Narratives from the Holy Land
In my project, I present and explore the history of the Palestine and Israel conflict through a zine that is filled with pictures of Palestine in the late 19th century. The rise of Zionism occurs with their main goal being establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Jewish immigration soon increased as they were fleeing persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe.
During World War One the British signed the Balfour Declaration, which was issued for the creation of a natural home for the Jewish people in Palestine. On May 14, 1948, Israel established its independence because the British mandate had ended, and the following day they were invaded by the surrounding Arabic countries. This was the start of the 1948 Arab Israeli War that only lasted a year and ended with Israel winning while 750000 Palestinians got expelled or fled from their homes and country. This allowed Israel to remain in control of a large piece of territory and left Jordan in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
20 years later Israel launched a strike on Egypt and Syria in June 1967, and in this 6-day conflict Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Israel began building Jewish settlements in these territories, and the Palestinians were severely weakened. In the 80s and 90s there began to be mass protests and rock throwing by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and in 1995 the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. This only grew tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and in 2005 Israel withdrew itself from the Gaza Strip but still maintained control of its borders, airspace, and waters.
In 2006 Hamas gets voted into
power and is constantly battling against Israel's tight blockades, which cripple their economy. On October 7, 2023, Hamas surprise attacked Israel, killing 1200 people, most of them being civilians, and taking 200 hostages. Israel has responded with a large-scale military attack, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. I think that Hamas committed a terrible crime on October 7th, but I also believe that Israel should not punish innocent Palestinians for the crimes of their leaders. “Whereas art tends to be limited to museums and galleries and activism to street demonstrations, artistic activism is at home in town squares and shopping malls, on billboards, or through social media.”
“They usually have a common denominator, which is a focus on political and social issues with the intent to change or influence public opinion by confronting people with an unjust or problematic status quo.”
PowerPoint: israel vs palestine.pptx
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1X--W7QXLpVF9gx-IJua-2Xu-p3Ck5-Ug-MOdAPeNdcM/edit?usp=sharing
Khalidi and Rashid. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance. Picador Press, 2021.
Mandel, Neville J. The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. University of California Press, 1976.
Sachs, Natan, and Kevin Huggard. "Gaza ceasefire: What the Israel-Hamas agreement means." Brookings, 17 Jan. 2025.
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