Occupation Therapy Part #2: Peeling Back the Onion of Occupation

(Please note: This blog does not advocate violence or the destruction of any people or their homes. Besides the factual, verifiable historical information posted in this blog, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.)

One of my Christian friends asks me this question: “Isn’t the land that Israel ‘occupies,’ stolen from the Palestinians?” She continues: “I mean it was originally called ‘Palestine,’ right?” Like many mainline Christians, she associates Palestinian identity with a specific area of the world.

I prepare for a brief history lesson for my friend, whom we will call "January." She, like many secular Liberals and mainline Christians, approaches the Palestinian/Palestine conundrum with a couple of misinformed narratives. January believes that the phrase: “Free Palestine” means that Palestine is a country like any other country on the planet. She thinks Israel stole it from the Palestinian people in the same way that white colonialists stole the North American Continent from the Native American peoples.

Applying this lens, she concludes that Israel is occupying “stolen” land for “colonial” purposes. (In future posts, I will examine the concept of colonialism and why it doesn’t apply to Israel’s existence in the Middle East.)

It’s important to note that twisting facts and manipulating historical scenarios are some of the ways that well-intentioned Christians come to many inaccurate conclusions. 

Let’s unpack the assumptions about Palestine and Palestinians, Israel, and the accusations that paint Israel as a felonious land-stealing illegitimate country aimed at destroying, colonizing, enslaving, and persecuting the Palestinians. 

Quick review: In the last post, we explored two 1947 maps. In the first map (above), the color green represents land supposedly owned or belonging to Arab Palestinians in 1947, the color white represents land owned by Jews.

The second 1947 map (below) shows the UN Partition Plan, which proposes, in the same green and white colors, how the land is to be divided to create two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The green land is significantly less in the second map than in the first map, leading the uninformed to conclude that Palestinian Arabs lost land and subsequently suffered the displacement of Arab Palestinians

What the green and white propaganda maps don’t show is important. 

The Partition Plan was never implemented. Israel accepted the plan; the Arab League nations rejected it. When Israel declared itself a country in 1948, six Arab countries attacked it. (More on this in my next post.) 

The map of the Plan shows the entire area that the British Mandate was commissioned to administer with a specific goal of creating a Jewish homeland as well as an Arab state.

“Palestine” was a territory operated under a British Mandate, because it was not a “country” or a “state.” It’s difficult for my Christian friend to understand that, unlike the British Empire, the foundation of Israel was not designed to “colonize” Arab peoples or to create an “apartheid” state.

January is beginning to understand a little more about the scope of history. Nonetheless, she quotes some slogans from the signs the streets of New York City. One such sign reads: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”

I ask her what that phrase means, and she responds that it means Palestine should be “free” of Israeli occupation.  

When I explain that the slogan—by definition—includes the destruction of Israel and the people who live there, she says quickly, “Oh no! I would never advocate for the destruction of Israel; I just want them to end the occupation of whatever territory they are occupying, give the Palestinians a state, and stop bombing Gaza. “

Unfortunately, January does not understand that this rallying cry calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and the creation of a State of Palestine in its place from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (see map below).

Walking through the souks in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, posters of Palestine without Israel on the maps are common; they also appear in Palestinian children’s textbooks like the page (below) from a third-grade schoolbook. Young students are taught that the State of Palestine exists from the “river to the sea” without Israel in it. 

While Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, publicly agrees with a two-state solution, this picture (below) indicates otherwise.

In order to clarify the situation for my friend, I try to help January understand the divisions and reconstructions of the lands once called Palestine—a term once coined by the Romans, who conquered and occupied the Holy Land after the time of Christ, in the second century CE. 

The Ottoman Empire conquered and occupied the region in 1516 and ruled it as “Ottoman Syria” largely undisrupted through the 20th century—some 400 years. The Ottoman Empire’s loss of their occupied land during WWI was redefined by the British under the British Mandate, which was in effect from 1920 to 1947. 

“Who were the Ottomans? And why have I never heard of them?” January asks.

So, I show her the Ottoman Empire map.

“Okay,” she says. “But I don’t see Palestine on the Ottoman map!”

“Exactly,” I say. “That area used to be an extension of Syria.”

 I didn’t want to drown my friend with information—just as today, I hope my post will serve to help the Christian reader understand some of the deliberate misrepresentations of history in the affairs of today’s Israeli-Palestinian peoples. 

I pull out the 1920 and 1921 maps and ask her, “Do you know who created the country of Jordan, and in what year Jordan became a country?” 

She looks at me incredulously. “What? We’re talking about Israel!” 

“Yes, but we’re also talking about other countries that were created at the same time as Israel!”

January’s expression is one of surprise and confusion. 

“Really?” She asks. 

I can see she’s becoming exasperated. “But the Holocaust created Israel. 1920 is way before the Holocaust (1941-1945).”

In 1921, the British government decided to separate the eastern part of the mandate and establish it as a distinct administrative entity called Transjordan, later known as the country of Jordan in 1946. Israel became a state in 1948 by the British Mandate.

Then, January’s questions fly: “What about the West Bank? And Gaza?”

Having just left her with the formation of Jordan, I decide that we will take a break and return later for a synopsis of what happened when Israel was formed and why war was the outcome of that transaction.

To my readers, please stay tuned for Part 3 of Occupation Therapy or Peeling the Occupation Onion.

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