Palestine is in Africa, and Arabic Peoples are Africans

Palestinian people and  African/Black people share more than a common struggle. They share a history dating back thousands of years.

Much has been written about the historical comradely relations between Palestinian and African liberation movements, as well as the similarities between the colonial histories of the two.; I don’t intend to address these facts. What you will read below is the undisputed fact that Palestine is part of Africa. This may sound like a rhetorical statement, or one of international solidarity, but truly it is geographically factual that Palestine is in Africa.

Let us take a look at the African Continental Plate. It is clear that all of Palestine, Lebanon and the coast of Syria are part of Africa. Meaning Palestinians are Africans, so are Lebanese and Syrian people.

Arabic peoples are African

Much effort has been spent by the “White Man'' to defame the Arabic peoples and their ancestors, while simultaneously appropriating their heritage as his legacy. Notice I use the term Arabic peoples, denoting their belonging to a cultural-linguistic group and not a pseudo-science Race category of “Arab”. Although there are Arabian peoples, denoting their belonging to a geographic location, i.e. those who live in the Arabian Peninsula, like Yemenis, Omanis, etc.

Geography and topography are the greatest shapers of culture and the course of history. In that sense, Arabic people are a product of their lands and, more specifically, of their location at a crossroads between continents and the center of all geographically peripheral cultures, and of the fact that prior to the 1490s they and their lands were the primary conduits of culture, trade, travel, and transit between Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Bringing up this issue of “race” at this point is crucial to understand who are [the] Arabic peoples, and what is their relation to Africa and its peoples. Firstly, the regions of North and East Africa, and the Arabian peninsula, and their peoples have always been a transient space, with many old connections built through this human movement. The ease of movement of peoples within this space, meant that Yemenis could travel all the way to the Atlas mountains 3000 years ago, and settle with their archaic Arabic alphabet and become what we know as Amazegh today. How Canaanites from Syria could rule Pharaonic Egypt. Or how coastal Cannanites, i.e. Phenicians and Philistines, could ride their boats to Tunis and Algeria, and found the Empire of Carthage.

Similarly, the ease of movement of culture and language within this geographic space, meant that singular accents of proto-semitic could dominate the whole of this space, with or without a forced political unification. The accent of the economic center within North Africa and the Arabian peninsula, defined the lingua-franca of the day. When Mesopotamia was the dominant cultural and economic center, the Assyrian accent was spoken and written in Yemen and in Tunis, but when the center shifted to Damascus, the Arameic accent was heard in Morocco and Oman. In fact, Arabic as an accent was alive at the time of Assyrian and Arameic, but it was written in their alphabets. Essentially Arabic is just the accent of the desert dwellers, and more precisely Mecca. I say all of this to make one final point, Arabic speaking people did not colonize and force their accent in North Africa, they did not genocide and forcefully displace, they just were the latest wave of movement within a natural geographic space and common peoplehood that had thousands of years of codevelopment. Finally, only because of the success of Islam in liberating the peoples of North Africa and the Arabian plate from foreign occupation and domination did Arabic become the lingua-franca.

Free Palestine! Free Africa!

Read more about Laith Marouf in the author box below.