Knowing the history of Israel-Palestine: Right of return and right of self-defence

UN Resolution 181 is well-known as the resolution that unjustly partitioned Palestine. Another resolution, Resolution 194, recognised the Palestinians’ right of return to where they had been expelled from.

The breakout of hostilities following Resolution 181 led to the appointment by the UN of a peace mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte.

The Israeli government agreed to his appointment as Bernadotte was president of the Swedish Red Cross and had been instrumental in saving many Jews from the Nazis during World War Two.

Bernadotte arrived in Palestine on 20 May 1948, five days after the establishment of the state of Israel.

What the Israelis did not expect was for Bernadotte to demand the unconditional return of all the Palestinian refugees and for the country to be redivided.

Bernadotte made his recommendations to the UN.

A paramilitary Zionist group responded by assassinating him in September 1948 while he was carrying out his official duties.

In a sense, there is tragic irony here. Bernadotte paid with his life for trying to stand up for the Palestinians. He had survived the Nazis when he courageously negotiated the release of so many Jews. But when he courageously tried to secure the rights of the Palestinians, he could not escape death at the hands of the Zionists.

This was just one example of Zionist Israeli terrorism. Ilan Pappe’s book Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (from which much of the above account is taken) and other sources give a well-established history of Zionist Israeli acts of terrorism from the very birth of the state.

What continues today in Gaza is part of a history of Israeli state terrorism that has simply never ended.

Bernadotte’s work, nevertheless, left a legacy – UN Resolution 194, adopted in December 1948 (after the establishment of Israel) by the same UN General Assembly that had voted for partition in November 1947. A key part of the resolution was its recognition of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes.

This has been ignored by Israel as it has with many other UN resolutions. This is an example of what has become habitual Israeli intransigence made possible by US military and diplomatic support over the years.

Israel’s admission to the UN in May 1949 was on condition it would accept Resolution 194 (First Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949). 

But that acceptance came to nothing. Israel’s word could not be trusted – a trait that would be repeated time and again.

The principle of an expelled people’s right of return was again more recently underlined by a July 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful. But again, this has been ignored.

The ‘tropish’ question often asked is, doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself?

The question is conceptually illogical. In his Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe quotes Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi: “The native people of Palestine like the native people of every other country in the Arab world, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe, refused to divide the land with a settler community.” 

This was in the context of a process that disrespected the Palestinians with circumstances forced upon them. Thus, at its root, the confiscation of land came with the loss of dignity, freedom and self-determination.

A subjugated people cannot but be expected to revolt and resist – which is what the Palestinians have been doing ever since.

Self-defence is when you are the victim of someone else’s actions, and you therefore have to defend yourself. If you and your family are robbed and under threat, and you act against the robber to wrest back your property and remove the threat to your family, who is exercising the right of self-defence? You? Or the robber who thinks he is defending himself against your actions?

And so it is with Israel and Palestine.

Israel inserted itself into a situation by aggressive and violent means.

Its victims, the native Palestinians, have always been far weaker and at a disadvantage. Some of this weakness has been due to internal problems. But that does not change the fact that a dominant force with imperial support came and forcefully displaced them and, over the years, sabotaged them.

Thus, the real point is, it is the Palestinians who have the right to resist and defend themselves.

Israeli ‘retaliation’ is not self-defence. It is force used by an occupier to enforce its illegal occupation. (Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice and by UN resolutions.) 

So long as the root causes of dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people are not addressed, there will be one form or other of fightback or resistance. It may take the form of Hamas, Hezbolah, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) or the Houthis with new incarnations to come. And all that time, there will not be the safety and security that Israelis themselves want.*

That is why a lasting solution has to be a just political solution that recognises root causes and not one imposed by overwhelming armed might, which has now escalated into genocide in Gaza.

(* It is enlightening to note the twisted ways in which Israeli leadership works, currently personified by Benjamin Netanyahu. He was quoted telling his Likud colleagues in March 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy, to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”  (Britain and the Muslim World – Sayeeda Warsi). He needed Hamas to succeed to ensure there would be no joint Palestinian voice so he could say there was nobody to negotiate with.

It also has to be noted that the Palestinians have not, contrary to unfair stereotyping, always only resorted to violent resistance. In many instances over decades, the Palestinian leadership has shown readiness to negotiate and compromise including recognition of the state of Israel.

But Israel has always not responded in kind thus allowing it to continue using its might to increase its occupation of Palestine and to crush the will of the Palestinian people.)

This is the second in a series of four articles. Look up the other three articles here.