Click on the banner to read the full series in portuguese, english and spanish
The Palestinian Emeir Da'ona is a historical character in the eastern part of Jerusalem. At 84, he attended events that led to the declaration of the independence of Israel in 1948, while still a teenager. His small newsstand, right in front of the Lion Gate of the old city, also witnessed the arrival of the Israeli troops in 1967 in the eastern part of city.
Read more:
Israel faces the dilemmas of a walled society
Zionism despite divisions, remains the official doctrine
“There were moments of fear and expectation,” remembers Da'ona. “In the first of the wars, we lost our land, but a part of Jerusalem was still Palestinian. Afterwards, nothing was left. ” The western part of Israel had sovereignty since the 1947-48 conflicts. The eastern section was under Jordanian control.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
His grief contrasts with the celebrations that enliven the Jewish population, ready to rejoice that same May 8 in which he talked to Opera Mundi, the date of the reunification of the capital under Israeli auspices. Forty-six years ago, after all, the Jordanians had been forced to withdraw and deliver their portion of the city to the Zionist army, making the 1949 armistice completely ineffective.
The clash of narratives began in the late nineteenth century, when the Zionist movement assumed as its flag the return of the Jews to their land of origin, in order to rebuild their national state. The backgrounds in favor of that aspiration were religious and historical. The biblical history of the Israeli people was told based on facts related to the region dating back to the earliest patriarchs.
After the escape from slavery in Egypt, around the year 1250 BC, until the last unsuccessful revolts against the Romans in 135 AD, when the Jewish diaspora begun, there had been almost 1400 years of Jewish presence in a perimeter that covers all the way from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the western borders of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, currently the territories of Jordan, Israel and the southern part of Lebanon, West Bank (Judea and Samaria for the Zionist traditionalists) and the Gaza Strip.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
There’s a long period that runs through the final chapter in the fight against the Romans and the birth of Zionism, however, and during this period the region had a large repopulating process.
First, during the Byzantine Empire from 324, it was occupied mostly by Christians, with Jews accounting for a minority, which supported the Persian invasion of 614. When Emperor Heraclius reconquered Palestine, many of them were forced to escape in the company of defeated occupants.
But Byzantium was weakened and couldn´t resist the harassment of the Arabs who, in the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, took control of almost the entire area. Jerusalem and Caesarea, the last bastions, fell in 638 and 640, inaugurating a period of historical predominance of the Muslim population. The period was only broken by the power of the cross, called the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted between 1099 and 1144.
Balfour Declaration
Palestine, conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, with the same ethnic-religious features of other Arab kingdoms, would be ruled by the British after the end of World War I, when the British and the French beat the Germans and their Turkish allies. The year was 1917. England, through a letter from Arthur Balfour, British Minister for Foreign Affairs, to Baron Rothschild, waved to the creation of a “national home of the Jewish people.”
In this piece of the promised land, nevertheless, lived more than a million Palestinians and only one hundred thousand Jews, despite waves of migration undertaken by the Zionists in the previous twenty years. The Arab reaction against the so-called Balfour Declaration led Britain to retreat from its commitment. To ease the pressure, in 1922, 75% of the disputed area would be delivered to the creation of Transjordan, now Jordan, located in the east part of the Jordan River. The only thing left was the division of Western area.
During the next thirty years, conflicts between the two peoples and the resistance against the British colonization would deepen and turn into armed struggle. New waves of Jewish immigrants began arriving, self-defense groups were organized, as well as political and economic institutions. The Arabs also prepared to defend their properties and cities.
NULL
NULL
The impasse ended in the Partition Plan for Palestine, adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. Approximately 53% of the land was allocated to 700 thousand Jews to establish their state, but ensuring that the 400,000 Arabs who lived on the borders would receive full citizenship rights. Other 47% would be granted to 1.4 million Palestinians so that they could form a national entity. Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be under international control.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Israeli soldiers patrol the streets of Jerusalem, the holy city that should have remained under international control
The Zionists, despite some discomfort, because some of their factions wanted to conquer the entire area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, accepted the resolution. But the Palestinians and Arab states didn´t, claiming that the UN was imposing the interests of a minority to build a state that was contrary to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of Palestine.
The wars
The announcement of the partition unleashed a civil war. Better armed and organized, the Zionist troops quickly occupied the territory which had been appointed to them and tried to take the Palestinian borders. When the British mandate was over, on the evening of May 14, 1948, the same date of the signing of Israel's independence, the countries of the Arab League (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan), and Iraq declared war against the new State.
Wikicommons
Members of the Israeli armed forces during the 1948 war in which the newly created state of Israel emerged victorious
Reinforced by strong international support, largely caused by the tragedy of the Holocaust, Israel had the solidarity of the two major emerging powers which rose after the defeat of Nazism, the United States and the Soviet Union. Its army beat the enemy military and pushed the Palestinians to an even smaller portion than the one predicted by the partition agreement. When the armistice was signed in 1949, the Israeli borders occupied 75% of the region, including the control of West Jerusalem.
For the Zionist Jews, it was a great military and political victory that consolidated the autonomy of the young nation. For Palestinians and Arabs, the day would go into history as al nakba, the catastrophe. Between forced evacuations and escapes, about 700,000 Palestinians (according to the UN) joined the road of exodus. Many ended up living in squatter camps. Other migrated to different countries.
The fourth part of the region, which had not been occupied by Israel, was divided between Jordan (which annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem) and Egypt (who won sovereignty over the Gaza Strip). The currency of the peace agreement came to be known as the Green Line. Lasted less than two decades.
Wikicommons
Leaders of Arab troops in the 1948 war, which meant the beginning of forced evacuations and mass escapes of Palestinians
Claiming they were under the risk of an Arabic attack, on June 5, 1967, the Israeli armed forces unleashed a powerful military offensive against Egypt and Syria. Jordan also entered the combat and suffered retaliation. In the short period of six days, Israel conquered the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the Palestinian territories previously attached by their enemies, including East Jerusalem, formally unified in 1980.
The Zionist movement presented the deed as their war of liberation. The United Nations, through Resolution 242, considered it an illegal aggression and violation of the 1949 armistice, demanding the return to the pre-occupation borders. The state of Israel claimed security reasons. The Palestinian exodus multiplied and begun the process of Zionist colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Arab countries tried to recover, in vain, their lost territory, during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. They took advantage of the same element of surprise that, six years earlier, helped Israel, but were severely defeated. Their chances against the powerful military neighbor were buried.
Every year since then, the newsman Da'ona regrets the Palestinian disaster, in the same day that the Jewish neighborhood is singing and dancing about the creation of the State of Israel and the return of Jerusalem. Each with its own and antagonistic narrative.
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli