History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
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The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the account of events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beginning in the 1880s and continuing to present day.
Origins
In the 1880s, the Zionist movement was initiated in Europe. This movement held that the Jewish people had a right to a state of their own; most Zionists specifically held that the state should be in a part of their historic homeland, the area then known as Palestine. At that time Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Under Ottoman rule, Palestine had substantial regional independence, and the area was inhabitated predominantly by Palestinian Arabs (about 95%, mostly Muslims, some Christians), and Jews (about 5%).
In 1917 the British army took control of Palestine and Transjordan from the Ottomans. In that year, its government issued the Balfour Declaration, viewing "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". In the same period, the British were giving contradictory assurances to the Palestinian Arabs.
The Zionists interpreted that as a promise from the British that they would help them build a state in Palestine, in part because of divided opinions in British government, with some endorsing that view and some not.
Signed in January 1919, the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East.
In 1920, the San Remo conference largely endorsed the 1916 Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement, allocating to Britain the area of present day Jordan, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and Iraq, while France received Syria and Lebanon. In 1922, the League of Nations formally established the British mandate for Palestine and Transjordan, at least partially fulfilling Britain's commitments from the 1915-1916 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence by assigning all of the land east of the Jordan River to the Emirate of Jordan, ruled by Hashemite King Abdullah but closely dependent on Britain, leaving the remainder west of the Jordan as the League of Nations British mandate of Palestine.
Arabs opposed the division of their lands into multiple territories under the control of various European powers, arguing that it was unjust and imperialist. Some of them—led by Grand Mufti Muhammed Amin al-Husseini—also opposed the idea of turning part of Palestine into a Jewish state, objecting to any form of Jewish homeland. This was the source of much of the Palestinian and Arab resentment against British rule. It also extended to the growing number of Jews immigrating to Palestine.
See the related articles on the British Mandate of Palestine and the History of Jordan.
Jewish immigration
Initially, the trickle of Jewish immigration emerging in the 1880s met with little opposition from the local population. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, as Anti-Semitism grew in Europe, Jewish immigration began to increase markedly, causing Arab resentment of British immigration policies to explode. Zionist agencies purchased land from absentee landlords and replaced the Palestinian Arab tenants with European Jewish settlers. In addition, the influential Jewish trade union Histadrut demanded that Jewish employers hire only Jews. As a result, Arabs feared that they would become alienated.
As many European Jews entered Palestine illegally, British attempts at immigration restrictions were largely ineffective. Arab resentment towards the British continued to grow.
The Great Uprising
In 1936, the British proposed a partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The partition was rejected by both the Arabs and the Zionist Congress.
During the years 1936-1939 there was an upsurge in militant Arab nationalism that later became known as the "Great Uprising". The uprising came as Palestinian Arabs felt they were being marginalized. In addition to non-violent strikes and protests, some resorted to acts of violence targeting British military personnel and Jewish civilians. The uprising was put down by the British forces.
The British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in the remaining land in an attempt to limit the socio-political damage already done. Jews alleged that this contradicted the League of Nations Mandate which said:
- ... the administration of Palestine ... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency ... close settlements by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.
Jews argued that the British had allotted twice as much land to Arabs as Jews instead of the same amount. Arabs held that the contract was disproportionately in favour of Jewish settlement when the relative size of the two populations at the time was considered.
World War II and its aftermath
During the war and after, the British forbade European Jews entry into Palestine. This was partly a calculated move to maximize support for their cause in World War II among Arabs. That the Zionists would support the anti-semitic Axis was unlikely (though attempts at cooperation were not entirely unheard of: see Lehi) and the British government considered it worth sacrificing Jewish sentiment in an attempt to gain Arab support. The immigration policy was also in response to the fact that security in Palestine had begun to tie up troops much needed elsewhere.
After Operation Agatha, the June 29, 1946 arrest by British authorities in Palestine of about 2700 Jewish activists and fighters, on July 22, 1946, members of the militant Zionist group Irgun Tsvai-Leumi bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was the base for the British Secretariat, the military command and a branch of the Criminal Investigation Division (police). Ninety-one people were killed, most of them civilians: 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 other. Around 45 people were injured. This escalation of violence may have decreased British resolve to continue their presence in Palestine.
The Zionist leadership decided to begin an illegal immigration (haa'pala) using small boats operating in secrecy. About 70,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in this way between 1946 and 1947. A similar number were captured at sea by the British and imprisoned in camps on Cyprus.
Details of the Holocaust (through which the German Nazi government was responsible for the deaths of approximately six million European Jews) had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. It propelled large support for the Zionist cause and led to the 1947 UN Partition plan for Palestine.
The 1947 partition plan
Main article: 1947 UN Partition plan
The newly-formed United Nations appointed a committee, UNSCOP, to try to solve the dispute between the Zionists and the Palestinians. UNSCOP recommended that Mandatory Palestine be split into three parts, a Jewish State with a majority Jewish population, an Arab State with a majority Arab population and an International Zone comprising Jerusalem and the surrounding area where the Jewish and Arab populations would be roughly equal. Under the plan, the Jewish State would comprise most of the coastal plain (where the majority of Jewish settlements were located), as well as the eastern part of the Galilee and the Negev desert. The Arab State would encompass roughly a section of the Mediterranean coast from what is now Ashdod to the Egyptian border, a section of the Negev desert adjacent to the Egyptian border, the Judean and Samarian highlands, and the eastern part of the Galilee including the town of Acre. The town of Jaffa would be an exclave of the Arab State. The Jewish State would be roughly 5,500 square miles in size (including the large Negev desert which could not sustain agriculture at that time) and would contain a sizable Arab minority population. The Arab state would comprise roughly 4,500 square miles and would contain a tiny Jewish population. Neither state would be contiguous.
Neither side was happy with the Partition Plan. The Jews disliked losing Jerusalem, which had a majority Jewish population at that time and worried about the tenability of a noncontiguous state. However, most of the Jews in Palestine accepted the plan and the Jewish Agency, the de facto government of the Yishuv campaigned fervently for its approval. The more extreme Jewish groups, such as the Irgun, rejected the plan. The Partition Plan was rejected entirely by the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states who felt it was unfair that the Zionists should receive half of Palestine when they owned about 6% of land and constituted only one third of the population. (Proponents of the resolution pointed out that 70% of the land was state owned).
The UN General Assembly voted on the Partition Plan on November 29th, 1947. 33 states, including the US and the USSR, voted in favor of the Plan, while 13 mostly Muslim countries opposed it. Ten countries abstained from the vote. The approval of the plan sparked the Jerusalem Riots of 1947 and gave great legitimacy to the future state of Israel.
The war for Palestine
Main article: 1948 Arab-Israeli war, See also: Palestinian Exodus, Immigration to Israel from Arab lands
Following November 29, 1947, the Yishuv was attacked by Arab irregulars. This "battle of roads" consisted mainly of ambushes against logistical convoys and traveling Jews. Jewish underground groups carried out some raids in retaliation (including some apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre), but full scale war erupted only after the British had left and Israel declared itself an independent Jewish state.
On May 14, 1948, the Zionists announced the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. Palestine's five Arab neighbour states then attacked the newly self-declared state.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements that Israel signed with its neighbours left 78% of Palestine (17.5% of the 1921-1946 territory of the Mandate which included Transjordan) in its hands. The remaining territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and annexed by Transjordan, respectively.
Additionally, the war created about 750,000 Palestinian refugees who had lived inside Israel's borders. It also brought about the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands to Israel.
In 1949, Israel offered to allow families that had been separated during the war to return, to release refugee accounts frozen in Israeli banks (these were eventually released in 1953), to pay compensation for abandoned lands, and to repatriate 100,000 refugees (about 15% of those who had fled). This number would have included some 35,000 refugees whose return had already been negotiated and was underway. The Arabs rejected this compromise, at least in part because they were unwilling to take any action that might be construed as recognition of Israel. They made repatriation a precondition for negotiations, which Israel rejected. [Palestine Conciliation Commission, September 1949; Prittie, 1975].
In the face of this impasse, Israel didn't allow any of the Arabs who fled to return and, with the exception of Transjordan, the host countries where they ended up did not grant them — or their descendants — citizenship. As of today, most of them, and their offspring, still live in refugee camps. The question of how their situation should be resolved remains one of the main issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
About 900,000 Jews either were expelled from or voluntarily left their Arab homelands in the Middle East and North Africa. Roughly two thirds of these settled in Israel. (See Jewish refugees.)
The founding of the PLO
Main article: Palestine Liberation Organization
In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded. It was the first Palestinian organization that worked for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and, initially, for the destruction of Israel. From the start, the organization used armed struggle in the conflict with Israel. From 1969 to 2004 the PLO was led by Yasser Arafat.
At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the Palestinian Black September group, a militant faction of the PLO, carried out the Munich massacre, resulting in the deaths of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes. It was among the first Palestinian attacks to become world news.
The PLO was recognized as "the sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people by the Arab League at their meeting in Rabat, Morocco in 1974.
The Six-Day War
During the Six-Day War (June 5-June 11 1967), Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Sinai has since been returned to Egypt in a phased withdrawal in 1979–82 and in August-September 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The war also created a new wave of 200,000 to 300,000 Palestinian refugees. They also have neither been allowed to return nor granted citizenship in their host countries.
1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon
Main article: 1982 Lebanon War
After the PLO was ousted from Jordan, its previous base, in 1970 it relocated to southern Lebanon. From there it carried out attacks into Israel. Ending these attacks was one of the reasons given for the 1982 Lebanon War as a result of which the PLO was forced to relocate to Tunisia.
During the war, the bloody Sabra and Shatila Massacre took place. It was carried out by Phalangist Christian Arab militias, allied to Israel, on September 16-17, 1982. Estimates of victims ranged from 700 to over 3000. For its involvement in the Lebanese war and its indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, Israel was heavily criticized, including from within. An Israeli Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli military personnel, among them Ariel Sharon, had several times become aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it.
The First Intifada
The First Intifada began in 1987. It was a partially spontaneous uprising among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories against Israeli repression. Daily, the riots escalated throughout the territories and were especially severe in the Gaza Strip. The intifada soon became an international concern. On December 22 that year the UN Security Council passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 605 which condemned Israel's handling of the first Intifada.[1]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Resolution 605 (1987), Adopted by the Security Council at its 2777th meeting on 22 December 1987.
References
- Terence Prittie, "Middle East Refugees," in Michael Curtis, et al., The Palestinians: people, history, politics, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1975, ISBN 0878555978), pp. 66-67, as referenced at [2]
- Palestine Conciliation Commission, Fourth Progress Report, A/922, 22 September 1949