The Middle East is on fire again.

After Hamas launched a surprise offensive on October 7, resulting in the loss of 1,400 Israeli lives, Israel carried out withering air raids on Gaza that have displaced hundreds of thousands, killed over 7,000 Palestinians and left scores more wounded.

Israel has implemented a total siege on the Gaza Strip, severely impacting the lives of 2.3 million residents by cutting off their access to essential resources, including food, water, and fuel.

Amid this unprecedented development, readers are besieged by a flow of information full of words and terminologies often mentioned in the context of Israel and Palestine that they may not be familiar with.

Dawn.com has compiled a list of words that can help you understand the news stories coming out of Palestine and Israel.

This list is in alphabetical order.

Antisemitism

While addressing the nation from the Oval Office last week, US President Joe Biden urged Americans to fight both Islamophobia and antisemitism, without equivocation.

“We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must without equivocation denounce antisemitism. We must also without equivocation denounce Islamophobia,” he declared.

Antisemitism is a certain perception of the followers of the Judaism religion or Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.

Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Apartheid

Last week, in a post on their X account, Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned that if “Israeli apartheid’s war crimes and genocide” are not stopped then the situation could spiral out of control with “far-reaching consequences.”

The apartheid refers to a policy or system of segregation or discrimination. In the case of South Africa, it was the racial segregation under the all-white government of South Africa which dictated that non-white South Africans (a majority of the population) were required to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups would be limited. The different racial groups were physically separated according to their location, public facilities and social life.

Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 expressing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, that was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The declaration was named after Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary at the time.

Palestinians argue that the declaration disregarded the rights and aspirations of the Arab population living in Palestine at the time. It remains a controversial document that played a pivotal role in the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.

Esteemed Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said stressed that the declaration “was made by a European power about a non-European territory in a flat disregard of both the presences and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group, that this foreign group might, quite literally, make this territory a national home for the Jewish people”.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian civil society movement that aims to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Taking inspiration from the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the BDS initiative hopes to exert pressure on Israel, encouraging its adherence to international laws.

Boycotts encompass the withdrawal of support from Israel’s regime, complicit Israeli institutions and international companies engaged in actions that violate Palestinian human rights. Divestment campaigns seek the disinvestment of funds from Israel and companies that contribute to Israeli apartheid.

Sanctions campaigns aim to compel governments by banning business with illegal Israeli settlements, ending military and free-trade agreements and suspending Israel’s membership in international forums such as UN bodies and FIFA.

In the UK, an anti-BDS bill is being proposed that is designed to stop councils and other public authorities from conducting boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel.

Colonialism

Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another and is frequently used to describe the settlement of North America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India and Brazil, places that were controlled by a large population of permanent European residents.

The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer which tells us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin.

Ethnic cleansing

“Israel has already carried out mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine has warned.

“Again, in the name of self-defence, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing,” she said.

Ethnic cleansing is a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory on the basis of religious, ethnic or national origin. Such a policy involves violence and is very often connected with military operations.

Gaza Strip

Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lies on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over 2m Palestinians.

Genocide

Earlier this month, caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani slammed Israel for “committing a genocide” against Palestinians.

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the United Nations defines genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Golan Heights

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau in south-western Syria, about 60km (40 miles) southwest of Damascus and covers about 1,000 sq km. It has a political and strategic significance which belies its size.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War. Most of the Syrian Arab inhabitants fled the area during the conflict. Israel’s 1981 annexation was not globally recognised and Syria demands the return of its territory.

The area became a point of contention once again when Israeli strikes reportedly killed two people near the Syrian town of Beit Jinn in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights recently.

Great March of Return

Between March 2018 and December 2019, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip held the “Great March of Return” (GMR) demonstrations, demanding the right of Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns in what is now Israel and the cessation of the Israeli blockade.

These demonstrations involved thousands of participants who would gather every Friday and on specific occasions at five designated points along the border fence. Additionally, smaller protests occurred during the week at the beach and at various locations near the fence at night.

The UN says that about 1.4m people have been displaced in Gaza in the current conflict — which is over 60 per cent of the entire strip’s population.

According to Article 13 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right […] to return to his country”.

Hebron Protocol

The Hebron Protocol was an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed in 1997. It aimed to address security and administrative arrangements in the city of Hebron, located in the West Bank.

The protocol divided Hebron into two areas: H1, which was placed under Palestinian Authority control, and H2, which remained under Israeli military control.

English language website The New Arab describes Hebron city in the West Bank as a “microcosm of Israel’s occupation”.

Holocaust

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Presiden Joe Biden that Hamas’ atrocities on Oct 7 were the “worst since the Holocaust”.

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.

Intifada

The Arabic term intifada, literally means “shaking off,” when applied to conflicts usually takes on the meaning of an “uprising”, “popular resistance”, or “rebellion”.

The first Intifada began in December 1987 after a traffic accident in which an Israeli truck crashed into a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp, killing four. Stone-throwing protests, strikes and shutdowns followed. It ended with the Madrid Conference in 1991, although some date its formal termination as 1993 with the onset of the Oslo Accords. At least 1,500 Palestinians and 400 Israelis were killed in the violence.

The second or al-Aqsa Intifada began in 2000, and, while many of its actions and effects are still playing out today, most authorities assign an end date of July 2005. At least 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed in the ensuing violence.

A recent Dawn report said that Palestinian deaths from the Israeli siege of Gaza are the most that Palestine has ever witnessed, exceeding the first and second intifada combined.

Iron Dome

On Oct 24, a senior defence official announced that the Pentagon is increasing its support for Israel by supplying them with complete Iron Dome air defence systems.

The Iron Dome is a part of Israel’s defence system. It is designed to shoot down incoming rockets. Developed between 2007 and 2011, the dome has a success rate of 95.6pc, according to the IDF.

Islamophobia

Islamophobia is an extreme fear of and hostility toward Islam and Muslims which often leads to hate speech, hate crimes, as well as social and political discrimination.

According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, a multi-year it can be used to rationalise policies such as mass surveillance, incarceration, and disenfranchisement, and can influence domestic and foreign policy.

Islamophobia was originally developed as a concept in the late 1990s by political activists to draw attention to rhetoric and actions directed at Islam and Muslims in Western liberal democracies.

The UN observes March 15 as the international day to combat Islamophobia.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF)

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) serves as the primary military organisation of the State of Israel. It comprises three distinct branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Navy.

It has said it would intensify strikes on Gaza ahead of a planned ground invasion, as UN agencies warned of a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in the blockaded territory.

Kibbutz

On Oct 7, Hamas fighters attacked a music festival which was held in a field outside the Re’im kibbutz, about 5.3km from the wall separating Gaza and southern Israel.

A kibbutz (plural: kibbutzim) is a communal settlement in Israel that is owned and shared equally by the people who live there and run it. The first kibbutz was founded in 1909; currently, there are about 270, with a total population exceeding 120,000. Adults live in private quarters, while children are generally housed and cared for as a group.

Nakba

The mass evacuation of Palestinians has given Gazans memories of the “Nakba”.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe”, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, which has been likened to the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society”.

The creation of Israel entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state.

Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9m population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state.

Naksa

Al Naksa or the Naksa, also known as the day of “defeat” or “setback”, is observed by Palestinians on June 5 each year.

Similar to Nakba, it commemorates the displacement of Palestinians that occurred during the Six Day War in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s occupation of the rest of historically Palestinian areas of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

Neocolonialism

Neocolonialism is a process by which former colonising countries exploit the rules and regulations of their former colonies that are now independent, underdeveloped or less developing, for indirect domination.

Predominantly neocolonialism has been noticed in economics, although this economic exploitation is intertwined with political and cultural exploitation.

Oslo Accords

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Chairman Yasir Arafat on 13 September 1993, redrew the geopolitical map of the entire region when they signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Governing Arrangements (DOP) for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Jericho, marking one of the most momentous events in the twentieth-century history of the Middle East.

The DOP was signed in Washington, with President Bill Clinton acting as master of ceremonies, but it had been negotiated in Oslo and initiated there in late August.

The first part was mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. The second part, the Declaration of Principles, set an agenda for negotiations on Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories, beginning with Gaza and Jericho.

Thirty years later, the goals of these accords remain unachieved.

Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)

There are currently two governments in control of the Palestine territories. Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)/Fatah governs the West Bank region whereas Hamas is in control of Gaza.

The PLO, established in 1964 as a coalition of resistance groups, political parties, and various Palestinian civil society organisations, achieved global recognition as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” by the mid-1970s.

The PLO had agreed to end its policy of armed resistance and, as a result, the PLO’s presence and government were recognised by the international community.

During the 1996 elections, the electorate handed the PLO a landslide victory and the mandate to rule the West Bank and Gaza. However, the 2007 armed conflict between PLO and Hamas in Gaza led to the ouster of the PLO from Gaza.

Rafah crossing

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai region is the sole route for aid to enter Gaza directly from outside Israel and the only exit that does not lead to Israeli territory.

The crossing is controlled by Egypt.

It has become a focus in the intensifying conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have headed towards south Gaza after Israel warned them to leave Gaza City and the enclave’s north.

The only likely route for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza is via Rafah from Egypt’s Sinai region. It is also the only exit point for Gaza residents seeking to flee.

Egypt is wary of insecurity near the border with Gaza in northeastern Sinai, where it faced an insurgency that peaked after 2013 and has now largely been suppressed.

Settler colonialism

Israel’s occupation is illegal and indistinguishable from a “settler-colonial” situation, which must end, as a pre-condition for Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination, the UN’s independent expert on the occupied Palestinian territory told the UN General Assembly last year.

Settler colonialism is an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures.

Essentially hegemonic in scope, settler colonialism normalises the continuous settler occupation, exploiting lands and resources to which indigenous peoples have genealogical relationships. Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism.

Shebaa Farms

The Shebaa Farms is a disputed region between Lebanon and Israel situated near the Hermon mountain range at the Lebanon-Syria border.

The Shebaa Farms were seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East conflict and are a part of Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syria and Lebanon, on the other hand, claim that it belongs to Lebanon’s territory.

There have been conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon at their border. The latter launched rockets at three Israeli outposts in Shebaa Farms and in retaliation, the former hit a Hezbollah outpost in Lebanon.

Two-state solution

The two-state solution is an agreement that would create a state for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside Israel.

It would see an independent Palestinian state established alongside the existing one of Israel — giving both people their own territory.

It is the official position of the UK, US, United Nations — and even Israel itself — but many now say there is little hope of achieving it.

West Bank

The landlocked West Bank — the larger of the two Palestinian territories — is home to some three million Palestinians.

Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC, the West Bank, like the Gaza Strip, has been dominated by many different powers throughout its history.

Zionism

Zionism is a nationalist movement calling for the establishment of an independent state for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland of Zion.

“I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist,” said Joe Biden when he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet during his visit to Israel.

Zion is a place name often synonymous with Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible.

Anti-Zionism is the belief that a Jewish state should not exist.