The Holocaust education program, Making History Together, holds a central role within The Together Plan. This programme delves into the historical context of antisemitism and examines the ties between Soviet Union Jews and Israel. Robin Moss, a highly esteemed facilitator of our program, has crafted this insightful article for us in response to the attack on Israel that transpired on Saturday, October 7th, 2023.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – A Short Primer
Robin Moss (October 2023)
On Simchat Torah 5784 – 7 October 2023 in the Gregorian calendar – Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group who are in political control of the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack on Israel. Firing thousands of rockets and breaching the border fence in dozens of places, they entered southern Israel on vehicles carrying weapons and brutally murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians, as well as soldiers and policemen. They also took hostages back into Gaza. This attack, a total surprise to Israel, is just the latest in more than a century of violence in what is often called the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. This short article aims to be a basic primer to the conflict. It is neither in-depth nor exhaustive, but I hope it can help to provide some context for the appalling scenes we are currently seeing in the media (both conventional and social).
Ever since the 1880s, when Jews inspired by the Zionist ideology began to immigrate to (what was then called) Palestine, there has been tension between them and the Arabs who lived in Palestine. From the very start, or certainly from near the start, of the conflict, the conflict has had (at least) three dimensions:
- Political – there was, and is, a struggle for control (ie sovereignty) over the land. For Zionism, the land is the Land of Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People and should be under Jewish sovereignty. For Palestinians, the land is the Land of Palestine and should be under Palestinian sovereignty. Whether there is a way for both claims to be fully implemented, and if so how that would come to be, is a major issue within the conflict
- Religious – the Zionists were (almost all) Jews, and some Jews see the conflict through a religious lens; in other words, Jewish claims to the Land are God-given, and a Jewish state is God’s will. For some of these religious Jews, non-Jews can live in the land as a tolerated minority; a few radical religious Jews seek to remove non-Jews from the land entirely. Palestinians historically were (mostly) a mixture of Muslims and Christians (today, the vast majority who live in the region are Muslim). Some Palestinians see the conflict through a religious lens; the most common way this plays out is via so-called Islamism, in other words a particular, radical interpretation of Islam that (amongst other things) claims that the land is Muslim land and (at best) Jews can live there as a tolerated minority or (at worst) that Jews cannot live in the land at all and/or can be subject to terrible violence. Hamas, for instance, has an Islamist ideology
- Narrative – a narrative is a story that a people tells itself about itself. It defines a people’s past in a particular way in order to imply a certain preferred future. All peoples have narratives, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a particularly powerful example of a narratives-driven conflict. This is because, as with both of the dimensions above, key elements of each side’s narratives can feel incompatible with the other side’s narrative. For instance, the claim that the whole land is Jewish and can only be Jewish is not reconcilable with the claim that the whole land is Muslim and can only be Muslim. Narratives are what turn political or religious beliefs, held by individuals and groups within the two sides, into strongly-held and -acted-upon claims of justice
In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a brief survey of the history is thus:
- From the 1880s to the end of the First World War, the land was under the control of the Ottoman Turks, who allowed Jews to immigrate to the land and generally had an indifferent attitude to the whole region. It was not considered especially important to the Ottomans, and was sparsely populated and relatively underdeveloped
- At the end of the First World War, the British took control of the land. Operating under a so-called Mandate (a kind of temporary colonial control, aimed to prepare a land for self-government in the future), the British promised the Zionists that they would support their project to build a national home, for instance by nurturing their institutions and allowing Jewish immigration. This infuriated the Arabs, who were the vast majority of the inhabitants, but also, as the 1930s progressed, the Zionists too lost faith in the British, who reneged on some of their promises. Violence erupted regularly and Palestine became almost ungovernable at points
- After the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, the newly-created UN agreed to “partition” the land into three areas: a Jewish state; an Arab state; and an internationalised area around Jerusalem. In 1947 this plan was voted on and approved; in May 1948, the British left and an ongoing civil war between Palestine’s Jews and Arabs erupted into a regional war as the neighbouring countries (primarily Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) invaded the newly-independent State of Israel. Israel won the war, but as part of that war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs (from hereon in: Palestinians) became refugees. The so-called West Bank was taken over by Jordan, the so-called Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt and decades of tensions on Israeli’s borders began
- In 1967, an attempt to destroy Israel by Egypt, Syria and Jordan was defeated by a stunning military victory, which brought vast new territories under Israeli control. This included the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which contained hundreds of thousands – and soon millions – of Palestinians, who came under Israeli control; how to deal with this situation remains a conundrum to this day. Two other territories, the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Peninsula in the south, were also conquered
- In 1973, on Yom Kippur, a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria caught Israel off-guard. Although Israel eventually won the war, the initial shock of invasion profoundly challenged Israel’s “indestructible” mentality arising from their victory in 1967
- Beginning in the late-1970s, some of the Arab countries concluded that they could not defeat Israel militarily and instead started peace talks with Israel. Egypt made peace in 1979 (and Israel left the Sinai Peninsula); Jordan followed in 1994. Attempts to make peace with Syria (in return for giving back the Golan Heights) did not succeed
- In the late-1980s, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza began an “intifada” (uprising), challenging Israeli control of their lives, as well as being an expression for some of the participants of Islamism. Israel and the Palestinians began, in secret, a peace process, which was revealed in 1993 when the two sides formally recognised each other for the first time
- The so-called Peace Process was set up on the premise of the “Two State Solution”, a template for peace that would involve a State of Palestine being established alongside the State of Israel. For the past 30 years, with more or less enthusiasm and optimism, this Two State Solution has been discussed and debated. The four key issues negotiated over are: 1) security concerns Israel has about a Palestinian state; 2) the settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank and (until 2005) Gaza Strip; 3) the status of Jerusalem; 4) what to do about the Palestinian refugees’ claim to “return” (ie move back to what is today Israel). The Peace Process made major progress in the late 1990s and early 2000s but today has largely been abandoned
- In the early 2000s, a second intifada started. As it ran out of steam, Israel announced that it would unilaterally leave the Gaza Strip; in the summer of 2005, all Israeli soldiers and settlers left. In 2006, Hamas, a radical Islamist terrorist group, took over control of the Gaza Strip, which remains the status quo to today. They have periodically fired rockets at Israel from Gaza; rounds of violence have peaked in 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021 and the current round in 2023