Strangers in our own country

Apr 05, 2026 Features / Columnists

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(Kaieteur News) – If the modern world were to embrace the idea that every people must return to and reclaim the lands their ancestors inhabited two thousand years ago, we would not be advancing civilization—we would be unmaking it. Such a principle would ignite competing historical claims across continents, tearing apart established nations and plunging humanity into ceaseless territorial conflict. It would resemble not a just order, but a medieval world of overlapping claims, conquest, and perpetual instability.

It is precisely this danger—of elevating ancient entitlement above lived reality—that is laid bare in the modern history of Palestine.

The creation of the State of Israel was not simply an act of refuge; it was also, undeniably, an act of displacement. It emerged from a convergence of forces: the rise of modern nationalism, the catastrophic persecution of Jews in Europe, and the machinery of British colonial power. But in resolving one historic injustice, it imposed another on a different people—the Palestinians.

Zionism framed the establishment of a Jewish homeland as both a necessity and a right. Yet this vision, while grounded in a historical connection to the land, it did not adequately reckon with the presence of an existing society—Arab Palestinians—who had lived, worked, and built communities there for generations. The land was not empty; it was inhabited, cultivated, and claimed in the present tense.

The decisive turning point came under the umbrella of empire. During World War I, Britain positioned itself as arbiter of the region’s future. Through the Balfour Declaration, it endorsed the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. It did so without the consent of the majority population already living there. This was not self-determination; it was imperial allocation.

Under the British Mandate for Palestine, Jewish immigration increased, land purchases expanded, and the demographic and political balance began to shift. In other words, Jews were allowed to come and take over lands that belonged to the Palestinians.

For the Palestinians, this represented the gradual erosion of their control over their own homeland. They saw a project unfolding in which they were becoming strangers in their own country.

The aftermath of World War II intensified international support for the creation of a Jewish state, particularly in light of the Holocaust. But the moral urgency to provide a safe haven for Jews translated, in practice, into dispossession of the Palestinians.

The United Nations stepped in and proposed a partition plan of 1947. This plan proposed dividing the land, but it did so in a way that allocated a significant portion to a population that was still a minority. This deepened fears of Palestinian marginalisation.

Those fears materialised in 1948. The establishment of Israel and the ensuing 1948 Arab–Israeli War resulted in what Palestinians call the Nakba—the catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands were expelled or fled from their homes, entire villages were depopulated, and a people who had lived on the land for generations were transformed into refugees. This was not incidental to the creation of the state; it was, in many respects, intrinsic to it. A new national home was being forged for Jews, and it came at the cost of another people’s homeland.

In the decades that followed, the pattern deepened. The Six-Day War brought additional Palestinian territories under Israeli control, and the expansion of settlements further entrenched a reality in which Palestinians found themselves increasingly confined, fragmented, and denied full sovereignty. What began as displacement became a prolonged condition of statelessness and occupation.

The creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine displaced the Palestinian people from their rights to it. Their dispossession was not an unintended side effect; it was a direct consequence of establishing the State of Israel, state that prioritized one group’s national aspirations over another’s existing presence.

Imagine what would happen if a decision was taken to create in a part of Guyana, a home for Venezuela. This is no different from what happened with Palestine. Their lands were handed out to create the State of Isarel which has continued to expand and expand, displacing the very people who the land belongs to.

This is why the conflict endures. It is not simply a dispute over borders; it is a struggle over rights—over who belongs, who governs, and who has claim to the land. If Palestinians are denied full sovereignty and the restoration of their rights, the conditions for conflict will persist.

And guess where at one time consideration was being given to locate the State of Israel. Of all places, Guyana, then British Guiana, was being considered. Today we would have been strangers in our own country.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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