The Nakba, Palestinians’ loss of their lands and homes, arguably began in the 1880s with the arrival of the first Zionist Jewish colonists, who evicted Palestinians from land the colonists had purchased from absentee landlords.
The Nakba is an ongoing calamity that continues to define the Palestinian condition today. 1948 and 1967 are watershed dates of larger and more monumental losses of land and rights, and 1993, the Oslo year, is a watershed date of Palestinians’ loss of their right to retrieve their stolen homeland through the collaboration of what once was their liberation movement.
But Zionist Jewish colonisation of Palestine was a culmination of European Christian efforts to colonise Palestine since Napoleon’s invasion and defeat in Acre in 1799 at the hands of the Ottomans and their British allies.
Indeed, this European Christian colonisation of the country throughout much of the 19th century was the prelude to Zionist Jewish colonisation at the end of it.
Fanatical missionaries
While the Protestant Reformation was the first Christian European movement to call for Jews to be converted and “return” to Palestine, it was the British who began the plans for colonisation and Christianisation pioneered by the fanatical missionaries of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (founded in 1809), known popularly as the London Jews Society.
Anglican zealots sought to convert European Jews and encourage their emigration to Palestine, where they established a missionary network. In the 1820s, this society, sponsored by British politicians and lords, was led by Jewish converts who saw fit to send more Jewish converts to Palestine to proselytise the Jews.
Things changed measurably in the last two decades of the 19th century, as early Zionist Jewish immigration began from the Russian colonial settlement of Odessa…