Background
The International Solidarity Day
November the 29th
On the 29th of November 1947 the United Nations adopted resolution 181 which stated that the British mandate of Palestine was to be partitioned. The original idea, was that the partition would be a solution to the conflict which had arisen from several waves of Jewish immigration before, and after, the Second World War. In what had once been a territory with a large Arab majority, there were now to be two states, with 55% of the land given to the quickly expanding Jewish minority.
Angered what they saw as European colonialism, the surrounding Arab states invaded to try and restore the Arab Palestinian homeland. When the dust settled by 1948 the Jewish minority had seized 78% of the former Arab territory and the State of Israel was declared. What was left of Palestinian territory (22%) was occupied by Egypt and Jordan and the idea of an independent Palestine has not been realized to this day.
In 1948, the new Israeli state ethnically cleansed its new territories, destroying 450 Palestinian villages and turning the Palestinian nation into a Diaspora people. This was followed by the seizure of the remaining Palestinian territories in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict. Today the Palestinians number more than 8 million and are scattered throughout world, including in Israel and the Occupied Territories, the surrounding Arab states and in a host of other countries.
International Solidarity Day was declared to encourage Israel to honor resolution 181 and finally allow a Palestinian state to come into existence. The need to show solidarity has never been greater. The remaining Palestinian territory (the 22%) is presently being heavily colonized by Israeli settlements and infrastructure, with mass land seizures and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. When this process is complete the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to have their own nation, as laid out by numerous United Nations resolutions, will be lost forever.
