This is a history of Palestine and its inhabitants from Ottoman rule to the Intifadas of 1987 and 2000. It complements, but does not replace, Avi Shlaim's superlative, and presciently titled, book 'The Iron Wall'. Palestine's British rulers tried from 1918 to get the two peoples to build a British protectorate, but failed. After the British allowed a division of the unitary economic system in 1929, Jewish leaders built up an independent, privileged Zionist enclave. They mobilised the Jews by intensifying enlistment, imposing coercive taxes, preventing emigration and encouraging immigration.
In the 1948 war, the Zionist leaders, under the cover of a war of national liberation against the British Empire and its puppet Arab royals, expelled most Palestinians from their homes. Pappe writes of the Zionists' military Plan D's two aims: "the first being to take swiftly and systematically any installation, military or civilian, evacuated by the British. ... The second, and far more important objective, of the plan was to cleanse the future Jewish state of as many Palestinians as possible." Atrocities carried out by Zionist forces, including the massacres at Dir Yassin and Balad al-Shaykh, forced 690,000 Palestinians to flee under threat of death.
Decades of partition and occupation followed. Now Israel is building yet more illegal settlements, blockading the Palestinians (causing 50% unemployment), manning an electric fence around the Gaza Strip, abusing people at checkpoints, demolishing houses, assassinating at will, conducting mass arrests, torturing detainees, and building a wall dividing the West Bank from Israel. In the last three years, Israeli forces have killed 2,750 Palestinian civilians, and Palestinian suicide bombers have killed 892 Israeli civilians.
The US state massively subsidises the Israeli state. Bush fully backs Sharon the career terrorist: ten days after assuming the Presidency, Bush told the National Security Council, "We're going to correct the imbalances of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict. We're going to tilt it back towards Israel."
US and EU interference have inflamed, not resolved, the conflict. Outside attempts to achieve a solution by backing one people against another will always fail.
