All warfare is based on deception.

(Sun Tzu)

In fewer wars is this adage truer than in the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is often difficult to differentiate fact from fiction in this conflict due to the excessive amount of propaganda being pushed by both sides, as modern wars are fought as much on Elon Musk’s platform ‘X’ as they are on the battlefield. This article is the first of a trilogy that aims to sift through some of the common false or doubtful narratives that most parrot without a full appreciation of the truth. The particular focus of this article is two foundational claims that are often parroted claims to legitimize their claims to the land. From the pro-Palestinian side, the argument based on native majority, and the argument from historicity, are often made by the pro-Israeli side. These are not the only claims, and perhaps not even the most potent. They are, however, repeated often enough to warrant examination. The intention with these articles is not to retell the entire history of this conflict but to address specific narratives.

The popular contemporary Palestinian position is that the land as a whole should be under the governance of the native Arab-Palestinian population because they are the native majority of the land. They hold to the position that Zionist Jews are European colonialists who have forcibly dispossessed an indigenous people of their land, immigrating en masse to the Holy Land in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Hence they have no legitimate grounds to assert governance over the land. The effect of this narrative has been best illustrated by the fact that multiple respective Palestinian leaderships had rejected a 2-state solution on 4 separate occasions, refusing to concede a square inch of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea until the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank did eventually in 1993.

While this reading does contain some truth, it is also fairly selective, primarily because it omits two pivotal facts. The first is that there was mass immigration into the land by Arabs in the same period and increasingly so during the British Mandate period (1918-1948). Many moved to the region for work under the employ of the British. Indeed, before the late 1800s, much of the land had become desolate, most famously remarked by Mark Twain, who remarked that “Jerusalem lay in sackcloth anashes.” s”This position is further supported by Hamas’ former Minister of the Interior, who, while requesting assistance from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, stated that a decisive majority of Gazans have roots in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

The second issue is that the dominance of the Arab-Palestinian population also ignores the effect of the violent uprisings with the intent of massacring or expelling the Ottoman Jewry that occurred, which undoubtedly displaced a large segment of the Jewish population, who may otherwise be within the borders of the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian borders. These include but are not limited to the Hebron Massacre of 1834 and 1929 (which prompted an evacuation of the area’s Jews) and the Jaffa and Tel Aviv deportations of 1915. It is also worth noting that Jews as a population are orders of magnitude fewer than the Arabs—some 16 million worldwide, in comparison to 480 million—and subsequently any attempt at a massacre is likely to have a more decisive impact on their numbers as a minority.

Contrarily, the oft-repeated pro-Israeli narrative holds that they were a people scattered repeatedly by foreign empires (Romans, Seljuk Turks, Ottomans, etc.) returning to their ancestral homeland. This is buttressed by the fact that the Israelis have a relationship with the land that can be archaeologically traced back to almost three and a half millennia years ago. They had been forcibly expelled from the land several times by subordinating empires but had continuously returned to their ancestral homeland time and again, the phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem,” echoing throughout the Jewish diaspora for 2,000 years. The pogroms they suffered in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, culminating in the Holocaust, were but a rude awakening in the Jewish consciousness that the Jews would only be guaranteed safety if they could institute it themselves; and where else would it make sense but the land from which their forefathers originated?

While many will acknowledge that there were local Arabs who were at the formation of the state of Israel, they argue that the Palestinian national consciousness is a new concept birthed in the late 19th century, in opposition to Zionism. The state of Israel has attempted to mitigate the fact that they were not a decisive majority in the land by acknowledging and integrating the local Arabs, who stayed after its establishment. The so-called ‘Arab-Israelis’ now constitute 21% of the total population of the state of Israel and have equal rights under the law, although social inequality does prevail.

The main issue with the point of the historical claim is that even if it is granted, it is hardly a convincing argument to the people who took up residence in the land in the interim, and nor can it justify the dispossessing them of any land. Additionally, while it is true that Palestine has never been a sovereign nation, the last sovereign predecessor to the modern-day state of Israel ceased to exist more than 2,200 years ago.

Ultimately, to find a just solution to this conflict, a few questions need to be answered comprehensively. Namely, can a people lose their indigeneity? If so, at what point does that happen? Does it matter that the previous owners were forcibly removed?

In sum, the purpose of this article is to show that there is a high level of nuance that is often hidden by the bombastic and emotive language that is often reported around the conflict. The next article will discuss claims of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and civilian casualties.