The distinguished dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, contends that Palestinian civil society was ripe to become a State, before its potential was cut off by the bloody British repression of the Great Arab Rebellion (1936-39) and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the Nakba catastrophe, when the bulk of the indigenous population of the day were driven at gun point into exile, (1947-8).
Courtesy of AFOPA sympathiser, Brad Watts, we are in possession of 42 photographs of late Mandate Palestine (1920-1948). They came into his hands from his father, who discovered them among his grandfather’s things. Their precise origin remains to be researched. These photographs feature historical religious monuments such as historic churches and mosques, colonial architecture and street scenes, featuring Palestinian characters of the day, such as street vendors, and Arab souks or markets.
One, pictured below, features a panorama of a Royal Navy flotilla lying in Haifa Harbour, which would date to the late 1930s. This is contemporary with the Great Arab Rebellion and the building of the port city as a base for possible naval operations in the Eastern Mediterranean against the Italian Regia Marina (the Italian Navy), should the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini throw in its lot with its ideological ally, Nazi Germany, and raid the sea lines to the South East Asian naval base of Singapore, the British imperial Raj in India and the Dominions of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia.
It is proposed to explore avenues for funding and realizing an exhibition to expound the Pappe finding, with a related purpose of dispelling the Zionist contention that the Palestinians are a non-people, having neither history nor culture to speak of.
If you would like to participate in this project please contact me on 0488 079 753.
Dr David Faber, Adjunct Research Fellow, College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Flinders University.
Royal Navy flotilla lying in Haifa Harbour, circa 1930s