Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) is the most persistent military occupation on earth. But this 35-year-old occupation is only the second stage in the colonization of the land of Canaan. The first stage, between 1947-1949, generated the largest population of refugees still unsettled since World War Two, with the longest displacement in modern history. Until recently, two competing accounts of this catastrophic event existed.

By Ahmed Moor - Washington insiders are now touting a misguided Obama-dictated plan to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Most recently, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz took to the pages of The Washington Post to float the idea of an imposed peace, which largely undermines non-negotiable historic Palestinian rights. The authors call for the annulment of the Palestinian right of return, and the creation of a "demilitarized Palestinian state."

 

A Disputed land: The fame of Palestine comes from the over 80 years dispute between its local Arab population and the immigrant Zionist Jews who strove and later managed to establish their own political entity, the “State of Israel”, expelling and depriving the local population. Zionism in brief is a political ideology that believes in the establishment of a “national” home for the Jewish people in Palestine, it works to realize its aim through all possible means, with violence on top of the agenda.

Aqaba, 1917:Troops of the Arab Revolt, "Before Their Diaspora"

* Chronology compiled from sources in the Bibliography section

1876 - 1877

* Ottoman constitution promulgated. Palestinian deputies from Jerusalem attend the first Ottoman parliament in Istanbul, elected under a new Ottoman constitution.