worst atrocity in human history) while the political leaders of Palestine’s old allies Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon had mostly lost interest in their cause. With this context, it’s easy to understand how so many Palestinians eventually became susceptible to the extremist and violent messages of groups like Hamas.
After the 1967 war, fully occupied by the Israeli military, things only got worse and worse in the occupied Palestinian Territories. People were being crushed under the boot of military oppression. Land was arbitrarily taken. People were arbitrarily arrested, harassed or beaten. Settlers kept pouring in and taking all the remaining fertile lands from peasant farmers. Despite all of this, Palestinians had no recourse since Israeli Military Law courts dolled out lopsided justice. All of this led eventually to the Intifadas (“tremors” in Arabic). These were masss uprisings. Every single Palestinian living in the OPT participated in these massive protests, from the grandmas to the little kids. Despite what is often portrayed in the media, only a small minority of people who participated were violent. Most people resisted non-violently and were subsequently beaten or arrested for going on strike, refusing to obey curfews, waving Palestinian flags, and even doing things as innocuous as milking their own cows (see a wonderful documentary called the Wanted 18).
Some Palestinians started to retaliate with extreme violence perpetrated against civilians. For example, the first bus bombings started to happen in 1994 as a retaliation against a mass-shooting that happened in a Hebron Mosque. A right-wing extremist Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein walked into the mosque of Abraham and shot a crowd of worshippers, killing 29 people. After this Hamas called on people to begin explosively violent retaliation.
At this time, Israeli officials kept blaming Palestinian leaders. They claimed (and continue to claim) that Israel was trying to support a two-state solution and they blamed Palestinians for refusing to negotiate… but the reality is, when you look at what the Israelis were willing to concede, it was often insultingly insufficient. If we go back to the Refugees in Langley scenario. Imagine those refugees have now occupied and terrorized all of the lower mainland including Vancouver with their extremely powerful army. Then imagine they offer peace by saying they will concede Whalley and Aldergrove. Would you be willing to accept that offer?
Eventually an agreement was reached in the 90s (mediated by Israel's long time ally, the USA). It stipulated, in part, that Israel would gradually pull out of the occupied Palestinian territories. In reality, the very opposite happened. Even as these negotiations were happening Israel continued to build illegal settlements. At no point did Israel show any signs of relenting its expansionist policy. To this day, if you visit the OPT, there are massive sprawling Israeli settlements all over the place. Hundreds of them. The sheer scale of construction revealing Israel’s true intentions, to stay forever in the OPT.
Throughout all of this, and especially after the 1967 war, the international community gradually began to realize the hypocrisy and injustice of Israel’s actions. Several UN resolutions were made to declare the illegality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and their settler expansionism, but to no avail. With the determined support of the U.S. (who had veto power in the security council), Israel continued to get away with everything.
So now, imagine you’re living in a refugee camp in Aldergrove. Your camp used to be a hastily built tent-city on some farmer’s land, but over the decades it became a sprawling concrete jungle of badly built 7-story cement buildings. You and your family depend on the UNHCR for basic provisions and education for your kids. There’s a massive 18 foot concrete wall with barbed wire running down Fraser Highway. The economy is piss-poor and there’s a family of your "enemy" living in your home. Not the most pleasant experience to say the least.
Now, fast forward to today. It is estimated that over 80% of children in Gaza have PTSD. Despair and hopelessness have become cultural norms in Palestine. The news and peoples’ Facebook feeds are constantly bombarded with stories of arbitrary arrests, police brutality, land confiscations, home demolitions, settler expansion, and to make matters worse, global apathy. Mix a bit of religious zealotry in there, and you can see why people might be motivated to throw stones at tanks, launch crudely made rockets at a global military superpower, and otherwise behave like any living creature would when it's been threatened, cornered and abused.
Sadly the story of the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah (a neighborhood of East Jerusalem) that led, in part, to all the violence we see now, was a straw that broke the camels back. These kinds of evictions happen all the time. Here in the West, we only catch glimpses of daily reality for Palestinians.
Anyways… this could somewhat be qualified as the Palestinians perspective. Though it mostly consists of the Palestinian perspective of the people I met, who might not be representative of the entire population. For example, I don’t believe I ever met any Hamas supporters, so they might summarize their perspective differently.
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