The Wild East

This week the Israel - Palestine conflict erupted again, the many victims of which are of course tragic for each side. Unlike it seems pretty much everyone else I will not try to attribute blame nor claim to know what the solution it. Instead as the title of this post attempts to allude to, I wish to compare the situation in the Middle East to the colonization of the Americas.

Both the Israel-Palestine conflict and the colonization of the Americas involve immigration of Europeans fleeing persecution and poverty to a new already inhabited area which had been claimed/ appropriated by foreign European powers. This territory was relatively sparsely populated by diverse peoples (mainly Arab Palestinians, and First Nations). The immigrants had the technology to increase the productivity of the land and built many settlements to house their growing population (irrigation and dredging of swampland in Israel, and metal working and agricultural techniques in the Americas). Eventually the immigrant population out grew the boundaries of their initial colonies and racial/religious tensions resulted in the government forcibly removing the indigenous population to make room for the settlers (illegal Israeli settlements, or the Trail of Tears forced relocation of the Cherokee). As one might expect the indigenous population wasn't happy about this and fought back. But knowing they were out-gunned by their technologically superior enemy, who could hide behind nearly impenetrable defences, they resorted to guerrilla tactics and terrorism. As a result of these tactics and the divided nature of the indigenous people there was a long but intermittent war (the several Gaza Wars, and the American Indian Wars).

Another similarity is the integration of some of the indigenous people into the colonizer's new nation, Israel has a substantial Arab minority amongst its citizens, and many first nations people now live and work in city centres and in the military in the Americas. The remaining indigenous people who failed to integrate were restricted to small reserved bits of land where they were promised they would be allowed to be self-governing nations (the Palestinian authority, and the First-Nation reserves) but in reality most ended up impoverished (unemployment in Gaza is 21%, and unemployment on Canadian First Nations reserves is 25%).

However, this comparison doesn't necessarily mean a bleak future for the Palestinians. Some indigenous peoples manage to integrate with the colonizers (New Zealand) and some others manage to become stable well-governed groups and lift their people out of poverty. However, most nations (Canada, Australia, USA) are still struggling to provide the First Nations people either physical or mental well-being and it is only because of a lack of allies capable of providing weapons or financial assistance plus prolonged killing/imprisonment of attackers that the First Nations gave up all military ambition.