Palestine in an international historical perspective on genocide

This article discusses what may be involved in treating the 1948 destruction of a large part of Arab society in Palestine as ‘genocide’. It argues that genocide is a general sociological concept which can be applied to many historical cases varying in scale, murderousness, ideological motivation, etc., so applying genocide analysis does not imply a comparison to any other specific case. The article analyses the Palestinian case in the context of an international perspective on the historical development of genocide, and discusses the significance of differences over the historical explanation of the 1948 events for a genocide perspective.