The story of Israel is possibly the world’s oldest and saddest. It stretches back Millennia to God’s land deal with Abraham and encompasses wars, slavery, a long and bitter diaspora, pogroms, and the Holocaust.
And that is just the Jewish side. On the Palestinian side (or if you prefer, Arab), there is colonialism, wars, displacement, refugee camps, unemployment, and their own diaspora.
But let’s start with the Jews and relatively modern history. In 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration which set aside the British mandate of Palestine (as it was then known) as a homeland for the Jews. But there was a proviso, Jewish rights were not to be realised at the expense of the resident Arabs.
This obvious contradiction led to The Israelis fighting against the British and Palestinian Arabs for the right to create their own state. In 1948 they succeeded and emerged as underdog heroes; rising from centuries of discrimination and the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the tactics they used to achieve their political success was terrorism.
When the infant Jewish state defeated the Arab armies in 1948, 1967, 1956 and 1973 its leaders morphed from terrorists to soldiers. Now they were heroes carving a modern successful nation out of an arid wilderness.
But there are two sides to every story. If the Jews are the most oppressed people in 3,500 years of history then the Palestinian Arabs are possibly the most oppressed in modern history.
It is true that in 1947 they were offered a separate Palestinian state in an UN-partitioned Palestine. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they should have accepted the deal. But at the time they saw no reason to give up the land that their families had lived on for centuries. The Jews said their God had given them the land. But the Jewish God was not their God.
In fact, it was not the Palestinians themselves who fought in 1948. It was mainly the Arab states with the help of poorly equipped and ill-trained Palestinians. The Arab states were more interested in an anti-colonial war to stop the establishment of a Western outpost in the Middle East than they were in upholding Palestinian rights.
In three successive wars between 1948 and 1967, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were displaced by Jewish expansion. To say they were all forced off their land would be unfair to the Jewish state. Many of them fled the fighting voluntarily expecting to return when the dust had settled. But many were – quite literally – forced off their property at gunpoint.
Regardless, of how they left, none – or at least very few – returned and their homes were taken by Israeli Jews. Most of them became long-term residents in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. They all dream of someday returning to the homes they left just as Jews dreamt for centuries of returning to Israel.
Up until the mid-1970s the major threat to Israel came not from the Palestinians but from the Arab states. Fatah and the PLO were not founded until 1964. It took about a decade for the PLO to organise itself into an effective fighting force, but when it did it employed the same terrorist tactics that Jewish leaders such as Menachem Begin used against the British and Palestinians during the British Mandate.
Terror begat terror begat terror with the result that the Israelis resorted to some of the same terrorist tactics employed by PLO against them. One of the best examples was the 1982 attack on the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in which 3,500 Palestinians were killed.
The attacks back and forth across the Lebanon and Syrian borders continued through the 1980s with both sides claiming the right to all of the land of what the Jews called Israel and the Arabs Palestine. Then in 1992 came the Oslo Accords which were followed in 1995 with Oslo Accords II.
These were an agreement between PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to create a Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank which would become the incubator for a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. This was a revival of the two-state solution which the Palestinians had rejected in1947. It was hailed as a breakthrough. And then it failed.
There were lots of reasons for the collapse of the Oslo Accords. One was the intransigence of Arafat. Another was the rise of Hamas which totally rejected the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution and reverted to the former PLO position of the extinction of the Jewish state. Third was any real enthusiasm for the project from either the rest of the Arab world or the US.
Then there was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by an ultra-Orthodox Jew opposed to the Oslo Accords. Finally, there was the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and the growing commitment to the Jewish claim to all of Biblical Israel which includes the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
In the face of increasing intransigence from Netanyahu’s successive Likud government, the world moved away from the two-state solution and turned a half-blind eye to illegal West Bank Jewish settlements. It was just too difficult. And besides, the Palestinians themselves were now fighting amongst themselves, and the Israelis seemed to have a lid on the security situation with their divide and rule tactics.
Donald Trump was so impressed with Netanyahu that he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and engineered the establishment of diplomatic relations between key Arab states and the Israeli government (the Abraham Accords). Joe Biden continued this policy. The Palestinians were rapidly sliding into the category of “forgotten people”, and, as such, were also becoming increasingly desperate people.
This is the backdrop to the Hamas attack which brutally murdered 1,400 people. It was a horrific act. Israel has every right to defend itself against a repetition of such an attack. But is their defense as much of a terrorist offense as that of Hamas? 2.2 million people are trapped in Gaza. Their exits are blocked. Israel allows only limited humanitarian supplies into the area. The water and electricity has been cut off. Some food and medical supplies are now entering Gaza, but not nearly enough. People are literally starving to death.
At the same time, Israeli air strikes have killed an estimated 10,000 people. Many tens of thousands more are likely to be killed when the ground offensive gathers team. Is this is a reasonable and proportionate response? Or, has the Jewish state, once a refuge for the oppressed, become the oppressor?
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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16 Comments
“On the Palestinian side (or if you prefer, Arab)”
This is an interesting point. Palestinians might speak Arabic because of previous historical conquests, but are they ethnically Arab? We might know from our Biblical studies that Israelites weren’t the only occupants of the region a couple of thousand years ago.
They were also those described as Philistines and Samaritans. Presumably they weren’t totally wiped out and would have produced descendants who still live in the region. Some Israelites too will have remained in the area and adopted the language and religion of conquering armies. Present day Israelis and Palestinians probably have more inherited DNA in common than some might like to acknowledge.
“In 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration”
If I were a Palestinian I’d be thinking that the opinions of Earl Arthur Balfour, and those of the rest of the British government, on what should happen in a geographical area which had previously been part of the Ottoman empire were far less important than those who actually lived there.
I doubt if anyone in Palestine would have thought it appropriate to be making “declarations” on what should happen in the Home Counties of England!
It is only a short matter of time before lsrael completes the conquest of Gaza. The attention will now focus on immediate humanitarian relief and a longer diplomatic sorting out. Hamas will go underground and bide their time. They must not be allowed to return. Therefore Fatah must now be supported and show courage of stepping forward to lead. Here lies the next problem
If one recounts over 100 years of history in an article for most issues, this would be a comprehensive explanation. However this article from the New Statesman of November 1914 gives a different and illuminating perspective.
https://www.newstatesman.com/archive/2021/05/ns-archive-future-palestine?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The Zionist movement on the inter-war years had a slogan “A land without a people for a people without a land” to justify the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. There was some rationale to this as mandate Palestine was very sparsely populated with much of the land area left to desertification or undrained marshland. The initial Jewish migrants bought land from wealthier Arab families (known as the ‘notables’) many of whom themselves lived outside the area in Damascus, Beirut or Amman. While there were Palestinian villages where families had farmed the land for centuries many residents were recent migrants from other Arab states that had come to work in the ports and towns of the British mandate area.
The Peel Commission introduced the idea of a two state solution in 1937 and it proposed that Palestine be partitioned into three zones: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and a neutral territory containing the holy places. The proposals for a Jewish state representing about 20% of the land area were accepted by the Jewish agency but rejected by the Arab representatives. The Arab leader was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husseini. He served in the Ottoman army in WW1. At war’s end he he went to Damascus as a supporter of the Arab Kingdom of Syria. After the Franco-Syrian war ended Arab-Hashemite rule in Damascus he returned to Jerusalem where as an Arab nationalist he actively opposed Zionism.
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was preceded by a civil war that had begun after the adoption of the UN resolution for the partition of Palestine in 1947 that was itself an extension of the Jewish insurgency against British rule in Palestine from 1944-1947. The Civil war had seen the expulsion of Palestinians from towns like Haifa and Jaffa and the exodus of refugees to neighbouring Arab states was itself a cause of the wider Arab-Israeli war. With the formal end of the British Mandate and the declaration of Independence by Israel in May 1948 the invading Arab states took control of the Arab areas with Egypt annexing the Gaza strip and Jordan the west bank. No effort was made between 1948 and 1967 to form a Palestinian state from the annexed areas or offer citizenship to displaced Palestinian refugees in the newly created states carved out of the former Ottoman empire.
There are Palestinian refugees camps today in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria where most of the residents have never been to Palestine. Only Jordan has fully integrated Palestinian refugees with the exception of Gazan refugees who arrived in the aftermath of the 1967 hostilities. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) defines Palestinian refugees as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict. UNRWA also extends assistance to the patrilineal descendants of such refugees, as well as their legally adopted children. Treating lineal descendants as refugees is exclusive to displaced Palestinians and is perhaps itself a source of ongoing friction and discontent between Israel and neighbouring Arab states.
Jonathan Freedland, a British Jewish journalist writes in the Guardian “This isn’t a contest of heroes and villains – but two peoples in deep pain, fated to share the same land” The tragedy of the Israel-Palestine conflict is this: underneath all the horror is a clash of two just causes
“the late Israeli novelist and peace activist Amos Oz was never wiser than when he described the Israel/Palestine conflict as something infinitely more tragic: a clash of right v right. Two peoples with deep wounds, howling with grief, fated to share the same small piece of land”.
A two state solution along the lines of partition has been become infinitely more complicated by the expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied areas of the West Bank. One possible solution proffered is that of a Confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan as described by Philosopher Michael Waltzer ‘A confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan would be a wonderful solution’
@Joe Bourke
Surely it is perfectly reasonable to count those born in refugee camps, of refugee parents, as refugees themselves? The fact that many Palestinian refugees have never been to the land from which their parents or grandparents fled, or were expelled, does not make them any less victims of the catastrophe that befell their parents or grandparents. They are as deserving of a just solution as the original victims.
Mary,
the proposal for an Israeli Palestinian confederation seeks to address the issues of Palestinian refugees who want to return to Palestine as Palestinian citizens and Israeli Citizens who want to live in the West bank or Gaza Israeli Palestinian confederation
The confederation would be similar to that of the EU. Israeli and Palestinian Citizens would vote for their respective governments and have a right of residence anywhere in the Confederation.
Under the proposals “the Israeli Palestinian Confederation is a third government for both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples together. A Confederation does not dissolve the Israeli or Palestinian governments. The Israeli and Palestinian governments will remain the governments of the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. The Israeli and Palestinian peoples and institutions will remain subject to the jurisdictions and laws of their respective governments. However, the Confederation is an independent third government representing both the peoples of Israel and Palestine together.
Under the Israeli Palestinian Confederation Constitution, there will be 300 Parliament members representing 300 districts of the entire area of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
In order for the 300 representative to pass legislation, they will require 55% of the Israeli and 55% of the Palestinian Parliament members to vote “yes” for the same legislation.
The separate Israeli and Palestinian governments will have a veto power over the legislation. If those governments veto the legislation, it will not become law. However if they fail to veto it, the legislation will become law.”
Can there be a solution with the existing leaders in place ? While everyone assumes that Hamas cannot be in a position of Power (at least not its military wing) surely the current Coalition in Israel has no place either. In 2028 it passed an Act which places anyone who is not a Jew as a second place citizen, making them racist and intent on an apartheid state. Add in their tax incentives for Israelis to settle in the West Bank, free to force out Palestinians from their homes and/or severely limit their ability to survive economically and we see that UK and US have to start pursuing drastic change in Israeli government.
Looking back over history, Munther Isaac of Bethlehem Bible College has recently shown that Israel has never had the right under God to the land; the land belongs only to God and Israel lived on it under conditions of good behaviour. The prophets told their leaders they forfeit the land as a result of bad behaviour.
Sorry, the Act passed in the Knesset was in 2018, of course.
Tom ‘On the Palestinian side (or if you prefer, Arab)’
I wrote this in my journal on April 16th 2014:
‘We have just returned from a 9½-hour excursion to Nazareth and Galilee, which consisted of a vitriolic anti-Arab diatribe. Jannie and I have no hope for any two-state solution and believe Israel will never accept anything less than the whole of the area within what they show on their map as the International Boundary. There are just a dozen areas, some minute, where there is Palestinian responsibility for civil affairs, internal security and public order.
Moses had two children: Isaac, father of the Jews, and Ishmael, father of the Arabs. That divide still exists. Furthermore, our guide, Moshe’s attitude and monologue were that the Arabs were untermenschen, a sub-species of humanity.
I would love to write at length about this country but I am absolutely devastated by the day.’
My wife remembers Moshe repeating: ‘there is no such person as a Palestinian, they are just Arabs’.
I think one event has been left out of this narrative.
The bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 by the irgun (Jewish terorists)
http://www.britishforcesinpalestine.org/attacks/kingdavid.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
There are some inaccuracies here though the basic picture is correct. The mandate came from the League of Nations, took effect in 1923 and meant that Britain held Palestine in trusteeship from the international community not as a colonial possession, though of course that’s not how the Arabs saw it. At first British ministers like Churchill had high hopes of forming a settled, binational state. The Jews started buying land fair and square, the Arabs not understanding (or pretending not to understand) that this meant sitting tenants had to vacate. The Jews rapidly came to the conclusion that they would form their own state. The Arabs could choose to like that and cooperate or lump it and resist. The Arabs, or at least their leaders, chose to resist, with consequences to this day.
One was the intransigence of Arafat. Another was the rise of Hamas which totally rejected the Oslo Accords. According to Illan Pappe, the Israeli historian, the original Oslo document of Sept 1993 promises the palestinians that if they waited 5 to10 years( during which Israel partially withdrew from OT) the essentials of conflict: right of return, Jerusalem and future of settlements would be discussed. Lacking experience they misread tone of peace scheme and Israel alone set the terms of the agenda in 2000. Israel offered some withdrawal from west bank leaving 15% divided into cantons, divided by roads and military camps, to Palestine with Jerusalem and right of return excluded. This offer was a distortion of the concept of statehood. Arafat refused as a Palestinian state is not viable without a capital in East Jerusalem. During the waiting time settlements had expanded,and he was seen as weak, leading to the rise of Hamas. See Illan Pappe The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Illan Pappe is a highly regarded historian and has produced a work of historical significance in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His sources include a number of the written orders issued to the Jewish militias in the 1947-48 expulsion of Palestinians from the State of Israel that clearly describe the intent of the ethnic cleansing.
His journey from IDF reservist in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to his advocacy for a single democratic state that encompasses the return of Palestinian refugees has been directed by a lifetime of academic rigour that eventually saw him expelled from Haifa University.
His article on the 1948 Tantura massacre provides an example of the kind of opposition that academics face in Israel when it comes to gory details of how the State was created
Israel can no longer bury the Tantura massacre
Israel is not alone in concealing the darker side of its history to serve a nation building agenda. However, until Israeli society is able to accept that the Palestinians suffered a great injustice in being driven from their homes (and perhaps more importantly being prevented from returning) there is unlikely to be a just and lasting peace settlement. Israel has the right to exist within its recognised borders, but denying discussion of the atrocities that accompanied its creation is a disservice to this generation of Israeli and Palestinians alike.
We are where we are. Israel’s right to defend its territory does not extend to unwarranted violence. Hamas will only disappear when the people of Gaza have a reasonable quality of life. When this happens and is combined with fair and free elections the violence on both sides will decrease and eventually disappear.