The Roots of the Apartheid in Palestine: The Jewification of the Territory during the British Mandate

Abstract

The Zionist colonization of Palestine was, from the beginning, an ethnically-based nationalist project that sought to separate and expel the Palestinian population. The creation of a state for the Jewish people demanded a “cleansed” territory in which Jewish immigrants could settle. The land was obtained with the conquests of 1947-8 and the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians. However, the foundations of the future state were laid before, mainly during the Mandate. The dynamics of ethnic cleansing, as with apartheid, began with the colonization at the end of the 19th century and increased under the British Mandate. In a previous article I analyzed the dimension of the defence of Jewish labour, and in this one I shall deal with the process of the Jewification of the territory.