Roots of the conflict.

• What are the root causes of the Israel-Palestinian conflict?
• Have Jews and Arabs always been in conflict?
• Are Jewish claims to the land any more valid than Palestinian?
• Doesn’t Israel have a “right to exist”?
• Did God give the land to the Jewish people?

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What are the root causes of the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

According to Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “In the 19^th century…Jews and Palestinians both began to develop a national consciousness, and mobilized to achieve national goals. Because Jews were spread across the world (in diaspora), their national movement, Zionism, entailed the identification of a place where Jews could come together through the process of immigration and settlement. Palestine seemed the logical and optimal place, since this was the site of Jewish origin…

Following World War II …UN-appointed committee of representatives from various countries went to Palestine to investigate the situation… there was general agreement that the country would have to be divided in order to satisfy the needs and demands of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. At the end of 1946, 1,269,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews resided within the borders of Mandate Palestine. Jews had acquired by purchase 6 to 8 percent of the total land area of Palestine …

… On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The UN partition plan divided the country in such a way that each state would have a majority of its own population, although some Jewish settlements would fall within the proposed Palestinian state and many Palestinians would become part of the proposed Jewish state. The territory designated to the Jewish state would be slightly larger than the Palestinian state (56 percent and 43 percent of Palestine, respectively) … According to the UN partition plan, the area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to become an international zone.

… The Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states rejected the UN plan and regarded the General Assembly vote as an international betrayal …

… Fighting began between the Arab and Jewish residents of Palestine days after the adoption of the UN partition plan… By the spring of 1948, the Zionist forces had secured control over most of the territory allotted to the Jewish state in the UN plan.  On May 15, 1948, the British evacuated Palestine and Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel.  Neighboring Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) then invaded Israel… [T]he Arab rulers had territorial designs on Palestine and were no more anxious to see a Palestinian Arab state emerge than the Zionists.

… [Israel’s] armed forces established superiority and conquered territories beyond the UN partition plan borders of the Jewish state.  In 1949, the war between Israel and the Arab states ended with the signing of armistice agreements

… The State of Israel encompassed over 77% of the territory.  Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine (the West Bank).  Egypt took control of the coastal plain around the city of Gaza (the Gaza strip)

… In the 1967 war, Israel captured and occupied these areas, along with the Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). The Palestinian Arab state envisioned by the UN partition plan was never established.”[1]

Have Jews and Arabs always been in conflict?

Over the long history of the Middle East and North Africa vibrant Jewish communities could be found in almost every country.[2]

Jeremy Hammond writes, “To be sure, there were invariably tensions and occasional incidents of conflict – though remarkably few and minor for a history going back 1600 years to the origin of Islam and thousands of years of pre-Islamic co-existence. True, concepts of equality were lacking (they were lacking in Europe as well until the American and French revolutions), but to cast Muslims as the “enemy” of Jews is an egregious oversimplification. Indeed, the very concept “Judeo-Christian,” invoked in the Clash of Civilizations argument against Islam, fundamentally distorts history. If anything, there was a Judeo-Islam civilization as set apart from the Christians. Judaism resembles Islam in theology, structure and rituals far more than it does Christianity, and Jews lived infinitely better in Muslim societies than they did in Christian ones. Jews and Christians were recognized by Islam as “Peoples of the Book.”

…Jews and Christians enjoyed internal communal autonomy according to the religious laws and traditions. They were not considered infidels by Islam and were not proselytized; nor were they considered a foreign element in Muslim countries, as they were in Europe. Nothing approaching an ideology of anti-Semitism ever appeared in the Muslim world, and if Jews and Christians had to acknowledge their subordinate status vis-à-vis Muslims, that took the form of symbolic acts only (such as paying a poll tax). Except for the partial exceptions of Yemen and Iran where Shiite Islam ruled, Jews never suffered from the severe restrictions imposed on them by the Christian populations of Europe (such as not being allowed to own land, engage in many professions or enter major cities). Jewish quarters were nothing like European ghettos.

The fact remains that when the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal under the Inquisition, they found welcome refuge in the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust were products of European anti-Semitism. It does great injustice to both Muslims and Mizrahi Jews (Jews from Muslim countries) to try to impose a European model of anti-Semitism on Middle Eastern/North African Jewish history. After the founding of Israel masses of Mizrahi Jews chose to come to Israel; they did so for religious and economic reasons, they were not driven out of their countries of origin. Even today Jewish communities thrive in Morocco (where there is Jewish government minister) and in Turkey. There is even a Jewish community in Iran.

As history shows, we are embroiled in a political conflict, not an “inevitable” clash of civilizations. As the native Sephardi historians Eliahu Eliaschar and Meron Benvenisti testify, relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine were also traditionally harmonious. The rise of Zionism changed that – the first real fighting between Jews and Arabs took place in Sejera at the turn of the century when Jews purchased village land from absentee landlords and evicted the peasants who had farmed there for generations …”[3]

Halper, Johnson, and Schaeffer maintain that “the conflict between us Israelis and the Palestinians – and by extension with the wider Arab and Muslims worlds – has nothing to do with some primordial enmity. [This is] a political conflict of two national movements claiming the same land. Only by insisting on its political definition rather than some mystification [is there] hope to find a way out of this mess. Even now, after 40 years of Occupation, sixty years of mass displacement and a century of national conflict, Arab and Jewish Israelis live side-by-side in peace, while strong partnerships exist between Israeli Jews and Palestinians working non-violently for a just peace.”[4]

Are Jewish claims to the land any more valid than Palestinian?

Beinin and Hajjar explain, “Jewish claims to this land are based on the biblical promise to Abraham and his descendants, on the fact that this was the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel (which was destroyed by the Roman Empire), and on Jews’ need for a haven from European anti-Semitism. Palestinian Arabs’ claims to the land are based on continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years and the fact that they represented the demographic majority. They reject the notion that a biblical-era kingdom constitutes the basis for a valid modern claim. If Arabs engage the biblical argument at all, they maintain that since Abraham’s son Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, then God’s promise of the land to the children of Abraham includes Arabs as well. They do not believe that they should forfeit their land to compensate Jews for Europe’s crimes against them.”[5]

Doesn’t Israel have a “right to exist”?

Beinin and Hajjar argue, “The fact that this term is used exclusively with regard to Israel is instructive as to its legitimacy, as is the fact that the demand is placed upon Palestinians to recognize Israel’s “right to exist,” while no similar demand is placed upon Israelis to recognize the “right to exist” of a Palestinian state.

Israel … came into being on May 14, 1948, when the Zionist leadership unilaterally …declared Israel’s existence, with no specification as to the extent of the new state’s borders. In a moment, the Zionists had declared that Arabs no longer the owners of their land… In an instant, the Zionists had declared that the majority Arabs of Palestine were now second-class citizens in the new “Jewish State” [6]

Did God give the Land to the Jewish people?

Hammond points out that “No amount of discussion of the facts on the ground will ever convince many Jews and Christians that Israel could ever do wrong, because they view its actions as having the hand of God behind it, and that its policies are in fact the will of God. They believe that God gave the land of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to the Jewish people, and therefore Israel has a “right” to take it by force from the Palestinians, who, in this view, are the wrongful occupiers of the land..”.[7]

Halper et al argue against the notion that “God gave the land to the Jews” by saying that “Mixing faith with politics is always a dangerous proposition.  Everyone has a right to a religious belief, but not to force that belief on others. Jewish claims to a Divine right over the Land of Israel clashes with the equally valid claim that Palestine, the Holy Land, is waqf land holy to the Muslims, as well as a Palestinian patrimony. No claim can be objectively proven, and the assertion by force of one claim over the others will result only in perpetual conflict and suffering….”

Halper et al continue, “Jews have a genuine tie to the Land, but not an exclusive one. Jews (actually, Judeans) were the majority in this land for only some 1900 of the past 5,000 years of recorded history, and were the governing authority for even less. For the past 1400 years or so, the country “belonged to” the Muslims, Arabs for the most part, although many peoples came and went. The Jews have no more, and no less, a right to live in the land than any of the others who populate it. In the end no people can claim exclusively over the country. As for Zionism’s claim that the Jews are the “returning natives,” the Palestinians counter that they represent the sum total of all the indigenous peoples who have lived there in an unbroken continuity. Who is right? Both claims have merit, yet both are narratives constructed to serve present national purposes. While the Jews try to assert their exclusive ownership to the Land, the Palestinians, who consider themselves the indigenous population, … affirm their own national rights. For any kind of accommodation to take place, both people must acknowledge the others’ right to a national presence while finding a way of sharing it.”[8]

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[1] Beinin, Joel and Hajjar, Lisa. “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict:  A Primer.” Middle East Research & Information Project. Web.  August 14, 2010.
[2] Halper, Jeff, Johnson, Jimmy and Schaeffer, Emily. “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Challenging Slogans through Critical Reframing.” Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. 2009.  Web.   August 14,  2010.
[3] Hammond, Jeremy R.  “Top Ten Myths about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”  The Palestine Chronicle.  18 June 2010.  Web.  August 16, 2010.
[4] Halper, Jeff, Johnson, Jimmy and Schaeffer, Emily. “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Challenging Slogans through Critical Reframing.” Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. 2009.  Web.   August 14,  2010.
[5] Beinin, Joel and Hajjar, Lisa. “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict:  A Primer.” Middle East Research & Information Project. Web.  August 14, 2010.
[6] Beinin, Joel and Hajjar, Lisa. “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict:  A Primer.” Middle East Research & Information Project. Web.  August 14, 2010.
[7] Hammond, Jeremy R.  “Top Ten Myths about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”  The Palestine Chronicle.  18 June 2010.  Web.  August 16, 2010
[8] Halper, Jeff, Johnson, Jimmy and Schaeffer, Emily. “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Challenging Slogans through Critical Reframing.” Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. 2009.  Web.   August 14,  2010.