On Israel and Palestine- Part 1
Introduction
The creation of the state of Israel almost 80 years ago and the conflict between its citizens and the displaced Palestinians and surrounding countries has become one of the most polarizing geopolitical topics in popular discourse. Those with any “skin in the game,” so to speak, (eg. Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Jews) probably have very strong beliefs about which “side” is in the right, and the actual facts and events occurring on the ground are unlikely to significantly change those beliefs, myself included. Discourse about this conflict across all forms of media is rampant in an attempt to sway public opinion, with wild claims being made to justify the actions of one side or another. It’s obviously a very complex topic and I encourage anyone interested in an in-depth look at Palestine to do their own research and reading, while being very critical of what biases sources may have.
The purpose of this series of essays is to give some basic background information for those with relatively little knowledge of the conflict and its history, to help clarify some of the conflicting and opposing claims you will often hear online or in the news, and help explain why I believe the actions of the state of Israel definitively put them on the wrong side of history and merit harsh criticism.
This will be an 8-part series that I will post over the following weeks/months, with this identical introduction in each. I will list sources I referred to at the end of each post but, as this is not an academic treatise, the formatting will be informal and will not be embedded into the text itself.
Parts 1-3 are going to give some historical background on the region. One of the fundamental arguments made by both sides in the conflict is that the land belongs to them on a historical basis. It is helpful then, to have a basic overview of the broad strokes of history and what populations lived there at various points throughout history. This will be an extremely basic summary, as you could read books on each of these periods in history and still have a lot to learn.
Parts 4-8 are going to be formatted essentially as responses to frequent claims made in defense of Israel and will cover a variety of topics, including Israeli behavior in relation to the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, the relationship between the US and Israel, and what the future may hold.
This is Part 1, a brief review of the history of the region through the creation of the state of Israel.
I recommend reading these in order, and you can find the other essays in this series here:
Part 2- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-2/
Part 3- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-3/
Part 4- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-4/
Part 5- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-5/
Part 6- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-6/
A (Very) Brief History of the Region
From the earliest histories until the Byzantine period:
The earliest known settled people in what is now Israel/Palestine are the people of Canaan, with evidence of their settlements going back as far as the third millennium BC. For much of this early history of the region, they were surrounded by more powerful civilizations/empires including the Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, and Assyrians. The limited records of this region in particular make it difficult to be certain about exact dates, but it is likely that the city-states of Canaan existed as vassals to Egypt. While it is unclear when and how this process occurred, the first Jews (Israelites as they are more commonly referred to when discussing this time period) would have emerged as a monotheistic subgroup of these Canaanites. Internal chaos in Egypt would result in the independence of these various city-states in Canaan. Biblical texts would have us believe that these aforementioned events took the form of a Jewish escape from slavery under the Egyptians, and an exodus out of Egypt, though there are no Egyptian sources to corroborate this, and it seems likely that the loss of such a large workforce would merit some mention in the Egyptian historical record. It’s more likely instead at these Canaanites were vassals of Egypt and gained political independence at some point. At any rate, by the start of the first millennium BC it is likely that there were independent political entities of Jews living in this region, the two most well-known of which are the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah. It is likely that around this time, the Phoenician city-states were rising to prominence in what is now Lebanon, and would have had significant interactions with these Canaanites/early Jews.
Around 700 BC, these kingdoms would become vassals of the Neo-Assyrians, and then the Neo-Babylonians, and famously, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem and dissolve the kingdom following a Jewish revolt in 587 BC. Only a few decades later, the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenids, would conquer the Neo-Babylonians and allow the Jews to return to the region, under Achaemenid control. Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated and conquered the Achaemenids in 332 BC, but his reign lasted only 10 years and his empire fractured after his death. The region would alternately be controlled by two of the Greek successor kingdoms to Alexander: the Seleucids and Ptolemaic kingdoms. The Jews would eventually revolt and in 142 BC managed to achieve autonomy for themselves for about a century, until a Roman army, led by Pompey Magnus, conquered the region in 63 BC.
The conflicts that would follow between the Jews and Romans would become famous in Jewish history, and over the course of three Jewish-Roman Wars from 66 AD to 136 AD, the Romans would ultimately destroy Jerusalem, and massacre much of the population of Judea and the majority of surviving Jews would be scattered, leaving only a small Jewish presence in the region. Under the Roman Emperor Hadrian, the province would be renamed from Judea to Syria Palaestina, and would thereafter continue to be ruled by the Romans and their successor state the Byzantine Empire.
Christianity was steadily gaining in popularity throughout Europe and the Middle East, and by 380 AD Theodosius would make it the official religion of the Roman Empire. By the end of the 5th century the majority of the population in the region of Palestine was Christian, with a small Jewish minority. During the 5th and 6th centuries, there would be multiple revolts against Roman rule by the Jews (and other local populations, such as the people of Samaria), resulting again in significant depopulation by the Romans, and significant persecution against the Jews remaining in the area.
The Muslim Conquests:
By the time of the Muslim conquests in the 7th century, the region was still controlled by the Romans, the majority of the population was Christian, and a small minority were Jews. In 610 AD, Muhammad ibn Abdullah (PBUH) would have the first revelations of what would become Islam revealed to him. He would unite the Arab tribes of the Arabian Peninsula together, and though the Ummah would begin to fracture to varying degrees following his death, the creation of Islam and unification of the Arabs would change the course of history. Under the Prophet’s (PBUH) next three successors, these Arab tribesman who were formerly organized around small clans, roaming the desert, eking out an existence through animal husbandry, as merchants, or as raiders, would sweep across the Levant, Mesopotamia, and North Africa, topple the Persian Sassanid Empire, and conquer much of the Byzantine Empire’s holdings in West Asia and North Africa, including Palestine.
The region would remain in Muslim hands for most of history until now, though would change governorship as the Islamic governments themselves changed (eg. first the Rashidun caliphate, then the Umayyads, then the Abbasids, then the Fatimids). It was during the initial Muslim conquest that many of the laws/persecutions specifically targeting the Jews that had been put in place by the Christian Romans were lifted. During the following centuries under Islamic control, the region would gradually become majority Muslim with Arabic as the dominant language.
In the late 11th century, Christians would be organized into a crusade to try to reclaim the “Holy lands” of Jerusalem, and would be successful. The Crusaders would then control the region (known as the kingdom of Jerusalem) for about 200 years (from approximately 1099 AD to 1291 AD). The Ayyubid Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and Mamlukis of Egypt would defeat the Crusaders, and re-establish Islamic control. In 1516 AD, the Ottoman Turks would defeat the Mamluks, and gain control of the region until the end of World War 1 in 1918, when the Ottoman Empire would be carved up by the French and British, and the British would gain control of what was known as the “British Mandate of Palestine”.
The Ottoman Empire:
Because the administration of the region under the Ottoman Empire would last for 400 years and last until the modern age, I think it’s worth briefly discussing the makeup of the region and relations between the major Abrahamic faiths at the time. The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, and applied Islamic law to the region. While the majority of the population in Ottoman territories in the Middle East were Muslims (this is less true for European territories they controlled, but these areas still contained large numbers of Muslims), there were sizeable populations of Christians and, to a lesser extent, Jews living throughout the Middle East. Christians and Jews, in Islamic faith, are considered “people of the book”, and were afforded a relatively protected status in comparison to those who were not either Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Non-Muslims had to pay a special tax (the jizya) to the government. Non-Muslims were also, to varying extents throughout the duration of the Empire, not permitted to hold governmental positions or participate as soldiers in the Army. Particularly towards the later part of Ottoman rule (ie. the 19th century), the fact that Ottoman military engagements usually resulted in their defeat actually meant that the relative proportion of non-Muslims in the Empire was increasing (due to Muslim deaths in combat), and the non-Muslim population had a greater proportion of individuals occupying more lucrative roles as tradesmen compared to the Muslim population, resulting in an average level of wealth that was greater amongst non-Muslims during this late Ottoman period.
The Ottomans would face, at varying times, revolts from different groups living within their borders, including Christian revolts in the Balkans, Jewish revolts in Palestine, and Arab revolts throughout Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula, and the response to these revolts was usually harsh and would involve some amount of what we today consider ethnic cleansing, which is to say, displacement of these populations to weaken their ability to revolt in the future. However, on the whole, if you were not a part of the faith espoused by the government, it was better to be a subject of the Ottoman Empire than anywhere in Europe at the time, particularly if you were Jewish. For example, many Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century would be given permission to move to Palestine by the Ottomans.
There is also, in modern times, perhaps, a temptation to picture the Middle East during the time of the Ottoman Empire as similar to what it is now in terms of demographic makeup, but this is definitively untrue. The Ottoman Empire was very much a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious Empire, and there were far greater proportions of Christians and Jews living throughout the Middle East compared to the current demographic makeup of the majority of the region, including within most Arab nations and within Anatolia itself as well; many of these demographic changes occurred during the 20th century with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire when there was mass movement of populations (think for example, of the expulsion of many Muslims living in the Balkans, and the expulsion of many Christians living in Anatolia (eg. the Armenian genocide)).
Takeaways through the Ottoman Period:
There are some key takeaways from summarizing the history of Israel/Palestine up until now. Of all the groups that currently believe the region has significance to them, the Jews were the first to occupy the region. The last time there was an independent Jewish national entity in that region was about 2000 years ago, before the Romans definitively conquered and depopulated much of the area. All of the major Abrahamic religions at one time or another controlled the region. Aside from a brief time period when the Crusaders controlled it, the region had been in Muslim hands for about 1300 years. Finally, the Ottoman Empire was a more hospitable place for Jews than any of the other European kingdoms of Christendom for much of its duration, and as we will soon see, it was this “hospitability” of the Ottomans that would allow for mass Jewish migration to the region in the late 19th century.
For individuals who “wave away” the Arab-Jewish conflict as being impossible to solve because these groups have been fighting each other for thousands of years, I hope this summary can help reveal how lazy, baseless, and reductive this line of reasoning is.
The British Mandate and Zionism:
Before diving into the major political events of the region when it was the “British Mandate of Palestine”, it will perhaps be helpful to talk about the demographic makeup of the region during this time, as well as the concept of Zionism.
The idea that the land of Israel is special to the Jewish people is an ancient one, however it was not really used as the basis for a political movement (ie. modern Zionism) until the 19th century. Political Zionism then, is the idea that through immigration of the global Jewish population to colonize Palestine (or, in fairness, the historical “Land of Israel”), a Jewish nation that can function as a Jewish homeland can be created. This idea arose in Europe due to significant persecution against Jews that was occurring at the time, and Jewish organizations actively promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine starting in approximately the 1880’s. It was this political idea of Zionism and the mass Jewish migration to Palestine with the explicit plan to create a Jewish homeland (that would necessarily be at the expense of the existing Arab populations within) that would form the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Prior to that point, (~1880’s), the Jews made up about 2% of the population of Palestine. Over the following decades, waves of immigration from Jews fleeing persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe would go to Palestine. Many of these immigrants moved to Palestine with Zionism as their motivation, and the early 20th century would see the formation of multiple Jewish political groups (paramilitary/guerilla organizations is perhaps a more accurate descriptor, of which perhaps the most famous is Irgun) that explicitly aimed for the displacement of Arabs from Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. By the time of the creation of the British Mandate, the proportion of the Jewish population had increased to be about 10%, with Arab Christians making up another 10%, and the remainder were Arab Muslims.
British Promises/Lies:
It’s worth noting that from the outset, British plans for the region were poorly thought out and contradictory. The British had promised independence to the Arabs in exchange for their support in fighting the Ottomans during World War 1. The nature of this independence is murky, but would purportedly have entailed a single Arab nation that would have included Palestine (in addition to North Africa, Iraq, the Levant, and the Arabian peninsula). In 1917, the war was looking fairly dire for the British (the Russians were on the verge of dropping out of the war, there were mutinies in the French Army, the Americans were not yet directly involved on the ground), and in exchange for Jewish support (and to be more specific, on 2 fronts: as a reward for prominent Jewish scientists helping the war effort, and to motivate the Jewish population of Palestine to fight the Ottomans) the British made the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which stated their aim to fulfill the Zionist dream of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British would betray the Arabs of course, as rather than an independent Arab state, the region was carved up into multiple territories with arbitrary borders under British and French control.
These two competing promises would define the next 30 years. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, there would be increasing immigration of Jews to Palestine, particularly as the Nazis ramped up their persecution as they marched across Europe. The region would experience the formation and strengthening of Jewish political movements and paramilitary groups, as well as their Arab counterparts, and would see fighting occur between Jews and Arabs, as well as between each of these groups and the British.
The British during the interwar period and during World War 2, knew that they were making contradictory promises that might be impossible to fulfill. The British Prime Minister at the time, Lloyd George, and later Winston Churchill, are both quoted discussing these challenges, and I will reproduce a particularly prescient Churchill quote from 1937 here:
“the wealthy, crowded, progressive Jewish state lies in the plains, and on the sea coasts of Palestine. Around it, in the hills and the uplands, stretching far and wide into the illimitable deserts, the warlike Arabs of Syria, of Transjordania, of Arabia, backed by the armed forces of Iraq, offer the ceaseless menace of war. To maintain itself, the Jewish state must be armed to the teeth, and must bring in every able-bodied man to strengthen its army. But how long would this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations in Iraq and Palestine? Can it be expected that the Arabs would stand by impassively and watch the building up with Jewish world capital and resources of a Jewish army equipped with the most deadly weapons of war, until it was strong enough not to be afraid of them? And if ever the Jewish army reached that point, who can be sure that, cramped within their narrow limits, they would not plunge out into the new undeveloped lands that lie around them?”
The Creation of the State of Israel:
By the end of World War 2, Jews would make up about 30% of the population of Palestine. In the years following the end of the war, there would be essentially open conflict between the Arabs and Jews against each other and against the British. Arab and Jewish delegations were unable to reach agreement, as the Jews insisted on a state of their own that involved partitioning Palestine, and the Arabs insisted on a non-partitioned Palestine under Arab rule. The British would defer the question to the UN, and the UN would pass a resolution that would create a Jewish nation comprising about 55% of the land (though they were 30% of the population) upon the expiration of the British Mandate. When the mandate expired in 1948, it resulted in a civil war in Palestine between Arabs and Jews, as well as the invasion of Palestine by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Fighting would last about a year, during which many atrocities were committed on both sides (and though it may be ignored now, there were massacres aplenty committed by the Jews), but ultimately the Jews would come out on top. This was the Nakba, the expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians, who would flee into neighboring countries. Many of the remaining Arabs (about 150,000) within this Israeli territory (Muslim and Christian) would be rounded up into ghettos under heavy guard before they were gradually reintegrated in the following years (these are the Arab-Israelis that Israel so likes to tout as evidence of their tolerance). Jordan would control the West Bank, and Egypt would control Gaza.
Notwithstanding the military disaster, it was a humanitarian disaster for the Arabs as well, with the displacement of ¾ of a million people. Unfortunately for them, in the wake of a Holocaust that led to 6 million Jewish deaths, and the displacement of millions of refugees throughout Europe following the end of the most vicious war in humanity’s history, there was little international sympathy or attention paid to the plight of the Palestinians at this time.
And so, due to claims of an ancestral homeland from a people two millennia dispossessed, and the crimes of Jewish persecution and massacres committed by European powers, it would fall to the Arabs of Palestine to pay the price, and the Middle East has been defined by this conflict to this day.
Part 2- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-2/
Sources:
- The Modern Middle East: A History by James Gelvin
- The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years by Bernard Lewis
- The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
- Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk
- Osman’s Dream: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel
- The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories by Ilan Pappe
- Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007 by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar
- History of Rome podcast
- The Hellenistic Age podcast