Suarav Sarkar

Globetrotter Media

In 1917, the British government issued the infamous Balfour Declaration.

This brief document—<a data-link-role-code="open_new_tab" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration">67 words</a>—was a turning point in modern Palestinian history. It committed Great Britain to establishing a “national home” for Jewish people in Palestine. (The initial language promised a “Jewish state,” but was changed later.)

The Balfour Declaration contained language that was meant to safeguard Palestinians, but we have seen how that has played out in the ensuing century.

Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba (L) and Amad Diallo (R) walk around the pitch with a Palestine flag

<h3>Repression of Palestinian nationalism</h3>

From World War I to 1948, the British ruled Palestine, the bulk of that time under a mandate issued by the League of Nations.

The population of Jewish settlers in Palestine increased over these decades—particularly the 1930s—as the British government fostered their immigration.

In 1922, only 11 percent of the population in the region was Jewish. By 1931, the figure was up to about 17 percent. By 1939, it was almost 30 percent.

At that point, the British government sought to limit any further expansion of the Jewish population in order to ensure stability in the region. But by then, it was too late—the facts on the ground had changed.

What had been a region that was almost <a data-link-role-code="open_new_tab" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide">90 percent</a> Palestinian had become a contested land between two demographically numerous groups.

Pope Francis Canonizes Saints from 19th Century Palestine

Moreover, the British had confiscated land from Palestinians to hand it over to Jewish people and engaged in violent repression of incipient Palestinian nationalism. And in the 1930s, a British government commission recommended that Palestine be partitioned, laying the groundwork for the failed “two-state solution.”

In other words, this conflict is the product of specific imperial policies that were practiced in the first half of the 20th century to foster a colonial project.

<h3>Antisemitism made into Palestinians’ Zionist problem by the British Empire</h3>

The “Jewish question”—Europe’s longstanding inability to adequately address its own antisemitism—was made into Palestinians’ Zionist problem by the British Empire.

One of the key features of British rule was to play different groups against each other. One of the key methods adopted by them over the course of centuries and a global collection of provinces was to study the social history of their subjects to manage the politics and play different groups against each other.

The support for Jewish migration to Palestine triggered resentment and mobilisation by Indigenous Palestinians, eventually leading to the Great Revolt of 1936-1939.

Tehran, Iran. In Tehran's capital, two Iranian clerics express their support by holding the flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Palestine as they take part in an anti-Israeli rally.HOSSEIN BERIS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

The revolt, which included a general strike and peasant uprising, was violently repressed by the British government in collaboration with Zionist paramilitaries. However, after the revolt, the British began to limit further Jewish immigration to the region, turning against the group they had supported in order to protect their imperial interests.

This led to violent attacks by Zionists in Palestine.

<h3>Palestine is not alone in the British 'divide and rule' fate </h3>

In region after region, the British used strategies of “divide and rule” to pit one people against another for the benefit of the empire.

In British India, they pushed the Hindu-Muslim divide, sometimes favoring one population, sometimes the other.

In Cyprus, they pitted the Greeks against the Turks.

In Sri Lanka, it was the Tamils against the Sinhalese.

In Ireland, it was the Catholics against the Protestants. The list goes on.

Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 2023. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

In all of these places, the supposedly “ancient” politics of intergroup conflict have persisted beyond when the sun set on the British Empire. There have been territorial divides based on ethnicity and/or religion.

British India became India and Pakistan. Pakistan was then further subdivided into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ireland was split up into the Republic of Ireland and the UK’s Northern Ireland.

Cyprus is divided in two, and its legal status is still unresolved. In Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka, a 30-year civil war waged to establish a Tamil state, which ended in 2009 in a similar fashion to what we are witnessing in Gaza today.

And in 1948, Palestine was formally partitioned, establishing a Zionist state and what was meant to be a Palestinian one, with the blessing of the former British rulers who oversaw the beginning of the Nakba.

<h3>Stop the current genocide instead of waving an Israeli flag</h3>

Each of these places has been marked with violent conflict based on “ancient” hatreds that can be traced to the last one or two centuries.

It is this commonality that firmly establishes that the British Empire policies are the root cause of the violence in these regions; there are simply too many instances of these conflicts being traced back to the empire to imagine a coincidence.

While the proximate causes of Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide clearly lie squarely at the feet of Israel and its chief sponsor the United States, the United Kingdom has a special responsibility to make right its historical sins in Palestine—and everywhere else.

A minimal first step would be to work to stop the current genocide instead of waving an Israeli flag. But this—let alone reparations—does not seem to be on the table.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Pulse as its publisher.

Israeli flags are flying over all government buildings in the United Kingdom currently, but this isn’t the first time the former imperial hegemon has put its weight behind Zionism. In 1917, the British government issued the infamous Balfour Declaration.

The British roots of the conflict in Palestine

Reynard Loki

<h3>As scientists continue to research the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, one fact has become clear: Deforestation is linked to emerging diseases. </h3>

When humans destroy forests to create land for human use, whether it’s for farming, mining, logging, infrastructure development, or urban expansion, biodiversity is diminished. And as some species go extinct, the ones that remain and even flourish in degraded forest ecosystems—like bats, rats, and birds—are those that are more likely to be hosts for deadly viruses that can jump to humans.

COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola—three infectious diseases that spread across national borders since 2002—share one thing in common: They were transmitted to humans from wild animals living in tropical forests, which are losing more than 100 trees per second due to rampant, unsustainable deforestation.

It is also important to note that cutting down trees negatively impacts not only biodiversity and human health but the climate: Deforestation is responsible for 30% of global carbon emissions.

<h3>Human activity creating reservoirs of zoonotic disease</h3>

Researchers in England examined over 6,800 ecological communities across six continents and found trends connecting disease outbreaks to regions where biodiversity has been diminished due to human activity.

Their study, published in the journal Nature in August 2020, concluded that “global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.”

Some scientists had been sounding this alarm for many years, but it had fallen on deaf ears.

“We’ve been warning about this for decades,” said Kate Jones, an ecologist at University College London who was one of the study’s authors. “Nobody paid any attention.”

<h3>Calls to maintain healthy forests</h3>

Now is the time for governments to pay attention to the science: To prevent the next pandemic, efforts must be made to rein in rampant deforestation.

In an essay published in the journal Science in July 2020, a group of scientists made the case that reducing both deforestation and the wildlife trade would result in a lower risk of future pandemics.

“The clear link between deforestation and virus emergence suggests that a major effort to retain intact forest cover would have a large return on investment even if its only benefit was to reduce virus emergence events,” they write.

Epidemiologist Ibrahima Socé Fall, who heads emergency operations at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, echoes that call: “Sustainable development is crucial,” he said. “If we continue to have this level of deforestation, disorganized mining, and unplanned development, we are going to have more outbreaks.”

<h3>Sustainable development means sustainable livelihoods</h3>

Investing in sustainable solutions also means investing in sustainable livelihoods. And so part of reducing deforestation is understanding the needs of rural communities living in or alongside forests, including providing economic incentives to protect the natural ecosystems around them.

Giving Indigenous groups legal rights to their land is one way. In 2009 in India’s Narmada District, for example, villagers were able to secure legal rights to their land and resources, which led to more sustainable land management.

“Being secure in the knowledge that they own their land has meant that these communities have an incentive to protect and improve it for the future,” writes Edward Davey, the international engagement director of the Food and Land Use Coalition, an initiative to improve the world’s food and land use systems.

“Villagers can now invest in actions like leveling, terracing, and irrigating farmland for greater productivity. Some villages are also taking steps to prevent illegal forest clearing and forest fires, by patrolling the forest and brokering community agreements to manage fire," Edward adds.

In addition, research indicates that improving rural healthcare can lead to a reduction in illegal logging. In one study conducted by researchers from the United States and Indonesia, villagers in rural Borneo were given discounts on health clinic visits, which offset the medical costs that were often paid for by illegal logging.

“The greatest logging reductions were adjacent to the most highly engaged villages,” write the study authors. “Results suggest that this community-derived solution simultaneously improved health care access for local and indigenous communities and sustainably conserved carbon stocks in a protected tropical forest.”

In early 2021, several environmental groups and advocacy organizations co-sponsored a public petition—signed by more than 87,000 people as of July 2023—urging the Biden administration and Congress to curb deforestation in an effort to lower the risk of the next pandemic.

Specifically, the petition calls for $2.5 billion in the next COVID relief bill to “support healthcare and jobs training for indigenous people in every tropical rainforest community, and support impoverished nations to build the healthcare systems to stop outbreaks before they spread.”

The petition’s sponsors, which include Brazilian Rainforest Trust, Endangered Species Coalition, and Mighty Earth, argue that “[ending deforestation is our best chance to conserve wildlife, one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to curb global warming, and absolutely crucial to prevent the next deadly, global pandemic.”

“We are all interconnected,” famed primatologist Jane Goodall told PBS NewsHour. “And if we don’t get that lesson from this pandemic, then maybe we never will.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Two chimpanzees on a tree [Photo: Oscar Mugisha]

COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola were transmitted to humans from wild animals living in tropical forests. Destroying their habitats is killing us.

Why healthy forests mean fewer pandemics

Prabir Purkayastha

The twentieth century marked a significant shift in the landscape of knowledge production and technology development.

Gone were the days of lone inventors like Edison, Siemens, Westinghouse, and Graham Bell, who defined the nineteenth century.

Instead, this new era saw the rise of public-funded universities and technical institutions alongside concentrated technology development within the R&amp;D laboratories of large corporations.

READ: <a data-link-role-code="open_new_tab" href="https://www.pulselive.co.ke/business/domestic/2023-drif-will-inspire-you-to-learn-connect-shape-advocacy-issues-and-build-bonds/4vg1wdj">5 reasons you should take part in Digital Rights &amp; Inclusion Forum</a>

<h3>The changing role of science &amp; technology</h3>

In this phase, the capital was still expanding production. Even though finance capital was already dominant over productive capital, the major capitalists still had a strong manufacturing base.

In this phase of development, science was regarded as a public good and its development was largely concentrated in the university system or publicly funded research institutions. Technology development was largely regarded as a private enterprise.

Science was supposed to produce new knowledge, which could then be mined by technology to produce artifacts.

<h3>Emergence of Intellectual Property</h3>

To protect the valuable ideas embedded in these artifacts, the concept of intellectual property emerged.

Patents and other rights were established, serving both a private and public purpose. They offered inventors a limited-term monopoly in exchange for full public disclosure of their inventions, ensuring that knowledge was eventually shared with the public.

The transformation of this centuries-old system was driven by two major shifts in knowledge production.

Firstly, the neoliberal order reshaped universities into profit-driven commercial entities, blurring the lines between academia and industry.

Secondly, the boundary between science and technology became increasingly porous, with advances in fields like genetics seamlessly leading to patentable and marketable products. This integration drove many academic disciplines closer to production systems.

READ: <a data-link-role-code="open_new_tab" href="https://www.pulselive.co.ke/apo/time-for-a-digital-scale-up-in-africa-to-unlock-the-continents-untapped-creative/8t4hbl0">Time for a digital scale-up in Africa to unlock the continent’s untapped creative economies</a>

Finance capital began to exert its influence not only through R&amp;D investments but also by acquiring knowledge produced in universities.

The monopoly over patents and university research enabled finance capital to dominate industrial capital, contributing to the separation of finance from productive capital.

By the end of the twentieth century, finance capital had ruptured from productive capital.

Today, global capital operates as disembodied finance capital, controlling both production and technology markets. This phase sees a distinct separation of knowledge as capital from physical capital like plant and machinery.

The transformation of capital into a rent-seeking entity, leveraging its monopoly over knowledge (patents, copyrights, industrial designs, etc.), characterizes the current phase.

Advanced capitalist countries have transitioned toward becoming rentier and 'service' economies, where control over intellectual knowledge and property rights plays a pivotal role in economic dynamics.

<h3>Impact of Intellectual Property on Corporations</h3>

This shift in capital dynamics is exemplified by companies like Foxconn/Hon Hai Precision Industries, which manufactures Apple products but holds a small share of the profits due to Apple's ownership of intellectual knowledge and property rights.

Approximately 31 percent of iPhone profits go to Apple, while Foxconn receives less than two percent.

Intellectual Property, embodied in patents and other rights, emerged to protect innovative ideas while ensuring public disclosure—a delicate balance between private and public interests.

Is Intellectual Property turning into a knowledge monopoly?

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Articles written by the author

The British roots of the conflict in Palestine

Why healthy forests mean fewer pandemics

Is Intellectual Property turning into a knowledge monopoly?