Palestine in the history of Decolonization – Research Paper – International Conference on the Question of Palestine (A/CONF.114/11)

21 July 1983

8. Conclusion

The process of colonizing the world by Europe (and later by its colonies) began in the sixteenth century. It may be defined, very roughly, as the establishment of economic and often political hegemony, which culminated in direct domination involving territorial occupation and sometimes large-scale settlement by an alien population. This process – which is far from being unique in history – was partially reversed in the twentieth century. Some territories were entirely transformed by European colonization; the indigenous population was wiped out (as in Tasmania) or reduced to an insignificant minority (as in Australia, the United States of America or Canada). However, the others – where the indigenous population remained the majority despite the presence of a significant number of immigrants (as in Algeria and Rhodesia) – usually managed to eliminate foreign tutelage and achieve political independence, while still vulnerable to the subordination that resulted from the continued hegemony of Europe and a few non-European countries (such as the United States and Japan) in technological, economic and military power. Latin America is a complex case in which political independence of the elite segment of the colonial immigrants was accompanied in the 1920s by a merger between the indigenous population and the immigrants; the large portion of the indigenous population unaffected by that process often remained in a subordinate situation within new, independent political units.

Large areas of Asia outside European political domination or colonization have been subjected to European and American hegemony, at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Such was the case of Japan, China, Iran and the Ottoman Empire. The three latter States included minorities which were subordinated by such dominant ethnic groups as the Hans, the Persians and the Turks. Among the dominated minorities were the non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire and the Christian and Muslim Arabs of Ottoman Asia, including the Palestinians.

The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, who formed a subordinated minority but participated more or less in the administration, particularly in Muslim affairs, found themselves caught up in a colonization process at the very time when, in the wake of the 1914-1918 war, colonization was losing much of its ideological legitimacy. The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire were then subjected to new colonization that was draped in a camouflage, and which prepared the way for decolonization by providing the peoples placed under the colonial regime with representative institutions, even though these did not have much power. Those limitations of foreign domination, however theoretical, applied to every region except Palestine, and the same was true for the possibilities and the prospects of a free future which they presented. The cause lay in the ambitions to settle there by a population (the Zionist Jews) which did not belong to the colonizing people and which was protected in that endeavour by most of the hegemonic Powers. The Zionist population managed slowly to extend its hold over Palestinian territory, to defend it when the protecting Power hesitated or refused, to set itself up as a State which subordinated the indigenous peoples or drove them into exile. The Zionists obtained for their new State legitimacy from the international organization in which the European and Europeanoid Powers predominated, and they extended it by intensive colonization of the territory and victorious wars. The decisive victory of the colonizing process was won in 1948, symbolically when the world-wide process of decolonization was entering a phase of acceleration, in which| the ideological legitimation of colonization was almost totally abandoned and discredited.

However, new legitimization had been substituted for it, namely, the creation of a State through a partition of territory by a majority decision of the United Nations. Hiat procedure was open to question because the decision had essentially been taken as a result of the preponderance of the developed nations and against the will of the indigenous population. Still, the new legitimacy seemed convincing to the majority of States and to the greater part of world public opinion, at least for a long period, although that conviction did not extend to the conquests or the conduct of the State thus created. Legitimization by alleged historic rights retains a good deal of influence, even in circles where one would scarcely expect it, although the legitimacy acquired from relatively long occupation and work on Palestinian soil carries the greatest weight in the eyes of world opinion. In this; regard, there is a certain analogy between the forced exile of the majority of Palestinians from the State of Israel within its original boundaries and the disappearance or wiping out of the American Indians and the Australian aborigines.

In light of these circumstances, several questions may be raised for the future.
1. Will colonization, as in the United States and South America, result ini permanent fait accompli that is almost universally legitimated and perhaps even recognized by the ethnic group in question?

2. Are we, on the contrary, moving towards the abolition of the State of Israel as a preponderantly Jewish State? A similar question arises in the case of South Africa.

3. Are we moving towards a middle-course solution which would be the way to peace in our time? This refers to the establishment of a new ethnic group, a new cultural formation with its political translation on Palestinian land, a State in a position to defend the aspirations and interests of the new ethnic group, and the acquiescence of the dispossessed ethnic group through compensation. If the middle-course solution is not achieved, we shall be thrown back on one of the two extreme solutions. The second seems achievable only after a very severe and very long struggle involving new catastrophes along the lines of those which have been taking place successively for some 30 years. The first seems almost impossible to achieve in toto, because we live in an era when such alienation gives rise to rebellion and to acts of violence on the part of those who reject the fait accompli, even if they are few in number. The author prefers a middle-course solution that would be sparing of human lives and losses of all kinds. It is clear, however, that the future, like the past, will be determined by the relations of forces.