The never ending Israel-Palestine Conflict
World is full of conflicts — India-Pakistan, North-South Korea, US-Russia and many others. But none of them match the intense region of Israel and Palestine. This conflict since the beginning of the World War and even before has only grown. Thus it becomes very important to know the history of this enmity than by merely forming opinions based on some tweets or photos.
Before starting this article, I would like to mention that this is not an anti-Muslim rhetoric or filled with Islamophobia, but is based on real facts and interpretations that radical leaders propagated for decades.
“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews killing the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”
The above statement is the quote from Koran, as given and stated by Hamas, a militant organization in it’s Article 7 of Hamas Covenant. Of course, it could be a wrong interpretation of the holy book but that’s how the Hamas interpreted.
UN Approval of Different Israeli and Palestine State
In 1947, the UN General assembly had approved the resolution of 2 different states — Israel and Palestine. However, a day after the resolution was passed, pan Arab community attacked Israel, the nascent country that was just formed. The attackers were Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. The purpose of the attack remained the same — Extermination of Jews.
But God has His way and Israel won the war seizing some territories. As a result, many Arabs left the zone and settled in nearby states. Interestingly, it was only Jordan that gave these settlers equal rights. And now the very same Arabs and UN demands that Israel should take all of them back along with their grandchildren. The motive that could not be fulfilled with war was not being done using ‘Refugee’ status. Cmon!
A nation whose people had just barely survived the Holocaust and somehow able to get a small piece of land were attacked. By all morals, duties and rights it was absolutely correct and important for them to have seized and captured the strategic points. Would you every believe that a second attack wont come for Israel?
The 1949 Armistice act had ordered 5,75,000 Jews to be expelled from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria after the US adopted the Palestinians Anti-Semitic demand.
The US had supported Fatah (a constitution that we will see later in the story) and signed up an agreement with Hamas, the militant organisation, whose sole aim was the extermination of Jews. Even many US authorities showed concern to such alignment as the Hamas doesnt believe in the Jews “right to existence”.
In fact all the major leaders of the Arab world had made it clear that the conflict with Israel will not resolve even if there is a formation of Palestine state.
History — This is where you can understand the development of Israeli attitude towards Radicals
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 had made it sure that Judea, Samaria and Gaza belong to Israel, i.e. Jews. But the desire to make the relations with Arabs, British along with administrators of Palestine and local Arabs started promoting violence against the Jews so that the Balfour Declaration could be brought down in the UN General Assembly. During the passover holidays, merciless killings were done for 3 days in Jerusalem. The Victims — Jews. The organiser — Haj-Amin-al-Husseini , the head of the Palestine Arabs.
Husseini was the founder of Palestine Arabs and the most influential muslim leader of the world in world war 2. He was elevated as the mufti of Jerusalem by British and leader of the supreme muslim council. Post Ottoman collapse, there was a vacuum in the Islamic world. Turkey’s Ataturk had refused to join the Caliphate and decided to go secular. This is why Husenni became the leader and called for violence against jews and British in the Islamic regions.
He never wanted a specific state for Palestine Arabs because he treated them like pan Arabs as per the islamic concept Ummah. Instead he had the hatred for jews. Between 1929 and 1933 he made several attacks against the jews. And what the British did? They asked the jews to surrender to them and also give away the lands. All this is documented!
There was a time when British was not so keen for the adamant and inhuman demands of Husseini.
But with the rise of Germany, Husseini and the Arab world threatened the British of dire consequences in case they support Jews. Needless to say that Britain was the enemy of Germany. Husseini had supported Hitler in capturing Iraq, the then British dominated territory, only because Hitler had an hatred for Jews. This is because British could never be more anti-Semitic than Nazis.
1936 — The terror on Jews and supporters started officially under the leadership of Husseini. Defenceless Jews were killed in hospitals, buses, schools and even moderate Arabs were not spared who showed sympathy towards the Jews. An estimate of 549 Jews and 494 moderate Arabs were killed. This was followed by imposition of Sharia law and anyone not abiding will be killed. This also made the issue International in nature. Thus began the campaign for ‘Eradication of the Jews’ by Arab world. This continued for 3 years.
1939 White Paper — The British now decided to totally side with the Arabs and grant major parts of the land to them. The Peel Commission had made absurd laws for Jews — Population can only grow till 450,000, prohibition of land purchases amongst others. This was critically commented by the Chairman of the UN General Assembly, but it did not deter British. But guess what, even this bizarre paper was also not accepted by the Arabs. They wanted no Jews at all.
Husseini had translated the famous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Arabic which was a book written the secret police of Russia when there was a hatred for Jews. This translation spread across the Islamic nations and gathered momentum to completely destroy Jews. He formed an alliance with Axis powers on the condition that they would recognise Arab states and let them have sole rights over Jews and treat accordingly.
Hussein’s meeting record with Hitler stated that this fundamental condition of cooperation was a free hand to exterminate every last Jew”. Hitler responded with “The Jews are yours”. He got most advanced tech radios from Nazis where he pronounced Jews as enemies of Allah. This broadcast was throughout the Islamic world.
After the war, 75% of the entire Jewish community was murdered. The remaining were displaced and only wanted to have a state of their own. The State of Israel. It was eventually announced by the UN General Assembly in 1947 but we all know what happened later — The immediate attack by the 5 Arab nations.
Yasir Arafat
Arafat was Husseini’s successor. During Husseini’s time, anti-Semitism, extermination of Jews, pro-Nazis were considered good words and ideologies. After the war, this was not accepted.This got changed to anti-Zionism , by Soviets (we will see why Soviets came in picture). Arafat had charted new propaganda of terrorism and arming up the Palestinians, hiding behind Peace, in order to exterminate Zionism (and not Jews) and complete Liberation of Palestine. Thus came Fatah constitution.
It propagated that armed conflict and struggle is a strategy and needed and such acts can never be disallowed by the world. Articles also oppose any political solution offered to solve the dispute. The Fatah constitution had many articles which are disturbing to read unless you also believe in the “Death to Jews” concept.
Just like Husseini leveraged Nazi relationship over British, in the current world, Arafat leveraged Soviet relationship over US, so that his interests are met.
Post Cold War
The British had lost the title of World Leader to the US. On the other side of the planet, USSR or Soviet Union was another strong power. It was natural for both to exercise control on rest of the countries in order to be the supreme power. Soviet’s had a strategy to have influence on third world nations vowing for independence and liberation. It also had a major disregard for all those states who were against Communism. Israelis or Jews had fought both British and the Ottomans and thus were definitely anti-colonialists.
Club these with Soviet anti-Semitism, Israel’s anti-communism and its friendliness to US, led the Soviets to disregard Israel. Soviets now gave a new name to Anti-Semitism, it was anti-Zionism, the national movement for the liberation of Jews. This would also make pan Arab word take Soviet’s side and thereby a control on the region. Thus started Soviet’s political vocabulary against Israel.
This was well taken in UN as well. They had sponsored draft resolution to bring Zionism equivalent to Racism. It was rejected at UN but a motion was set. After 11 years, it came into effect. Remember, that time Soviet was very strong.
Arafat and Naseer (The then President of Egypt)
After 1950, Naseer was the leader of the Arab world .PLO had been an Egyptian organization with Naseer in Control. With his all out attack on Israel in 1967 and facing a humiliating defeat, he thought of siding with Arafat and supporting his strategy of terrorism against Israel. And thus Naseer put the reign of PLO in the hands of Arafat.
With Naseer’s Soviet connections, it was quite easy to arm this new organization against Israel and eventually helping the Soviets to retain their control and allies in the region.
When Arafat took control of PLO region, given by Israel, he perpetrated terror. By inciting fellow people across the Middle East, he gave speeches in Mosques on the lines of Husseini. One such popular and infamous speech is in South Africa Mosque. After all Husseini was his mentor and Arafat was one of the troop members when the 5 states attacked Israel.
When the PLO was formed and were allowed to govern the area with Palestinian population, instead of the governance, they had built large scale terrorist infrastructure meant solely to target Israeli population. It was a routine to see daily attacks killing Israeli civilians. When Israeli forces later got control of these camps, they found documents (in Ramallah headquarters) that had Yasir Arafat as the head of such terror attacks. In fact since the inception of the PLO, they had controlled media, schools, mosques and govt. ministries. Huge amount of energy was used to carry out a systematic campaign against Israelis. It wasn’t to bring them to 1949 act, which itself was wrong, but their complete destruction. The preachings deemed the Jews as monsters and enemies of Allah. It is well documented.
“Satan has, in the eyes of many people, made [one people’s] evil actions appear beautiful until they thought that their race was the best of all, and their kind better than all others, and that other people are their slaves and do not reach their level. Such a people are the Jews”
Arafat had used both his Pan Arab influence as well as relations with the US to be in charge of the PLO. He started with Jordan to plant his PLO forces and used Jordan as the base to attack Israel. Not only this, 2 years later he planned to take over Jordan. The country that gave its land to Arafat was itself in trouble. Fearing this, Jordan forces along with Israeli assistance overthrew PLO. Arafat had then fled to Lebanon where he pursued similar things. Lebanon was also mostly Christians followed by Shi’ite muslims. PLO forces misused Lebanon to attack Israel and eventually was overturned by Israel. The same PLO forces at that time trained Hezbollah and Ayotollah forces which later formed Iran Revolutionary Guards.
Now no Arab stated wanted to host Arafat because of his deeds. He finally got some assistance from Tunisia when US forced Tunisian President in 1982. This was done on the belief that Arafat would tell fellow Middle East nations that US was their friend and so that US could have a stronger hold on Middle East.
Arafat wanted to destabilise Israel using terrorism as the method so that eventually the Jews would emigrate from Israel. PLO conducted its first airline hijacking in 1968 and later carried out more than 8000 attacks on Israel (bombings, attacks on schools, restaurants, civilians). Not to forget the infamous kidnapping and massacre of Israeli Olympics team.
The politics of appeasement led Arafat to propagate his cause. Attacks from Palestine towards Israel were shown sympathetic because of the left oriented media, their keenness to meet PLO leaders and at the same time fear of having killed if they showed it negatively. Such was the condition that no one criticised Arafat when he openly supported terrorism in UN General Assembly.
The 1973 Oil Embargo led the Europeans to forcefully take PLO sides and deter Israel as Oil was the most important thing then, even till date.
How Arafat curbed peaceful Palestinians wanting co-existence
Palestinians born under Israeli rule (i.e. post 1967) in the lands of Judea and Samaria had different views than their parents who had witnessed the brutal Jordan ruling. They wanted co-existence and was against anti-Semitism. Arafat took advantage of this situation and immediately announced a peaceful co-existence. This was a historical moment. The west renounced with joy.
But Arafat had used this to identify people who believed in co-existence. Between Dec 1987 and Jan 1989, 21 Palestinians were killed by fellow Palestinians. However this number rose to 138 in 1989 and 184 in 1990. This number was more than the number that were killed by Israeli forces.
Post Arafat’s death, there have been numerous political changes in the region, most important being that of Hamas elected by the Palestinians. Owing to US pressure on Israel to allow Hamas participate in the elections, it had made a gruesome mistake which can be understood from the current circumstances.
There are various other things that have led to the erosion of peace in the region and that can be linked political games of the world powers. The meetings at the Camp David have been a failure and refusal of Palestine leaders for a 2 state solution has only make things worse. Nowhere in the world you can find a self declared state or a state with world attention endorsing statements like “Death to Israel”, “Death to the Jews”, “Jews are the enemies of Allah” and of same kind. If these words and ideologies still do not force you to think that such leaders of the so called Arab world are insane and inhuman, then there is really no need for a debate.
Israel has seen a lot from beginning. The fact that no one was on its side for a very very long time, made it realise that self sufficiency is the only way. And they are the numero uno in technology, especially defence. The reason for their ruthlessness owes to their traumatic history and unwillingness of the Arabs to let them even exist in the world. Despite this we see a sizeable Arab population in Israel living with same constitutional rights as the Jews.
A war definitely kills people on both sides and killing of innocents can never be accepted by anyone, be it on either side. But unfortunately, in a war that is inevitable.
