Let's begin by making my position clear: I don't approve of terrorism, violence, or cruelty and at no point am I going to justify any such behaviour or attitudes from anyone. And I'm not taking sides with any party. My position is "Live and let live." Refusing to take sides doesn't put me by default on any other side. Okay, let's dig in.
A brief history of Israel
The story begins in the Bible if you want to understand what's going on here. It continues in the Quran, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The point is, the conflicts are rooted in faith.
The Promised land
- Genesis 11: 27-31 Terah of Ur (a ruin in modern Iraq) leaves his home and sets out for Canaan (modern Holy Lands) but stops at Harran (in modern Turkey) and settles there.
- Genesis 12: 1-4 Abraham is called by God to go on to Canaan, which he does.
- Genesis 12: 6-9 God promises the land to Abraham's offspring, Abraham explores the land.
- Genesis 15: 7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
- Genesis 15: 18 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates...”
- Genesis 16: Ishmael is born to Abraham's slave Hagar. This is where the Quranic story begins.
- Genesis 18-19 Abraham's nephew Lot's story. His descendants become antagonists to Israelites (descendants of Abraham's son Isaac) later on in the Biblical narrative.
- Genesis 21 Isaac son of Abraham born, Hagar and Ishmael sent away, they move to Egypt (if you accept the Bible version) or to Mecca (if you accept the Quranic version). His descendants become antagonists to Israelites (descendants of Abraham's son Isaac) later on in the Biblical narrative.
- Genesis 23 Abraham's wife Sarah dies. He buys a plot of land for her tomb.
- Genesis 25-27 Jacob and Esau born to Abraham's son Isaac. The boys grow up and go their separate ways when Jacob cheats his brother out of his birthright. Esau's descendants become antagonists to Israelites (descendants of Abraham's son Isaac) later on in the Biblical narrative.
Okay, if you're still with me, God told Abraham to go to Canaan and promised him the land for himself and his descendants. During this time the stage is set for the entry of antagonists from his own bloodline to arise and engage in conflict with his direct descendants. The rest of Genesis is basically about how that plays out. By the end, a famine has driven the Israelites to Egypt, where they become enslaved by anxious Egyptians who use them to build store cities Pithom and Rameses, not pyramids. They left about 400 years later, then moved back to Canaan, where, following a series of genocidal campaigns, they eliminated most of the original inhabitants and established themselves as a nation state.
The Exile(s) and the New Testament
The rest of the Bible story tells how the Israelites got into conflicts with their neighbours as well as their relatives and this carries on until the nation splits into two factions, Israel and Judah. The Israelites are deported to Assyria and the land is resettled. Later on, the Babylonians attack and deport the Judahites. Later on, the Judahites return from exile, but the Greeks arrive just when they're back on their feet (the books of the Maccabees are apocryphal so not included in the Bible, except for the Catholic ones) and take over. The Romans arrive later on, where the story of Jesus begins. In 70AD the Temple, the heart of the Jewish state, is destroyed by the Romans following a rebellion. The Romans then killed and enslaved those who remained after the fall of Jerusalem. Everybody else fled to the surrounding nations.
The Survivors
Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes, Islamists and others occupied and ruled the land after the fall of the Roman empire. The Jewish people wandered throughout the world, settling where they could, relying on their trading connections to survive. In European countries they were either sheltered or mistreated (guess where the term "Ghetto" comes from?) according to the whims of the ruling classes. They were often scapegoated (blood libel stories are rife. On a recent trip to York I learned of the 1190 Massacre, a story repeated throughout Europe until recently). Nonetheless a small minority held on in and around Jerusalem despite the best efforts of waves of invaders.
The Islamic spanner in the works arrives in the form of the Isra and Mi'raj, the two parts of a Night Journey story that, according to Islam, Muhammad took during a single night around the year 621AD. Basically, Muhammad was transported by God to Jerusalem, then ascended in to Heaven. Jerusalem, specifically the rock upon which the Dome of the Rock mosque was later constructed, briefly became the direction that all Muslims were expected to kneel in prayer towards. It's important to note that Muslims don't give supplementary writings (hadith) the same treatment as we give apocryphal texts. They take them as seriously as the Quran. This is their claim on Jerusalem.
But with the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 691 and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 705, the Muslims established the Temple Mount as an Islamic holy site. The dome enshrined the Foundation Stone, the holiest site for Jews. Before Omar Abd al-Aziz died in 720, he banned the Jews from worshipping on the Temple Mount,[84] a policy which remained in place for over the next 1,000 years of Islamic rule. - History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel, Wikipedia
Arab and Persian invaders settled the land, ensuring the Jews remained a minority, and the Crusaders helped to keep it that way. Following Saladin's defeat of the Crusaders, Jews were allowed to worship freely and to live in Jerusalem, just not on the Temple Mount (per Omar Abd al-Aziz before he died in 720), which was also where their Temple used to stand. Waves of immigration (often thwarted by authorities wishing to retain the labour and tax revenues from departing Jews) kept the Jewish presence alive in what had been called Palestine since Roman times. It's uncertain whether or not their numbers ever exceeded 10% of the region's population. They certainly never had any executive authority.
The rebirth of a nation
The tail end of the Second World War began the sequence of events that created modern Israel. Pre-Zionist migrations had continued up to this point. In 1917 the Balfour declaration was issued.
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
This sounded all righteous and noble but there were problems with this from the start:
- No precedent in international law
- No clarity as to whether or not a Jewish state was being contemplated
- No idea as to where the borders would be drawn
- No mandate for protection of non-Jewish people's rights
- No consultation with local people and authorities
None of this were under consideration at the League of Nations (precursor to the modern UN) when they issued the Mandate for Palestine in 1920. Britain administered the region until after the Second World War. During this time, hostilities between the native Arabs and the incoming Jewish settlers waxed and waned, with interference from surrounding nations regularly stirring the pot.
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws made German Jews (and later Austrian and Czech Jews) stateless refugees. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration and the impact of Nazi propaganda aimed at the Arab world led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission to investigate the situation. The commission did not consider the situation of Jews in Europe, but called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations. Britain rejected this solution and instead implemented the White Paper of 1939. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 additional Jewish migrants. This was disastrous to European Jews already being gravely discriminated against and in need of a place to seek refuge. - Zionism, WikipediaFollowing the Shoah (the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jews, A.K.A. the Holocaust), the Zionist movement intensified its campaign for a Jewish homeland. This didn't play well with their Arab neighbours, who feared becoming minorities in the land their ancestors had lived in for centuries.
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was passed, envisaging the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states operating under economic union with Jerusalem being transferred to UN trusteeship. Two weeks later, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would terminate on 15 May 1948. On the last day of the Mandate, the creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed, and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began. - Mandate for Palestine, Wikipedia
The Arab-Israeli war precipitated the flight of many thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homes, following which they were banned from returning. They remain refugees to this day, living out their lives in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. They have no formal right to live there, they are tolerated recipients of charity in temporary accommodation. Meanwhile, the state of Israel has enjoyed the support of powerful allies in America, who routinely dismiss and downplay the suffering of the Palestinians.
Interference from state actors continues, with Arab and Persian neighbours providing material assistance and moral cover for terrorist activity by Palestinian radicals, the repercussions of which serve as propaganda for their purposes. To no-one's surprise, this constantly backfires on them with aggrieved Israelis pointing to the atrocities as justification for further repression. Rinse and repeat.
Political issues
Given the weight of history and the repercussions that continue today, it's impossible to come up with a simple solution. "Live and let live" isn't going to work as a philosophy as long as the hatred engendered by the constant cycle of violence continues. The outline provided above barely scratches the surface of the story though I've tried to explain both sides of it. Bothsiderism is of course what prevents a solution from being effected. The issues as viewed from my communitarian/utilitarian position are:
- Religious, moral, and legal claims to the land
- Exclusive claims and ownership of holy sites
- Ongoing abuses from one side and terrorism from the other
- International interference
- Palesinian refugees
- Conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism
The United Nations, riven as it is with powerful actors competing for influence in the Middle East (all that oil doesn't help) has been unable to do much to resolve the issues listed above. Ignoring the plight of the Palestinians while the Israeli regime takes over and settles more land just exacerbates the situation and renders the proposed two state solution nonviable since the recent settlements have split the land that would have been allocated to the Palestinians.
Conclusion
There is no easy answer to this. If we support the right of Palestinians to return to their homes we must equally support the rights of Jews to return to theirs. If we complain that the Jews displaced Palestinians we must also accept that Palestinian Arabs are migrants brought in to displace Jews. We could, in principle, argue it all the way back to Abraham.
My personal faith demands that I respect the right of Israel to exist but also to have compassion for the Palestinians and join the calls for fair treatment for them. It would, of course, be a damn sight easier if everyone involved was willing to coexist peacefully in a secular state where everyone had equal rights and equal access to the holy sites but that's not going to happen any time soon unless the international interference bends in that direction.
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