All of Israel is “occupied” and Israelis are just “settlers who arrived with colonialism,” according to Official PA Daily
Excerpt of an op-ed by Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “Independence or colonialism?”
“Israel is celebrating ‘Independence’ Day! And the question is, independence from whom? Is the intention from the British Mandate? That is not logical, because Britain occupied Palestine for one single purpose – realizing the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) through the establishment of the Jewish national home – and it fulfilled its promise as well as possible (sic., Britain occupied the Land of Israel during World War I, and only issued the Balfour Declaration three years after the start of the war). Or is the intention independence from the Palestinian people’s rule over ‘the promised land,’ which continued for a long time? That cannot be, because Britain occupied a geographic area of land named Palestine, and that in and of itself constitutes recognition that this area of land has a historic name, and that there is a people that has dwelled in it for thousands of years (sic., the term “Palestinian” was used by the British to refer to both Jews and Arabs living in the Land of Israel, and had no national identity connected to it; further, the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period). Even the Balfour Promise itself did not succeed in ignoring this fact, and explicitly noted that the Jewish national home would be established in Palestine.
The question is whether the Zionist movement is a national liberation movement, like the rest of the liberation movements? Let us examine the answer together. All the liberation movements were established as a natural response to colonialism that arrived from across the sea and occupied their lands and peoples, and it was natural that they would resist this colonialist occupation. When the liberation movement succeeds in expelling the occupation from its land, this development is referred to as national independence. The Zionist movement arrived in Palestine with the British colonialism (sic., there was always a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, and large waves of Jewish immigration began in the early 1800s), and [the British colonialism] is the one that provided it with absolute support, so that it would take the place of the Palestinian people and establish a political entity on the ruins of its historical homeland. The residents of this entity are settlers who arrived with colonialism…
The Zionist movement built its narrative while establishing itself on false claims, and its ideology is a racist ideology that negates the existence of the other. In this sense, it is a colonialist movement, and it occupied Palestine in two stages: the first in 1948, and the second in 1967. So what kind of independence is this, when it comes at the expense of another people, and at the expense of another people’s rights? What is happening is nothing but the most despicable form of colonialism.”
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.