Ethics of War

1
Ethics of War

• The Israeli Palestinian Conflict

2
Basics of the Conflict

• The Pro-Israel camp generally base their
  arguments on the following principles a) Israel
  is the historical "homeland" of the Jewish
  peoples who have lived there continuously since
  biblical times. b) Many Jews believe that they
  deserve a "Jewish" state because of historical
  injustices, such as the Holocaust, and because
  they have international support and recognition
  through the U.N. c) The majority of Israelis
  support a "two-state" solution, creating a
  Palestinian state alongside Israel in Gaza and
  the West Bank. d) Other Israelis support the
  idea of "one-state", either by annexing all
  occupied territories into the Jewish state (far
  right view), or incorporate the occupied
  territories into one secular democratic state
  with equal rights for all (far left view).

• The Pro-Palestinian camp generally base their
  arguments on the following principles a) The
  Palestinian people have lived in the area of
  Israel/Palestine since biblical times. They see
  most Israeli Jews as foreign colonizers who began
  arriving within the last 100 years. b)
  Palestinians consider themselves a national
  entity, deserving of the rights of all nations,
  including a Palestinian state. c) Many Muslim
  Palestinians and their supporters see the land as
  Islamic holy land, and are strictly opposed to
  non-Muslims owning and establishing a state on
  Muslim land. d) Palestinians vary widely in what
  they see as a just solution to the conflict. They
  include the total destruction of Israel a
  "bi-national" or "one-state" solution and a
  "two-state" solution.

3
Purchasing the Land

• Before 1880, 10,000 Jews lived in Israel as
  Dhimmi
• From 1878 to 1908 Jews purchased from rich
  landowning effendis 400,000 dunams in Israel,
  about 1.5 of the land of Israel. Ottomans
  resisted Jewish immigration but Jews bribed their
  way in.
• More purchased in 20s and 30s

4
Jewish Arab Population
5

• Stephen P. Halbrook, PhD, JD, Virginia State Bar
  Attorney, in a 1981 Journal of Libertarian
  Studies article titled "The Alienation of a
  Homeland," wrote
• "As for the Jews right to 'return' to Israel
  because they populated the area two thousand
  years ago, this reasoning would vindicate much
  more strongly the right of Palestinian Arabs to
  return to their homeland of only thirty years
  ago."

6

• Jacob Tovy, PhD, Research Fellow at the
  University of Haifa, in a Spring 2003 Middle East
  Quarterly essay titled "Negotiating the
  Palestinian Refugees," wrote the following
• "Israel, the Palestinians argued, bore full
  responsibility for the creation of the refugee
  problem because its armed forces had carried out
  a systematic, planned campaign to expel the
  Palestinians during the 1948 war. The
  Palestinians then invoked Article 11 of U.N.
  Resolution 194 from December 1948, which, by
  their reading, required Israel to allow all Arab
  refugees interested in returning and living in
  peace alongside their Jewish neighbors to do so
  as soon as possible and to compensate those
  refugees who were not interested in returning for
  their abandoned property. The Palestinians
  claimed that this resolution gave every single
  refugee, and also every refugee's descendant, the
  right to return (what they called 'the right of
  return') to the place he or she left as a result
  of the war.

7

• Israel, on the other hand, rejected (as it has
  done since 1949) any possibility that a
  significant number of Palestinian refugees might
  be permitted to return to places within its
  pre-1967 boundaries. Israel's representatives
  refused to admit any responsibility for the
  genesis of the refugee problem, arguing that it
  was created because of the decision by the Arab
  states and the Palestinians to take military
  action in breach of the U.N. partition resolution
  of November 1947, which called for the
  establishment of two states in Palestine Jewish
  and Arab. This policy of the Arab states
  precipitated the 1948 war that created the
  problem in the first place. Israel argued that
  any significant return of refugees would
  undermine the Jewish-Zionist character of the
  state, endanger its security, and subvert its
  economy."