On Israel and Palestine- Part 2

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 2, a summary of the history of the region from 1948 until 1993.

I strongly recommend reading these in order, and you can find the other essays in this series here:

Part 1- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-1/

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

The early years of the Israeli state, the early Palestinian resistance, and the Suez Crisis:

The Palestinians were now scattered, with many living in Gaza (controlled by Egypt), the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), or in other Arab countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere. Following 1948, all of Israel’s Arab neighbors were hostile to them in the sense that they would not have diplomatic relations with Israel, though large-scale conflict would not occur for several years.

The next few years saw additional mass migration of Jews from around the world to Israel, due to a variety of factors: many of the Holocaust survivors did not want to continue living in the countries where they had been rounded up and persecuted, there was rising antisemitism in Arab countries (though recall that this occurred as a direct response to Zionism, as the Middle East was where Jews would previously go to flee European persecution), and there were other Jews in Europe and America that believed in Zionism and wanted to move to Israel. Within a few years of Israeli independence, immigration would double the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000.

Resistance to Israel among the Palestinians was initially fairly disorganized, with sporadic guerilla attacks occurring usually launched from Gaza or the West Bank in the years following the Nakba. Many of these attacks would target Israeli civilians, and the Israelis would launch reprisal attacks in turn. These reprisal attacks also often explicitly targeted Arab civilians, though overall these operations were fairly small-scale, with several dozen Israelis killed and several hundred Arabs killed in turn over the period of a few years. Interestingly, Arab countries (Syria, Jordan, and Egypt) trying to avoid being dragged into a large-scale conflict with Israel would use their own militaries and intelligence services to curb the activities of the Palestinian guerillas.

In 1956, large-scale conflict would break out in the form of the Suez Canal Crisis. Egypt, under the government of Nasser, had nationalized the Suez Canal. The UK and France put intense political pressure on Egypt to reverse this move, and threatened military intervention. Israel, happy to use the opportunity to weaken one of its enemies, coordinated with the UK and France and invaded Egypt. Israel was able to capture the Sinai Peninsula and the tripartite forces were able to capture important ports along Egypt and had significant military success initially. Due to both immense political pressure from the US and the Soviet Union, the UK and France were forced into a ceasefire, Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt was left in control of the canal. The final death toll was as many as 3,000 Egyptians and about 170 Israelis killed. This event was viewed as an Egyptian geopolitical victory overall, and rapidly hastened the end of Britain and France as imperial powers in the new post-WW2 order.

The Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, and Camp David Accords:

A lack of diplomatic relations between the Arab countries and Israel continued, eventually leading to the Six-Day War of 1967. Egypt massed forces near its border with Israel, and before they invaded Israel launched a pre-emptive attack. In response, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq attacked Israel, but unsuccessfully. The conflict lasted only 6 days, and Israel was able to capture both Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria, and occupied these territories. This was obviously, once again a catastrophe on the part of the Arabs, and a decisive military victory for the Israelis. The final death toll was almost 1000 Israelis, about 10,000 Egyptians, 1-2,000 Syrians, and about 700 Jordanians killed. The Israelis now controlled the entirety of the British Mandate of Palestine, with the addition of the Sinai and the Golan Heights. While they did not outright annex these territories, their military occupied it and forcibly expelled another 300,000-400,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

We will discuss this more in Parts 4-6, but this victory allowed for the initiation of Israel’s settlement program in both Gaza and the West Bank. Where, even though Israel had not explicitly annexed the territory, they displaced Palestinians, bulldozed their homes, drastically reduced the approval of Arab building permits, and allowed Jews to create “settlements” and move into these areas under military protection. This process would begin after 1967, but would really ramp up in the 1980’s and continues until this day (in the West Bank).

In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Egypt and Syria led surprise attacks into Israel (technically the Sinai and the Golan Heights), and after some initial military successes, they were ultimately defeated, and there were no changes in control of territory. Some 10,000 Egyptians, 3,000 Syrians, and about 2,800 Israelis would be killed. In the following years however, Anwar Sadat would begin peace negotiations with Israel and the Camp David Accords of 1978 would result in “land for peace”, where Egypt promised peaceful relations with Israel and Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt was arguably the most powerful Arab state at the time, and these negotiations were done without input from other Arab countries and undermined the Arab unity against Israel, and for his trouble Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The Yom Kippur War was the last large-scale military conflict between the land army of an Arab state and the Israeli army, aside from some smaller-scale encounters between the Syrian army and the Israeli army in Lebanon.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization:

We must now turn our attention back to the Palestinians proper, who remained scattered throughout the Middle East, but had become significantly more organized since the early days of the Fedayeen in the 1950’s. In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, were created in Egypt. This would be the largest umbrella organization for Palestinian guerillas in the following decades, but had multiple smaller subgroups within it (the most famous of which now is Fatah). As is the nature of such a guerilla group, many of the attacks carried out over the years would be done by smaller cells operating individually, but ultimately, the PLO as a whole would be the most important organizing force for armed Palestinian resistance throughout the Middle East for several decades, and they operated throughout the Middle East but primarily in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and eventually Tunisia. The PLO would famously, especially in their earlier years, target Israelis outside of the region (such as in Europe), and in turn, the Israelis would target them abroad as well, and these attacks, assassinations, bombings, and hijackings would prove to be a big headache for the international community and ensure there was always international attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was in 1969 that the PLO’s most famous member, Yasser Arafat, would become chairman of the PLO, and the great boogeyman in American and Israeli imagination for the next 25 years.

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, the PLO were primarily operating out of Jordan and launching attacks against Israeli forces within the West Bank. There were also certain factions of the PLO that were chafing under the concept of monarchical rule and calling for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy. Jordan, in an attempt to avoid a large-scale conflict with Israel and in response to these factions of the PLO calling for the overthrow of the government, would launch small scale skirmishes to control the PLO that escalated into a much larger conflict in September of 1970 (in what would later be known as Black September) when a PLO army from Syria invaded to support their brethren in Jordan. The Palestinians would ultimately be defeated, and the PLO would be ejected from the country and would go to Lebanon, which would then be the main PLO base of operations. In 1974, the Arab League officially designated the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

The Lebanese Civil War and the invasion(s) and occupation of Lebanon:

The PLO in Lebanon would continue their attacks on Israel across the southern Lebanese border. Recall that during all this time, the PLO would also carry out attacks against Israelis worldwide. These continued attacks into Israel, as well as their continued involvement in Lebanese politics would play a large role in the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. This was a very complicated war involving many factions over the next ~15 years, and would involve different Lebanese Christian factions, Lebanese Druze factions, Lebanese Sunni factions, Lebanese Shia factions, Palestinians, the Syrian military, the Israeli military, the Lebanese military, and the American military. These different factions would at various times fight each other, ally with each other, and be supported by various external powers to turn it into a proxy war. We will not focus on a detailed discussion of this conflict, and instead focus just on Israeli and PLO involvement.

The Coastal Road massacre in 1978, where the PLO hijacked a bus in Israel and killed 38 of its passengers, prompted an invasion of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River that caused the PLO to withdraw from southern Lebanon (and the Israelis killed over 1000 Lebanese civilians in the process), but the Israelis would also withdraw from Lebanon in the coming months. Though the Israelis did not stick around in southern Lebanon, they supported Christian militias in the south to prevent the Palestinians from re-establishing a presence there.

It’s worth mentioning that in the years preceding both the 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon, the Israeli Airforce was launching regular air strikes into Lebanon. While the PLO would rebuild their presence in southern Lebanon, following the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, the UNIFIL was established to monitor the border. They reported that Palestinian attacks into Israel were a very rare occurrence while IDF attacks into Lebanon were becoming increasingly frequent (involving violations of Lebanese airspace, Lebanese waters, and establishing military outposts and minefields in southern Lebanon), clearly setting the stage for another military intervention. Israel would claim that though the PLO attacks into Israel were generally minimal and did not necessarily violate the ceasefire put in place after 1978, that Palestinian attacks against Israelis abroad and launched from elsewhere besides Lebanon would constitute a ceasefire violation. The goals of an eventual invasion of Lebanon were laid out by the Israeli Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon (clearly, a re-invasion was being planned, and only a casus belli was needed); these goals included: the destruction of PLO infrastructure in Lebanon, driving Syrian forces out of Lebanon, installing a Christian-dominated government in Lebanon, and signing a peace agreement with this new Lebanese government. Sharon had also made comments to the effect that by undermining the PLO as a political organization, it would allow Israel to annex the West Bank outright. A Palestinian splinter group would attempt to assassinate an Israeli diplomat, and Israel would use it as an excuse to reinvade Lebanon in June of 1982.

Israeli forces, backed by their Lebanese Christian militias would rapidly advance through southern Lebanon, and would besiege West Beirut, fighting predominantly against the PLO and Syrian army. This siege would last for about 2 months, and there would be about 5,000 Lebanese civilians killed by the Israelis during this battle. An agreement would be reached that would allow thousands of PLO fighters to withdraw. Many of them would be evacuated outside the country, while some would go to Northern Lebanon in Tripoli. The Syrian Army would besiege Tripoli, eventually forcing the PLO out of Lebanon. They would go to Tunisia and thereafter have their headquarters in Tunis.

As for the Israelis, they withdrew from Beirut following the siege, but still occupied all the south of Lebanon. Though the Palestinians were no longer a significant threat in the country, it would be the Lebanese themselves that would resist the occupation. In particular, the Shia of southern Lebanon, who were the poorest demographic in the country, who had felt abandoned by the government and were now at the mercy of the Israeli occupiers and Christian militias, would create Hezbollah (really a gradual unification of multiple different militias). Shia resistance was very effective. The US would briefly send a “peacekeeping force” to assist the Israeli occupation, but suicide bombs detonated by Shia fighters would kill hundreds of American soldiers and lead to the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon. The Israelis and Shia would continue fighting, but gradually the Israelis were withdrawing from the country. By 1985, in the face of mounting losses, the Israelis had withdrawn from the Bekaa Valley, Sidon, and Tyre, and continued to occupy only a small stretch of land in southern Lebanon along the Israeli border, before completely withdrawing in 2000.

The Lebanese Civil War as a whole was a destructive conflict, and Israeli involvement added to the destruction. The Israelis were involved in killing thousands of Lebanese civilians in their invasions, with estimates of about 15,000 Lebanese deaths in the first few weeks of the 1982 invasion, and over 5,000 additional Lebanese killed in the siege of Beirut. Later that year, Israel’s Christian militia proxies would massacre at least 1,300 Palestinians and Lebanese Shia in the Sabra and Shatila camps near Beirut (with some estimates as high as 3,500). In 1993, in an attempt to destroy Hezbollah, Israel launched an intensive bombing campaign severely damaging 55 villages in southern Lebanon and killing over a hundred Lebanese. And in 1996, they launched another intensive campaign resulting in several hundred additional Lebanese deaths, including an incident where a United Nations compound where hundreds of civilians were sheltering was targeted and over a hundred of them were killed (including 55 children). The Israeli occupation was a bloody affair that caused a tremendous amount of death and destruction across Lebanon, and it was armed resistance resulting in Israeli losses that ultimately forced their withdrawal out of the country.

The First Intifada, the rise of Hamas, and the Oslo Accords:

In 1987, the First Intifada (or Uprising) began where there were widespread demonstrations by Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza. These demonstrations took various forms and evolved over the following years, but included nonviolent protests, labor strikes, boycotts, and general acts of civil disobedience, but also targeted destruction of Israeli buildings (when they could be accessed) and attacks on the Israeli army and civilians (again, when they could be accessed).

Recall that since 1967, the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza were under Israeli military occupation. Life in these areas was generally difficult. Israel was promoting the spread of settlements, where Israeli colonists were provided with Israeli military protection and building permits to move into these occupied territories. In order to promote settlements, Israel demolished many Palestinian homes and agricultural land and made it very difficult for Palestinians to obtain building permits. Other factors included the fact that the Palestinians were used as a source of menial labor such that by the time of the Intifada, about 40% of Palestinians were going into Israel for work, but jobs requiring an advanced education were limited for them, such that scarcely 12% of Palestinians with college degrees were able to get work. Curfews were in place in many areas, and all of these factors contributed to a general feeling of humiliation on the part of the Palestinians.

The Israeli military response was disproportionate, as protesters were frequently met with live fire, and by the end of the 6-year conflict about 2,000 Palestinians had been killed, compared with about 200 Israelis. The simple number of casualties can’t tell the entire story however, as the Israeli tactic of collective punishment was on flagrant display here. For example, when Palestinians medics when on strike, the head of the Gaza medical association was arrested and held without trial for 6 months. This was the case for the heads of many professional societies in the occupied territories. There were also widespread arrests, teargassing, and beatings of gatherings of Palestinians whether at protests or not (for example, gatherings at mosques).

The First Intifada is also when Hamas was organized and rose to prominence as an overtly Islamist and more hardline alternative to the PLO for resistance against Israel. Its origins lie within the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and there are individuals who have claimed, both within Palestine and within Israeli intelligence, that the formation of Hamas was encouraged by Israel as a way to undermine the PLO, though this claim is contested. Another notable Islamist group rising to prominence during this time period was Islamic Jihad.

Although the various Arab countries did not get militarily involved against Israel, they did give monetary support to the Palestinians. The leadership of the PLO, in exile in Tunisia, also did not have significant involvement in the day-to-day demonstrations. Of note, in 1988, Jordan would relinquish its claims to the West Bank (and in so doing, stripped the Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship).

 In 1992, a conference was convened with several Arab countries, the PLO, and Israel to try to reach a peace agreement to resolve the Intifada. There was very little progress made for many months, as many sticking points included not only the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but also the occupation of Lebanon and the Golan Heights. There was also significant paranoia on the part of the Arab statesmen that one of the Arab delegations would go through back channels and sign a peace with Israel without consulting the other Arab delegations and maintaining a united front (such as what Egypt did in 1978). In fact, this is precisely what happened.

Arafat would open up back channels with Israel. The woefully unprepared Palestinians without a single lawyer among them would come to an agreement with Israel’s best-educated and shrewdest negotiators. It seems as though there were several motivating factors for these negotiations: Arafat’s desperation to be able to rule over a Palestinian state after spending decades in exile fighting for a Palestinian homeland, the increasing brutality of the Israeli occupation, and the increasing power of emerging religious Palestinian groups such as Hamas that were gaining influence in Palestine at the expense of the less religious PLO. The 1993 Oslo Accords would be signed, and Arafat would get to rule his little piece of the land. In doing this however, Arafat had undermined the other Arab delegations, had not built in any recognition of the many UN resolutions in the preceding decades that demanded Israeli withdrawal from territories they had conquered in war, had officially recognized Israel as the proper owner of about 80% of Mandate Palestine, did not secure any guarantees for joint control of Jerusalem, and would not secure any rights for the displaced Palestinians to return. A sad turn of events for the “superterrorist” he had been portrayed as in the preceding decades by the Western media, who had spent those decades uncompromisingly demanding a unified Palestinian homeland with Jerusalem as its capital and where all displaced Palestinians could return.

For his trouble, Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister that signed these accords would be assassinated by a right-wing Israeli in 1995. As it turns out, this agreement was equally distasteful to right-wing Israelis (who wanted to annex the West Bank and Gaza outright) and the majority of Palestinians, who felt betrayed for the reasons I outlined previously.

 Part 3- https://sunflowers.ghost.io/on-israel-and-palestine-part-3/

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
• 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
• Amnesty International 2001: Israel and the Occupied Territories: State Assassinations and other Unlawful Killings