The recent conflict between Israel and Palestine is only the latest chapter in what is the world’s most notable ongoing military and political struggle. There is a wealth of history behind the story, which isn’t fully understood by many, and this article will try to condense the timeline of events into a manageable summary on page 1, and discuss current events in a historical context on page 2.
The Jewish community originated in the area around where modern-day Israel is. The stories of the Bible take place entirely in the western Mediterranean and as such it is considered the homeland of the Jews and of Christians, often termed the Land of Canaan, Eretz Yisrael (from which the name Israel comes) or simply the Promised Land. However, the same region is also where the events of the Quran take place, so Muslims also believe the area to be their homeland as it was promised to Ishmael, a prophet of Islam.
Although the Jewish population had scattered across Europe in the centuries afterwards, the beginnings of Jewish re-settlement in Palestine began as early as 1492 when Jews were expelled from Spain. These waves, known as Aliyahs, steadily increased and the largest was before World War I, as 40,000 Jews moved to Palestine in the Second Aliyah.
World War I saw the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, and its territory was handed out via the “mandate” system. Britain was given the mandate to govern Palestine, a large tract of land bordering the Western Mediterranean, and as early as 1917 had plans, under Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, to create a Jewish state – in what was called the Balfour Declaration.
This promise and the growing persecution of Jews in Europe, primarily by the growing Nazi party in Germany, meant that there were more aliyahs, reaching as many as 250,000 in the 1930s. Between 1922, when the British mandate of Palestine was finalised, and the end of World War II – the Jewish percentage of the Palestinian population rose from 11% to 33%.
After the terrible events of World War II, where Jews were by far the most persecuted race as part of the ethnic cleansing programme of the Nazis, the Allied powers and the newly created United Nations believed the only available solution to anti-Semitism in Europe was to create a Jewish state. In 1947 a plan was accepted to divide the area of Palestine into two separate entities, for Israel and Palestine. This sparked outrage amongst native Palestinians, and created the first civil war between the Jewish and Arab populations over who owns the territory.
The state of Israel was formally created on the 14th of May 1948, as Israel unilaterally declared its independence from British mandatory rule. Israel began to rule over the area provided to it by the UN and Palestine the same. This sparked the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, as neighbouring countries threatened to invade the former mandate of Palestine to restore Arab rule for Palestine. Stop-start fighting ended in 1949 with an armistice agreement, but Israel were the victors and increased the size of its territory by 50%. This sparked another Aliyah, as Jews moved to the newly secure homeland with almost 700,000 arriving in the first three years and a similar number arriving from Arab states that began to expel Jewish communities. Israel’s transition to statehood was complete on the 11th of May 1949, when it was admitted to the United Nations.
From then until now, Israel’s history has been marred with clashes with Palestinians and some more substantive wars with neighbouring states. As Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and subsequently the Indian Ocean, Israel joined an alliance with Britain and France to capture Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 1956. The UN ordered the Israelis to return the land, but tensions still remained between Israel and Egypt.
Israel eventually recaptured the Sinai Peninsula during the Six Day War of 1967, after Egypt attempted to blockade Israel’s access to the Red Sea and other Arab nations threatened to support them. During this short war, Israel also recaptured the Golan Heights district from Syria and attacked Jordan and Iraq pre-emptively. A coalition of Egypt and Syria attempted to regain the territory they had lost, in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 but Israel repelled them successfully.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to destroy PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) camps within the country that were held responsible for attacks on Israeli civilians. Israel only withdrew their troops from the country in 1986 and maintained a buffer zone of military observation until 2000.
More recently, Israel went to war with Lebanon again in 2006 over the militant group Hezbollah’s shelling of Israeli targets.
All the while, Palestine has attempted to disrupt Israel and gain their own sovereignty. The PLO has persisted throughout the decades as the de facto regime of Palestine, and used both violent attacks and peaceful negotiation to further their cause. Little has come from either method, apart from a brief period in the late 90s and early 2000s where Israel gave the Palestine National Authority, largely influenced by the PLO, powers to govern Gaza and the West Bank. In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered PLO leader Yasser Arafat terms to establish a Palestinian state, but he refused.
The situation has deteriorated since those days, and sporadic skirmishes like the ones we have seen this year have been the norm.
From history we can see that there’s nothing new about the fighting between Israel and Palestine. What makes this year’s conflict different is that the international reaction, from people more so than governments, is less pro-Israel than it has been in the past.
Aggression between Israel and Palestine normally begins as militants, usually from the Hamas terrorist group, fire upon Israel or attack Israeli soldiers. This is followed by strikes against militant targets in Gaza/West Bank. It’s a phenomenon that happens several times a year and has done for decades.
Every so often the militants’ campaign of rocket attacks is more prolonged, and Israel ramps up the action and the rhetoric and attacks civilian targets and creates more devastation.
In either case, the end to the fighting generally comes as the Palestinian militants cut their losses and draw a ceasefire. One exception is the last major conflict where Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire that was abided by the Palestinians.
This year’s conflict is essentially no different from what we have seen before, except that it is lasting longer than usual.
What people are protesting against is not necessarily against the idea of the state of Israel but the imbalance of power between them and the Palestinians. Israel has had a naval blockade of access to Gaza for nearly eight years now, denying the Palestinians access to vital resources needed to develop and even survive. Hamas are acting out in protest against this blockade, as peaceful attempts have been fruitless.
Israel, being a wealthy state surrounded by potential aggressors, has built up what is the strongest defence per head of population in the world. Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, is one of the most highly regarded in the world behind the CIA, MI5 and KGB. It is also widely considered that Israel has nuclear weapons capabilities, although the answer from Israel has been “deliberately ambiguous”. Despite being a country of only 8 million people, Israel has undoubtedly got one of the strongest defences in the world.
There is no comparison between Israel’s military force and Palestine’s. Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are limited to essentially guerrilla tactics of firing rockets at Israeli settlements and targeted killings/assassinations. They cannot order air strikes, smart bombs, ground invasions or anything close to it. They are armed with weapons siphoned from other countries, the hand-me-downs from governments sympathetic to their cause. When Israel invades and fights, the Palestinians have no chance of mounting real resistance.
However, it’s becoming increasingly clear to a growing population in the West that Israel’s strong hand tactics are exacerbating the situation in this year’s new round of violence, rather than the Palestinians. Israel’s reactions have surely gone beyond the vague line in the sand set by international law of a “proportionate response” to threats. A BBC report last night claimed that the death toll of Palestinians since the current attacks began just over two weeks ago stands at 1,000 while the Israeli losses are only 42, with just two of them being civilians. In addition, many houses, schools and even hospitals have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes; critical infrastructure which will take years to rebuild with Palestine’s relative poverty. Despite media coverage which appears biased towards Israel, with the BBC being reprimanded for their reporting so far, the public opinion in the West has appeared to be pro-Palestine at the moment.
Protests yesterday in London and Paris condemned Israel’s response to the Gaza threats and there has been vociferous pro-Palestine support on social media, more so than ever seen in the past. It will be interesting to see governments’ reaction to this, as people are becoming less and less tolerant of Israel’s militaristic stance while most Western governments support it. This may mean that Palestine gets more bargaining room in future negotiations.
No-one can condone any of the attacks that are happening in Israel/Palestine at the moment, as the only way in which peace can be achieved is through diplomacy and negotiation. The two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine both have their own sovereignty, is the only one that has a chance of succeeding in achieving peace, finally, in the Middle East. Getting this negotiation and solution is possible but will take tremendous concessions from both sides. Neither side wants to back down on their claims to the land, their land.
Peace in the Middle East is still far off, but the end of this summer’s fighting in Gaza will hopefully draw to a close soon. The fall-out of the MH17 tragedy in Ukraine from last week is beginning to fade, and world leaders are now diverting their attention into pressuring Israel and Palestine, or more specifically Hamas, into a ceasefire. In the last few days, both Israel and Hamas have announced their own unilateral ceasefires – so both sides have expressed a will to stop fighting, paving the way for negotiation and a joint agreement to bring this latest chapter of violence to an end.
You can’t negotiate over the sound of guns. Let’s all hope that they fall silent soon and that progress can be made over the age-old question of Israel. It may have taken a long time to create a Jewish homeland, but it seems as though it may take just as long to have it accepted.