Author: Joseph Massad
Affiliation: Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.
Organization/Publisher: The Middle East Eye
Date/Place: September 29, 2021/UK
Type of Literature: Opinion
Word Count: 1900
Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-occupation-elite-failure-prevent-land-theft
Keywords: Israel, Palestine, Palestinian elite
Brief:
The author argues that the Zionist movement depends on stealing the land of the Palestinians. The Zionist movement has stolen lands to drive Palestinian peasants off their land. However, the author argues that the Palestinian elite also failed to stop the Israeli theft of their land. The author observes that when the Zionists started colonizing Palestine, they had a model in their minds: the German model. The German model indicates the plan of moving about 40000 German families to the Polish-Majority provinces. Arthur Ruppin, a German Jew and Posen-born, had witnessed and experienced the German model of colonizing Poland. Ruppin headed The Palestine Bureau of the Zionist Organization (ZO), which played a role in the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The author details how the Zionists continue with their theft of Palestinians’ lands through false purchases and illegal confiscations, and that the Palestinian elites’ efforts are “too little, too late.” Thus, the resistance of the Palestinians is the best means to prevent this colonization.
By: Fadi Zatari, CIGA Senior Research Associate
