Why Palestine haunted FIFA World Cup

Palestine had a ghostlike presence in the FIFA World Cup with its flag popping up just about everywhere in Qatar The popular fervour for Palestine was ascribed to the anger of Arabs at Israel ruling over the ldquoOccupied Territoriesrdquomdashcomprising the West Bank the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalemmdashas ruthlessly as any colonial powerNot just the Occupied Territories the entire Israel is a usurpationThe creation of Israel in Palestine was conceived by the Zionist movement which emerged in the 1880s Between 1909 and 1914 about 40000 Jewish immigrants trickled into Palestine They were settled on land purchased by the Zionist movement To these settlers the native Palestinians ldquowere largely invisiblehellipor if not were part of naturersquos hardship and as such were to be conquered and removedrdquo writes Ilan Pappeacute in The Ethnic Cleansing of PalestiniansThe first step in this direction was the 1917 Balfour Declaration made in the backdrop of Britainrsquos imminent victory over the Ottomans in Palestine The Declaration said the British government viewed favourably the ldquoestablishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peoplerdquo but without prejudicing the ldquoexisting civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communitiesrdquo thereAlso read Ind v Aus herehellipso long agoThe Declaration invisibilised the Arabs Rashid Khalidi in The Hundred Yearsrsquo War on Palestine writes ldquoThe overwhelming Arab majority of population went unmentioned by Balfour except in a backhanded way as the lsquoexisting nonJewish communities in Palestinersquordquo The recognition of the national rights of the Jewish people gave a fillip to their immigration which saw them grow from being six per cent of Palestinersquos population in 1918 to 18 per cent in 1926In 1918 itself 33 exiled Palestinians protested to the British Office against the plan to convert their country into a national home for the Jews Their protest was to no avail with the League of Nations mandate issued to the British in 1922 for administering Palestine reiterating the Balfour DeclarationThe rise of the Nazis in Germany saw 65000 Jews pour into Palestine in 1935 alone prompting Zionist leader David BenGurion to purr ldquoImmigration at the rate of 60000 a year means a Jewish state in all Palestinerdquo Bankrolling the immigration was an agreement between the Zionists and the Nazi government that allowed Jews to transfer 100 million out of Germany In 1936 the Jews were now over 28 per cent of Palestinersquos populationIn 1937 the Britishappointed Peel Commission envisaged a Jewish state in 17 per cent of the Palestinian territory The Arabs revolted only to be brutally crushed by the Mandatory Administration two years later Around 10 per cent of Palestinians were killed wounded imprisoned or exiled Khalidi rates Britainrsquos armed suppression of the revolt as the most invaluable service it provided to the Zionist movement as it weakened the Palestinians for future battlesThe discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust had the world perceive the Jews as the foremost victims of World War II This global sympathy became a justification for the United Nations through its resolution of November 29 1947 to divide Palestine and give 56 per cent of its territory to the Jews Next day armed conflict broke out with poorly armed Palestinians failing to match the colonisers who on May 14 1948 declared the formation of Israel Palestinians commemorate May 15 as the Nakba or Great Catastrophe In the next phase of the Nakba Israel defeated the Arab regimes belatedly interceding in the conflict on Palestinersquos behalfIsrael now possessed 78 per cent of former Mandatory Palestine The remaining 22 per cent comprised the Gaza Strip which Egypt occupied and the West Bank which Jordan took over Nearly 800000 of the 13 million Palestinians were compelled to become refugees Historians like Pappeacute have cited documents to show that the expulsion of Palestinians was nothing less than ethnic cleansing planned by a group of eleven comprising veteran Zionist leaders and young Jewish military officersCut to 1967 To stop Israel from diverting water from the Jordan river to central parts of Israel Fatah one of the militant Palestine groups attacked a water pumping station in central Europe This symbolic action mounted popular pressure on the reluctant Arab regimes to take action against Israel Egypt transferred 60000 troops to the Sinai PeninsulaDubbing it as a provocation Israel struck first neutralising the air power of Egypt Jordan and Syria Israelrsquos strike had the approval of America although it believed the three countries did not pose an existential threat to Israel which won the war in six days in June 1967 It seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from SyriaThe Occupied Territories of the West Bank the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem have been denied their freedom even three decades after the flawed Oslo Accords seemed to have held out such a promise Late public intellectual Edward Said once said ldquoThe best Palestinian for them Israel is either dead or gonerdquo In exile or living in the Occupied Territories the Palestinians have refused to be invisibilised by producing literature tossing bombs chucking stones or simply flying their flag in the FIFA World CupThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper