PalestinianIsraeli Conflict

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Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

• Background, the Creation of Israel,
• and the Palestinian Nakbah

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Geography of Conflict
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Note Unless otherwise noted, all maps in this
presentation from http//www.dartmouth.edu/gov46/
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These maps prepared by pro-Israeli sources show
the size of Israel-Palestine relative to other
parts of the world.
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Why did the Zionists want to found a state? Why
in Palestine? On what grounds did Palestinians
and other Arabs resist them and challenge their
plans? Why did they believe they were entitled to
stop them?
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Zionism principles and context

• Basic tenets
• Jews constitute a nation
• Jews should establish a Jewish state in Palestine
• Largely secular (secular nationalism)
• Context
• Centuries of Jewish persecution
• Western Euro assimilation, Russian Eastern
  European persecution pogroms
• Age of Nationalism, European colonialism
• National state as solution
• Ignorance and stereotypes about Arabs
• Why Palestine?
• Religious significance Before the Jewish
  diaspora
• Jerusalem
• Kingdom of Israel, 1000 BC (lasts in unified form
  about 70 years)
• Before that? 3000-1500 BC Canaanites 1200-1100
  BC Philistines Jews invade settle the area
• 722 BC-600s AD various Jewish states rise fall
  but area mostly under control of empires
  (Babylonian, Roman, etc.)

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Palestinian resistance motivations and context

• Politics and Identities, early 20th century
• Self-identification as familial/local,
  Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Ottoman
• Palestine as southern Syria under Arab rule?
• British wartime promises of Arab independence
• Long-term Arab settlement and use of land
• Area under Ottoman rule, 14-20th c.
• Local autonomy under Palestinian notables
• Customary land use
• 70 population rural
• Landowners and tenants
• Jerusalem
• Arab demographic majority
• 1878 443,000 Arabs 15,000 Jews
• 1914 560,000 Arabs 80,000 Jews.
• Arab pop 84 Muslim (mostly Sunni), 16
  Christian
• Jewish pop about 70 longtime inhabitants, about
  30 Zionists
• 1933 about 950,000 Arabs 280,000 Jews
• 1946 1.26 million Arabs 608,000 Jews

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Why did the Zionists succeed in founding a Jewish
state in Palestine?
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1. Diplomatic Pressure Influential foreign
allies

• British (London) support for Zionism, 1917-1939
• Balfour Declaration
• Palestine Mandate (mixed policies)
• BUT. The White Paper (1939)
• U.S., Russian support

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2. Extremely high level of organization and
multiple repertoires of contention

• Creating facts on the ground Immigration and
  land transfers
• World Zionist Organization/Jewish National Fund
• Five aliyah
• Proto state-building
• 1929 Jewish Agency in Palestine
  (quasi-governmental)
• Histadrut- Jewish labor organization
• Haganah- Jewish defense forces
• Irgun
• Armed pressure
• BUT Internal differences
• Labor Settlement Movement (Labor Zionism)
  1904-1914
• Land Purchases
• Socialism
• Self-reliance closed shop labor
• Revisionist Zionism (Eretz Israel --
  territorial maximalization) - 1920s onward

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Above, David Ben-Gurion, leader of labor Zionism
and Israels first prime minister. Undated
picture from http//www.law.harvard.edu/library/co
llections/special/exhibitions/portrait_exhibit/Dav
id_Ben-Gurion.php. Below, Vladimir Jabotinsky,
leader of Revisionist Zionism.
Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of revisionist
Zionism.
Palestinian resistance leader Abd al Qadir
al-Husayni, 1930s.
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3. World War II the Holocaust

• Renewed Jewish emigration to Palestine
• Arming and training of Jewish units
• Wearing down of British resolve
• New conflict between British and Zionists in
  1940s
• Jewish perspective Jewish state needed for their
  protection
• Arab perspective Arabs shouldnt have to pay for
  Europes injustice towards Jews

Jewish passengers from the damaged ship, the
Exodus, disembark after the war in July 1947 at
the port of Haifa before being forcibly returned
to camps. Photograph from the Government Press
Office, Jerusalem, courtesy of the USHMM Photo
Archives.
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What obstacles did the Palestinians face in
stopping the movement and establishing a state of
their own?
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Along with economic, military, diplomatic
disadvantages political fragmentation and
suppression

• Internal divisions among the Palestinians and
  Arabs
• Class divisions
• Rising land prices Absentee land sales and
  displacement, impoverishment of tenant farmers
• British policies, etc
• Palestinian revolt, 1936-1939
• Leaves at least 3,000 Arabs, 2,000 Jews, 600
  British dead
• Decimates Palestinian leadership
• Ideological/national differences Pan-Arabism vs
  national states

One depiction of the Arab Revolt.
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Establishment of Israel, 1948

• UN Partition Plans propose 2-state solution
• 3 Phases of war
• 1) Attacks by both Jews and Arabs on British
  forces, 1945-1947
• 2) Palestinian Zionist civil war, 1947-48
• 3) Arab states vs Zionists 1948-1949
• British Withdrawal UN Partition Plan 1947
• Civil war 1947-48
• Bombings and terror used by both sides
• Deir Yassin 04/1948
• 14 May 1948 Israeli Proclamation of independence
• Arab-Israeli wars, 1948-49
• Transjordan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon vs
  Haganah and other Jewish fighters

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Results of the War

• Expanded Israel state boundaries
• 77 of mandate territory
• Jordan controls West Bank Egypt controls Gaza
• 700,000 Palestinians expelled or fled from
  Palestine (al-Nakbah)
• 470,000 enter camps in Arab Palestine Gaza
• Rest dispersed (Palestinian Diaspora)
• Exodus of 325,000 Jews from the Arab world to
  Israel
• End of 1949 Israeli population about 1 million

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Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their
homes in the fighting after 1948. This woman sits
across from her home, separated from it by the
new border.
On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British
Mandate over a Palestine expired, the Jewish
People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum
and approved a proclamation declaring the
establishment of the State of Israel.
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Why didnt the Palestinians get a state in what
was left of the Palestine Mandate after the
establishment of Israel in 1948?Why did so many
Palestinians end up as refugees after 1948?
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The new Israeli state institutions and ethos

• Parliamentary democracy
• Population citizenship
• Jewish immigration
• Palestinian population
• National identity
• Homeland for all Jews
• Law of Return 1950
• Severing of ties to European Jewish past
• Religion vs secularism
• Security
• Conscription and armed forces
• Armed forces as instrument of foreign policy