“A thorough and comprehensive study of how Palestinian nationalism arose before the arrival of Zionism can be found in the works of Palestinian historians such as Muhammad Muslih and Rashid Khalidi. They clearly demonstrate that both the elite and non-elite sections of Palestinian society were involved in developing a national movement and sentiment before 1882. Khalisi in particular shows how patriotic feelings, local loyalties, Arabism, religious sentiments, and higher levels of education and literacy were the main constituents of the new nationalism, and how it was only later that resistance to Zionism played an additional crucial role in defining nationalism.
Khalidi, among others, demonstrates how modernization, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the greedy European quest for territories in the Middle East contributed to the solidification of Palestinian nationalism before Zionism made its mark in Palestine with the British promise of a Jewish homeland in 1917. One of the clearest manifestations of this new self-definition was the country’s reference to Palestine as a geographical and cultural entity, and later as a political one. Despite there not being a Palestinian state, the cultural location was very clear. There was a unifying sense of belonging. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, the newspaper Filastin reflected the way the people named their country. Palestinians spoke their own dialect, had their own customs and rituals, and appeared on the maps of the world as living in a country called Palestine.”
“Following the famous, or rather infamous, Sykes-Picot Agreement, signed in 1916 between Britain and France, the two colonial powers divided the area into new nation-states. As the area was divided, a new sentiment emerged: a more local variant of nationalism, known in Arabic as Wataniyya. As a result, Palestine began to see itself as an independent Arab State. Without the appearance of Zionism on its doorstep, Palestine would probably have gone the same way as Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria and embraced a process of modernization and growth.”
“Thus, Palestine was not an empty land. It was part of a rich and fertile Eastern Mediterranean that, in the nineteenth century, underwent processes of modernization and nationalism. It was not a desert waiting to come into bloom; it was a pastoral country on the verge of entering the twentieth century as a modern society, with all the benefits and ills that such a transformation entailed. Its colonization by the Zionist movement turned this process into a disaster for the majority of the native people living there.” Source: the Jewish historian Ilan Pappe in his book ‘Ten Myths about Israel’ [Verso] 2017, pages 7-8, 9 [emphasis added]
It was Zionism that prevented Palestine From Becoming an Independent & sovereign state.
Not only was Palestine not an ‘empty country’, but Zionism also – with the obliging support of the British – successfully prevented it from becoming an independent and sovereign state. Question: Is the so-called ‘two-state solution’ really a good solution? No, since the country was essentially a state in the making, Zionism never had any business there. And from this, it follows that Israel is an illegal entity. Therefore, it is definitely not ‘antisemitism’ to say that Zionism has to disappear!
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