Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The multi-cultural identity and diversity of Palestine was always in sharp contrast to the anachronism of mono-cultural Zionism, a latecomer European settler-colonial movement. A mono-culturalist ideology inspired by racialised and romantic 19th century European nationalism, Zionism originated in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that from its beginning in the late 19th century and until the creation of Israel in 1948 the Zionist leadership and institutions themselves frequently used the term Palestine in their official discourse and publications, This practice was in common with European and British official designation of the country as Palestine. However, during the Mandatory period the Zionists often employed this term Palestine in tandem with their imaginary construct of Eretz Israel, while, as I show in my 1992 work Expulsion of the Palestinians:

The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1982‒1948, simultaneously planning to dismantle Palestine and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians (Masalha 1992).

Furthermore, the Zionist ‘transfer’ and ethnic cleansing strategies and toponymicidal practices sought to replace the heterogeneity and mixed space of Palestine with a ‘pure’ European colony, an Ashkenazi-dominated, mono-cultural space of the Zionist Yishuv until 1948 (Kimmerling 2003).

In a microcosmic and typical fashion the heterogeneity of the thousandsof- years-old Jaffa was ethnically cleansed and culturally destroyed in 1948.

This historic, culturally mixed Palestinian city was replaced after 1948 and subsumed by the European ‘pure’ Jewish city of neighbouring Tel Aviv, ‘the capital of the pre-state Yishuv’/Colony, subsumed and subordinated ancient Jaffa under the post-1948 Hebrew designation of Tel Aviv-Yafo.

This Zionist memoricidal and toponymicidal project was institutionally, cognitively, and emotionally built within an exclusionary Jewish ‘bubble’. The plans for the new Jewish state were similarly exclusive. The Jewish state was supposed to be purely Jewish and no political and bureaucratic tools were prepared for the possibility, mentioned in all partition proposals, that large Arab minorities would remain within the boundaries of the Jewish state.

(Kimmerling 2003: 22; see also Yiftachel 2006: 54; Shafir 1996a, 1996b, 1999)

During the Mandatory period the Zionist organisations in Palestine employed a variety of methods of subterfuge designed to conflate ‘Palestine’ with ‘Eretz Yisrael’. One such example of concealment and subterfuge was the insertion of the Hebrew abbreviation of Eretz Yisrael ( א״י ), ‘Land of Israel’, after the Hebrew word for Palestine ( פלשתינה ) on the official Mandatory government stamps – stamps which would have been handled by tens of thousands of Arabs in Palestine and neighbouring countries, most of them not knowing Hebrew and unable to decipher the Zionist Hebrew abbreviation ( .(א״י Although Palestinian leaders protested in the 1920s at this inclusion of ‘Eretz Yisrael’ in the official documents, stamps and currency of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine – a government which was committed to the pro-Zionist ‘promise’ of the 1917 Balfour Declaration – they were incapable of dissuading the Mandatory authorities from pursuing their pro-Zionist policies.

However, the extensive use of the official term Palestine by the Zionist organisations until 1948 is not surprising for two main reasons:

• All governments and millions of people across the world, and especially readers of European languages, identified the country as Palestine or the Holy Land – the only exceptions were the Zionist Jewish advocates, who also identified the country as Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel):

• Following the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration commitments of November 1917, the Zionist settler-colony in Palestine (the Yishuv)

evolved both as ‘settler-colonialism within British colonialism’ and as a ‘settler-colony with British colonialism’. This allowed the emerging European Yishuv to pursue a double strategy of (a) shadowing (and operating ‘from within’) the official terminology of British Mandatory system in Palestine; and (b) of creating a parallel autonomous Zionist Hebrew discourse.

Nonetheless, subterfuge (of Palestine-cum-Eretz Yisrael), euphemism (‘transfer’), alternative facts, and new ‘facts on the ground’ were central to the newspeak and strategies of the Zionist colony (‘Yishuv’) in Palestine during the pre-state period and this is evident from the following examples:

• The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine was a Hovevei Tzion organ established in 1890 with official support and encouragement of the Tsarist Russian government (Shafir 1996a: 46). The Society was dedicated to the practical aspects of establishing Jewish agricultural colonies in Palestine and its projects included help with the founding of the colonies of Rehovot and Hadera.

• The Jewish Agency for Palestine was founded in 1930, and played a central role in the founding of the Israeli state in 1948; the Chairman of its Executive Committee from 1935 until May 1948 was David Ben-Gurion. Only after 1948 did it change its name to the Jewish Agency for Israel.

• The Palestine Office (German: Palästinaamt) was the name of a Zionist agency set up by the executive of the World Zionist Organisation in 1908

with its office in Jaffa. Headed by Arthur Ruppin (born in the German empire; 1876–1943), the Palestine Office served during the Ottoman period as the central agency for Zionist colonisation activities in Palestine, including land purchases and assisting Jewish immigration. After the First World War the Zionist name ‘Palestine Offices’ had a different connotation and applied to Zionist international missions charged with the mobilisation and organisation of Jewish immigration to Palestine.

The Palestine Offices were subordinated to the Immigration Department of the Zionist Executive, which worked with the Jewish Agency for Palestine. The Palestine Offices were run by a Palestine Commission (Palaestinaamts kommission) composed of representatives of various Zionist parties.

• The Palestine Orchestra (‘Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’; founded in Palestine 1936) and was continuously called the Palestine Orchestra until 1948.

• The Anglo-Palestine Bank: Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi (National Bank) was originally founded in London as the Anglo Palestine Company. It was a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust which was founded by the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in 1899. It subsequently became officially known as the Anglo-Palestine Bank and this name continued until 1948.

• The Palestine Electric Company was initially founded in 1923 by Pihnas Rotenberg as the Jaffa Electric Company. It was later incorporated in Mandatory Palestine as the Palestine Electricity, Corporation Limited.

It only changed its name to the current one, the Israel Electric Corporation Limited, in 1961. Today it is one of the largest industrial companies in Israel.

• The Palestine Post was established in Jerusalem in 1932 as part of the Zionist movement and only changed its name in 1950 to the Jerusalem Post. The newspaper’s targeted audiences were English readers in Palestine and neighbouring countries and Jewish readers abroad – British Mandate officials, local Jews and Arabs, tourists and Christian pilgrims. Zionist organisations considered the Jerusalem Post an effective medium for exerting influence on the British authorities in Palestine. During its first year the Palestine Post achieved a daily circulation of about 4000 copies and by 1944 its circulation reached 50,000 copies.16

• The Jewish Palestine Exploration Society was founded in 1914 with a focus on ancient Palestine; it was renamed after 1948 as the Israel Exploration Society.

• The Palestine Football Association was established in 1928 by Zionist Jewish football clubs; after 1948 it was renamed the Israel Football Association.

• The Palestine Potash Company was established in 1930. In 1951 the company was nationalised by the Israeli government and in 1953 it was renamed the Dead Sea Works.

• Palestine Citrograph, a monthly journal devoted to the citrus industry in Palestine, was published in Tel Aviv in the 1930s and 1940s by the Zionist Yishuv; the name was later changed to the Hebrew Hadar.

• The Palestine Economic Corporation (now the Israel Economic Corporation)

was founded by American Zionist investors in 1922 as a public company and incorporated in the US. Initially it invested and operated through another American Zionist organisation, the Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions in Palestine and a string of Zionist ‘Palestine’ subsidiary companies including the Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank Ltd and the Palestine Water Company. The Palestine Water Company itself became a subsidiary of the Palestine Economic Corporation in 1933 and in 1949 it was renamed Mekorot, the Israeli Water Company, a division of the Histadrut.

• Palestine Endowment Funds was created in 1922 by US Zionist leaders to enable the distribution of funds to selected and approved Zionist organisations in Palestine. Many years after Israel was established it was renamed Israel Endowment Funds. Its grants now total over $1 billion.

• The Palestine Automobile Corporation Ltd was founded in 1934 and began its activities as a Chevrolet dealer for Tel Aviv and Haifa. In 1937 the company took over the sole distributorship of Ford products, marketing Ford cars and commercial vehicles manufactured in the US and in Europe. The company continued to operate under the ‘Palestine’ name for several years after the establishment of Israel.

• Flora Palaestina is a publication by the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, first appeared in 1966. It encompasses the Palaestina plant taxonomic and floristic data in the geo-botanical area between the Mediterranean coast in the west and the Transjordan deserts in the east, the mountains of Lebanon in the north and the desert of Sinai in the south. An updated version, Distribution Atlas of Plants in the Flora Palaestina Area by A. Danin, was published in 2004.