#visualizing palestine

[This post is a series of images from an infographic by the Slow Factory Foundation originally posted May 2021. The first image is a photo with text over it. The photo shows a massive fireball in the middle of a group of buildings, with a massive black cloud rising from the flames that is bigger than the buildings themselves. The building just behind the fireball is low, rectangular, and lit up bright orange. Behind that building, there is a city lit up at night. Hundreds of buildings stretching into the distance, a thousand glimmering lights.]

What is happening in Palestine is not complicated; it's settler colonialism & ethnic cleansing.

Debunking Misinformation around Palestine.

Myth ❌ Palestine and Israel are in "conflict."

Fact ✅ What is happening in Palestine is settler colonialism, military occupation, land theft and ethnic cleansing. A conflict means there is equal footing, which is not the case. There is an active oppressor (Israel) and an oppressed (Palestine). A colonizer (Israel) and a colonized (Palestine). This is not a conflict.

[Three images of headlines with the word 'conflict' crossed out in red ink.]

Note: According to the Congressional Research Service,

Israeli military occupation has been supported by US aid with $3.8bn a year paid for by U.S. tax dollars since 2016 for the next 10 years.

It's also supported by other colonial countries including Canada, Australia, France and Belgium.

Myth ❌ Before Israel came to Palestine, it was "just a desert" and Israel made the desert green.

Fact ✅ Before the occupation of Israel, Palestine had green, rich and lush land. In fact, Palestine respected the biodiversity of their Indigenous land: Palestinians were producing 92% of Palestine's grain, 99% of its olives and 95% of its melons to name a few.

Since Israel's occupation, biodiversity has decreased. Israel removed Indigenous plants from the land to plant European Invasive species. This phenomenon is called green colonialism, which has been discussed in depth by many, including Naomi Klein in "Let Them Drown."

Myth ❌ Sheikh Jarrah is the only neighborhood in Palestine that is in danger.

Fact ✅ Israel has been gradually stealing Palestinian land, destroying and ethnically cleansing entire Palestinian villages, violently displacing families and building illegal settlements on top them since the first Nakba ('catastrophe' in Arabic) in 1948, where almost 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed, Palestinian history erased and half the Palestinian population were expelled from their homes.

Myth (cont'd.) ❌ Sheikh Jarrah is the only neighborhood in Palestine that is in danger.

Fact ✅ Over the past few decades, the state of Israel has continued the settler colonial project, and Sheikh Jarrah is the latest and not the last neighborhood being violently threatened with dispossession, which Israel has no legal right to do.

[Images of a map showing the drastic decrease in Palestinian landmass from 1946 to 2019. In 1946, Palestine was 99% Palestinian land. In 1947, it decreased to 40%. In 1967, to 30%. And in 2019, less than 20% of Palestine is Palestinian land. The remaining areas are being encroached on by occupied Palestinian land, meaning occupied by Israelis. The rest is Israeli land.]

The mainstream media has been supporting these myths by spreading misinformation that conceal Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine by saying it's a two-sided conflict, framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism and normalizing the state of Israel.

To learn more about Palestine and the ongoing fight for liberation, follow Palestinian-led organizations, media and frontline activists. [@Instagram / Facebook]

@theimeu / Institute for Middle East Understanding ( IMEU )

@eye.on.palestine

@palestinianyouthmovement / Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)- حركة الشباب الفلسطيني

@jewishvoiceforpeace / Jewish Voice for Peace

@visualizing_palestine / Visualizing Palestine

@wolpalestine [Censored by Meta]

@mohammedelkurd / Mohammed El-Kurd

@muna.elkurd15 / Muna Nabeel Elkurd

@nouraerakat / Noura Erakat

Sources & Suggested Reading

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

Let Them Drown by Naomi Klein

Black Power and Palestine by Michael Fischbach

Orientalism by Edward Said

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

Palestine by Joe Sacco

"Zionist Logic — Malcolm X on Zionism" in The Egyptian Gazette, Sept. 17, 1964

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

Land and Housing

As a result of decades of land confiscations and discriminatory land policies, Israeli authorities have hemmed in Palestinian towns and villages, while nurturing the growth and expansion of Jewish communities, many of which in practice exclude Palestinians. The majority of Palestinians in Israel live in these communities, while some live in “mixed cities” like Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa.

Ninety-three percent of all land in Israel constitutes state land, directly controlled by the Israeli government. Israeli authorities confiscated much of this land, several million dunams, from Palestinians through several different legal instruments, as documented in a later chapter of this report. A government agency, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), manages and allocates state lands. Almost half the members of its governing body belong to the JNF, whose explicit mandate is to develop and lease land for Jews and not any other segment of the population. The fund owns 13 percent of Israel’s land, which the state is mandated to use “for the purpose of settling Jews.”

Israeli authorities have almost exclusively allocated state lands for the development and expansion of Jewish communities. Since 1948, the government has authorized the creation of more than 900 “Jewish localities” in Israel, but none for Palestinians except for a handful of government-planned townships and villages in the Negev and Galilee, created largely to concentrate previously displaced Bedouin communities. Less than 3 percent of all land in Israel falls under the jurisdiction of Palestinian municipalities, where the majority of Palestinian citizens live, according to a 2017 estimate by Israeli and Palestinian groups.

Even inside Palestinian towns and villages within Israel, Israeli authorities discriminatorily restrict the land available for residential growth. The authorities have zoned large sections of Palestinian towns and villages for “agricultural” use or as “green” areas, prohibited residential building in them, and built roads and other infrastructure projects that impede expansion. A 2003 Israeli government-commissioned report found that “many Arab towns and villages were surrounded by land designated for purposes such as security zones, Jewish regional councils, national parks and nature reserves or highways, which prevent or impede the possibility of their expansion in the future.”

While increasing focus in recent years on these issues has resulted in more state-approved residential development, they have done little to date to change the reality of hemmed-in Palestinian towns and villages. By contrast, in case studies documented by Human Rights Watch in each of Israel’s six districts, planning authorities provided sufficient land and zoning permissions to predominantly Jewish communities to facilitate their growth.

Graphics by Visualizing Palestine: https://visualizingpalestine.org