Thread by @lymanstoneky

been reading up on the chain of events in Israel 1940-1950 and ever-more-confused how "settler-colonial" is supposed to describe it

the settlement was actively opposed by the actual colonial power, to the point of actually arming their military rivals

they had no metropole from which to base a colonial effort

they were actively fleeing the Holocaust and *ongoing* pogroms in Poland

neither side disputes that the reason for the small Jewish population pre-1850 was due to ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the 1st century onwards by Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic states

how is it possible to colonize a state that you're only absent from because you were ethnically cleansed from it, and to do so because you were genocided out of your diasporan homes, and against the military opposition of the actual literal colonial power

now, Israeli settlements *in the West Bank* might be a form of settler-colonialism! that's a stronger argument!

but identifying the state of Israel *itself* as in some sense inherently a settler-colonial state seems very clearly wrong

see, *this* usage makes some sense to me!

but I see a lot of usages that describe the Israeli state as in some sense inherently "settler-colonial", many explicitly tied to the nakba

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1395483050574860294

but to a first approximation it looks like what happened is Arab representatives boycotted the UN talks about statehood, the British were super big anti-Semites who wanted to strengthen the Jordanians, and basically nobody gave a darn about the Palestinians

i.e. *to a first approximation* the people who owe the Palestinians for their lost lands are the countries who boycotted the settlement and drove Jews out of their homes in Arab countries, and also then also the British. Always the British.

to their credit the British kinda seem to have understood this on some level in their push to create UNRWA?

Like apparently Arab generals during the civil war period were irritated because the Jews refused to initiate offensive attacks against Arab communities and they were worried this would win public support for the Jews and make partition more likely

which in historical hindsight that seems.... extremely correct?

there's also apparently no historic debate that most of the post-partition-resolution casualties before open war were Jews; bus bombings and snipers and such?

One thing I haven't seen a good answer to is what the goal was early on for Palestinians and for the Arab countries nearby. Jordan obviously wanted to annex, but Palestinians I guess were not big fans of this?

So what about the other countries? What was the actual goal? There's public statements saying they wanted to establish a unitary state.... but also public statements where they legit just say it's gonna be a massacre and the Jews will be pushed into the ocean?

The problem with this theory is that the British did not "bite." They rejected the idea and actively tried to prevent Jewish immigration into Israel and fought against the Jewish insurgency and armed the Arab states.

https://twitter.com/123456789blaaa/status/1395486024625795076

That Zionists attempted to get the Brits to bankroll them and arm them on the basis of British colonial ambitions is an awkward and weird historical bit of trivia but when push came to shove the Brits recognized the Jordanian annexation.