‘After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine’
Alarge sign over an alleyway in the conservative Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in inner Jerusalem beseeches entrants to the area, in bold Hebrew and English, to refrain from immodest attire or other practices that might offend residents’ Orthodox precepts. Two large Palestinian flags have been painted on the stone walls on either side of the notice. The images are a silent but unignorable reminder of the existence of an indigenous population whom many of Mea Shearim’s locals and other citizens of Israel will go their whole lives without encountering.
Less than two kilometres away, in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, an elderly Palestinian woman has just been issued with an official Israeli order to demolish the home she was born into in 1952 in order to make way for Jewish settlers. Though her family has lived in the area since before Israel itself was founded, their 25-year battle with the authorities has been quashed by a court ruling, on the pretext that the site was Jewish property prior to 1948.1 ‘We will not leave, no matter what happens,’ she insists, ‘this home is our whole life, with all our memories.’ Nonetheless, her house is likely to join the some 1,000 structures destroyed each year in East Jerusalem and the West Bank for these purposes – part of a population transfer by the Israeli state that UN special rapporteurs recently branded an illegal and ‘deliberate intention to colonize the territory it occupies.’2,3
These quotidian events in the contested capital point to the inherent contradictions, historical revisions and material force that have underpinned the state of Israel in its efforts to subjugate – or altogether eliminate – the Palestinian people since its foundation in 1948. Across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), these efforts are appearing in ever more stark and violent forms which a growing number of voices are branding apartheid. The outset of 2023 marked the bloodiest start to a year in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in two decades, with over 150 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, including more than 20 minors.4 As Israel commemorates the 75th anniversary of its declaration of independence, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heralding the ‘miracles’ of its modern history to a divided nation, the fissures in Israeli statehood look increasing difficult to mask.
Narrating a nation
The renowned Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said once wrote: ‘history is written by those who win and those who dominate’. But much of the national history Netanyahu sought to evoke in his 75th anniversary speech is characterised by erasures.
Such sabotaging of history has been a feature of Israeli political and ideological discourse since its outset – but has been put on steroids following the formation in late 2022 of what has been deemed the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The months since have seen repeated public claims that, as Israel’s notorious new finance minister Bezalel Smotrich put it: ‘there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people’. As Israeli authorities step up their efforts to control the region’s history – including blocking access to official archives – Palestinians struggle to keep alive their own story and identity that has weathered a century of attacks. Its defining moment is the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, of 1948: the years 1947 to 1949 saw over 750,000 Palestinians – three-quarters of the population – driven from their homes by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army during the state’s establishment. More than 500 villages were destroyed and some 15,000 Palestinians killed, including brutal massacres like that of Deir Yassin.
