Palestine

Palestine is a geographic region in Western Asia between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The name was used by Ancient Greek writers, and was later used for the Roman province Syria Palaestina, the Byzantine Palaestina Prima, and the Islamic provincial district of Jund Filastin. It is usually considered to include Israel and the State of Palestine, though some definitions also include parts of northwestern Jordan. Historical names for the region include Land of Israel, the Holy Land, and Canaan. As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics.

See Also: 2023 Israel–Hamas war

• All the regimes in the world have taken advantage of the Palestinian situation. The Arabs have exploited it to cement their authority and the West has taken advantage economically. Everyone has played around with us. When you’re a card, you can never fully know who’s holding you.
  • Hani Abbas, quoted by Patrick Hilsman, "Hani Abbas Extends the Vital Tradition of Political Cartooning in the Mideast", The Daily Beast (20 October 2013; updated 11 July 2017)

• People don't feel that safe being part of something that will be associated with the U.S. They get intimidated because they think they'll be on some type of grid.
  • Kefah Abukhdeir, a Palestinian American in Jerusalem originally from Atlanta, talking about trying to start a chapter of Democrats Abroad for Palestinians in Highly Motivated': In Israel, U.S. Voters Lean Toward Trump, NPR (3 November 2020)

• Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.
  • Yasser Arafat, addressing an Arab Summit in 1974, as quoted in TIME (11 November 1974), Vol. 104, No. 20

• It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of the myth that its homeland was a desert until it was made to bloom by the toil of foreign settlers, that it was a land without a people, and that the colonialist entity caused no harm to any human being. No: such lies must be exposed from this rostrum, for the world must know that Palestine was the cradle of the most ancient cultures and civilizations.
  • Yasser Arafat, text of his speech to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, archived by Al-Bab

• I have come bearing an olive branch and freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands.
  • Yasser Arafat, in 90-minute speech to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, reported in The New York Times on November 14, 1974

• His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.
  • Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917)

• A lesson we ignore at our peril is that oppression undermines not only the rights, dignity, and lives of the oppressed but eventually the security of the oppressors as well. The apartheid system that’s been suffocating Palestinians for so long is now also undermining the safety of Israeli civilians.
  • Phyllis Bennis, We Need an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza, Counterpunch, (October 20, 2023)

• I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers—it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
  • Aaron Bushnell, shortly before self-immolating in front of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., Air Force member dies after setting himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy, (February 25, 2024)

• For 40 years, Israel has been ruled mostly by a series of right-wing governments – more and more openly racist and abusive of Palestinian rights. It’s not the land of tree-planting, kibbutzim and “a country treating its Arab minority nicely” that we were sold as youngsters.
  • Jeff Cohen, "This Jew Tells Speaker Pelosi: 'You May Well Prove Ilhan Omar Correct'", CounterPunch (March 7, 2019)

• I sometimes fantasize vacationing in Greece or Italy but never do. If I have time and cost isn't prohibitive, I always return to Palestine. I do so mostly from a sense of duty – do I have a right to be elsewhere? – relieved by the authentic affection I've developed for friends. I cannot say I enjoy going back. From the moment I arrive, even before arriving, I count the minutes left before I depart. The eminent Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Gaza as "the largest concentration camp ever to exist." The West Bank ranks only a mite less awful. Once the Israeli wall currently under construction is finished, the West Bank will replace Gaza with top honors. Bordered on both sides by four meter deep trenches, fortified with guard towers at regular intervals, and topped with barbed wire, this massive barricade will stretch across fully 347 kilometers – twice the size of the Berlin Wall.
  • Norman Finkelstein, Postscript to the German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine

• For some reason, Israel’s critics just don’t want to believe the worst about a group like Hamas, even when it declares the worst of itself.
  • Sam Harris, "Why Don't I Criticize Israel?" (July 27, 2014)

• Lo! star-led chiefs Assyrian odours bring,
  And bending Magi seek their infant King!
  • Reginald Heber, "Palestine", in The Poetical Register, and Repository of Fugitive Poetry, for 1802, 2nd ed. (1803), p. 184

• At the beginning of 1968, the word Palestinian was generally used to refer to members of Arab guerrilla units, which were also frequently referred to in the Western press as terrorist organizations. These groups used the label Palestinian, as in the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestinian Revolution, the Palestine Revolutionary Youth Movement, the Vanguard for Palestine Liberation, the Palestinian Revolutionaries Front, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At least twenty-six such groups were operating before the 1967 war.
  • Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World (2004), pp. 17-18

• When were Palestinians born? What was all of this area before the First World War when Britain got the Mandate over Palestine? What was Palestine, then? Palestine was then the area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border. Eastern West Bank was Palestine. I am a Palestinian, from 1921 to 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews, and Arabs, and Palestinians, There were Jews and Arabs.
  • Golda Meir, "Iron Lady of Israeli politics", Thames TV (1970)

• Hail to the spot Heaven favoured, land divine,
  Revered, long-suffering, beauteous Palestine!
  • Nicholas Michell, from Ruins of Many Lands (1849; rev. 1854)

• Walk around Hebron, look at the streets; streets where Arabs are no longer allowed to go on, only Jews... That's exactly what happened there, in that dark country.
  • Amiram Levin, interviewed on Kan 11; "Former Israeli general compares treatment of Palestinians to 'Nazi Germany' and 'apartheid'", Middle East Eye (August 13, 2023)

• From all information I have been able to gather, the land in this neighbourhood [Ottoman Palestine] appears to be particularly favourable for agricultural speculation. There are groves of olive trees, I should think, more than five hundred years old, vineyards, much pasture, plenty of wells and abundance of excellent water; also fig trees, walnuts, almonds, mulberries, &c., and rich fields of wheat, barley, and lentils; in fact it is a land that would produce almost everything in abundance, with very little skill and labour.
  • Moses Montefiore in his diary, (written in Safed on 24 May 1839) quoted by Ruth Kark in "Agricultural Land in Palestine: Letters to Sir Moses Montefiore 1839", Jewish Historical Studies (1988)

• Many Jews now emigrate to New South Wales, Canada, &c.; but in the Holy Land they would find a greater certainty of success; here they will find wells already dug, olives and vines already planted, and a land so rich as to require little manure.
  • Moses Montefiore in his diary, (written in Safed on 24 May 1839) quoted by Ruth Kark in "Agricultural Land in Palestine: Letters to Sir Moses Montefiore 1839", Jewish Historical Studies (1988)

• The Palestinian people [do] not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism... For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
  • Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw (March 31, 1977)

• Neither Israeli nor Palestinian society is a seamless, monochrome garment: hope as well as difficulty lies in this recognition.
  • Adrienne Rich "Jewish Days and Nights" in Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, eds., Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) and A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008 (2009)

• It is the psychological problem of how to reconcile two powerful movements — the time-old yearning of the Jews to return to the Promised Land and to possess a home which is theirs as of right, and the Palestinian Arab desire for promotion to national status.
  • Great Britain and Palestine: 1915–1939 (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1937)

• I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
  • Winston Churchill in 1937, regarding the Palestinians; as quoted by Arundhati Roy, Come September Speech, Santa Fe, NM, (September 29, 2002)

• I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello, act 4, sc. 3 (Emilia)

• The pleasure of tending, tending
  something that will not be taken away.
  A family, a tree, growing for so long,
  finally fruiting olives, the benevolence of branch,
  and not to find a chopped trunk upon return.
  Confidence in a threshold. A little green.
  And quite a modest green untouched by drama.
  Or a mound of calico coverlets stuffed with wool,
  from one's own sheep, piled in a cupboard.
  To find them still piled. Is that too much?
  Not to dominate. Never to say we are the only
  people who count,
  or to be the only victims,
  the chosen, more holy or precious.
  No. Just to be ones who matter
  as much as any other, in a common way, as you
  might prefer.
  Stones and books and daily freedom.
  A little neighborly respect.
  • Naomi Shihab Nye "What Do Palestinians Want?" in Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

• Palestinians are, today, among the most victimized, scapegoated, and attacked people in the world. I watch as their suffering and mass murder is propagandized through pervasive dehumanized representations that falsely position them as "dangerous" when, in fact, they are the ones endangered and in desperate need of outside intervention.
  • Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016)

• Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
  Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
  • Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" (1915; expanded 1923)

• Palestinian liberation is an idea, unless you have a bomb that kills ideas — do you have a bomb that kills ideas? I mean, how long would it even take to bomb the shit out of an idea?
  • Jon Stewart, The Daily Show (February 26, 2024)

• Palestine is not the original home of the Jews. It was acquired by them after a ruthless conquest, and they have never occupied the whole of it, which they now openly demand. They have no more valid claim to Palestine, than the descendants of the ancient Romans have to this country. The Romans occupied Britain as long as the Israelites occupied Palestine, and they left behind them in this country far more valuable and useful work. If we are going admit claims based on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down.
  • Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922

• The future will not change if we continue to think with the same concepts of the past... If we believe we have a right to this land and the Israelis believe they are the ones who have a right to this land, we must build a new model. If both of us believe that God gave us this land, we must put history aside and begin to think about the future in different terms.
  • Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian West Bank Protest Leader: "Israel Killed the Two-state Solution", Haaretz (17 February 2013)

• Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli government’s de facto annexation policies.
  • A three-member Commission of Inquiry appointed by the UN, which wanted the issue to be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ); "Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory illegal: UN rights commission", United Nations News (October 20, 2022)

• Both the Germans and the Zionists wanted as many Jews as possible to move to Palestine. The Germans preferred to have them out of Western Europe, and the Zionists themselves wanted the Jews in Palestine to outnumber the Arabs as quickly as possible. [...] In both cases, the purpose was a kind of 'ethnic cleansing', that is, a violent change in the ratio of ethnic groups in the population.
  • Slavoj Žižek, discussing a meeting between Feivel Polkes and Adolf Eichmann in Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (2004), p. 59, ISBN 1844675408

• Gaza
• Hamas
• Israel
• David Ben-Gurion