I support Israel. Well, kind of. The truth of the matter, and most matters in general, is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is much more complicated than it is often portrayed. And to really delve into that complication, we have to place it into its proper historical context.
That historical context is vast though. It also encompasses an incredibly misunderstood portion of human history; WWII and specifically the Holocaust. Regretfully, the distance between us today, and that horrific past has done us no favors, with the motto of “Never Forget” changing to “just get over it,” or “that’s distant history, you just have to move past it.” Yet, even today, the Jewish population has never recovered.
Even more so, Judaism, the religion of Jews, and a key component of their culture, was forever, and fundamentally, changed due to the philosophical implications of the Holocaust. Beyond that, even after the Holocaust was over, it wasn’t really over.
By placing this entire conflict into perspective, and placing Jewish history into context, what we see is that while the war was won, the anti-Semitism, and the genocide continued, with Nazis continuing to stay in power, and with Jews being slaughtered.
But before we even get to the Holocaust, and finally the creation of the state of Israel, we need to go even further back.
The Jewish Question
The history of the Jewish people is one largely of subjugation and expulsion. Historically, Hebrews, and later Jews, never had significant power. While there would be a short lived United Monarchy, followed by the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, these nations would never be of major strength. For the most part, they would be a footnote in history, with their largest importance really being a buffer zone.
During their short lived period of sovereignty, they would face constant threats, such as by the Egyptians, and later, domination at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians. They would also face exile and deportation. While some inroads would be made back into Palestine, later expulsions would center the Jewish community in Europe.
During the Middle Ages, the core of the Jewish community was centered in Europe, but that didn’t stop the expulsions. Throughout Europe, they would continue to face expulsions from places such as England, and Spain, as well as pogroms throughout the Russian Empire, not to mention the massacres and anti-Semitism that would occur throughout the continent.
Now, there is a lot of history here, which would take volumes to cover. The key point though is that the Jewish community had a history of being expelled, of being persecuted and having to relocate. While peace, or at least periods of less hardship could be found, much of the history is filled with persecution. For our purposes, we can jump to around 1753, with the coining of the term, the “Jewish Question.”
The Jewish Question was first posed in Great Britain in regards to debates surrounding the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753. Briefly, the Jewish Naturalization Act would have allowed Jews to become naturalized citizens of Great Britain, and was largely a reward for the loyalty to the government that the Jewish community had shown during the Jacobite rising of 1745.
The Bill was quickly rescinded though after an enormous public outburst of anti-Semitism broke out. Over the course of almost two centuries, the question would crop up time and time again when dealing with Jews, who seemed to pose a singularity as a people, against a growing trend to nationalism among various states.
Various solutions to this question would be posed by different governments, ranging from expulsion, to widespread pogroms and ethnic cleansing, especially in Eastern Europe, to segregation, such as forcing Jews to only live in what would become known as the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire.
This increased persecution, and the rise of anti-Semitism in general, led many in the Jewish community to try to find a solution themselves. This would give birth to organizations such as the Jewish Colonization Association, which helped Jews flee Europe by setting up colonies where they could, including in South America and Palestine. It would also give rise to the modern Zionist movement in the mid and late 1800s.
On the other hand, at the same time that Zionism was being formed, Arab and Palestinian Nationalism were also rising in popularity. This rising nationalism would form a foundation for the later Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While Jews had lived in Palestine for generations, the rise of both Zionism and Arab Nationalism made for an incredibly shaky relationship. Zionism was seen as a threat among the Arab leaders in Palestine, and with a growing influx of Jews into Palestine, that threat was met with violence.
This would only worsen with Germany’s solutions to the Jewish Question. With the situation worsening in Europe, the demand for Jewish immigration had grown considerably. It would be met with an increasing difficulty though. Places, which were once safe havens, such as the United States, Brazil and Argentina, were restricting passage for Jews fleeing from Europe. This would lead to Jews instead fleeing to the Middle East, including Palestine, in much larger numbers.
The mass exodus of Jews from Europe also coincided with the initial solution that Nazi Germany had for the Jewish Question. Deportation was a central idea, to begin with. But as Germany’s goals increased, for them, it became clear what the answer was to this Jewish Question. They developed the Final Solution.
Genocide
Often, when we think of the Holocaust, and the acts of Nazi Germany, we want to see it as an isolated event. That what the Nazis did existed in a bubble. The truth is much less clean and tidy. What the Nazis did, what the Holocaust symbolized, was just the next step in an evolutionary process. The Nazis were able to achieve, at least in part, what others had already attempted. What made the Nazis stand out, and allowed for the Holocaust, was the industrialization of the killing process.
Ethnic cleansing of Jews was widespread. Russia led this sort of atrocity, but Eastern Europe in general was guilty of such actions. In places like Poland, pogroms grew to be more regular, which increased the mass exoduses from those areas.
With the rise of the Nazi party, and the development of the Final Solution, those ethnic cleansings, and atrocities, were conducted on a much larger scale. And this time, they were done with an efficiency that had never been seen before. Genocide was turned into a science, and Germany had everything it needed to conduct it on a mass scale.
While the Holocaust would begin in Europe, Hitler’s intention was to fully exterminate the Jewish population. In 1941, Hitler met with Amin al-Husayni, a Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine, and promised that Germany would also eliminate the Jewish foundations in Palestine.
During WWII, Jews in Palestine were surrounded by pro-Nazi regimes. Arab leadership in Palestine had made ties with the Nazi Party as far back as 1936, and the Vichy regime in control of Syria and Lebanon were both pro-Nazi. This would lead to two major fears of German invasion into Palestine.
The first was from the north, with the Vichy regime, but was squashed by the allied invasion on June 8, 1941. The more serious threat has become known as the 200 days of dread.
In 1942, the German Afrika Korps, under the command of Erwin Rommel, was posed to overrun British possessions in the Middle East. As part of the invasion, Einsatzgruppe Egypt had been commanded to carry out systematic mass killings of Jews in both Palestine and Egypt.
The 200 days of dread would eventually come to an end after the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein, which halted the Axis from advancing further into Egypt.
By the end of the war, it’s estimated that 6 million Jews had been murdered. That’s around 60% of the Jewish population in Europe. Even as the Allies closed in on the Nazis, and on Hitler, the slaughtering of Jews did not cease. If the Nazis were going to lose the war, they were going to still kill as many Jews as humanly possible.
After the War
For many of us, we imagine that once the Allies liberated the Concentration and Death camps, Jews were free to go home in peace. The truth couldn’t be further from that depiction.
In Poland, as Jews attempted to return, anti-Jewish riots broke out in numerous cities. In Kielce, during July 1946, 150 Jews tried to return home. Fearing that hundreds more would return to reclaim their belongings and property, a pogrom broke out. 41 Jews would be killed, and 50 more wounded. It was clear that returning home wasn’t an option.
Many Jews would remain in their concentration camps, which had been turned into displaced persons’ camps. There they would wait until they could find a new country to call home, but much of the world didn’t want them. And to add insult to injury, in many of these camps, it was the Nazi soldiers who were often put in control over the populations.
While we would like to think that after the war, the Germans realized their mistakes and tried to change them, the fact is that little really changed. The Germans knew of the severity of their crimes against humanity, so much so that when the liberating armies were approaching, they attempted to destroy as much evidence as possible.
Today, when visiting Germany, few depictions, statues, and forms of honoring of the Nazis remain. However, this wasn’t by choice for the Germans; it was forced upon them, a condition of their defeat. The country would have a superficial face lift, erasing the crimes of their past. But when it came to the inner structure, things continued as they had.
Few Nazis would be tried and convicted of their crimes. Even if they had been brought before the country’s judges, it wouldn’t have matter as many of those judges were Nazis themselves. The rampant anti-Semitism continued to exist as it had before, and throughout Europe, it was clear that there was no safe refugee.
For years, these Holocaust survivors were stuck in these camps where they had seen so much death and destruction. There was no place to go as no one would have them. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, who had been rounded up to be slaughtered, were now stuck in limbo. This limbo would last for many of them until 1948.
Finding a Home
While Jewish colonies had been set up around the world prior to WWII, growing anti-Semitism made virtually all of them unsuitable. Mass exoduses to South America among the Jews had produced a number of flourishing communities in places like Argentina and Brazil, as the War approached, the area became increasingly less hospitable. And after Germany’s defeat, these countries would become safe havens for Nazis fleeing Europe.
Even in the United States, where Jewish communities now thrive, it would take years after the war for them to open their borders to receive these displaced Jews. Sadly, before the United States would open their doors to Jews who survived the Holocaust, they had already been welcoming Nazis they deemed important, giving them a new home.
With the tragedy that had just fallen upon them, centralizing Jews into a stronger area, an area they could be unified and have some control over, became much more important. The United States was an option, once it opened up, but for many it wouldn’t be enough, as the country could always turn on them. And Jews knew the ramifications of that.
Palestine became the leading solution for many Jews; really the only plausible solution. While Palestine was their ancestral home, it also had a sizeable Jewish community. It was also part of the now defunct Ottoman Empire, and was a League of Nations mandate, which became a United Nations mandate.
Part of Mandatory Palestine was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British had promised support of a Jewish national home. Because of that, discussions about establishing a homeland for Jews had been discussed for decades leading up to the 1947 partition. In a special session, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states; one Jewish, one Arab.
Virtually as soon as the Resolution had been approved, attacks were performed by Arab irregulars against the Jewish population of Palestine. Reprisals, and counter-reprisals would continue, with thousands being wounded or killed.
When the termination of the British mandate ended, and Israel declared Independence, an all out war broke out. It would become known as the First Arab-Israeli War, which erupted on May 14, 1948. During the next couple of days, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq, followed later by Lebanon, would join the Palestinians.
The purpose of the Arab armies was largely the same as what Hitler proposed; extermination. For the Jews, fearing another Holocaust, their initial goal was survival. They had anticipated an Arab invasion, and hoped that their preparations would be enough to prevent annihilation.
That goal would later expand to expanding the Jewish state beyond the borders assigned by the UN partition agreement, in order to both incorporate isolated Jewish communities, but also add more territories to their state in a way that would give them easier to defend borders.
The war waged on for 10 months, and after it was over, around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs would be expelled, or had fled, the area. At the same time, about 850,000 Jews were expelled, or fled their homes in Arab countries. Many of these individuals would be able to find a home in Israel, but hundreds of thousands would have to find a new home elsewhere.
For those Palestinian Arabs, their situation was much more tragic. Most remain refugees, and continue to live in refugee camps. Neighboring Arab states would deny them, or their descendants, citizenship. In 1949, Israel did try to offer a partial solution, by allowing some, who had families in Israel, to return home, to release refugee accounts, and to repatriate 100,000 refugees, but the Arab states rejected any sort of compromise. As far as they were concerned, Israel didn’t exist, and thus they would not do anything that might give them recognition as a state.
Those Arabs who had remained in Israel would eventually be granted citizenship, and finally the same rights as Jewish citizens, but it was a long road.
Continued War
For nearly two more decades, conflict would continue, with violence being instigated on both sides. The major threat to Israel though would be Egypt.
Having gained control of the Gaza Strip, during the previous war, Egypt aided Palestinian attacks from that area. They would also begin amassing a large troop on the Sinai Peninsula. With the threat increasing not only from Egypt, but other neighboring states, Israel launched a preemptive strike that would result in the Six-Day War.
Following the war, Israel had succeeded in claiming the entire area that was once the British mandate of Palestine. It also led the Arab nations to form the “three no’s;” no recognition, no peace, no negotiation with Israel.
There would also become an increase in the activity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO. Founded in 1964, a primary goal of theirs was to establish a Palestinian state within the entire area that was under the British mandate, as well as to purge Zionists from Palestine.
The PLO would be founded in armed struggle, believing that it would be through force that their goals would be accomplished. However, since 1993, they have now recognized the right of Israel to exist, and have officially rejected violence and terrorism. Terrorism did continue, and in 2018, a segment of the PLO has once again called for the destruction of Israel, rejecting their right to exist.
However, for two and a half decades, the PLO would wage a terrorist campaign against Israel. This campaign would also be fueled by the Soviet Union, both through training PLO members on covert bombings and plane hijackings, as well as by releasing propaganda, such as the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Arabic, to help fan the flames of discontent.
In this environment, two more wars would be fought. The Yum Kippur War, initiated by Syria and Egypt, as well as the 1982 Lebanon War, initiated by Israel against the PLO who were stationed there.
Attempt at Peace
Multiple attempts at peace would be had, with one of the most promising being the Oslo Peace Process. Both the PLO and Israel agreed to work towards a two-state solution, but negotiations would fail. From 1993-2000, talks would occur even though attacks were being conducted by both sides of the conflict.
In July of 2000, the talks would finally come to an end, after Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, rejected a possible agreement, without making a counter-offer. Peace talks would halt, as violence was rising.
A new uprising broke up, which continues even now. Increased terror attacks against Israeli civilians led to Israeli troops to begin conducting more regular raids and arrests. Multiple attempts at peace would be made during this time period, with even the Arab League trying to find a suitable solution.
However, with steps forward, drawbacks continue to be had. In 2002, the West Bank barrier was constructed, which helped reduce suicide bombings and other attacks across Israel by 90%. But the barrier has also been met with serious issues, as much of it was built within Palestinian territory, as per the 1948 Green Line. Right-wing and ultra-conservative groups within Israel have also objected to many of the peace solutions.
The death of Yasser Arafat also provided a major blow. Upon his death, it was revealed that he had received billions of dollars in aid from both foreign nations and other organizations, but much of this money was never used to develop Palestinian society. On a yearly basis they were receiving almost 2 billion dollars, with close to 10 million in total assets.
This controversy eroded much of the remaining faith that Palestinians had in the organization, and it gave the Hamas a growing support, who did not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
In turn, this led Israel to cut off negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which was controlled by the Hamas, as they couldn’t negotiate with an organization that was intent on wiping them out.
The Situation Today
The current situation in Israel is multi-faceted, and surrounded by difficult history. To put the blame on one side ignores all that history. To pretend that the situation is an easy solution ignores all that history.
For half a century, Israel has faced threats not only to their existence, but attacks on their citizens from people who refuse to recognize their right to exist. In turn, they have aggressively defended themselves, because they know what happens when they don’t. Their need for sovereignty, for them, is a matter of life and death, which the Holocaust made very real for them.
With the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands were expelled or had to flee from their homelands. Some of those exoduses were fueled by the promise that they would be able to return home after the Jewish presence was eradicated. But today, that has left many of those individuals as refugees. However, we also can’t ignore that those countries that supposedly came to assist them then also left them without any support when they lost, and sabotaged potential help from Israel because of their refusal to accept their right to exist.
For those Palestinians who have remained, they also face the threat of their lands being encroached on, as mass influxes of Jews into the country has led many looking for areas to expand. While Israel, at times, has tried to restrict this encroachment, they simply haven’t succeeded.
Today, by far, Israel is the stronger force there. They were a nation forged in war, formed in horrors, that they don’t want to repeat. It makes for a mighty nation, but not one that is always fair or kind. Palestine, on the other hand, has a legitimate reason to be angry. They had promises made to them, which in part led to hundreds of thousands becoming refugees and their lands taken. Those who would lead them have done so through violence, and often terrorism, thinking it’s the only option. Which only continues the cycle of violence.
Neither side is innocent, but neither side is fully to blame either. It’s a complicated situation, that needs nuance. And that nuance has to be rooted in some historical knowledge.
