Fourteen
FourteenThe Origins of theIsraeli-Palestinian DisputeThe British
short story writer Saki (H. H. Munro) once described the island of
Crete as a place that has produced more history than could be
consumed locally. The same might be said of Palestine, the
territory that includes the contemporary state of Israel and the
occupied territories. The territory itself is quite small. It
stretches from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Jordan
River in the east, and from Lebanon in the north to the Gulf of
Aqaba and the Sinai Peninsula on the south. The state of Israel is
roughly the size of New Jersey. And Israel comprises almost 80
percent of historic Palestine.The population of Palestine is also
small. Israel's population is about 6.5 million, less than 10
percent of the population of Turkey, Iran, or Egypt. There are
approximately three to 3.5 Palestinians in the Occupied Territories
- roughly the population of Chicago. (Estimates for total number of
Palestinians in the world run as high as nine million.) Since 1948,
wars between Israel and its neighbors have claimed upward of
150,000 casualties. These wars were certainly tragic, but they just
as certainly pale in horror when compared with the most grievous
squandering of lives in the region during its recent history.
During the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, there
were 500,000 to one million deaths and one to two million
wounded.In spite of the fact that the size of Palestine and the
number of people directly affected by its political problems are
minuscule in comparative terms, the dispute between Israel, on the
one hand, and the Palestinians and various Arab states, on the
other, has been at the forefront of international attention for
over fifty years. The so-called Arab-Israeli dispute has gone on
for such a long time and has been the subject of so much heated
debate that it is easy to lose sight of the fundamental issue
involved. The dispute is, simply put, a real estate dispute. Jewish
immigrants and their descendents, united by their adherence to the
nationalist ideology of Zionism, and the Palestinian Arab
inhabitants among whom the Zionists settled both claim an exclusive
right to inhabit and control some or all of Palestine.
206Zionism is a nationalist movement that redefined a religious
communityJewsas a national community. Like other nationalist
movements, Zionism asserts the right of this nation to an
independent existence in its historic
The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute207
Palestine and the Middle Easthomeland. The Zionist movement was
typical of nationalist movements that arose in Europe during the
nineteenth century. And, like other nationalist movements, the
Zionist movement has its own pantheon of heroes who were
instrumental in articulating its doctrines and organizing for its
goals.Perhaps the most important figure in the early history of
Zionism was a Viennese journalist, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). Herzl
was the son of a Hungarian merchant whose family had moved to
Vienna at a time when that city seemed to promise so much to
upwardly mobile Jews who wished to assimilate into mainstream
European society and culture. Herzl received a secular education
and acquired a doctorate in law. He went on to become the French
correspondent for a prestigious Viennese newspaper. It was while he
was in Paris that Herzl became a Zionist.According to many
accounts, Herz]. converted to Zionism as a result of the Dreyfus
Affair. In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a French army captain, was accused
of spying for Germany. Dreyfus was, like Herzl, an assimilated Jew.
The trial of Alfred Dreyfus became a cause clbre in France and the
rest of Europe. For
208The Modern Middle Eastmany, it was clear that Dreyfus had
been guilty of little more than being a successful Jew in Catholic
France. Among these was the French novelist Emile Zola, who
condemned those who accused Dreyfus in the following words:It is a
crime to poison the minds of the small and simple and to excite the
passions of reaction and intolerance while seeking refuge behind
that hateful anti-Semitism of which great liberal FranceFrance of
the rights of manwill die, unless she is cured of her disease.The
Dreyfus Affair demonstrated to Herzl that if France could play host
to viru-lent anti-Semitism, Jews could not be secure anywhere. What
the Jews needed was a homeland of their own in which they would
form a majority of citizens.At first, Herzl was ambivalent about
just where that homeland should be. In various writings, he
advocated establishing a Jewish home in Argentina or in the western
United States. Others were not so ambivalent. Since the first
century, when Jews were exiled from Palestine by the Romans,
Palestine was remembered in texts and rituals of Jews who lived,
sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes in peril, as a scattered
-community throughout the world, Thus, Zionism combined Herzl's
call for the establishment of a Jewish national home with the
historical memory of Palestine.Theodor Herzl was not the first
Zionist. Nor was he the movement's most brilliant advocate. Indeed,
there were a number of Zionist thinkers who con-tributed more ideas
to Zionism than Herzl. But few offered more passion. Herzl's
organizational talents proved essential for the success of the
Zionist cause. In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress
in Basel, Switzer-1and. The Zionist Congress createde the-World
Zionist Organization continues to speak for the international
Zionist movement. It also issued the Basel Program, which not only
called for the establishment of a "Jewish home" in Palestine, but
specified the tactic to achieve that goal. The Basel Program
stipulated that Zionists should commit themselves to obtaining that
home through diplomacy.While Herzl and others attempted to gain
support from a variety of powers (including the Ottoman Empire),
the Zionist movement achieved its first real success in 1917 when
the British issued the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration
stated, in part, "His Majesty's Government view with favor the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the
achievement of this object..." This declaration marked a milestone
in the efforts that culminated in the creation of the State of
Israel. The British, who received the mandate for Palestine from
the League of Nations, allowed Zionist immigration to Palestine
(which, after the creation of Trans-Jordan, they defined as the
territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan
River).Jewish immigration to Palestine began even before the
Balfour Declaration was issued and continued long after the end of
the war, however. Immigration took place in waves, called in Hebrew
"aliyot" (sing.: aliya). The first aliya was significant because
its members attempted to install a settler-plantation colony in
Palestine similar to the French settler-plantation colony in
Algeria. For the most part, their efforts failed. The second and
third aliyot, which took
The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute209The Jewish
settlement Nes Zionah, near Jaffa, was established in 1883. (From:
The Collection of Wolf-Dieter Lemke.)place during 1904-1914 and
1918-1923, had more lasting results. During these aliyot,
sixty-thousand Jews emigated to Palestine from Europe. These
immigrants. shaped many of the institutions and ideals that still
exist in Israel. Influenced by both socialism and romantic,
back-to-the-land ideas that were then popular in Germany, the new
immigrants established agricultural settlements, including
collective farms (moshavim, sing.: moshav) and communal farms
(kibbutzim, sing.: kibbutz). They organized a labor federation (the
Histadrut), which established schools and hospitals and which
provided a variety of social and welfare services for the immigrant
community. And they resurrected the biblical language of Hebrew for
use as the national tongue.Perhaps most important for the future of
the Middle East was the labor policy adopted by the new immigrants.
The Zionists of the second and third aliyot expressed their
aspirations in two slogans: "conquest of land" and "conquest of
labor." The first slogan refers to the need these Zionists felt to
make their imprint on the land of Palestine by "taming the
wilderness" through settlement activity. The second refers to the
need these Zionists felt to remake the Jewish people by having Jews
fill all jobs in the economy. Whereas the peculiar circumstances of
Jews in Europe had restricted them to certain urban occupations,
these Zionists wanted Jews to expand beyond commerce and the
professions. Only by doing this, they believed, could Jews overcome
their crippling experience as an exile community and become a true
nation. The belief that the Jewish nation had to purge itself of
the ill effects of centuries of exile is called "the negation of
exile." It, too, played a central role in Zionist polemics.
210The Modern Middle EastAlthough the "conquest of labor" idea
had its ideological roots in utopian socialism and romanticism,
there were practical reasons for European Jewish settlers to shun
Arab labor. Although one of early Zionist slogans was "a land
without a people for a people without a land," Arab labor was, in
fact, plentiful and Arabs were willing to work for lower wages than
would European emigrants. The expansion of the labor force to
include low-wage workers would drive wages down and discourage the
immigration of new settlers. As a result, influential Zionists felt
that the success of their project depended on severing the economic
links connecting the two communities. Thus, after the Zionists
bought land, often from absentee landlords, they frequently
displaced Palestinian farmers whose services were no longer
required.The indigenous inhabitants of Palestine did resist Zionist
settlement policies. This resistance took a variety of forms, from
land occupations to violence against settlers and destruction of
property. But, while the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine
resisted Zionist settlement from the start, this resistance was
mainly defensive, devoid of political goals, and rather haphazard.
No Palestinian national movement existed until after World War I.
Even then it had to compete with other nationalist movements for
support. Before World War 1, most educated Palestinians viewed
themselves as Ottoman subjects and later as Ottoman citizens. As we
saw in Chapter 13, the fact that educated Palestinians would
express their political aspirations in the form of nationalism was
inevitable. That they would advocate Palestinian nationalism was
not. After World War I, when an Ottoman identity was no longer a
viable option, some Palestinians were attracted to Arab
nationalism. Others viewed themselves as Syrians. In addition to
the competition a Palestinian national movement faced from rival
national movements, there were other factors that hindered its
consolidation. The Palestinian community was hardly as well
organized or as unified as the Zionist community. As citizens of
the Ottoman Empire, there had been no need. Although the Zionist
community was notorious for the fractiousness of its politics, most
of its members did, after all, play by the same rule book. The
Zionist community embraced the mandates system and organized itself
accordingly. Political elites in the Arab community in Palestine
accepted neither the Balfour Declaration nor the British mandate,
They thus did not organize themselves in a way that could take
advantage of the mandate. Further hindering the organization of a
unified Palestinian national movement was the problem of internal
fissures in the Arab communityfissures that were exacerbated by
British policies. While political elites had competed with each
other for positions and prestige under the Ottomans, the British
were not reluctant to use that competition for their own ends. The
British also continued the Ottoman policy of allowing each
religious community to organize its own affairs. Because the Arab
community of Palestine included both Muslims and Christians, each
community maintained parallel but separate institutions for such
functions as social welfare and law.Over the course of the mandate
period, both the Arab nationalist and the Syrian nationalist
options became less and less viable. The mandates system not only
divided the Arab world into a variety of states, but severed
PalestineThe Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute211from
Syria. Because the Palestinian Arab community could not reasonably
expect to unite with Syrians, the lure of Syrian nationalism
eventually lost its hold on it. Over time, the history and
institutional development of Palestine and Syria also diverged.
Syrian elites, for example, would further their education by
studying in France and felt at ease in French culture. Since
Britain held the mandate for Palestine, educated elites in
Palestine would often learn English, complete their studies in
Britain, and come to regard British institutions and traditions,
not French, as a model to be emulated.But there was a second reason
why a separate Palestinian identity began to emerge during the
mandate period. The inhabitants of Palestine faced a problem that
no other inhabitants of the region faced: Zionist settlement.
Zionist settlement was very different from the imperialism
practiced in Syria or Iraq under the mandates system. The British
and French ruled their mandated territories indirectly, through
local collaborators. They did not appropriate land, establish a
rival and competing economy, or establish rival and competing
political structures. Because they faced a different type of
adversary, the response of Palestinians was different from the
response of their neighbors.The fact that Palestinian nationalism
developed later than Zionism and, in fact, developed in response to
Zionist immigration does not mean that Palestinian nationalism is
any less legitimate than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in
opposition to some internal or external nemesis. All are defined by
what they oppose. Zionism itself originally arose in reaction to
anti-Semitic and nationalist movements in Europe. It would be
perverse to judge. Zionism as somehow less valid than European
anti-Semitism or those nationalisms.
Furthermare,-ZionismitselLwas.also.defined byits opposition to the
indigeno. Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest
of land' and the "conquest of the labor" slogans that became
central to Zionist thinking originated as a result of the
confrontation of Zionism with its Palestinian "other."During the
late 1920s and 1930s tensions between the two communities
escalated. Both local and international events contributed to these
tensions. As a result of the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe
during the 1930s, Jewish immigration to Palestine expanded
dramatically. From 1931 to 1935, the Jewish population of Palestine
rose from 175,000 to four hundred thousand. To put it another way,
the Jewish population expanded from 17 to 31 percent of the total
population in Palestine. Zionist land purchases struck a
Palestinian population already reeling from an agricultural crisis.
Palestinian society was predominantly rural, and the collapse of
agricultural prices and international trade caused by the Great
Depression had put it under tremendous strain. By 1931, Zionist
land purchases had led to the ejection of approximately twenty
thousand peasant families from their lands. Close to 30 percent of
Palestinian farmers were landless and another 75 to 80 percent did
not have enough land for subsistence.Thus, in 1936 Palestine
exploded in violence. What Palestinians call the Great Revolt was,
after the 1948 War, the most traumatic event in modern history for
Palestinians. The British quickly suppressed the revolt in urban
areas, but met with more difficulty in rural areas. There, the
revolt lasted three years. By the autumn of 1937, up to ten
thousand rebels roamed the
212The Modem Middle Eastcountryside. To put down the revolt, the
British launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, employing
tactics all too familiar to Palestinians today: collective
punishment of villages, "targeted killings" (assassinations), mass
arrests, deportations, and the dynamiting of homes of suspected
guerrillas and their sympathizers. The revolt, and the British
reaction to it, ravaged the natural leadership of the Palestinian
community and opened up new cleavages in that community. Many
wealthy Palestinians fled rather than face what they considered to
be the extortionate demands of rival Palestinian gangs, while the
British imprisoned many of the community's leaders or forced them
into exile. Palestinian society never recovered. The roots of what
Palestinians called the nakba (calamity) of 1948 can be found in
the Great Revolt.In the wake of the Great Revolt, the British
attempted to find some diplomatic solution to the Palestine
imbroglio. In 1937, they proposed dividing Palestine into two
separate territories, one Zionist, one Palestinian. In 1939, they
backed away from partition and issued a White Paper that had just
the right ingredients to offend leaders of both communities. The
White Paper of 1939 advocated putting restrictions on (but not
ending) Jewish immigration, closer supervision of (but not ending)
land sales, and independence within ten years. Both communities
felt betrayed by the White Paper. Both communities rejected
it.Although the White Paper remained official British policy during
World War II, Palestine was relatively quiet. Much of the Zionist
community balked at the idea of sabotaging the British war effort
against the Nazis, and the Arab community of Palestine was still
recovering from the trauma of the Great Revolt. Furthermore, the
war was an economic boon to Palestine, as it was to much of the
rest of the region. But the lull was not to last. As the ten-year
deadline stipulated by the White Paper loomed on the horizon,the
struggle between the two communitiesand between the two communities
and the Britishresumed. By 1947, at a time when India was about to
achieve independence and the cold war was in its initial stages,
the British had to stationone hundred thousand soldiers in
Palestine to keep the peace. Their soldiers and diplomats targeted
by Zionist splinter groups, their economy in shambles, the British
decided that enough was enough and dumped the Palestine issue in
the lap of the newly established United Nations. The United Nations
was, after all, the successor organization to the League of
Nations, which had granted Britain the mandate to begin with.
Following the recommendations of the United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), the General Assembly of the United
Nations voted to terminate the mandate and partition Palestine
between Zionist and Palestinian communities.In the wake of the
United Nations' vote to partition Palestine, a civil war broke out
between the two communities. The civil war was followed by the
intervention of surrounding Arab nations on behalf of the
Palestinians. The war for Palestinecalled by Israelis the War of
Independence and by Palestinians the nakbaaffected all combatants
in dramatic ways. For Zionists, the war led to the creation of the
State of Israel whose de facto borders corresponded to the
ceasefire lines. Although the state quickly received international
recognition, no peace treaties were signed between Israel and
its
The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute213
'4^
Palestinian houses demolished by the British during the Great
Revolt. (From: Fondation Arabe pour limage, Beirut.)neighbors -
only armistice agreements. For the next forty-five years, theX-
attention of the world would focus: on :getting Israel and its
neighbors to signsuch treaties. In other words, for the
next16ity:fie years most Of the nter national community chose to
view the conflict between two peoplesZionists and Palestiniansas an
"Arab-Israeli" conflict among sovereign states. After more than
half a century, only two peace treaties between Israel and any of
its neighbors have been signed: one between Israel and Egypt
(1979), the other between Israel and Jordan (1994).On the other
hand, the war devastated Palestinian society. About 720,000
Palestinians fled their homes and were trapped behind enemy lines,
unable to return. Although the reasons for their flight have been a
subject of debate for over fifty years, a consensus has begun to
emerge in the scholarly community, mainly as a result of research
undertaken by a group of Israeli scholars called the New
Historians. Most scholars now agree that a combination of factors
led to the birth of the Palestine refugee problem. On the one hand,
Palestinians, like most refugees, naturally fled from a war zone.
On the other hand, there were expulsions, particularly in the
north, while other Palestinians were deliberately frightened into
leaving by acts of terror committed by Zionist forces. In the
village of Dayr Yassin alone, between 110 and 240 men, women, and
children were butchered, and the bodies of many were stuffed in the
village well. Acts such as that one were hardly kept secret. After
all, as Lenin once put it, the purpose of terrorism is to
terrorize.Most Palestinian refugees ended up in the West Bank
(which was occupied by Jordan until 1967), the Gaza Strip (which
was occupied by the Egyp-214The Modern Middle East
Israel/Palestine, 1921, 1948tians until the same year), and
neighboring Arab countries. Those who had an education or money
tried to rebuild their lives as best they could on their own.
Others who were not so lucky ended up in camps supported by the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), where they and
their descendents have lived to this very day. Those Arabs who
remained in Israel were subject to martial law until 1966.The 1948
war also affected Arab statesnot just those that fought in the war,
but states throughout the region. Groups of military officers in
Egypt,
Documents215Syria, and Iraq felt they had been betrayed by their
governments. While the Palestine war was not the only reason these
officers were dissatisfied, the Arab defeat came to symbolize a
host of grievances these officers held against their governments.
They accused those governments of entering the war half-heartedly
(which they did) and blamed their defeat on the incompetence and
corruption of those governments. They also equated the defeat of
the Arab forces with the inability Or unwillingness of Arab
governments to promote the sort of economic and social development
that would have assured success on the field of battle. Taking
matters into their own hands, these officers launched coups d'etat
in Syria (1949), Egypt (1952), and Iraq (1958) against their
governments. As we shall see in the next chapter, these coups would
change the course of Arab politics and transform the bond
connecting the states of the Middle East with their citizens.