Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In the last Woodward Post issue, there were few informational links provided about Palestine and the current state of affairs. However, I’ve come to realize, much due to an inquiry of a friend, that the included description lacked historical depth, which provides context for the issues arising now. Therefore, I will attempt to provide an extensive background and description about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this article because it is still ongoing and continues to be an important foreign policy issue.
To summarize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a few words, it is primarily an issue concerning two groups of people with separate national identities claiming the same land. Much of the area that would soon become the Middle East was under Ottoman rule and largely religiously diverse, though Muslims and Christians made up the majority while Jews were a minority. As many people began identifying as Palestinian rather than simply Arab, in Europe, many Jews were joining a movement called Zionism. Zionism is an ideal that adopts the belief that Judaism is not simply a religion, but rather a nationality, therefore being a stepping stone into claiming an individual nation. Therefore, the current-day conflicts are less so religious disputes and more so an ideological conflict; it is important to remember that not all Palestinians are Muslims and not all Israelis are practicing Judaism, and believing so could perpetuate islamophobia and antisemitism. After centuries of persecution and discrimination, Jews believed that the only way to be safe was to have their own state. This developing idea became the foundation of Israel.
Post-World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the British and French divided the territory into what we know as the Middle East. The British took control of an area they called the British Mandate for Palestine. Initially, the British allowed Jewish immigration into the British Mandate for Palestine, but as more Jews arrived, there were heightened tensions between the incoming Jews and the existing Arab community, resulting in violence on both sides. As a result, by the 1930s Britain limited Jewish immigration in an attempt to control the violence. Consequently, the Jewish population started forming militias to fight the local Arabs and resist British rule.
Popular opinion about a Jewish state began to change following the Holocaust, as much of the world felt that Jews deserved retributions for the horrors they had faced during the Nazi regime. Therefore, in 1947, in the midst of growing Arab-Jewish tensions, the UN approved a plan to divide British Palestine into 2 separate states: Israel (Jewish) and Palestine (Arab). Jerusalem was then delegated as an international zone as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have holy sites there. The Jewish population happily accepted the proposed plan and declared independence, while the Arabs felt it was just another European colonialist plot to steal their land once again. Following the UN decision, many Arab states declared war on Israel (Arab-Israeli War 1948-1949) in order to establish an Arab Palestine within the totality of the former British Palestine. Israel won the war and in doing so took more land than they were allocated in the UN plan. They kicked out a huge number of Palestinians from these newly conquered lands, resulting in a huge refugee population. Israel controlled everything except the Gaza Strip (Egypt) and the West Bank (Jordan).
In 1967, Israel and its neighboring Arab states fought the Six Day War, resulting in Israel acquiring the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and Golan Heights from Syria. Israel now had to govern the Palestinians, which naturally, after years of conflict, was not peaceful.
In 1978, Israel and Egypt signed the US-brokered Camp David accords, mandating that Israel give Sinai back to Egypt. The signing of the accords caused huge outrage on the Israeli front, as people felt they had been tricked out of territory. However, soon a sense of peace occured in the Middle East, despite Israel still occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. At this point, the struggle is contained to Israel and Palestine, as we know it today.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization, an organization dedicated to liberating Palestine through armed struggle, fought within Israel, even in acts of terrorism, for all of British Palestine but over time changed mission to divide the land as the UN had mandated back in 1947. Israelis had begun to move into Palestinian areas, creating Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Jewish settlements began to increase as people moved for religious reasons or for cheap housing. As a result, Palestinians began to be forced off of their lands and tensions grew once more but because Jewish settlers had military backing, not much could be done. This division of land makes it harder for Palestine to ever have an independent state because there is no longer a clear border to distinguish the two territories.
In the 1980s, Palestinian outrage mounted into the Intifada (1987-1993), which is the Arabic word for “uprising”. Though the Intifada started with protests, it soon turned violent and Israeli forces responded with heavy force and many died. In Gaza, public opinion grew to believe that the Palestine Liberation Organization was too secular and compromise-oriented so they created Hamas, a violent extremist group dedicated to destroying Israel.
By the early 1990s, peace was necessary so leaders from both sides signed the Oslo Accords, which were meant to be the first step to Israel eventually withdrawing from Palestine. The Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority, allowing Palestinians the freedom to govern themselves in certain areas. The Accords garnered huge public uprisings because both sides did not want compromise. In 2000, a Camp David II summit occurred but negotiations meant to bring peace dragged on for years. The Camp David II summit was wholly ineffective left Palestinians to believe that peace wouldn’t come. Feelings of frustration led to a Second Intifada (2000-2005), which was even more violent than the first. In the end, 1,000 Israelis and 3,200 Palestinians died. The Second Intifada made Israelis become more skeptical of Palestinians’ devotion to peace and they began to question whether compromise was worth negotiating any more. Soon after, Israel had a right wing shift and walls were built with checkpoints in order to control the movements of Palestinians. Conflict was no longer a problem that needed to be solved, but rather managed. Palestinians felt like they were being occupied by Israel due to all of the new restrictions and methods of control. Eventually, Israel moved out of Gaza and Hamas gained power. Gaza then decided to split from the Palestinian Authority in a short civil war, resulting in Gaza officially separating from the West Bank. In response, Israel put Gaza under a blockade that caused unemployment to rise past 40%.
Presently, disputes often end with huge Palestinian deaths, most of which come from Gaza as they stage many violent movements. The Israeli public is generally apathetic when it comes to Palestinian issues and Jewish settlements continue to crop up in Palestinian territory. All Palestinians can do is protest as they continue to be removed from their homes. Knowing the history of Palestine and Israel helps decode present day headlines. The reason why it was such a big deal that the US moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was because it meant that President Trump officially decided that the US would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, even though it was supposed to be a Israel-Palestine neutral zone (if we look to the UN 1947 decision). In order for a true Jewish ethno-state to exist completely, Palestine cannot exist within Israel because there cannot be a Palestinian majority anywhere. This means that for such an ethno-state to exist, Palestinians would need to leave and never return. Furthermore, full equality can never be attained in this Jewish ethno-state, which is a driving factor in the push for liberation by Palestinians.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict