Solidarity with the Palestinian people against violence and occupation

Dr. Md. Enamul Hoque :

29 November each year, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, is a step to recognizing the inhuman and brutal injustices occurring on Palestine and Palestinians.

In practicc, the observance of the day is not significant; however, this day serves as a general reminder to the rest of the world that there are ever growing factors that continue to implement misery and suffering among Palestinian people. The current conditions of Palestine continue to worsen as time passes by.

We express our deepest and strongest solidarity with the Palestinians who have been inhumanly and brutally under attacked by the Israel with the direct support of the USA and many western counties for more than a century.

The Palestinians are the natives and owner of their state ‘Palestine’, while the Jews are the settlers and occupiers who created the state “Israel” for Jews coming from Europe and from the other parts of the world after 1st world war.

The State of Palestine is the native home of 5,371,230 people equivalent to 0.07% of the total world population.

The conflict starts with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, a public pledge by Britain declaring establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

The then-foreign secretary of Britain, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter on November 2, 1917 to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jews community promising a land for Jews where Palestinian Arab made up more than 91 percent of the population.

The Israeli-Palestine conflict started in 1917 from then; tens and thousands of lives have been killed by the occupiers Israeli soldiers and displaced many millions of people.

Recently, since October 7th, 2023, more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 6000 children and 5000 women, more than 30,000 have been injured, and displaced countless more.

The exact number of casualties is impossible to be measured.

Thousands of children are trapped under the rubble; more than 70% of fatalities are children, women, and the elderly people.

Approximately 1.5 million individuals in Gaza are internally displaced, seeking refuge either in UNRWA schools, hospitals, churches, or with host families.

A British Mandate was enacted in 1923 and lasted until 1948.

During that period, the British facilitated huge number of Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe.

Palestinians protested on street and were alarmed by their country’s changing demographics and British confiscation of their lands to be handed over to Jewish settlers.

Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population.

By 1947, the Jewish population had ballooned to 33 percent of Palestine, but they owned only 6 percent of the land.

At that time, the Palestinians owned 94 percent of historic Palestine and comprised 67 percent of its population.

The revolt of Palestinians began in late 1936, which is called the Arab Revolt of 1936-39.

In 1939, Britain sent 30,000 troops in Palestine.

During the revolt of three years, tens and thousands of Palestinians were killed, wounded, and were imprisoned.

The United Nations adopted Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.

The Palestinians rejected the plan because it allotted about 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state, including most of the fertile coastal region.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.

The U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day.

The following day, the first Arab-Israeli war began and fighting ended in January 1949 after an armistice between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

On June 5, 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab armies.

Since then, the Israeli government has established a two-tiered legal and political system that provides comprehensive rights for Jewish Israeli settlers while imposing military rule and control on Palestinians without any basic protections or rights under international law.

The first Palestinian Intifada erupted in the Gaza Strip in December 1987 after four Palestinians were killed.

It also led to the establishment of the Hamas movement. In 1988, the Arab League recognised the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

The Intifada ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an interim government that was granted limited self-rule in pockets of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In 1993, the PLO recognised Israel on the basis of a two-state solution and effectively signed agreements that gave Israel control of 60 percent of the West Bank, and much of the territory’s land and water resources.

In 1995, Israel built an electronic fence and concrete wall around the Gaza Strip, snapping interactions between the split Palestinian territories.

According to the international law, settlements are illegal, but over the years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved to colonies built on stolen Palestinian land.

In the recent decades, Israel has launched five military assaults on Gaza: in 2008-209, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2023 starting from 07 October.

Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including many children, tens of thousands of homes, schools and office buildings have been destroyed.

The Gaza Strip, a 41-kilometre-long and 10-kilometre-wide strip of land located between Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, is currently under the control of Hamas who have been fighting against mighty Israel.

In 1947, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, and to make Jerusalem a separate city with special status under UN supervision.

The fact that this issue has persisted for so long and remains unresolved or neglected is a major cause of the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The untold suffering of Palestinians will not come into an end until the USA and its allies stop their irrational support to Israel, the settler colonial and apartheid state. We need a free Palestinian state.

We believe Israel is a reality; we hope the Palestinians can regain their nation defeating all the occupiers and enemies.

We, the people Bangladesh irrespective of columnists, researchers, artists, political and labour activists, and members of civil society stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine who for more than 100 years have been subjected to and resisted Israeli military occupation, separation, settlers and colonial violence, ethnic cleansing, land dispossession and apartheid.

(The writer is an educational researcher and teacher educator.)