"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." Golda Meir

Part of the struggle for self determination by Palestinians has been to tell the truth about Palestinians as victims of Zionism. For too long their history has been denied and this denial has only served to further oppress and deliberately dehumanise Palestinians in Israel, inside the occupied territories, and outside in their Diaspora. Some progress has been made. Westerners now realize that Palestinians, as a people, do exist. And they have come to acknowledge that during the creation of the state of Israel thousands of Palestinians were killed and over 700,000 were driven or frightened from their homes and lands on which they had lived for centuries.

This home in Talbiyya, originally owned by Palestinian Hanna Bisharat, was taken over by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. It served as Golda Meir's residence in 1968, when she made the infamous statement "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people."

Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbour states but has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last few years. Why?

"My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine', you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land."  Menahem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?"

"The phenomenon that has prevailed among us for years is that of insensitivity to acts of wrong... Consequently, public opinion, the army, the police's conclusion was that Arab blood can be freely shed. And then came the amnesty for those (convicted of the massacre) at Kafr Qasim, and some conclusions could be drawn again, and I could go on like this... It must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been established and accepted by contemporary society."  Israel's second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, in 1961, quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism"

"Ben Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and October 1948. But no general expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his Generals 'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the 'great expeller' and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy... But while there was no 'expulsion policy', the July and October 1948 offensives were characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first half of the war."  Benny Morris  "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"

"I have already gone exhaustively into the reason for our being here, reasons that I as a pioneer of 1906 can affirm have nothing to do with the Nazis!... We are here because the land is ours. And we are here because we have again made it ours in this time with the work we have put into it. Nazism and our history of martyrdom abroad do not concern our presence in Israel directly."  David Ben Gurion  "Memoirs"

"Before the Palestinians very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived. We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home."  Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel"

"There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the need for justification...

...[E.g., the inheritance claim] The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,] Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago!...

...[Jewish suffering as justification] It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews... They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge...

...[Anti-Semitism as justification] Unlike the situation of Jews persecuted for being Jews, Israelis are at war with the Arab world because they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because of their Jewish identity...

...[The law of the jungle justification] Presenting the world as naturally unjust, and oppression as nature's way, has always been the first refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The need to justify Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli world view... In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis have become famous...

...[The effect on Israelis] Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel be discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews? This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis; it marks everything and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the blood and marks every moment of existence."  Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahami's "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel"

"There is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to a 35-year-old Palestinian man who worked fifteen years as an illegal day laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house for his family only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I asked why this was done - the land, after all, was his - I was told that a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stated that he had built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people required to have a license (always denied to them) to build on their own property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is apartheid."  Edward Said, in "The Nation, May 4, 1998"

"A study of students at Bethlehem University reported by the Coordinating Committee of International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many families frequently go five days a week without running water. The study goes further to report that, 'water quotas restrict usage by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli settlers have almost unlimited amounts'...

...A summer trip to a Jewish settlement on the edge of the Judean desert less than five miles from Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us. While Bethlehemites were buying water from tank trucks at highly inflated rates, the lawns were green in the settlement. Sprinklers were going at mid day in the hot August sunshine. Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor pool added to the unreality."  Betty Jane Bailey, in "The Link, December 1996"

Assaulting Palestinian children by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers

• On October 15, in Yaíbad near Jenine, 13 year old Zayid Fathi was kidnapped by settlers in a private car as he was walking home from school. He was beaten.
  
  

• Also on Oct. 15, in the same area, four Palestinian children were attacked by a group of settlers who severely assaulted one of them, Mahmoud Baíjawi, who was beaten unconscious.
  
  

• On October 16, settlers from Shirfee Shimron near Nablus set up road blocks and stoned Palestinian cars. 12 year old Yaseen Zohdi was struck by a rock and had to be hospitalized as a result.
  
  

• On October 24, Jewish settlers from the Hebron settlement of Daboya set guard dogs on a group of children from the nearby Qurtuba Girl's School.
  
  

• On Oct. 27, 12 year old Sahar Abdulraouf Al-Muhtaseb, was beaten by Jewish vigilantes in Hebron as Israeli soldiers watched.
  
  

• February 10, 1996, while a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Nablus was imprisoned in an Israeli jail, he was raped and sodomized by a Jewish soldier. The soldier removed the child, blindfolded and handcuffed, from his cell, and took him to another part of the prison where he sodomized him.

"You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or more have experienced - some many times - the Israeli army breaking into the home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these things happen to siblings and neighbors... The emotional aspect of the child is affected by the lack of security. He needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does not. In our research, we have found that children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their behaviors and, later, in their political beliefs."  Dr Samir Quota, director of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in "The Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1996"