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Israel and Palestine

The nation of Israel is the vortex of Middle East politics, pitting two groups of people, Arabs and Jews, both with competing historical and religious claims to the land which one set of extremists believes should be all Israel while another believes it should be all Palestine.

For Jews, Israel is the biblical homeland. The patriarch Abraham - who is also recognized as such by the Christian and Muslim faiths - is thought to have first arrived there - then called Canaan - from the deserts of Mesopotamia - now present day Iraq - sometime around 1900 B.C. A famine drove his descendants, by then called the Tribes of Israel, to Egypt where they were later enslaved, only to be delivered by Moses - also revered by all three faiths. The conquest of Canaan by this group is believed to have taken place sometime between 1290 and 1200 B.C. The legendary kings Saul, David, and Solomon, built a political power, with David establishing Jerusalem as the capital, sometime around 1000 B.C. However following the death of Solomon in 900 B.C., the Kingdom was divided into two: Israel to the north and Judah to the south.

The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians - from present day northern Iraq - in 721 B.C. However the Assyrians themselves were conquered by the Babylonians - from present day southern Iraq - in 612 B.C. who in 587 B.C., took the southern kingdom of Judah and destroyed Jerusalem. However soon after Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II's death, Babylon surrendered to Cyrus II, King of Persia, who allowed the Jews to return to their land in 538 B.C. The land remained in Persian hands until Alexander the Great drove the Persians out and claimed the land for Macedonia. However just as soon as the Macedonian empire had been created, it fell apart and the area in question was struggled over by the Ptolemies and the Seleucids.

The different parts of the Macedonian Empire, including the land in question, fell to the Romans. In a time of rising discontent by the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught, "founding" Christianity. In 70 A.D. the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem but it wasn't until the last Jewish revolt in A.D. 132-135 when their dispersal truly began. The diaspora took Jews away, to Europe and Africa. The Roman Empire also broke up and the land in question fell under the jurisdiction of the Byzantine Empire, whose emperor Constantine had made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

In the 7th century A.D., following the birth of Islam, Muslims conquered this land from the Byzantine Empire, and constructed the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in A.D. 691. It is believed to be the site where the patriarch Abraham had nearly sacrificed his son Isaac and where Mohammed, founder of Islam, had ascended into heaven. By the 10th century, the Byzantine Empire had pushed the Muslims back to the gates of Jerusalem (A.D. 976), while Jews were settling in Germany and developing their own language, Yiddish. In the 11th century, the land in question was taken by Seljuk Turks who refused Christian pilgrims safe passage. So in 1095 A.D., Pope Urban II called for a Holy War to take back the land for Christianity, thus beginning the Crusades, pitting Christian armies against Muslim armies. The Christian forces took Jerusalem in 1099 but it was retaken in 1187. Five crusades and a "Children's Crusade" would dominate the next two centuries but the Turks remained in control. During these centuries, the predominant inhabitants of these lands were the Arabs.

The Seljuk Turks were later absorbed into what became the Ottoman Empire, which ended the Byzantine Empire. By 1529, the Ottoman Empire had reached the gates of Vienna and occupied the land in question. However at the end of World War I, as the Ottoman Empire had allied itself with Austria and Germany, the land in question was taken and ceded to the British in the form of a protectorate.

In the meantime, while enriching their local cultures, the Jews were often scapegoated and viewed with suspicion and mistrust. They were expelled from France first in 1182 and again in 1306, subjected to the Spanish Inquisition and expelled from Spain, Portugal, England and persecuted in Germany and blamed for the Black Death.

By the time Hitler set up the first concentration camps in 1933, Jews had been persecuted in many parts of Europe for hundreds of years. Hitler's Final Solution, the name for the German genocide of 6 million Jews, was simply the biggest of many vicious attacks directed against Jewish people. The scale and scope of this atrocity finally woke the world's conscience and gave impetus to and significant sympathy for Zionism, a Jewish movement founded in 1896 by a Hungarian Jew Theodore Herzl. Zionism advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East and received strong endorsement from the British government. This took the form of the Balfour declaration in 1917 promising the Jews a homeland, considered significant since the British had been given control of the Palestinian territory following the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. However the British had also promised the Arabs the same land, in their efforts to weaken the Ottoman hold in the region.

The text of the Balfour Declaration specifically reads: "…it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…" British interest in Palestine was heavily influenced by their interests in the region, notably their desire to control the Suez Canal and their interest in oil. The British mandate over Palestine was officially authorized by the League of Nations in 1922.

An oil discovery in 1936 heralded the rise of Saudi Arabia's power as a major oil producer although an oil concession had already been granted to Standard Oil in 1933.

In 1947 United Nations General Assembly set aside territory of the British protectorate of Palestine to create the state of Israel. Resolution 181 called for the establishment of independent Jewish and Arab states, and a "special international regime" for Jerusalem. As the British completed their withdrawal in 1948, Palestinians and several Arab armies attacked but were repelled by the Israelis, acquiring 21% more land than they had been granted in the Partition Plan of Resolution 181. Then Jordan took the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while Egypt took the Gaza Strip, which were lands set aside by the U.N. partition for the Palestinians. Three hundred thousand Palestinians fled Israel or were driven into Jordan, with 780,000 Palestinians displaced in total, driven in part by massacres and the wholesale destruction of around 400 Palestinian villages. Resolution 194 called for the Palestinian Right to Return. The Arab League created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella body of Palestinian organizations, in 1964.

In 1956 Israel invaded Egypt, occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip but were pressured by the U.S. and the U.N. to return these lands. However in 1967, fearing a strike from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel launched what came to be known as the Six Day War against them, seizing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan. In November of that same year, the U.N. passed Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Instead of paying heed to the entity responsible for its creation, Israelis began to settle in the occupied lands in 1968. As the Arab armies were largely discredited as agents of vindication for the Palestinians, Yasser Araft, leader of the al-Fatah guerrilla organization (founded in 1959), was elected Chairman of the PLO in 1969. The PLO continued its guerrilla attacks against Israel and complemented them with terrorist attacks on the world stage to draw attention to their cause. In 1972, a PLO faction took eleven Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Games, resulting in all of the hostages being killed.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat attempted to strike peace with Israel in exchange for a return of the Sinai, however his attempts were ignored. In frustration, Egypt and Syria launched the October 1973 war, a surprise attack which became known as the Yom Kippur War of 1973, named for the Jewish feast of atonement. Israel received extensive support from the U.S. during this conflict: 35,000 tons of weapons, 40 Phantom bombers, 48 A4 Skyhawk ground attack jets, and 12 C130 transporters. Angered by U.S. support, the Arab nations instated an oil embargo which severely disrupted oil supplies. The United Nations passed Resolution 338, reaffirming Resolution 242.

Despite his defeat, Sadat persisted in his peace overtures and made a dramatic trip to Israel in 1977. This led to the Camp David Accords in 1979: Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for diplomatic recognition and peace. This overture however cost Sadat his life as he was assassinated by a zealot in 1981.

Meanwhile, the civil war in Lebanon, raging since 1975, had facilitated more guerrilla attacks into Israel from southern Lebanon. As Lebanon descended into more chaos, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 although at this time, it was a relatively quiet period for guerrilla attacks. The invasion succeeded in running the PLO out of Lebanon but resulted in Lebanese suicide attacks against the Israeli occupying army. The same year of the invasion, the Israeli Army cordoned off two Palestinian refugee camps, the Sabra and Shatila camps, and allowed the Phalangists, the Christian militia of the recently-assassinated President-elect Bashir Gemayal, to come in and massacre between 800 and 1,000 men, women, and children. In the meantime, U.S. Marines were sent into Beirut; while ostensibly there to support the "central government," they found themselves aligned with one of several factions vying for control. Several months later (April 1983), a suicide attack leveled the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing more than 60 people while a few months after that (October 1983), a suicide bomber drove a truck with 12,000 pounds of dynamite into the Marines' barrack, killing 241 people. In February 1984, the Marines pulled out of Lebanon. That September (1983), Israel began to withdraw from Lebanon, almost completing it by 1985 save for a narrow strip of land. Israel continued incursions and bombing raids into Lebanon afterwards including the Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 which included the bombing of a U.N. refugee camp.

In December 1987, a lethal altercation sparked a spontaneous Palestinian rebellion which soon spread. This rebellion was called the Intifada (Uprising). Israel responded with repression: in January 1988 Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced a "strong arm policy" to respond with "force, might, and beatings," complementing the total denial of due process with administrative detentions. The policy was to break the limbs of anyone caught or suspected of participating in the uprising. But as this practice began to be more exposed, outrage grew even within Israel by the Israeli army's repressive techniques. However Israel's Landau Commission had legitimized the use of torture, using the euphemism of "moderate physical pressure." Despite or perhaps as a result of the repression, the Intifada seemed to only grow. Israel was eventually forced to pursue a political negotiation.

The Oslo Agreement of 1993, reached between Israel and the PLO, set out a timetable for reaching a final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. It also led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994 in the Gaza Strip and Jericho, which Yasser Arafat led, and was the legislative and executive body exercising the powers devolved by Israel. This was a gradual plan by which more land would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority however much of the transfers that were supposed to occur did not happen or were subjected to renegotiation time and again.

This agreement was opposed by other Palestinian and Arab groups, such as Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) and Hezbollah (Party of God), who continued attacks against Israeli targets. In 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, who had been the Israeli leader behind the Oslo process (and also the Defense Minister who had come up with the broken bones reaction to the Intifada) was assassinated by an Israeli zealot, a right-wing extremist. As tensions rose, President Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestine Authority President Arafat together in Camp David to try to revive the Oslo process and reach a framework for a final agreement. However these talks collapsed and with them the Oslo process died.

One of the key Palestinian demands at the talks had been control over all of East Jerusalem, including the Haram al-Sharif, the Dome of the Rock erected in A.D. 691, or Temple Mount, an area considered holy by both faiths (the Haram al-Sharif is the Temple Mount; the Dome of the Rock is contained within this place). On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, Member of the Knesset, Israel's legislative governing body, and former Israeli Defense Minister who had been forced to resign because he had been found responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, went to the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif escorted by more than 1,000 Israeli police officers. The following day, Palestinian demonstrators assembled at this site and Israeli security forces fired "rubber" bullets (rubber-coated steel bullets) as well as live ammunition at them. Five were killed and around 200 were injured.

The resulting uprising was such that in the following Israeli elections, Prime Minister Barak was ousted and Sharon with his no-compromise stance was elected. Especially since Sharon's ascendancy, the Israeli reaction has been one in which they have engaged in selective assassinations, prohibited by international human rights law; use of excessive force in crowd control, including the notorious killing of Muhammad al-Dura, a twelve year old Palestinian boy (this killing occurred before Sharon ascended to Prime Minister); continuation of house demolitions; torture and ill-treatment, as well as administrative detention. At the time of this writing, Israeli incursions into Palestinian areas with jets and armored personnel carriers, jet strikes are commonplace as are suicide attacks in retaliation.

By October 2001, according to Amnesty International more than 570 Palestinians and 150 Israelis had been killed, and 15,000 people maimed or wounded. In addition, Israel had demolished 500 Palestinian homes. Israeli security forces have also killed Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The United States of America is a staunch ally of Israel and Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. aid. Politically, Israel is the country with the most influence in the U.S. Congress thanks largely to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC, founded in the 1950s, serves as a stoplight for the many Political Action Committees that channel money and votes to those politicians who support Israel. It also channels support to opponents of those Members of Congress AIPAC decides are not pro-Israel enough. AIPAC is widely believed to be one of the key reasons Representative Paul Findlay, ten-term Illinois Republican, was defeated by Richard Durbin in 1982. In 1984, AIPAC targeted the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Percy, also of Illinois, and helped elect Paul Simon. Today, AIPAC has 50,000 members. The New York Times has called AIPAC the most important organization affecting the U.S. relationship with Israel, while Fortune magazine consistently ranks AIPAC among the most powerful interest groups. According to AIPAC, it has helped pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year, including the nearly $3 billion in aid. AIPAC is active on about 200 college campuses.

But this has not been a one-way street. Israel has been regarded as the tip of the U.S.'s spear in the region, especially during the first Cold War (1945-1989). Israel was frequently allied with repressive states that the United States also supported, like South Africa and Taiwan. Israeli assistance bolstered Guatemala and Nicaragua when the U.S. aid was curtailed for human rights reasons, while Israeli mercenaries assisted Colombian paramilitary groups in the 1980s. This strategic relationship has been shifting, especially since the First Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the United States assembled a coalition of Arab states to remove Iraqi forces from the gulf state of Kuwait, then and now controlled by a monarchy. Despite this shift, Israel remains politically powerful - certainly on Capitol Hill and in the State Department.