Episode 1a - Israel and Palestine- THE HISTORY BEHIND THE HEADLINES
IT IS A COLLISION between two nationalisms – both forged substantially in exile. It is a struggle between two peoples whose militant wings both still lay claim to the same territory. It is perceived by some as a clash between the first and third worlds or between Islam and Judaism, even between Islam and the West. At its heart lie thousands of years of history and some of the holiest places on earth. But how did this epic conflict arise and what are the histories of the peoples involved? Today there are 15 million Jews scattered across the world. But originally many of their ancestors came from ancient Judea (formerly the area covered by part of the Biblical kingdom of Judah). The first Israelite (or proto-Jewish) period of statehood lasted from around 1000 BC to the partial destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC. According to biblical tradition there was initially a single Israelite kingdom but after a century or so it seems to have split into two separate Israelite states – the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. The second period of statehood lasted from 165 BC to the Roman Conquest of 63 BC (a period when the area was ruled by an independent Jewish dynasty known as the Hasmoneans). Two short periods of independence followed revolts against Rome in 66 and 132 AD. In between all these periods of statehood, the area was ruled successively by the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. The long exile of Jews from Judea started in earnest after the Babylonian onslaught and accelerated after each revolt against Rome. From the second century onwards the Jewish population of Palestine – the geographical region covering what is now Israel and the West Bank – shrank massively. A limited return of some Diaspora Jews to Palestine only seriously got underway in the 13th century following the Muslim defeat of the crusaders. More than a dozen relatively small waves of Jewish immigration, mainly for religious reasons, took place over the next 700 years. Large Jewish communities developed in Safed (in what is now northern Israel) and in Jerusalem – but as a percentage of the total population of Palestine the Jewish element was small – only around six per cent by 1880. But two phenomena combined to change the situation. Firstly, from 1881 onwards, violent anti-Semitism massively increased in Russia. Secondly most of the peoples in Europe had been developing nationalist ideologies and the continent’s Jewish population now did likewise and developed the concept of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). Over the next 30 to 40 years the Jewish population of Palestine quadrupled – by 1914 accounting for 14 per cent. In 1917/18 Britain captured Palestine from the Turkish Ottoman Empire shortly after Britain’s foreign secretary Balfour had announced that the UK favoured the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. After the rise of Hitler and after the Holocaust, Jewish migration to now-British-ruled Palestine speeded up massively. By 1948, 40 per cent of Palestine’s population was Jewish. As Britain prepared to withdraw, the UN approved a plan – opposed by the Arab countries and the Palestinian Arabs – to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. In late 1947 hostilities broke out between Palestine’s Jewish and Arab populations. British control ended in May 1948. The Jewish population immediately declared the State of Israel and regular troops from Arab countries became involved in the fighting. Israel succeeded in capturing substantial amounts of additional territory and emerged victorious. Only the West Bank and Gaza remained of what the UN plan had envisaged as a Palestinian state – these areas were taken over by Jordan and Egypt respectively. The year 1948 marked the final end of partial Jewish exile from Palestine, but it also marked the beginning of a partial Arab exile from the land. We have charted the Jewish relationship with Palestine but what of the Arab and Muslim relationship with it? Even before the substantial collapse of the Jewish presence in Palestine, following the revolts against Rome a substantial percentage (possibly even a majority) of the population of Palestine was Greek or Arab – not Jewish. By the fifth century it was mainly Christian. Then in the early seventh century in the deserts of Arabia, a new monotheistic religion, partly inspired by aspects of Judaism, burst into existence. Islam became a major military force and quickly conquered Palestine. Jerusalem (not Mecca) had initially been the direction of prayer for very early Muslims, and is still the third most holy city in Islam. Apart from the period of the crusades, Palestine formed for 1,300 years a small part of a succession of Islamic empires – first the Arab Caliphates and then the Turkish Sultanates. In Palestine relations between Arabs and Jews were generally good – until Jewish immigration began to expand in the 1880s. Just as Jewish nationalism (Zionism) had developed in the late 19th century, so did Arab nationalism. By 1891 Arab community leaders in Palestine were petitioning the Turkish Ottoman authorities to stop Jewish immigration and land purchases. Jewish settlements were attacked, and anti-Zionist newspapers and societies formed. In 1947 the Arab world opposed the UN’s plan to partition Palestine – and as Jewish and Arab extremists committed atrocities against each others’ communities, 725,000 Palestinian Arabs, who had lived in what is now Israel, fled to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and the West Bank and were prevented by Israel from coming back. Over the next seven years, thousands tried to return (illegally in the Israeli view) – and many were shot dead by Israeli border guards. In Arab countries hundreds of Jews were murdered and at least 400,000 were forced or frightened into leaving. Most of the Arab world remained technically at war with Israel despite a cease-fire in 1949. But clinging to the belief that Israel would ultimately be defeated, the Palestinian refugees were not integrated into the countries they had fled to, but were kept in often appalling conditions in dozens of permanent refugee camps. In 1958 Palestinian nationalist Yasser Arafat set up the Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine (FATAH) – and six years later an umbrella body, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established. In the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and much of the Arab world, Israel gained control of vast new territories including the West Bank and Gaza. This meant that tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who had fled Israel (and been refused re-entry) back in 1948, suddenly found themselves under Israeli rule. In 1987 a Palestinian nationalist rebellion broke out in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Within a year, Jordan relinquished its claim on this territory, handing over legal authority to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. By 1993 Israel finally agreed to hold direct talks with the Palestinians and gave them autonomy, under ultimate Israeli control, to rule themselves in Gaza and in part of the West Bank. At the same time the PLO recognised the State of Israel. But progress from autonomy to statehood has been elusive. The latest proposal – from the Trump administration – has been embraced enthusiastically by the Israeli government – but rejected as grossly unfair by the Palestinians. At the heart of this disagreement lie two key factors – the envisaged nature of any future Palestinian state and the status of the settlements which Israel has built on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. Excluding East Jerusalem, there are now 121 such settlements, all of which are considered illegal by the international community. Since 1980, there has been a 40 fold increase in the number of Israelis living in such settlements. The West Bank Jewish population is now more than 400,000. The latest US so-called peace plan envisages Israel annexing all the land on which the 121 settlements stand as well as the strategically and agriculturally important Jordan Valley. The Palestinians would get 70% of the West Bank – but the envisaged Palestinian state would be completely surrounded by Israeli controlled territory. What's more, Israel would control its airspace and much of its water supply and would in effect also control much of its foreign, domestic and security policy. Such a Palestinian state would obviously be a sovereign nation in name only. Far from bringing peace nearer, many fear that it pushes the prospects of justice and peace even further away. Over more than seven decades well over 22,000 Palestinian civilians and 4000 Jewish Israeli civilians have died in the conflict. Countless others have been maimed by Palestinian terrorists and Israeli snipers. So for the time being, the 72-year-old Israel Palestine conflict is sadly almost certainly nowhere near its end