In the process of our Western indoctrination in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many of us were never introduced to who “Palestinians” where or the *mechanics* of creating a Jewish state. We’re taught romantic ideas of self-determination and simplified stories of refugees escaping the horrors of the Holocaust (despite this happening long after Zionist ambitions began). Israel was, and in many is, seen as a pragmatic solution to Europe’s problem (namely, the “Jewish problem”). The first thing to know about settler colonization is just how unpractical and unpragmatic it is. Settler colonies always have a “demographics” problem — which should already be a red flag if one has to say that. People need great incentive to leave their home countries, while people living there have no natural incentive to leave—hence why they’re there in the first place!
Of course when you learn who Palestinians are, and start to investigate Israel’s creation, the obvious dilemma stands out on the page:
How does one create a “Jewish state” on a land that is overwhelmingly not Jewish?
Many of us were trained to stay so far away from this conflict that we never reached this very obvious question, nor its very, very obvious answer. How do you create a Jewish state on a land that is overwhelming non-Jewish?
You remove the non-Jews.
Israel never wanted Palestinians in their country. Israel is not simply Jewish, it is also explicitly not Palestinian. To be Palestinian is to be the anti-thesis of Israel. Even the Arab Israeli minority, which is mostly Palestinian, is only referred to as “Arab”. And that experience and label is bad enough in Israel.
The idea that Israel has even been entitled to such aspirations is itself a crime against humanity and works to dehumanize Palestinians every single day. The idea that they could seize people’s land, kick them out of their homes of countless generations, then ham-fisted-ly “find” a state that was still after decades of disposession just under 50% Arab — and we *still* don’t abhor that — abhors me.
"Herzl replied—and quickly, in a letter on March 19. His letter was probably the first response by a leader of the Zionist movement to a cogent Palestinian objection to its embryonic plans for Palestine. Herzl simply ignored the letter’s basic thesis, that Palestine was already inhabited by a population that would not agree to be supplanted. Although Herzl had visited Palestine once, in an 1898 visit timed to coincide with that of German Kaiser Wilhelm II, he (like most early European Zionists) had not much knowledge of or contact with its native inhabitants. Glossing over the fact that Zionism was ultimately meant to lead to Jewish control of Palestine, Herzl deployed a justification that has been a touchstone for colonialists and that would become a staple argument of the Zionist movement: Jewish immigration would benefit Palestine’s Indigenous inhabitants. “It is their well-being, their individual wealth, which we will increase by bringing in our own,” Herzl wrote, adding that “no one can doubt that the well-being of the entire country would be the happy result.” Herzl’s letter addressed a consideration that Yusuf Diya had not even raised: “You see another difficulty, Excellency, in the existence of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. But who would think of sending them away?” But Herzl had underestimated his correspondent. From Yusuf Diya’s letter, it is clear that he understood perfectly well that at issue was not the immigration of (as Herzl put it) “a number of Jews” into Palestine, but rather the transformation of the entire land into a Jewish state. Instead, Herzl offered the preposterous inducement that the colonization, and ultimately the usurpation, of their land by strangers would benefit the people of that country. Herzl’s reply to Yusuf Diya appears to have been based on the assumption that the Arabs could ultimately be bribed or fooled into ignoring what the Zionist movement actually intended for Palestine. This condescending attitude toward the intelligence, not to speak of the rights, of the Arab population of Palestine was to be serially repeated by Zionist, British, European, and American leaders in the decades that followed, down to the present day. As for the Jewish state that was ultimately created by the movement that Herzl founded, as Yusuf Diya foresaw, there was to be room for only one people, the Jewish people. As for the others, “sending them away” was indeed what happened, despite Herzl’s disingenuous remark." - Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017