The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Quotes

“In a speech at Bar Ilan university, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time endorses the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Ahad Ha’am, for example, visited Palestine and observed that ‘it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed’. He warned prophetically: ‘If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“The British army’s occupation of Arab territories ended four centuries of Ottoman rule over them. An entirely new political map emerged as six new successor states from the former Ottoman Empire were created: Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Facilitated by British rule over Palestine during the interwar period, Zionist settlement patterns focused strategically on Palestine's agriculturally rich valleys and coastal plains, largely disregarding the centres of ancient Jewish civilization that were located in Palestine's central hilly regions. This geographical division between the plains and the hills led to a profound redefinition of the territorial location of the Jewish homeland in the first half of the 20th century. When the 1937 Peel partition plan and the 1947 UN partition plan proposed a Jewish state be established in Palestine, they mapped out the coastal and valley areas, where Zionist land purchases were highest relative to the landholdings of the indigenous Arab population.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“By 1914, approximately 85,000 Jews resided in Palestine, of whom about 35,000 had arrived in recent decades.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Rather than negotiate, Sharon at this stage initiated a unilateral approach towards separating Israelis from Palestinians. The policy came to be known as ‘disengagement’.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“During the course of the fighting, approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“al-nakba)”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“One of the most important institutions of the Yishuv was Histadrut, the Federation of Jewish Labour. At first, its main role was to promote the employment of Jewish labour in Jewish enterprises, and to this end it instituted a boycott that targeted Arab workers.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Together with ‘the conquest of land’, ‘the conquest of labour’ continued to be a central feature of Zionist activity in Palestine: land purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was leased exclusively to Jews. British officials never properly counted the number of Arab peasants evicted from their lands, but given the limited agricultural potential of the country, control over land became a focus of Palestinian nationalist activism in the 1930s.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“By the end of the first decade, only 100,000 chose to immigrate to Palestine (in fact, from 1927 to 1928 Jewish emigration exceeded immigration).”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“The failure to create a legislative council in Palestine represents a key turning point in the country’s history.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Settlement conditions in Palestine were tenuous, and the first aliyah (1882–1903) encountered serious difficulties. Many settlers ended up leaving after a brief stay. Those communities that survived did so mainly due to their reliance on relatively cheap Arab labour and to the philanthropy of wealthy European Jews. In contrast, the more significant second aliyah (1904–14) gradually became more committed to the creation in Palestine of a separate society built on Jewish labour. These two groups tended to clash.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“But the delegates showed little interest in the goodwill of the Palestinian inhabitants, and it is this myopic thinking—‘A land without a people for a people without a land’ rang one prominent slogan—that lies at the heart of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“While it is true that Palestinian national identity would not arise until the British invasion and occupation of Ottoman land, and only consolidated itself as a result of the desire to both throw off the yoke of British imperial rule and resist Zionist immigration and settlement, the more important point to note is that all nationalisms arise and gather strength from specific historical circumstances”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“when they constituted 90 per cent of the population, Palestinians found themselves under a British imperial administration whose commitment to Zionism was perceived as a grave threat to their national identity. Conflict was inevitable, and with every round of violence and negotiations Palestinian Arabs witnessed a gradual but marked recession of the actual portion of land available for the establishment of their state. The 1937 Peel partition plan envisaged an Arab state on approximately 75 per cent of mandate Palestine; the 1947 UN partition plan reduced that amount to 44 per cent; and, when armistice lines brought the subsequent fighting to a close in 1949, only 22 per cent was left outside the borders of the new state of Israel.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“when they constituted 90 per cent of the population, Palestinians found themselves under a British imperial administration whose commitment to Zionism was perceived as a grave threat to their national identity. Conflict was inevitable, and with every round of violence and negotiations Palestinian Arabs witnessed a gradual but marked recession of the actual portion of land available for the establishment of their state. The 1937 Peel partition plan envisaged an Arab state on approximately 75 per cent of mandate”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“In addition to wartime strategic interests, a complex combination of motives led to the final decision to issue the Balfour Declaration. Contemporary explanations tended to stress the Biblical romanticism of British officials’ interest in the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine and their sympathy for the plight of Jews in eastern Europe. The first scholarly accounts focused more on the political and diplomatic context in which British officials came to see Zionism as an ally. These early interpretations stressed the Balfour Declaration as a product of the activities of the Zionist Organization, or specifically of Dr Chaim Weizmann, the most prominent Zionist spokesman. Weizmann was engaged during the war in biochemical research for Britain’s Ministry of Munitions. His influential contacts and skilful persistence were credited with convincing British officials of the wartime propaganda value that a gesture of support for Zionism would carry in the United States and Russia, where Jews were believed to wield great power.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“The tensions over access to the Western Wall galvanized the communal hostilities generated during the first decade of the mandate. In effect, they ended any real chance of Arab–Jewish peace in Palestine. Britain struggled to deal with the fallout. The Shaw commission, sent out to report on the 1929 disturbances, criticized Hajj Amin al-Husayni’s lack of restraint but acquitted him of incitement. More significantly, the commission warned against continued Jewish immigration and land purchase, arguing that the further dispossession of Arab farmers could only lead to more disturbances. In October 1930 the British issued the Passfield White Paper, stressing the need to deal more forthrightly with Arab concerns. It called for restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase and drew attention to the conspicuous absence of a representative legislative council. Zionist leaders were furious. In London, they voiced strong criticism of the White Paper and succeeded the following year in persuading the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, to write a personal letter to Weizmann in which key elements of the 1930 White Paper were revoked.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“In 1928, attempts by some Jews to extend their access to the wall by bringing screens and benches were fiercely challenged by Hajj Amin, no doubt as part of a larger political campaign to enhance his national status. Claims and counterclaims became increasingly heated over the following year and, when a Revisionist Party youth movement organized a demonstration demanding Jewish control over the whole complex, tensions spiralled out of control. Rioting broke out in Jerusalem in August 1929, the British struggled to restore order, and the violence spread to Hebron, Jaffa, and Safad, cities with significant Jewish populations. The massacre of Jews in Hebron was especially horrifying, and those who survived fled Hebron in the wake of the riots. Overall, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lost their lives. Palestinians worried that the Jews were violating the sanctity of Islam and dispossessing them of their patrimony. Jews compared Hebron to the pogroms of Eastern Europe.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“Though demonized by his Jewish and British enemies, Hajj Amin al-Husayni in fact cooperated well enough with the mandate administration. Only gradually did he use his religious authority to achieve a position of significant political influence contrary to British interests. It was a potent mix. The key event in this transformation was the so-called ‘Western Wall riots’ in 1929. The Western Wall was the only revealed section of what remained from the massive retaining wall built by Herod. This wall allowed Herod to enlarge the platform on which the Second Temple stood before being destroyed in 70 CE. Given this association, the wall became Judaism’s most important place of pilgrimage and prayer. The wall also was part of a Muslim religious trust (waqf): Muslim attachment to the wall and to the al-Haram al-Sharif (or ‘Noble Sanctuary’, as the Temple Mount is known in Arabic) is due to their association with the story of Muhammad’s night journey to heaven. The wall is known to Muslims as al-Buraq, because Muhammad tethered his horse there, and the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, built in the 7th century, are two of Islam’s most revered buildings.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

“This chapter examines the late 19th- and early 20th-century context in which two emerging national communities—Zionist and Palestinian—first collided over their mutually exclusive desire for the same piece of land, not much larger than Wales (approximately 16,000 square kms). Identifying 1897 as the beginning of the history of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict is significant. It underlines the fact that this hundred (or so) years’ conflict is neither rooted in ancient and religious animosities nor even are its origins so much Middle Eastern as European. Just as European Jews were responding to the nationalist spirit spawned by the conditions in 19th-century Europe, so too was the identity of the indigenous Arab population about to be reshaped by the sharpening of a specifically Palestinian consciousness that formed around the inhabitants’ resistance to the threat that Zionism posed to their own patrimony. It was in this context that Jewish immigrants from Europe struggled to find ways to successfully settle the land of Palestine, improvising and developing strategies that would have a huge impact on the future trajectory of the Zionist project.”
― Martin Bunton, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction