The
Arab – Israeli Conflict
Legacy
of the Great War
Background to Conflict
·
Describe the settlement of Palestine prior to the First World War.
·
Explain how British actions during World War I laid the seeds of the current
Arab-Israeli conflict.
·
What action was taken in regard to Palestine after World War I?
·
Why did tensions increase dramatically between Arabs and Jews after
1933?
·
What effect did World War II have on the future of Palestine?
·
What action did the United Nations take in regard to Palestine in 1947?
What was the result of this decision?
The Balfour Declaration contained only one sentence; it has led to four
major wars and a conflict that endures to this date. Issued by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur
Balfour in November 1917, it stated:
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.
The idea of a Jewish national
home in Palestine dated back to the
nineteenth century. After the demise of
the last Jewish kingdom in 135, and the expulsion of the Jewish people from Palestine
by the Romans, few Jews had lived in Palestine. In the 1870s, small Jewish societies in Russia
and Romania began
to advocate a resettling of the Land
of Israel. In 1882, there were only 2,000 Jews living in
Palestine, a mere quarter of one
percent of the population.
Jewish interest in a return to
Palestine dramatically increased in
1886 with the publication of Theodor Herzl’s The
Jewish State. Writing in reaction to
a wave of anti-semitism (hatred of
Jews) that swept Europe in the 1880s, Herzl, a Hungarian
journalist, argued that the Jewish people would never be assimilated
(blended or integrated) into European society and would only be safe if they
possessed their own country. Herzl’s advocacy of a Jewish state in Palestine
became known as Zionism. With the support of prominent European Jews,
such as the Rothschild family of bankers, Jewish immigration into Palestine
grew dramatically. By the beginning of
World War I in 1914, the Jewish population of Palestine
had grown to 90,000. Most of the
settlers were Russian, fleeing rabid anti-semitism in the Tsar’s crumbling
empire. These settlers formed the first Jewish
town in Palestine, Tel Aviv, in
1909 and established communal farms, known as kibbutzim. In 1914, Palestine
was part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Its population was overwhelmingly Arab. Muslim Arab armies had driven the Romans from
Palestine in 638 and ruled the area
until the Ottoman Turks defeated them in the sixteenth century. Alarmed by the growing Jewish immigration,
Palestinian Arabs unsuccessfully asked the Ottoman government to halt the sale
of land to Jews.
The whirlwind of the First
World War unleashed several factors that are still responsible for conflict
today. Eager to weaken their Ottoman
enemy, Britain
sought the support of both Palestinian Arabs and Jews during the war. A British intelligence officer, T.E. Lawrence
(later known as “Lawrence of Arabia”),
worked with Arab chieftains to raise an army and harass Turkish installations
throughout the Middle East. In addition, the British high commissioner of
Egypt, Sir
Henry McMahon, indicated to Shariff Hussein of Mecca
that a British victory would bring independence to the Arabs of the Ottoman
Empire. Based upon
McMahon’s assurances, Hussein proclaimed Arab independence in 1916. While encouraging Arab independence, the
British also sought to win support from European and Palestinian Jews. Jewish volunteers from Palestine
formed a mule corps that proved essential for the transference of supplies in
the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. Later
in the war, the British formed two Jewish Legions, made up of Palestinian,
European, and American Jews. Jews also
contributed in other ways to the British war effort. A Jewish chemist, Chaim Weizmann, developed an improved method of making acetone, an
essential ingredient in creating powerful explosives. Weizmann’s fame
brought him into contact with the leaders of the British government and
Weizmann, an ardent (passionate) Zionist, used this access to
relentlessly advocate British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. One of Weizmann’s
closest contacts was Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. The exact motivation for Balfour’s statement
supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in 1917 remains unclear even at
this date. The declaration was issued at
a time when it was questionable whether the western Allies could hold out much
longer against the force of German military might, especially in light of the
likely Russian withdrawal from the war.
Both Balfour and Prime Minister David Lloyd George were sympathetic to
the aspirations of the Zionists, but it is likely that the Balfour Declaration
originated mainly from wartime considerations.
Some believe that it was an attempt by the British to retain the support
of influential Jewish bankers at a time when Britain
desperately needed the funds to continue the war. Others maintain that the British were
attempting to influence Russian Jews to pressure the new Bolshevik government
to continue Russia’s
participation in the war against Germany. Regardless of the government’s motive, Britain
now had promised Palestine to two
separate groups during the course of the war!
Keeping these promises to both Arabs and Jews would prove to be
impossible. Further complicating the
issue was a secret agreement made with France
and Russia in
1916, the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which promised to divide the Middle Eastern
possessions of the Ottoman Empire between the victorious
Allies.
Armed conflict, starvation,
and disease decimated the population of Palestine
during the war. At its conclusion, Jews
made up only 11% of its 600,000 inhabitants.
The treaties that concluded World War I created a British mandate for Palestine,
frustrating both Arab and Jewish aspirations for independence. The growing rivalry between Arabs and Jews
continuously plagued the mandate. In
1922 the British issued a White Paper (statement of official government
policy), which reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration but greatly reduced the size
of the mandate by excluding land east of the Jordan River. This land was given to the eldest son of Shariff
Hussein, Emir Abdullah, to rule as the Kingdom
of Transjordan. Any future Jewish state was thus restricted
to the narrow area between the western bank of the Jordan River
and the Sinai desert. In addition, the
White Paper restricted Jewish immigration to levels that could be absorbed into
the economy of Palestine. Arab leaders were still unsatisfied with
these restrictions, arguing for a complete halt in Jewish immigration. Anti-Jewish riots in 1929 resulted in the
death of 133 Jews, but did not deter further immigration.
In 1932, the Jewish population
of Palestine had reached 20,000,
20% of the total population. Despite
this growth, only a small percentage of the world’s Jewish population showed
any interest in Zionism. The rise of
Nazism dramatically altered the situation.
As anti-semitic measures grew in Germany,
more and more Jews sought refuge in Palestine. In just three years, the Jewish population of
Palestine tripled. Increased immigration predictably brought
about Arab resistance and a new series of anti-Jewish disturbances broke out. Palestinian Arabs, led by the rabidly
anti-semitic Mufti (Muslim religious leader) of Jerusalem,
demanded that the British shut-off Jewish immigration and ban further land
sales to Jews. Accompanying these
demands was a general strike as well as numerous guerrilla attacks on Jewish
settlements. In 1936, almost 100 Jews
were killed and many farms were set on fire.
The British responded to these disturbances by establishing the Peel
Commission, which was charged with investigating the causes of the disturbances
and recommending a solution. The
commission eventually recommended that Palestine
be partitioned (divided) between Arabs and Jews, with populations being
shifted to reflect the partition boundaries.
Under the partition plan, Jews would receive 33% of Palestine
and the remaining Arab portion would be incorporated into the existing state of
Transjordan. The
holy city of Jerusalem was to
remain under British control.
The report of the Peel
Commission bitterly divided Palestinian Jews, with some favoring acceptance and
others opposed to abandoning any Jewish settlements. The Arabs, however, completely rejected any
form of partition. In response, the
British began to act more decisively against the Arab-inspired violence. Arab political groups were forcibly disbanded
and the Mufti, who was seen as the chief inciter of the violence, was forced to
flee from British authorities, going into exile. More radical Jewish defense groups also began
to emerge. Two of these groups, the
Irgun and the Stern Gang, began to attack both Arab settlements and British
officials. Between 1936 and 1939, over
600 people died and more than 2,000 were injured in politically related
violence. At this point, Britain
issued another White Paper. The White Paper of 1939 limited Jewish
immigration to 15,000 per year for the next five years. After that period, Jewish immigration was be
dependent upon “Arab acquiescence (agreement).” The White Paper failed to placate
(satisfy) the Arabs and had tragic consequences for the Jews. Britain
severely limited access to Palestine
at the very time that hundreds of thousands of European Jews sought refuge from
Nazi persecution. With most countries
still mired in the Great Depression, there were very few options of escape left
for European Jews. As a result, millions
would perish during the Holocaust.
Despite the White Paper,
illegal Jewish immigration continued.
During World War II, 60,000 Jewish refugees entered Palestine,
many of them illegally despite British efforts to stop them. Just as in the First World War, many
Palestinian Jews served in the British Army during the war. A Palestinian Jewish Brigade numbered 30,000
soldiers, 750 of whom died. In contrast,
many Arabs openly sided with Nazi Germany.
The Mufti of Jerusalem spent the majority of the war in Berlin,
making propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis.
As the full horror of the
Holocaust became apparent, public sympathy in many countries turned decisively
in favor of Zionism. Following the war, Britain
attempted to preserve the immigration limits of the 1939 White Paper, but
immense pressure from the United States
forced the British to relax the restrictions and permit more Holocaust
survivors to emigrate to Palestine. Once again violence erupted between Arabs and
Jews. In addition, both groups attacked
British officials who were becoming increasingly weary of their mandate
responsibilities. In 1946, Jewish
terrorists blew up the King David
Hotel in Jerusalem,
which served as the British headquarters, killing 80. Finally, in 1947, Britain
announced that it planned to terminate its responsibilities under the mandate
in May 1948. The problem of Palestine
thus became the responsibility of the newly formed United Nations. In November 1947, the UN voted to partition
the land between Arabs and Jews in a plan similar to that proposed by the Peel
Commission a decade before. While Jewish
groups celebrated the UN decision, Arabs rioted to demonstrate their opposition
to the formation of any Jewish state in Palestine. In the four months leading up to the end of
the British mandate and eventual partition, both sides engaged in what would
today be recognized as ethnic cleansing.
Jewish and Arab settlements were closely interspersed with each other,
making the creation of two geographically viable states almost impossible. Both sides attempted to link their
settlements by forcing out the residents of nearby settlements. As a result, Jewish settlements in
predominately Arab areas were overrun and their residents either killed or expelled. Arab settlements in Jewish areas suffered a
similar fate. The Arab governments of Egypt,
Syria, Lebanon,
Iraq, and Transjordan
announced that they would oppose partition by force, promising to invade
Jewish-held land as soon as the British mandate ended. With war imminent, many Arabs left their
homes in Palestine, confident that
they would return after the Arab armies destroyed the new Jewish state. Some Arabs left voluntarily, but others left
out of a realistic fear of Jewish attack.
Jewish leaders were determined to occupy Arab villages that endangered
the survival of their nearby settlements.
At Deir Yassin, an Arab
village located alongside the main road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,
commandos from the Irgun and Stern Gang massacred 245 Arabs, most of them women
and children in April 1948 in order to gain control of the area. Prior to the end of the mandate, between
150,000 and 200,000 Arabs either left or were driven from their homes in Palestine.
Four Wars
·
Explain the major effects of the following Middle East wars: 1948-49, 1956, 1967, and 1973.
Hours before the mandate
expired, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the formation of the State of Israel
on May 14, 1948. The next day, Arab armies from five countries
invaded the new country. Bitter fighting
ensued for the next month as Israel
clung desperately to the 20% of Palestine
that it had been awarded under the partition plan. Key factors in Israel’s
survival included swift diplomatic recognition by the United
States and the right (as an independent
country) to import unlimited weapons and immigrants. After a brief one-month truce, the fighting
erupted again and lasted another year.
As each month passed, Israel
grew stronger and the invading Arab armies became more and more discouraged. Finally, in July 1949, the defeated Arab
armies agreed to a truce, bring the first modern war in the Middle
East to a close. As a
result of the fighting, Israel
was able to expand its territory far beyond that granted in the UN partition
plan, gaining over 5,000 square kilometers of land that had been originally
allocated to the Arabs. The remaining
areas of Palestine were absorbed by
Egypt and Transjordan. Jerusalem
sat in between land controlled by Israel
and Transjordan.
As a result, the city was divided, with the Israelis in control of the
western half and the Arabs in control of the east. Despite the truce agreement, Israel’s
Arab neighbors refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel
and vowed to drive the Jews from Palestine
in the future. A major problem resulting
from the 1948-49 War was that of the
Palestinian Arab refugees. Between 500,000 and 800,000 Arabs had been
either been driven from or left their homes as a result of the fighting. The Arab countries made the conscious
decision not to assimilate these refugees into their own population, preferring
to house them in squalid refugee camps to maintain the hope of an eventual
re-establishment of a Palestinian Arab
State to be achieved through the
destruction of Israel. Another 170,000 Palestinian Arabs chose to
remain in Israel.
The lack of a permanent peace
treaty between Israel
and her Arab neighbors ensured that tensions in the region remained high. Palestinian guerrillas, financed and trained
by Egypt,
conducted border raids against Israel
from bases in Egypt
and Jordan. In 1952, a group of army officers led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew
King Farouk of Egypt. Nasser sought to build
popular support for his regime by vowing to destroy Israel. He increased Egypt’s
support for guerrilla attacks on Israel,
and used his navy to block Israeli access to the Red Sea. In July 1956, Nasser
seized control of the Suez Canal (which connects the Mediterranean
and Red Seas),
transferring its ownership from British and French stockholders to the Egyptian
government. In secret negotiations with Britain
and France, Israel
planned a military campaign that would seize the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt
while British and French forces recaptured the Suez Canal. In October 1956, Israeli armored units
stormed across the Sinai, capturing the entire peninsula. Britain
and France then
issued a prearranged ultimatum to both parties to withdraw their troops from
the area of the canal. When Egypt
refused, Britain
and France
moved to seize the canal. Fearing a
major war, the United States
joined with the Soviet Union to demand a cease-fire and
a withdrawal of the invading troops. In
a rare example of Cold War cooperation between the two superpowers, Israel
was forced to give back its conquests.
The 1956 Sinai War, however,
benefited Israel
in several significant ways. The ability
of the Israeli Army to deal a savage blow to an Arab enemy had been clearly
demonstrated. Although the Israeli’s
were forced to withdraw from the Sinai, UN peacekeeping forces were stationed
to prevent future attacks on Israel and the right of the Israelis to navigate
on the Red Sea was guaranteed by the UN.
The period following the 1956
War was one of relative peace. Israel
experienced a period of rapid economic growth, raising its standard of living
dramatically above that of its Arab neighbors.
Despite the absence of warfare, tensions remained high as the Arab
countries still refused to even recognize Israel’s
right to exist. In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
was formed to promote the interests of the refugees who had left Israel
in 1948-49. A year later, the PLO began
terrorist attacks on Israel
from bases in Syria
and Lebanon,
and the governments of Egypt,
Syria, Iraq
and Jordan
formed a joint military command aimed against Israel. In 1967, Nasser
ordered the removal of UN peacekeepers from the Sinai and once again closed the
Red Sea to Israeli shipping. Fearing an attack, the Israelis launched a
preemptive military strike in early June 1967. The results were devastating to the
Arabs. Most of the Egyptian airforce was
destroyed on the ground. With total
command of the air, Israeli tanks once again roared across the Sinai,
recapturing all the land that they had been forced to evacuate after the 1956
War, including the Gaza Strip.
After defeating Egypt,
the Israelis turned on their other two Arab neighbors. East Jerusalem and the
West Bank of the Jordan River
were captured from Jordan,
and the Golan Heights,
an area that had been used to shell Israeli settlements in the north, was taken
from Syria. In only six days the Israelis conquered an
area three times greater than their own country at the cost of less than 800
soldiers. The Six Day War of 1967, however, dramatically increased the Arab population
within its borders to over one million, sowing the seeds of future
conflict. Following the war, the United
Nations passed Resolution 242 which called for Israel
to withdraw from the territories that it had captured in the war in return for
a guarantee of Israeli security from its Arab neighbors. Although both the Israeli and Arab
governments rejected the resolution, the concept of Israel
trading “land for peace” became the
basis of all future efforts to resolve the conflict in the Middle
East.
Utterly humiliated by the 1967
defeat, Arabs relied increasingly on terrorism to call attention to the plight
of the exiled Palestinian population.
During the 1972 Munich Olympics, Palestinian terrorists seized and
killed eleven Israeli athletes. Between
the 1967 War and 1973, over 150 Israeli civilians died in terrorist
attacks. As Middle Eastern oil became
more and more important, the Soviet Union increased its
support for the Arab countries, primarily Egypt
and Syria. Similarly, the U.S.
increased its military support of Israel. The death of Egypt’s
Nasser in 1970 led to hopes of movement toward a peace
settlement, but when his successor, Anwar
al-Sadat, failed to make any progress in negotiating a return of the Sinai
from Israel, Egypt
again began to prepare for war. The
fourth major Middle Eastern war began in October 1973 with a surprise Egyptian
and Syrian attack on Israel. The Arabs had planned the 1973 War to
begin on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and it took the Israeli military by
surprise. For the first time since 1948,
Israeli forces tasted defeat during the initial days of the attack as the
Egyptians advanced across the Sinai and the Syrians recaptured a large part of
the Golan Heights.
Bolstered by a huge U.S.
airlift of supplies, the Israelis swiftly counterattacked and recaptured all of
the territory that they had been driven from during the previous days’
fighting. After three weeks of intense fighting, both
sides agreed to a UN sponsored cease-fire.
The cost of the war was heavy for both sides. The Israelis, who had suffered very few
casualties in the 1967 War, lost 2,500 men.
Arab casualties were estimated at four times that amount. Israel
had defended its territory, but at a great cost, both materially and to its
confidence. The Arab countries, although
unsuccessful in defeating Israel,
took pride in avoiding the humiliation of the 1967 defeat.
The Peace Process
·
What were the major agreements contained in the Camp David Accords (1978) and Oslo Agreement (1993)?
·
In what ways were Anwar al-Sadat and Yitzak Rabin similar?
·
How do Israel’s two major parties differ?
·
Why was the 1999 election victory of Ehud Barak considered a vindication of Rabin’s policies? Why was Barak unable to carry out his campaign
promises?
The 1973 War paved the way for a break in the decades old deadlock
where previously the two sides had steadfastly refused even to discuss their
differences. In November 1977 Egypt’s
President Sadat made the first move, travelling to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. There he addressed the Israeli Knesset
(legislature) and called for peace negotiations. Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin met in September 1978 with U.S. President
Jimmy Carter at the presidential retreat of Camp David,
Maryland.
There the three leaders negotiated the Camp David Accords, the first peace treaty between Israel
and an Arab country. Egypt
agreed to recognize Israel,
and the Israelis agreed to gradually withdraw from the captured Sinai
Peninsula. For their
willingness to work out an agreement, Begin and Sadat were jointly awarded the
1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
Peace between Israel
and Egypt had
little effect on the other Arab countries.
Their leaders shunned Egypt,
expelling the Egyptians from the Arab League.
In 1981 Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists, opposed to the peace process,
assassinated Sadat. Terrorism directed
against Israel
grew worse. Lebanon,
with its weak central government, was used by the PLO as a sanctuary for
launching raids on Israel. After a particularly bloody terrorist raid in
1978, the Israeli Army crossed the Lebanese border to raid terrorist
bases. Israeli also launched a
preventive air attack against Iraq
in 1981. Convinced that Saddam Hussein’s
government was developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, the Israeli
airforce destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad. Although the UN strongly condemned the
attack, the action took on increased importance as Iraq
became more and more of a danger to international peace. Continued terrorist attacks led to further
Israeli strikes across the Lebanese border and an eventual Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Between 1982 and 1985, 1,200 Israeli soldiers
were killed in Lebanon
and a large part of the country was devastated.
The war in Lebanon
exposed growing divisions within Israel. For the first time, political controversy
within Israel
surrounded an on-going military campaign.
Israel’s
two main political parties bitterly disagreed on how best to protect the
country’s security. The leftist Labor Party, which had dominated
Israeli politics prior to 1977, generally favored efforts to engage in
political negotiations with the Arabs and expressed doubts regarding the use of
Israeli troops in Lebanon. The more conservative Likud Party generally opposed any concession of territory to the
Arabs. Conservative Israelis sought to
establish Jewish settlements in the West
Bank (which had been captured from Jordan in the Six Day War) in order to
make it more difficult for any Israeli government to negotiate a return of the
land to Arabs. In addition to
disagreements over national security, Israelis became increasingly divided upon
cultural and religious lines. Unlike
most of Israel’s
early settlers, many new Israelis were not of European or North American origin
and held ultra-Orthodox religious beliefs, favoring strict prohibitions against
violations of the sabbath. These
religiously conservative Israelis were more likely to be opposed to land for
peace deals and either supported Likud or small,
hawkish religious political parties.
Labor Party supporters tended to be more Western-oriented, willing to
make concessions to the Arabs, and favored a more secular
(non-religious) state. National
elections in 1984 and 1988 failed to produce a decisive victory for either of
the two major parties, forcing coalition governments that contained members of
several parties. In 1985, Israel
removed most of its troops from Lebanon,
retaining only a small “security zone” to protect settlements in northern Israel.
In 1987, Palestinian organizations reduced their emphasis
on terrorism and embarked upon the intifada, or uprising against
Israeli authority in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The intifada
consisted of demonstrations, strikes, and riots against Israeli police and security
forces. Instead of fighting Arab armies
or terrorist groups, the Israelis were forced to battle stone-throwing
teenagers. Arabs, who had generally been
condemned by the international community for terrorist activities, now appeared
to be the victim of harsh Israeli efforts to control the intifada. The PLO further
raised their degree of international support in 1988 when PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat expressed a willingness to
renounce violence and recognize the Israeli government. The 1991 Gulf War again presented a danger to
Israel as Iraq
launched scud missiles that did minor damage to several Israeli cities. These attacks were a deliberate effort to
provoke an Israeli attack on Iraq
that Saddam Hussein believed would win him Arab support in his effort to oppose
UN efforts to expel him from his 1990 conquest of Kuwait. Under strong U.S.
pressure not to retaliate, Israel
refrained from attacking Iraq.
The end of the Cold War and the diplomatic isolation of Iraq
led to a renewed opportunity for Middle Eastern peace. The political deadlock in Israel
was broken by a Labor victory in the 1992 Israeli elections. The new government, headed by Yitzhak Rabin, was viewed as more
favorable to working out a peace agreement.
Secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway
finally led to a 1993 agreement between Israel
and the PLO. The PLO agreed to recognize
Israel and
renounce the use of terrorism. In
return, the Israelis agreed to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of
the Palestinian people. More importantly,
the Oslo Agreement paved the way for
the gradual transference of political authority for Arab areas in the West
Bank and Gaza from Israel
to a Palestinian government. Oslo
represented a major breakthrough on the scale of he previous Camp David
Accords. For the first time,
Palestinians affirmed Israel’s
right to exist, and the Israelis indicated a willingness to allow for
Palestinian self-rule. In May 1994, Israel
withdrew from Gaza and the West
Bank city of Jerico,
transferring control to Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian
Authority. The spirit of the Oslo
Agreement also led to a peace treaty between Israel
and Jordan in
October 1994. Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for their
efforts.
By 1995, the peace process seemed to be on an unstoppable
path toward a lasting settlement of the decades old conflict. Israel,
however, still remained bitterly divided over the issue of making territorial
concessions to their former Palestinian enemies. The Rabin government faced frequent criticism
from conservative Israelis just as the PLO had to contend with more militant
Arab organizations, such as Hamas
and Hezbollah, who were opposed to any recognition of Israel. In November 1995, an Israeli student opposed
to the peace process assassinated Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin was hailed as a martyr and his funeral
drew dignitaries from around the world, even from some of the Arab countries
that had participated in the four major wars against Israel. Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, pledged to
continue the peace process and called for early elections as a sign of support
for his government. The key issue of the
May 1996 elections was Israel’s
scheduled withdrawal from the rest of the West Bank. Arab militants launched a suicide bombing
campaign to coincide with the election campaign. Four major bombs killed 59 Israelis,
increasing Israeli fears of turning over more land to the Palestinians. As a result, Peres lost the election to Likud’s Benjamin
Netanyahu. Netanyahu promised voters that he would not
proceed with any more territorial transfers unless the Palestinians could
assure Israel
that they could control terrorist activity within the areas under their
authority.
The Netanyahu government struggled to walk a tightrope
between keeping Israel’s
Oslo obligations and maintaining
the support of its hard-line followers, who were opposed to any concessions,
essentially taking every possible opportunity to stall the transfer of more
land to the Palestinians. In an effort
to restart the peace process, President Clinton invited Netanyahu and Arafat to
the U.S. in the fall of 1998 for
negotiations. There, Israel
agreed to resume the transfer of West Bank territory to
the Palestinians. In return, the PLO
agreed to remove language in its charter calling for the destruction of Israel
and to take steps to control anti-Israeli terrorism by militant Islamic
groups. In December 1998, Netanyahu
called for new Israeli elections to be held in May 1999. In the elections, the new Labor Party leader Ehud
Barak, a former close aide to Yitzhak Rabin, challenged Netanyahu. Barak, like most Israeli leaders, had a long
and distinguished military career before entering politics. In his campaign he promised to extend “an
outstretched hand” to Israel’s
Arab neighbors and to make a “peace of the brave.” Barak’s promises
contrasted vividly with the policies of the Netanyahu government, which had
been seen by Arabs and many Israelis as being opposed to the peace process. On election day, Barak trounced Netanyahu by
a 57%-43% margin, in a victory that was seen as a vindication for Rabin’s peace
efforts. On the night of the election,
Barak symbolically made a pilgrimage to the spot where his mentor had been
assassinated four years earlier and lit a memorial candle as his supporters
chanted: “Rabin, we have won!”
Predictably, Arabs applauded Netanyahu’s defeat. One Palestinian leader commented: “Netanyahu
fell into the trash bin of history. He
will be gone forever … no other Israeli leader will ever be as bad as he
was.” Despite his large margin of
victory in the election for prime minister, Barak’s
Labor Party failed to win an outright majority in the Knesset, and like most
Israeli governments that preceded it, was forced to form a ruling coalition
with a number of smaller parties. Barak’s government initially moved swiftly to keep its
promises, ordering a halt to the building of additional Israeli settlements on
the West Bank and resuming the transfer of authority to
the Palestinians. Barak also removed the
last Israeli troops from Lebanon
and began negotiations with Syria,
the only Arab neighbor with which it was still at war.
Barak’s progress toward
achieving a final peace agreement with either the Syrians or Palestinians came
to a screeching halt in the summer of 2000.
President Clinton hosted a two-week conference between the Israelis and
Palestinians at Camp David in July, hoping to get a
final agreement on the status of the West Bank and Gaza. Although the majority of the land in each
area had been already transferred to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, several
difficult issues still remained. Israeli
troops remain responsible for the external security of each area, and
Palestinians cannot travel freely through Israeli controlled areas without
passing through time consuming Israeli checkpoints. In addition, large Israeli settlements, with
a total population of over 200,000, exist in the West Bank. The most notable issue, however, was the
clash over predominately Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Since its capture from Jordan
in the Six Day War, Israeli governments have insisted that Jerusalem
is the undividable capital of Israel. Arafat, however, seeks East
Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state that would
include all of the West Bank and Gaza. At Camp David, Barak
was willing to make significant concessions to the Palestinians, offering far
more than any previous government. Even
limited Palestinian control over East Jerusalem,
including the Temple Mount—a
place of enormous religious significance to both sides—was discussed. Despite Barak’s
willingness to propose terms that he knew would be extremely unpopular amongst
many Israelis, Arafat rejected the offer and walked out of the talks. His objections centered upon proposed terms
that would have allowed three large settlements consisting of 150,000 Jews, to
remain on the West Bank, and the fact that Israel was unwilling to concede to
total Palestinian sovereignty (absolute control) over East Jerusalem or
grant approximately three million Palestinian refugees the rights to return to
the homes that they had left in 1948.
American negotiators clearly viewed the Palestinians as responsible for
the breakdown of the talks. “Barak was far more willing to think out of the box, far
more willing to consider, though he never accepted, solutions that could have
broken the logjam,” President Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R.
Berger said. “Arafat on the other hand,
while he did make some compromises on Jerusalem,
was not prepared at this point to crack open his traditional positions.” Barak’s willingness
to even discuss giving up complete Israeli control over Jerusalem
was politically devastating at home.
Even before Camp David, several of the small
parties that supported him in the Knesset withdrew their support. Whereas Barak had been able to count on the
support of 75 members of the 120 seat Knesset after his election in 1998, he
now had the support of less than half of its members.
Renewed Violence
·
What factors led to the
outbreak of violence in September 2000?
·
How did the election of Ariel Sharon
symbolize a change in Israeli popular opinion?
What did the 2003 elections indicate?
·
Why is Yasir
Arafat’s status as the leader of the Palestinians in question?
·
What are the major issues that
block a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
Any hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement
totally disintegrated in late September 2000.
Ariel Sharon, a hawkish member of the Likud Party, made a widely
publicized visit to the Temple Mount
in East Jerusalem, accompanied by a large detachment of
security guards. Sharon
was blamed by many Arabs for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees
at the hands of Israeli-backed Christian Lebanese militiamen when, as defense
minister in 1982, he led Israel’s
controversial invasion of Lebanon. Palestinians viewed Sharon’s
visit as a direct provocation because the Temple
Mount was the most controversial
sticking point in the Camp David negotiations. Palestinian demonstrators chanted: “Murderer,
get out!” upon Sharon’s
arrival. The day after Sharon’s
visit, Palestinian youths tried to storm the area, bombarding Israeli security
forces with a hail of rocks. After
Israeli forces fired into the crowd, killing five Palestinians, the entire West
Bank erupted in a degree of violence unseen since the intifada. Over the course of the next four months, 300
people died, most of them Palestinian, and the world witnessed numerous
horrible scenes such as a Palestinian father attempting to shield his
twelve-year-old son from Israeli gunfire as the two were trapped in a firefight
between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli security forces. Eventually, the boy was hit and died. Soon after, two Israeli reserve soldiers were
detained in a Palestinian police station in the West Bank
after mistakenly venturing into a Palestinian-controlled area. An angry mob of Palestinians surrounded the
station and eventually overpowered the guards.
The two Israelis were then stabbed to death as one of the killers
appeared at the window, gleefully showing his bloodstained hands to the
cheering crowd.
The renewed violence further eroded support for the Barak
government as his political opponents used the violence to support their
arguments that his government had been too willing to bargain away East
Jerusalem to Palestinians.
Finally, politically powerless and able to count on the support of only
25% of the Knesset, Barak resigned in December and called for new elections in
early February 2001. Barak
hoped that, if forced simply to choose between himself and a Likud candidate
opposed to the peace process, Israelis would give him a vote of
confidence. His opponent was initially
expected to be former Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom he had soundly defeated
just 18 months earlier. Although polls
now showed Netanyahu far ahead, he refused to run unless the Knesset agreed to
dissolve itself in favor of new parliamentary elections. With Netanyahu out of the race, Likud
ironically turned to the very man whose visit to the Temple
Mount in September had triggered
the most recent violence, 72-year-old Ariel Sharon.
In the increasing atmosphere of hostility, Sharon
trounced Barak 63%-37% in the most lopsided election in Israeli history. Although Arafat sent Sharon
a message encouraging a resumption of the peace process, his Fatah movement issued a statement that warned: “If the
Israelis think that Sharon will
make security for them, we say loudly that Israel
will never have security at all.”
Predictions of an escalation of the violence soon came true. Incidents between Israeli troops and Palestinians
grew more frequent as more Israelis and Palestinians died. In the summer of 2001, the radical Islamic
group Hamas began a suicide
bombing campaign in Israel. In addition to repeated calls on Arafat to
arrest militants, Israel
reacted to these bombings by seizing the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters
in East Jerusalem, increasing the number of armed incursions
into Palestinian territory, and targeting Palestinian leaders for
assassination. The yearlong violence had
an especially devastating effect on the Palestinians, resulting in more than
500 deaths out of a population of 3 million, a proportional death rate
equivalent to 40,000 Americans. In
addition, the Palestinian economy was ruined.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers are barred from jobs inside Israel,
and checkpoints and blockades hinder trade among Arab towns within the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. The
unemployment rate in Gaza is 64%
and more than half of Gaza families
saw their incomes decline by 50% during the first year of the new intifada. Almost two-thirds of all Palestinians now
live below the poverty line, defined as a monthly income of less than $400 for
a family of six. Still, a vast majority of Palestinians
support the intifada—about 85% in a 2001 poll conducted by the Jerusalem
Media and Communications Center, a Palestinian think tank. “The suicide bombers started after the
Israelis began killing children on our side,” said a 23-year-old Palestinian
engineering student at al-Najah. “We had to show them we could kill their
civilians, too.” Hardening attitudes on
the Palestinian side are echoed by Israelis.
“Look how they behave—they dance in the street when people are blown
apart,” said Menashe Moshe, a retired Israeli
construction worker. “How can you make
peace with animals like this? The
violence will continue because the Palestinians just don’t want peace. The only language they understand is force.” The renewed level of fighting posed an
enormous challenge to U.S.
interests in the region. On the streets
of Egypt, Jordan and other moderate states in the Middle East, Israel, with its
vast military superiority and chokehold on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is
seen as the oppressor of the Palestinians, and the United States, as Israel’s
main ally and military supplier, is also widely regarded as responsible the
Palestinians’ suffering.
The horrific events of September 11, 2001 had the potential to change the
dynamic in the Middle East. Thousands of Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip cheered news of the attacks, distributing
candy and firing weapons in a show of glee over what they described as a
retaliatory blow against U.S.
cooperation with Israel. “The people here are gloating over the
American grief,” said Emad Salameh,
a taxi driver in Gaza. “[American-made] Apache helicopters, tanks
and all kinds of destructive weapons have been killing Palestinian infants and
women. Palestinians have been crying and
suffering, and now it is time for Americans to cry and suffer.” “This is revenge from Allah,” added a
storeowner in Gaza City. Horrified by this public relations disaster, Yasir Arafat ordered his forces to confiscate film of the
celebrations from reporters on the West Bank and claimed that the
demonstrations had only been, “less than ten children in East Jerusalem, and we
punished them.” Arafat also joined other
Arab leaders in offering condolences to the U.S.
and made a much-publicized donation of blood to the victims of the attacks. In the days after the attacks, Israeli
citizens and officials expressed hope that the shocking experience with
terrorism on U.S.
soil would bring Americans closer to Israel
and mute criticism of their actions against Palestinian militants. Prime Minister Sharon and other Israeli
politicians sought to establish the idea that Osama bin Laden and Arafat were
comparable, and that the U.S.
anti-terrorist campaign should be directed against such radical Palestinian
groups as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, along with bin Laden’s
al Qaeda.
Israeli hopes were soon dashed when the Bush administration sought
Arafat’s support in its coalition against terror and attempted to win favor
with Arab states by proclaiming support for the eventual creation of a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. In November, U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell set out a proposal for peace in the Middle East,
calling on Palestinians to halt the intifada, affirm Israel’s
right to exist, and bring an end to the virulent Ant-Israeli propaganda
regularly taught in Arab schools. Powell
also indicated that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza was a significant obstacle
to peace, calling on Israel
to stop expanding Jewish settlements and to restrain the use of checkpoints and
raids that had inspired widespread anger among Palestinians.
Just as it
appeared that U.S.
policy was swinging toward the Palestinians, another set of suicide bombing
attacks by Hamas reshuffled the cards once again. In early December, 2001, 25 Israelis were
killed in attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa. The Sharon
government, blaming Arafat for not arresting Palestinian militants, launched an
all-out attack on the Palestinian Authority with air strikes on Arafat’s
headquarters and numerous police stations.
The U.S.,
which had repeatedly urged restraint to Sharon’s
government, now refused to condemn the Israeli retaliation. In June, 2002, President Bush openly called
for Arafat’s ouster. While reiterating U.S.
support for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, the president added:
“Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian
state can be born.” Frustration with the
stalemate eventually led to pressure upon Arafat to cede some of his power to
an appointed prime minister. Meanwhile, Sharon’s
Likud party won a smashing victory in the January
2003 Knesset election, doubling its number of seats and dealing the Labor
Party a stunning defeat. As one
hard-line Likud member commented: “The parties that
collapsed are the parties of Oslo—those
that supported concessions to the Palestinians.” Despite this victory, Sharon
was still dependant upon other parties to form a government. Out of his 68 seat majority coalition, 13
seats are controlled by ultranationalist and pro-settler parties that are
strongly opposed to the dismantlement of any West Bank
settlements. Sharon’s
new government began the construction of a $1 billion “security fence,”
designed to isolate Palestinian areas of the West Bank
and tightly control access between Palestinian and Israeli areas. The fence does not follow the “Green Line,”
or pre-1967 Israeli border, but rather cuts off 15% of the West Bank
to incorporate 80% of the Israeli settlements.
275,000 Palestinians live within the area that is being isolated from
the rest of the West Bank. In addition, the fence will disrupt the lives
of many more Palestinians who are now isolated from neighboring villages and
farmland. Saeb
Erekat, the Palestinian minister in charge of
negotiations with Israel,
has called the fence “a profound disaster that’s engulfing the Palestinian
people.”
In April 2003, Arafat appointed a prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who
had frequently criticized his leadership, and accepted a plan put forth by United
States, Russia,
the European Union and the United Nations.
Known as the “road map,” this plan created a timetable leading to
the creation of a Palestinian state, required Palestinian groups to declare a
ceasefire, asked Israel
to discontinue the establishment of new settlements, and pledged that the
quartet of sponsoring groups would aggressively hold the Palestinians and the
Israelis accountable for fulfilling their obligations. While the Palestinian Authority embraced the
plan, the Sharon government added a
list of 14 reservations that rejected the firm timelines and international
monitoring and made the entire plan conditional on the ending of Palestinian
violence against Israelis. Predictably,
the road map led nowhere. Palestinian
violence and Israeli retaliation continued.
Prime Minister Abbas claimed that years of
Israeli attacks upon the Palestinian Authority had rendered it powerless to
restrain militant groups. Israel
refused to rein in its settlements, dismantling only a few remote outposts
while establishing several new ones.
Some of the roadblocks and checkpoints that had virtually destroyed the
Palestinian economy were eliminated, but new ones were also constructed. Although initially supportive of the process,
the U.S. became
preoccupied with the war in Iraq
and did little to pressure either side to follow through on its
commitments. As Saeb
Erekat commented: “We need Bush to say, ‘We’re
watching you. Israel
is supposed to stop settlement activity, period. Do it.
You are supposed to go back to your positions of September 2000. Do it.’
And to the Palestinians: ‘Where are the reforms? Where are the security
obligations? One, two, three—do it. We are going to watch you and tell the world
once and for all who is doing it and who is not doing it.’”
In September 2003, Abbas
resigned, blaming both obstructionist tactics by Arafat and Israel’s
refusal to make any concessions for the failure of the road map. He was eventually replaced by Ahmed Quria, who was seen as much less independent of
Arafat. At least 2,500 Palestinians and
900 Israelis have been killed since late September 2000 when the Palestinian
uprising against Israeli occupation began after the failure of the Camp
David peace talks. What the
future holds is impossible to predict.
Some believe that the Palestinian Authority will eventually have to come
down harder on militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while others
believe that this would lead to Arafat’s demise and eventual replacement by the
very groups Israel
wants him to contain. Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster,
predicts that, if the conflict continues, Hamas will replace Arafat as the
voice of the Palestinians. “People want
nothing short of blood, more of it,” he has said, “and under these conditions,
the ones who give them blood are the ones they will give their support.”
One thing that is very clear is that there is little hope
that there will be any progress as long as Arafat and Sharon remain the leaders
of their respective peoples. In the fall
of 2003, independent Israeli and Palestinians met in Geneva,
Switzerland and
formulated a model peace agreement, hoping to put pressure on their respective
governments. The 50-page Geneva
Accord called for a non-militarized Palestinian state in the West
Bank and Gaza in
return for peace with Israel. Palestinians would also receive the Arab
neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and sovereignty (with
full Jewish access) over Al Aksa mosque and the Temple
Mount. The Israelis would keep settlements for about
three quarters of the Jews in the West Bank (in return
for an equivalent amount of land from Israel),
including virtually all the new Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem
built in the Arab part of the city. Palestinian
refugees would receive compensation, but only a small minority, about 30,000,
would be allowed to return to their homes in Israel. The accord was quickly condemned by the
Israeli government, and a month later Sharon
warned that, unless the Palestinians ended violence against Israel,
the Israelis would begin a process of “unilateral disengagement” from
the Palestinians. This would result in
the security fence becoming a permanent border and the Palestinians in the West
Bank being reduced to isolated settlements that would have little
chance of developing into a viable independent state.
The conflict in the Middle East
remains the most significant threat to world peace. For the United
States, U.S.
support of Israel
is the major factor in the anti-American sentiments that pervade the Arab world
and is undoubtedly the root cause of the continued terrorist threat. At the current time, however, both the Israeli’s
and Palestinians are becoming increasingly hardened in their attitudes toward
one another. It is a problem that is
more likely to become worse than improve.
Jeffrey Stroebel, The Sycamore School, 1999. Revised 2004.