The formation of the Palestine refugee community in modern history - the beginning of the 1948 Palestinian War and the Israeli occupation
"Palestine" has never historically been an independent state, but has existed in a regional form, and today's Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are all located within the former Palestinian area.
The word "Palestine" in English is derived from the Latin "Palaestīna" and was coined in the 5th century BC by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus to refer to part of Syria.
Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the term "Palestinian" was used to describe all inhabitants of Palestinian areas, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Palestinians themselves had no clear concept of their identity, only as Arabs, Jews and foreigners living in the Palestinian areas, and for 400 years from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, the Palestinian areas were governed by the Ottoman Empire, mainly by indigenous tribes, and the tribal elder "Sheikh" was the ruler of the grassroots society, whose status was later replaced by a rising elite family.
After the defeat and surrender of the Ottoman Empire in October 1918, Palestine was taken over by the British, and the next thirty years were the period of British Mandate.
Jewish history has always emphasized the centrality of the "Land of Israel (i.e., Palestine)", and British support for Zionism squeezed the living space of the Arabs, which laid the ideological and practical basis for the subsequent Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The 1948 war was the beginning of Palestinian suffering, which led directly to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees, hence the term "Naqba" to refer to the dispersion brought about by the war.
Palestinian national identity cannot be understood without understanding how Naqba has radically changed the lives of Palestinians.
Before World War I, the Palestinians were under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, Palestinian nationalism had not yet emerged, and only some national sentiment was surging.
Zionism, however, flourished at this time.
Since the eighties of the nineteenth century, more than 100,000 Jewish refugees have come to Palestine from Nazi Germany and Poland, and anti-Semitism has developed into a powerful political force in Europe.
After the end of World War I, Palestinians gradually realized the aggression of Zionism and the serious challenges it posed, but they could not stop the gradual occupation of their homeland.
The British were supportive of the Zionist project as the new masters of Palestine, and in November 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring: "His Majesty's Government is in favour of the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine and will do its utmost to contribute to this goal." ”
Bibliography:
[1] Bowkerm,Robert,Palestinian Refugees:Mythology,Identity,and the Search for Peace,Lynne Rienner Publishers,2003.
[2] Camino,Linda,Reconstructing Lives,Recapturing Meaning,Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1994.
[3] Erni,Fiorella,Tired of Being a Refugee:Social Identification among Young Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon,Graduate Institute Publications,2013.
