the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: An INreoduction
It is a truism that "history is written by the victors." Something unique has happened, the history of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict is being written by the losers, on social media, in the press and academia. Google is so swamped with pro-Palestinian propaganda that contradictory facts cannot be found. The history can be so complex, with so much information and so many ethical, cultural and religious viewpoints that I believe only by cutting the story to the barebones can it be understood.
In the 19th and 20th century Palestine was a total shithole. A small elite of families of 'notables', 'effendis' who claimed descent from Arabian conquerors ruled over tribes of (fellaheen): dirty, ignorant, violent peasants. Lice, mosquito, flea and faecal borne diseases were common, infant mortality was very high and life expectancy was around 35.
In the late 19th century Jews began leaving Europe and migrating to Palestine in response to terrible oppression in Eastern Europe. They were Zionists, seeking to create a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine. There did not seem there was any possibility that this could be accomplished. They were not many and they were not very successful. They relied on Jews in other countries financing them. Their migration was legal and they bought land and settled. By 1914 there were app. 600,000 Arabs (mostly Muslim) and 100,000 Jews. The Ottomans did not maintain a reasonable rule of law in the area and the Jews were greeted with criminal attacks by the local fellaheen. They were so hopeless at self defence that they hired guards to protect from the very villagers attacking them.
Jews are descendants of ancient Canaanite people, the Israelites, who lived in the area currently now known as Israel and the West Bank for 2,000 years until the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD. Hadrian then expelled the Jews. They recorded their history in the Tanahk (Jewish Bible) aka the Christian Old Testament. Judaism has evolved from the time of the Diaspora but a return to Zion, the Holy Land, was always part of it. However, there was no right of return then, as now.
In the 19th century Great Britain and other countries in Europe became the dominant financial, manufacturing and military powers on earth with Britain the most powerful. In this time the Levant or Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire though it's sharia, medieval, guild controlled Islamic society was unable to compete with Europe and Russia and was making efforts to 'reform' ie Europanize itself. European travellers in Palestine in the 19th century reported it was a wasteland in which they required armed guards for protection from the 'natives'.
The Palestinians were living in the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Turks. Palestine was a very poor area, the majority of inhabitants were permanently indebted peasants or fellaheen ruled and exploited by the 'notables' or effendi landowning class. They spoke Arabic having been conquered and converted when they were Byzantine Christians but are genetically descendants of ancient Canaanites as were the Zionist Jews.
It's quite remarkable that in 1905 Ben Borochov (1881–1917), one of Socialist Zionism’s fathers wrote in "On the Issues of Zionism and Territory":
The Fellahin in Eretz-Yisrael are the direct descendants of the remnants of the Jewish and Canaanite agricultural community, with a very slight admixture of Arab blood; for as is well known, the Arabs, proud conquerors, mixed very little with the mass of the people in the lands which they conquered […] Thus the ethnic difference between the Jews of the Diaspora and the fellahin of Eretz- Yisrael is no greater than the difference between the Ashekenazi and the Sephardi Jews. The local people are neither Arabs or Turks.24
Britain had a Great Power interest in Palestine, it was close to the Egypt and Suez Canal but there was also a quirky religious tradition, a wide-spread British-Israelism movement with which many upper-class Victorians identified and a belief known as Christian Restorationism which taught that return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land must occur before Christ could return to earth. The British had no interest in the wishes of the Palestinians. Joseph Balfour, the Foreign Secretary famously said "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country."
There were always some religious Jews living in the Jerusalem area but in the late 19th century a new and increasing number of Jews, the Zionists, began to arrive and purchase land and settle in towns and create farming settlements. They were escaping persecution and they had a dream, if they could create a Jewish state, a Jewish country, then Jews would be safe. That dream seemed impossible to reach but they concentrated on the day to day possibilities.
There was an argument made when I was a boy that the Jews had suffered so much that they deserved to have a state. Today, there is an argument made that the Palestinians have suffered so much and the the British politicians lied so much that Israel should never have been allowed. Somehow the first argument was replaced by the second one while I was at the beach one summer and didn't notice. I do not attempt to consider the suffering, pain and heartache felt by any of the people involved in or affected by these events.
I am not a believer in any religion. I ascribe no value to Jewish religious ideas about JHWH giving the land of Canaan to the Jews or that their past history gives them any right of return and neither do I accept Muslim views of Palestine as a blessed land, al Quds, al Buraq, etc from where Mohammed rose to the 7th heaven. I only care about facts on the ground.
Where possible I have taken the facts from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian sources or compared them to the formerly dominant history.