A brief history of the complex identity of Palestine, Judaism and the rise of Political Zionism
Yasmine Modaresi (she/her) // Crew Writer
Andy Poystila (he/him) // Production Manager
For many people in the West, the Israel-Palestine conflict may appear to be a series of violent events rooted in deep-seated religious and political differences. However, a glimpse into the Middle East through the lens of Western media tends to be filled with biases and oversimplifications, which fail to address the region’s complex history that has culminated in the modern Israel-Palestine conflict. What is rarely given recognition in Western media is the fact that this conflict isn’t new, and the histories of Palestinians and Israelites are much more complex and surprising than short news excerpts can cover. While key phrases and ideologies like ‘Hamas,’ ‘Israel’ and ‘Zionism’ frequently fill the chyrons and headlines of news pieces, the distinct histories of these words—which shape the current ideological and political climate—often go unrecognized. A brief overview and introduction to the central elements of the conflict is often needed to facilitate a more thorough understanding of how today’s ideological division manifested.
For over 3,000 years, Indigenous peoples have resided in what is now called Palestine, using the sea and the land to sustain themselves in tandem with the natural rhythm of the changing seasons. One of the earliest records of the Palestinians dates back to 2285 BCE in Ancient Egypt. Perhaps due to the Indigenous population’s close relationship with the ocean, the Egyptians referred to the inhabitants as the ‘Sea People’ or the ‘Palesets.’ While the Indigenous population was constant, so too was colonial occupation throughout history, leading to ever-changing semantics when referring to the name of the people. For example, following the Roman occupation of modern Palestine in 135CE, the Romans renamed Judea “Syria Palaestina” following the crushing of Bar Kokhba as a way of legally diminishing the relationship between the Jewish people and the surrounding land. Still, with the turbulence of war and occupation littering human history, the Palestinian people had always been recognized as the natural inhabitants of their native land. A once commonly accepted reality, this narrative first began to shift around the end of the 1800s with the emergence of European Political Zionism, an ideology which sought to establish a Jewish ethnostate as a rebuke to the ongoing discrimination inflicted on the Jewish diaspora in Europe.
Before the founding of Israel, Zionism was a project with foundational aims of protecting Jewish populations rather than colonization. Across Europe, the Jewish diaspora had been oppressed and stripped of access to fundamental social and political freedoms for generations. Dating as far back as Medieval Europe, Anti-Semitic laws resulted in the persecution of Jewish people, forced conversions as well as systemic legal restrictions that set Jewish Europeans behind their peers in terms of land ownership, prohibitions and access to civil rights.
Having both migrated and been forcefully brought to Europe over a millennium ago from Judea and the surrounding regions—like Palestine—Jewish people in Europe were not permitted to fully integrate and receive equal treatment to their ‘White’ counterparts. The struggles of the Jewish diaspora in Europe are long-standing, and eventually, a long history of systemic oppression and prejudice against Jewish Europeans culminated in the creation of the Political Zionism movement in the late 19th century by Theodore Herzl.
Today, Zionism has many colonial and genocidal connotations: as a Zionist entity, it is the Israeli government that occupies land that they are not legally entitled to. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, adopted following the Six-Day War, called for the withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces during the conflict, and internationally deemed the territory acquired through war and conflict would be unlawful. Additionally, there have been several occasions on which the Israeli occupation has been legally recognized as violating the Geneva Convention, such as in the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion of 2004, where the court concluded that all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967—including East Jerusalem—were illegal settlements.
Modern connotations aside, Zionism was initially an empowerment movement designed to address the problem of Jewish rights, and establish a political body which would work to defend the human rights of the Jewish diaspora. Herzl published his most famous political work in the late 1800s, Ser Judenstaat, or The Jewish State, in response to rampant discrimination against Jewish people. For the first time in history, the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate (i.e. a political entity or nation where the population is dominated by a single racial or ethnic group) was advocated for. In the First Zionist Congress of 1897—soon after the release of The Jewish State—numerous options around the globe were proposed for the location of this homeland for the Jewish people of Europe and the world, including Uganda and Argentina.
During the early conception of the Political Zionist movement in the late 19th century, the central motivation for Herzl and other Jewish rights activists was stated to be ending the systemic oppression of Jewish people. In other words, it is unclear whether early Zionists considered that establishing an ethnostate in a foreign land—with its own unique history and population—would result in colonial violence. Motivations aside, the genuine consequences of creating this state began to unfold during WWI, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine, and from that point onward, Palestine became the definitive building site for the Zionist Jewish National home, which would appropriate the name ‘Israel’ from biblical literature.
The occupying forces in Palestine have been ongoing since the official establishment of Israel in 1948, with near constant records of defensive and offensive movement between sides. The events of October 7, 2023 led to greater international attention, with Western media creating a firm ideological divide. Often highlighted in Western media is the fact that Israel has proposed what they refer to as peace treaties on several occasions prior to the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis, and marking the beginning of a mass killing initiative on Palestinian civilians. Only a few months following October 7, in early 2024, there were approximately 25,000 Palestinian deaths, most of which were civilians. Throughout 2024, Israel’s bombing campaigns have targeted Palestinian hospitals, homes and refugee camps, forcing the people to continuously migrate as their homes and cities are lost to warfare. Over 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced since October 7, 2023.
The conflict continues to spark debates about the relationship between oppression and the ‘necessity of violence.’ Some argue that Israel has the right to defend itself, while others support the Palestinian people, who have endured what many call genocidal acts at the hands of a well-trained, heavily funded military. Still, some praise Hamas’ initial strike as an act of liberation, reflecting the idea that acts of violence are terrorism when perpetrated by the oppressor, but acts of liberty when perpetrated by the oppressed.
This is a brief overview of some aspects of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, and is non-exhaustive. While the history is complex, it is not as inaccessible as it sometimes appears. It can be difficult to tell the reputable news from the disreputable ones, but Al Jazeera often has very informative pieces about the ongoing conflict. There are also books available at the CapU Library such as On Palestine and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year War, which go into far greater detail about the history of conflicts in Palestine and the Middle East.
