# Is a Palestinian state a colonial power like Israel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2003, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338 "2003-06-30T13:30:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/1 "2003-06-30T13:30:05Z")
This thread was suggested by some comments made by **clairobscur** about the formation of the State of Israel. > [@](#): > > From my point of view, [the formation the State of Israel] was plain colonialism, whether or not the Jews had good reasons to think it was in their best interest is irrelevant… > > You seem to imply by mentioning [the Jews being expelled or fleeing Arab countries] in this part of your post that it could be a _reason_ for [Israel’s] creation, when of course it isn’t… > > Bringing in more “friends” when you’re already accused of being stealing the territory of another people and forbidding _their_ friends from coming back is a very different situation… I think that these are reasonable points as applied to the State of Israel. But, what about a Palestinian state? The question for debate here is: **Do these same points apply to a potential Palestinian State?** Many or most of the Palestinians are refugees, or decendents of refugees, who had come from other areas. They fled or were driven out during various Arab-Israeli wars. They do not have ancestral ownership of the land they now inhabit. Palestinians are mostly living on land that formerly belonged to Jordan. They were offered a State in 1948 by outside powers, namely the UN, just as Israel was. They are living on territory of disputed ownership. Of course, Jordan is an Arab state and the Palestinians are Arabs, but so what? One Arab doesn’t have a right to another Arab’s land just because they’re both Arabs. BTW I am not arguing against the formation of a Palestinian state. I hope a successful, peaceful Palestinian state can be established for the sake of all the people who live there. ---
**Author:** ![MMI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/2 "2003-06-30T14:03:07Z")
I think that the reason the Israelis may be considered a colonial state but not the Palestinians is that a large proportion of the Jewish Israeli population is not recently indigenous to what is now Israel/the West Bank . This site [http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp89.html](http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp89.html) is the abstract of a paper on the topic of Jewish immigration to Israel - it states an immigration of 543000 from the late 19th century through 1947, supplementing an indigenous Jewish population of 24000. According to [http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Immigration/immigration\_by\_country.html](http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Immigration/immigration_by_country.html) immigration to Israel in the first 47 years after independence totalled 2.4 million (approximately 1/3 from what is now the CIS, about 1/3 from other MENA countries, and 1/3 from the rest of the world). Unless you are suggesting that the vast majority of those who are considered Palestinians in 2003 are descended from people who in 1948 lived outside the British mandate of Palestine, I don’t think it is reasonable to consider the Palestinians colonists in any sense of the word. That Jordan claimed/administered the west bank for several years doesn’t seem relevant. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/3 "2003-06-30T14:12:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Many or most of the Palestinians are refugees, or decendents of refugees, who had come from other areas. They fled or were driven out during various Arab-Israeli wars. They do not have ancestral ownership of the land they now inhabit. Agree. But these areas were situated in Israel/in the occupied territories, not in Irak or Brazil. > [@](#): > > Palestinians are mostly living on land that formerly belonged to Jordan. Honestly I don’t care much about “countries”, especially when one consider that most countries in the middle-east had they boundaries arbitrarily defined by foreign powers, or even were created out of thin air. I think that _people_ have a legitimate claim on the the place they’re living. > [@](#): > > They were offered a State in 1948 by outside powers, namely the UN, just as Israel was. They are living on territory of disputed ownership. With the difference that most of the Jews came from other places during the first part of the XX° century, with a strong support by the current colonial power, while the palestinians were already living there. The ownership became disputed because there was a massive influx of…yes…“colonists”. > [@](#): > > Of course, Jordan is an Arab state and the Palestinians are Arabs, but so what? One Arab doesn’t have a right to another Arab’s land just because they’re both Arabs. As i wrote above, the entity “Jordan” doesn’t have any right to anything. Jordanian people and Palestinian people, on the other hand, have some right to decide about their future and about whether they want to be live in two independant countries, or in one united country, or in 243 San-Marino sized countries. Beside, there’s no way in hell Jordan would want back the occupied territories, even if everybody involved, Palestians and Israelis alike, begged the Jordanian government to take them. So, it isn’t really “disputed” now. The only dispute over these territories, currently, is between the Palestinians and the israelis (Golan excepted). Anyway, I was refering in my post quoted above to the creation of Israel, not to the current situation. At this time, the Jews (at least the wide majority of them) were immigrants and in my mind colonists, while the “palestinians” were the actual inhabitants of the land. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/4 "2003-06-30T14:13:53Z")
Although the point does remain to an extend. Essentially, right to a peice of land is simply a matter of time. By your definitio, MMI, shouldn’t any Jew born in Israel be considered, well, not a “colonial person”? Can you be a half-colonial state? look, the whole question is pointless. Nobody has any right to live anywhere unless they can make other peope accept their claim. Thats reality. Anything else is just marketing. ---
**Author:** ![CyberPundit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@CyberPundit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CyberPundit)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/5 "2003-06-30T14:18:15Z")
The OP gets it backwards. You could argue that Jordan was a colonial state when it ruled over the Palestinians before 1967 but obviously a Palestinian state over territory where Palestinians form a large majority is not “colonial”. In any case Jordan has renounced its claims to the West Bank. ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/6 "2003-06-30T14:25:15Z")
I really don’t want to get into the Israel-Palestine debate. But I know this subject and its history very well, so I’ll make a comment about the question in the OP. First history. After WWII the question arose about what do with the many jewish refugees in mainland Europe. The US President back then originally leaned on giving many of them shelter in the US, and he asked the British PM if they would take in some of the refugees as well. The British answered that they would match the US on a 1:1 ratio, whatever the total. However, later, after discussions with jewish interest organizations, the jewish community expressed a wish to have their own land in the area that later became Israel. As we all know, jewish immigration to that area began in the late 1900th century, and jewish immigrants owned a significant portion of the land there. The Palestinians, or Arabs, in the area where not refugees. They were living on the land. Today the Palestinians are made up by descendants of these Arabs, as well as refugees from the various wars. Many descendants of previous Arab landowners still owns land in Palestinia, while many of the Arab refugees from the unrest are living in refugee camps/refugee cities in Palestine, like Jenin, or in refugee camps in Jordan. So, to answer the OP, no, a possible Palestinian state is not colonialism. And I don’t think a Israeli state was colonialism either. ---
**Author:** ![MMI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/7 "2003-06-30T15:31:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by smiling bandit \* > **Although the point does remain to an extend. Essentially, right to a peice of land is simply a matter of time. By your definitio, MMI, shouldn’t any Jew born in Israel be considered, well, not a “colonial person”? Can you be a half-colonial state?** Even with the numbers I cited and assuming continuing immigration at those rates since, still well over half of Israel’s population was born there (and that is true even if I’m making the piss-poor assumption that all of the immigrants over the past years were still alive). However, even though I would be willing to be that a far higher proportion of the current population of the United States, Canada, and Australia were born in those countries than is the case in Israel, all three of those states will (probably always) be considered settler states/descendents of colonies that displaced indigenous populations (this is probably true of a few countries in South America as well, but as I am having trouble with the CIA world factbook at the moment). Israel probably falls into a similar category. I don’t know how to answer the question of when does an immigrant/outsider/interloper/foreign laborer become a native/one of _us_? As an American I would like the answer to be easy - as soon as you become a citizen (or intending for that matter). But when the movement is en masse and/or with the intent or changing existing society/creating or recreating a different society does that change things.? The Israeli/Palestinian situation is certainly not unique - except perhaps in terms of a combination of intensity, scale, and visibility. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/8 "2003-06-30T17:35:07Z")
I’m not certain that I agree with **december** ’s assertion that the Palestinians are living on land that once belonged to Jordan. While it’s true that Transjordan and Palestine both fell under the administrative mandate of Palestine for awhile prior to 1948, even the Brits considered the two territories to be distinct. Everything I recall about the dispute implies that Jordan acquired East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1948 war, and “formally” annexed it shortly thereafter. The only nation I can think of that officially recognized the annexation was Great Britain. When King Hussein formally dropped its claim to the West Bank in 1988, he did so with a finality which is depressingly absent from most of the disputes in the region. In cutting all ties to the area Hussein even dissolved the Jordanian parliament in order to remove all of the West Bank representatives. The bottom line is that I’m pretty sure Jordan didn’t control “Palestinian” territory prior to the creation of Israel and doesn’t control it or claim it now. I think that places some serious restraints on the type of analogy one can draw between Israeli “colonialism” and Palestinian “colonialism.” The question of Jordanian colonialism is now largely moot. Here are some quick sources of uncertain veracity which I probably should have read before I posted this: [http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf\_1967to1991\_jordan\_renounce\_claims.php](http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_jordan_renounce_claims.php) [http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf\_1948to1967\_jordan\_annex.php](http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_jordan_annex.php) [http://www.focusmm.com/jordan/johist\_1.htm](http://www.focusmm.com/jordan/johist_1.htm) ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/9 "2003-06-30T20:04:53Z")
> [@](#): > > **MMI** > I think that the reason the Israelis may be considered a colonial state but not the Palestinians is that a large proportion of the Jewish Israeli population is not recently indigenous to what is now Israel/the West Bank. > [@](#): > > **clairobscur** > _-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Many or most of the Palestinians are refugees, or decendents of refugees, who had come from other areas. They fled or were driven out during various Arab-Israeli wars. They do not have ancestral ownership of the land they now inhabit. > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------_ > Agree. But these areas were situated in Israel/in the occupied territories, not in Irak or Brazil. Both these comments suggest that an aspect of colonialism is coming from far away. They have a good point. The first two dictionary definitions of “colony” are: 1a. A group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant territory but remain subject to or closely associated with the parent country. 1b. A territory thus settled. 1. A region politically controlled by a distant country; a dependency. Note that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank aren’t in a distant terroritory from Israel, so they are not “colonies”, whether or not they’re justified. Also Israel wasn’t “colonized” by Jews or by Palestinians, since none of the settlers or refugees are controlled by or closely associated with a parent country. Again, not using the word “colony” doesn’t answer the question of whether they have a right to live there. ---
**Author:** ![MMI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-palestinian-state-a-colonial-power-like-israel/185338/10 "2003-06-30T22:25:01Z")
1. The quote in the OP regarded Israel as a colonial _enterprise_, not a colonial power as the OP stated. As I noted above, I can understand why Israel can be regarded as a colonial enterprise, as it involved a lot of people _not from there_ who moved in and displaced and/or replaced the inhabitants. I do not personally think of Israel in this fashion, colonialism having to me connotations that do not entirely fit the situation. YMMV. IMO it is somewhat ridiculous to consider the prenascent Palestinian state in this fashion. 2. I can understand why Israel might be considered a colonial _power_, with respect to the West Bank and Gaza in light of the establishment of settlements for reasons of securing ground and military control. Again, I do not feel that that description is helpful. And again, it makes far more sense as a description of Israeli actions then of Palestinian actions. 3. Given the dictionary definition provided, the OP’s suggestion of Palestinian colonialism becomes nonsensical. 4. A colony need not be settled from afar. England established colonies in Wales and Ireland. Rome established colonies all throughout Italy and other territories under her control. Connecticut and Rhode Island were colonized by dissatisfied Massachusettsian(ites?) rather than England English, although they as quickly as possible obtained charters from England to guarantee their rights. How far is far, anyway? 5. A colony need not remain under the control of the mother country. Many Greek city-states established colonies on the periphery of Greece, in Ionia, and throughout the Med (and beyond). I think any number of them rapidly developed into fairly independent states, that nonetheless, still considered themselves colonies of the parent polis. 6. I think it is fair to call Israel a settler state, as described in my post above.