Shades From US History on What Israel Has Perpetrated on the Palestinians

 

Shades of What Israel Has Perpetrated on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over a Period of More than 70 Years

 

In the spring of 1832, the United States War Department gave a difficult task to the United States Marshall Robert L. Crawford to remove white settlers who had illegally encroached on land that had been given to the Creek people under the Treaty of Cusseta, which had been signed just weeks before Crawford received his orders as part of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830.  That act allowed the government to exchange land west of the Mississippi for native lands in the east.  The terms of the Treaty of Cusseta essentially privatized five million acres located in southeast Alabama, premised on giving individual plots of land to the Creek people.  It provided Federal protection for the Native American rights for a period of five years. The hope in Washington was that the Creeks would sell their lands during this period and move west of the Mississippi. Yet, for the indigenous population, this was not the “opportunity” to move west but the right, which the government pledged to enforce for five years, to hold their land. 

 

Again and again, the Indians and Marshall Crawford turned to the federal government, Secretary of War Cass and the President for help.  And they received some, but in the end not nearly enough to deter the white intruders who “refused to tolerate the federal government’s curtailing of what they militantly regarded as their rights and freedom.”

 

I can’t read this history without being soberly reminded that this in so many ways is exactly what we have seen as Israeli settlers have moved into land granted by the United Nations to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  They have had fingers wagged at them from time to time by the Israel government, but not decisively, and indeed there are members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet who openly advocate displacing Palestinians to other countries to make room for Israelis, just as U.S. leaders almost a century ago looked to displace the Native American population to the west to make room for white settlers east of the Mississippi.    And, of course, those treaties establishing defined land for Native Americans west of the Mississippi were also soon to be abrogated, making way for the expansion of white settlers.

 

This is a fair reminder of what the Palestinians are up against and what those in the world, like me, who believe they have every right to their own state need to do to force upon the Israeli government the commitment to do what is right to recognize and support what Palestinians deserve—dignity and freedom—just as Israeli citizens do.

 

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