Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians

Presenter Information

Bria Riepe

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Brandi Denison

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Arts and Sciences

Faculty Sponsor Department

International Studies

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/2021/posters/israels-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestinians/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Archives; SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Posters; University of North Florida -- Students -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville – Posters; University of North Florida – Undergraduates -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. International Studies Program -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies; Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- Research – Posters; Ethnic cleansing -- Israel -- Research – Posters; Ethnic conflict -- Israel -- Religious aspects -- Research – Posters; Genocide -- Israel -- Research -- Posters

Abstract

The carving of Palestine to create a ‘Jewish State’, Israel, has imposed upon the Israeli and Palestinian people the necessity of separation on highly unequal terms and qualities of human existence. Since Israel’s creation, millions of Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their homes, displaced, rendered refugees, and continue to exist under severe Israeli military occupation. According to Israeli immigration laws, displaced Palestinians are prohibited from returning to their homes, joining their families in Israel or the occupied territories, and even from entering the ever-expanding borders of Israel. This has occurred alongside a high immigration rate through Israel’s Law of Return, or Aliyah, which invites Jews around the world to settle in Israel and receive full Israeli citizenship, denying this process to non-Jews. While both Palestinians and Israeli’s experience the terrible violence of the Israel-Palestine conflict, one can escape the circumstance by access to a comfortable lifestyle in Israel; for Palestinians, displaced and deprived of food, water, and shelter security, while being denied the freedom of movement, there is no escape from the escalating humanitarian crisis. For my project, I examine how Israel’s national ideology of Zionism has fueled the phenomena of creating a ‘Jewish State’ through ethnic cleansing of Palestinians at the expense of coexistence, focusing specifically on Israel’s Law of Return’s, or the phenomena of Aliyah’s, role in creating a homogeneous ethno-religious ‘Jewish State’ in what was once Palestine through population removal, replacement, discriminatory state infrastructure, and territorial expansion.

Comments

My name is Bria Riepe and my project is on Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians.
The carving of Palestine to create a ‘Jewish State’, Israel, on the ideological framework of
ethno-religious nationalism (Zionism) has resulted in extensive displacement, refugees, and
violence. Since Israel’s creation, the national ideology of Zionism has been employed through
international law, territorial expansion, non-Jewish dispossession and removal, and
discriminatory immigration laws to secure a ‘Jewish State’ through the mass influx of Jews from
around the diaspora to Palestine. This mechanism to secure a ‘Jewish State’ is significantly
accelerated through discriminatory immigration policies; the Law of Return, or Aliyah, invites
Jews around the world to settle in Israel and receive full Israeli citizenship, denying this process
to non-Jews. Therefore, the phenomena of creating a ‘Jewish State’ and it’s relationship to the
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians will be examined through this research question: How does
Aliyah contribute to the ethno-religious cleansing of Palestinians?
The Photo on the left of a Palestinian carrying a matress from their bombed home in Gaza. The
second photo is of the Gaza crisis, which Palestinians suffered extensive casualties and bombings
by Israel.
This research question is addressed through a historical analysis of primary and secondary
sources on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including: demographic statistics, state policies, legal
documents, court cases, literature, religious texts, and non-governmental documentation of
human rights abuses. The following practices central to Israel’s ethnic cleansing were analyzed
from the above sources: discriminatory policies, population removal, replacement, and territorial
expansion. This research is presented through a contextual history of the Aliyah immigration law
alongside the examination of its role in Israel’s active ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. A critical
examination of sources was also conducted to avoid bias on this controversial topic, and this
research includes Israeli, Palestinian, and external sources.
The first image shows the demographics of the Jewish Population in Palestine while the images
of 1947, 1967, and 2010 show territory under Israel and Palestine’s control. The 2010 image
does not reflect Israel’s illegal occupation of all of what was once Palestine, including the West
Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Prior to the 19th century, the territory of Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and
inhabited by a multicultural population with the following demographics: 86 percent Muslim, 10
percent Christian, and 4 percent Jewish. Since the 1948 founding of Israel and Israel’s
subsequent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, approximately half the Palestinians
of pre-1948 Palestine were displaced. This displacement has occurred alongside the immigration
of approximately 3.3 million Jews to Israel since 1948 under the Aliyah immigration policy, with
Jews constituting 74.1% of Israel’s citizenry today. Israel’s creation of refugees continues to
occur through land confiscation, home demolitions, discriminatory immigration laws, territorial
expansion, and forcible population transfer.
This mechanism to secure a ‘Jewish State’ is significantly accelerated through discriminatory
immigration policies: the Law of Return, or Aliyah, invites Jews around the world to settle in
Israel and receive full Israeli citizenship, denying this process to non-Jews. According to Israeli
immigration laws, displaced Palestinians are prohibited from returning to their homes, joining
their families in Israel or the occupied territories, and even from entering the expanding borders
of Israel. Israel encourages the mass migrations of Jews to Israel, providing financial incentives,
settlement packages, and even territorial benefits to live in illegally occupied land in Palestinian
territory, removing and pushing Palestinian people out of geographic regions. In turn, the spatial
distribution of Aliyah immigrants dispossesses Palestinian people from Palestinian land. In fact,
Israel reached the status of the highest immigration rate in the world in proportion to its size in
the 1990s (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics). The Law of Return is still upheld today, with the
Zionist national aim to create and preserve a homogeneous ethno-religious ‘Jewish State’ in
Israel.
The carving of Palestine to create a ‘Jewish State’, Israel, on the ideological framework of
ethno-religious nationalism resulted in extensive displacement, refugees, and violence. Since
Israel’s creation, millions of Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their homes,
displaced, rendered refugees, and currently exist under severe Israeli military occupation. Yet,
from the Balfour Declaration to the Oslo Accords, all efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict have used a framework to meet Israel’s ever-expanding territorial and security interests,
ignoring the human rights principles to which both sides should be held.
The discriminatory Aliyah immigration policy has significantly intensified Israel’s ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians through population removal, replacement, and territorial expansion.
The notion of the legal framework of Aliyah is based on the Zionist religious justification to a
territory that people already exist in and coincides with the employment of ethnic cleansing to
‘make room’ for a ‘Jewish State’; a notion faced with a contradictory reality of diverse religious
and ethnic existence in the territory of Israel and Palestine. A sustainable framework for peace in
the Israel-Palestine conflict must address the ethnic cleansing qualities of the Aliyah immigration
law, Israel’s state removal and exclusion of Palestinians through discriminatory laws and include
the human rights standards to which Palestinians and Israelis may coexist.