Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

The Palestinians have been asking for their own state since at least the 1920s when the British conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. But first the British (during the British Mandate years) and then Israel (since its founding in 1948) have ignored or actively suppressed the many attempts Palestinians have made to establish their own state. Palestinian political activists have been routinely jailed or deported, and sometimes assassinated. Protests have been routinely quashed. After Israel’s founding, Palestinian books, leaflets, and other writings have been systematically censored to remove any sign of nationalist aspirations.

Furthermore, their economy and general development has been actively suppressed by Israel for decades using various means, including:

• severely restricting imports and exports, which prevent farmers and businesses from flourishing
• severely restricting movement on land, which limit the ability to carry out business or get advanced educational degrees
• denying them the permits required to run certain businesses (e.g. quarry operators) and granting those permits to Jewish operators instead
• destroying their airports, which further limits the ability to conduct business
• preventing the construction of a sea port, which further limits the ability to conduct business
• imposing severe constraints on water usage, which makes agriculture difficult or impossible

If the Palestinians had been left to their own devices, without the constraints imposed first by the British Mandate then by Israel, national Palestinian institutions and economic development would have likely progressed in a manner similar to its neighbors Syria and Jordan, and a Palestinian state would have naturally emerged.