How it all started - Palestinian oppression

Following is the extract from the Yasir Arafat's address to the UN General Assembly (November 13, 1974)

The roots of the Palestine question reach back in the closing years of the 19th century, in other words, to that period which we call the era of colonialism and settlement as we know it today. This is precisely the period which Zionism as a scheme was born; its aim was the conquest of Palestine by European immigrants, just as settlers colonized and indeed raided most of Africa. Just as colonialism and its demagogues dignified their conquests, their plunder and limitless attacks upon the natives of Africa with appeals to a "civilizing and modernizing" mission, so too did waves of Zionists immigrants disguise their purposes as they conquered Palestine. Just as colonialism as a system and colonialists as its instrument used religion, color, race and language to justify the African's exploitation and its cruel subjugation by terror and discrimination, so too were these methods employed as Palestine was usurped and its people hounded from their national homeland.

The Jewish invasion of Palestine began in 1881. Before the first large wave of immigrants started arriving, Palestine had a population of half a million: most of the population was either Muslims or Christian and only 20,000 Jewish. Every segment of the population enjoyed the religious tolerance characteristic of our civilization  Between 1882 and 1917 the Zionist Movement settled approximately 50,000 European Jews in our homeland. To do that it resorted to trickery and deceit in order to implant them in our midst.
Its success in getting Britain to issue Balfour Declaration once again demonstrated the alliance between Zionism and imperialism. Furthermore by promising to Zionist movement what was not hers to give, Britain showed how oppressive the rule of imperialism was. In the wake of Balfour Declaration and over a period of 30 years, the Zionist movement succeeded, in collaboration with its imperialist ally, in settling more European Jews on the land thus usurping the properties of Palestine Arabs.

By 1947 the number of Jews had reached 600,00: they owned about 6 percent of Palestinian Arab land. The figure should be compared to the population of Palestine which at that time was 1,250,000.

As a result of the collusion between the mandatory Power and the Zionist movement and with the support of some countries , this general Assembly early in its history approved a recommendation to partition our Palestinian homeland. This took place in an atmosphere poisoned with questionable actions and strong pressure. The General Assembly partitioned our what it had no right to divide an indivisible homeland. They waged a war on being granted 54 % of land and hence they occupied 81% of the land uprooting millions of Arabs. They occupied 524 Arab towns and villages of which they destroyed 385.

With support from imperialist and colonialist Powers, it managed to get itself accepted as a United Nations member. It further succeeded in getting the Palestine question deleted from the agenda of the UN and deceiving world public opinion by presenting the cause as a problem of refugees in need either of charity from do-gooders or settlement in a land not theirs.

In addition to the many instances of aggression committed by this entity against the Arab States, it has launched two large-scales wars, in 1956 and 1967, thus endangering the world peace and security.
Why should Arab Palestinian people be responsible for the Jewish immigration, if such problems exist in the minds of some people? Why do not the supporters of these problems open their own countries, which can absorb help these immigrants?

Those who call us terrorist wish to prevent world public opinion from discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice. They seek to hide terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defense.
The difference between revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which they fight. For whoever stands by a just cause and fights for freedom and liberation and his land from the invaders, the settlers and the colonialists, cannot possibly be called terrorist; otherwise the American people in their struggle for liberation from the British colonialist would have been terrorist, the European resistance against the Nazis would be terrorism, the struggle for Asian, African and Latin American peoples would also be terrorism.
Zionist terrorism  which was waged against the Palestine people to evict it from its country and usurp its land is registered in our official documents Houses, towns, villages were destroyed and people were forced to leave their homeland at the gun-point.
Their terrorism fed on hatred and this hatred was even directed against the olive tree in the country. They see in the olive tree and in the child and enemy that should be exterminated. Their terrorism even reached the sacred place like Jerusalem.

I must mention the fire in the Al- Aqsa mosque and the dis figuration of many of the monuments, which are both historic and religious in character.

The small number of Palestinian Arabs who were not uprooted by the Zionists in 1948 are at present refugees in their own homeland. Israeli laws treat them as second class citizens and even third class citizens

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