The Discord and Violence between Israel and Palestine - Assignment Example

Background briefing on The Discord and violence between Israel and Palestine Student’s Name: Instructor: Course Code: Institution: Date the Assignment is due: Introduction The conflict between Israeli and Palestine dates many centuries back. It involves matters of religion, land and anti-Semitic sentiments. In the 19th century, Zionists strongly believed that it was their obligation to reclaim their ancestral land that was at the heart of Palestine, which they claimed was in the hands of Arabs. In their attempts to do this, they faced very strong resistance from the Arab community in Palestine. This was presumed to be as a result strong anti-Semitic sentiments expressed by these Arabs. Attempts by members of the Zionist movement to try to dispossess the Arab population that lives in Israel were aimed at making Israel an exclusively Jewish state. The Jewish National Fund bought land which was then held in the Jewish people’s name. This way, the land could never be leased the Arab population. To this day, this situation has never changed. Arabs, on their part, aware of what the intentions of the Jewish population was, started to oppose any further immigration of Jews since their very existence posed a threat to the Palestinian Arab population. In the middle ages, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, this did not make the land any less Islamic or Arabic. About 60 percent of the entire Palestinian population was leading an agricultural life, with a balance being maintained between a small nomadic group and townspeople, in which case both groups considered themselves as belonging to the land of Palestine1. The historical question of land ownership in Palestine Jewish colonists started arriving into Palestine in 1882. According to the Ottoman Land Code that was established in 1858, agricultural land owners had to register the land in their own names. This land had previously been registered and was being handled through traditional practices of land tenure. The impact of the new laws was that indigenous land owners could not only lose the title deeds to their land, they could also lose the right to live on that land, to practice agriculture on it and even to pass it on to their preferred heirs. Formerly, they had always held these rights to be inalienable. The peasants who lived in the land often discovered later on that they had ceased to be the legal owners of the land, which had already been sold to Jewish settlers by different absentee landlords. The question of whether the opposition exerted by Arabs on Jews was based on real dangers posed to their own survival or on merely anti-Semitic sentiments has been posed by many scholars of the Israel-Arab conflict2. As Ahad Ha’am, a Zionist leader wrote in 1891, “Arabs clearly understood very clearly what exactly we were doing and the ideals that we were had set out to pursue”3. Prior to the 20 the century, the Jewish community that lived in Palestine belonged to a community known as Yishuv. This community had settled on this land for religious reasons and not political ones. During this time, little, if any conflict, occurred between Arabs and Jewish communities. It is the arrival of Zionist settlers that heightened tensions in the 1880s4. The Balfour Declaration and the promise of a Jewish State in Palestine The Balfour Declaration was made by the British government in 1917. John chancellor, the British High commissioner to Palestine, supported the view that there was need to protect Arab agriculture by completely suspending immigration of Jews into Palestine5. He believed that all land that could be cultivated had already been occupied by Arabs and therefore, it was impossible to offer Jews any land in Palestine without creating a landless Arab population. The King-Crane Commission, an American body formed in 1919, spent many months reading petitions and interviewing different delegations. It was during this time that a large number of Jews started immigrating into Palestine with support from the British government. The migration alarmed Palestinian Arabs who felt angered by the American and British governments. The creation of the nation of Israel In 1922, the Jewish population was 11.14% compared to Muslim’s 78.34%. In 1942, the Jewish population had risen to 29.9%. After the creation of the nation of Israel, the western world started to develop some psychological hostility towards Arabs. They started to make partial decisions that were often in Israel’s favor. By the time of the creation of the state of Israel, there were 650,000 Jews and 1.2 million Arabs6. The Arabs were stalwartly opposed to the formation of a Jewish nation and even set out to fight against these efforts. Arabs lost this 1948 war, and the Palestinian state was never created. The territory that was to become Palestine became part of Jordan and Israel, resulting in a scenario whereby 780,000 Palestinians became refugees, most of whom were living in West Bank and Gaza Strip. Jewish immigrants started arriving in large numbers into the newly created home that they called Israel. They had suffered many abuses, including persecution and were therefore a weary and beaten lot. The challenges of adjusting to a new, hostile environment were many. In the beginning, the British were not very successful in offering security to the immigrants. For this reason, they started opposing any more influx of Jewish immigrants. This forced Jews to form Haganah, an underground armed organization for purposes of reacting to Arab terrorism. Some people broke up from Haganah and formed Irgun. Irgun members strongly supported use of extreme violence against Arabs in retaliation for terrorist activities that were being perpetuated against Jewish settlers. The boldest of the attacks directed towards the British forces and Arabs was a bomb explosion that claimed the lives of 91 people. This attack seems to have set a precedent for the manner in which future issues would be resolved in this region, a situation that manifests itself in today’s terrorism activities7. Conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians continued even after that8. Six-day war In 1967, Israel went to war with her Arab neighbors for 6 days. The war was precipitated by Gamal Nasser, Egyptian President, when he closed Tiran straights to all Israeli ships, threatening to completely destroy the new state of Israel. Israel also took control of West Bank, a region that was being held by Jordan. Many Palestinians were detained by the Israeli government during the conflict. The efforts seemed to have apparently failed by the end of 19919. The peace process after 2001 As Mezvinsky notes out, after 2001, the Bush administration became very active in trying to influence both Israel and Palestine to end the violence that was affecting both countries negatively (151)11. President Bush was under immense pressure to influence Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop using force against Palestinians in both Gaza and West Bank. He ended up bowing to this pressure, in which case he resorted to using the U.S’s influence in which case the idea of a “Roadmap to peace” was conceptualized10. The Israel-Palestine discord today On 18th November, 2009, Israel approved construction of hundreds of houses in the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, an areas disputed between Jews and Palestine, amid criticism from Washington. This followed the approval of construction of 900 units by Israel’s interior ministry. Today, the U.S has continues to oppose the construction of these settlements. Conclusion The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is a long one as well as one that is complicated. For lasting peace to be realized, compromises on each of the contentious issues are needed from both parties. When Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas recently came to power hopes of peace were renewed mainly because he is a relatively moderate politician11. The recent disengagement plan by the Israeli government, which led to withdrawal from four West Bank and Gaza settlements, has increased hope for peace in this volatile Middle East region. It seems that moderate leaders like Mahmud Abbas are needed by both warring parties in order to spearhead the peace process. Bibliography Bar-Tal, Daniel. “Societal beliefs in times of intractable conflict: The Israeli case” International Journal of Conflict Management 12, No. 3 (1998) 12-22. Bar-Tal, Daniel. “Israeli-palestinian conflict: A cognitive analysis”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 14, no. 1 1990: 7-29. Berrebi, Claude and Klor, Esteban. On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, No. 6, p. 899-925 (2006). Bornstein, As. “Crossing the Green Line Between the West Bank and Israel” Middle East Quarterly 12 no. 2 (2003) 50-63. Khatib, Ghassan. We Shouldn't Rush Into Negotiations. (February 15, 2010) Retrieved March 5, 2010 from http://www.bitterlemons.org/index.html. Kelman, Herbert. “The interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian National Identities: The Role of the Other in Existential Conflicts” Journal of social issues 55, no.3 1999 581-600. Kelman, Herbert “The Political Psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: How Can We Overcome the Barriers to a Negotiated Solution?” Political Psychology 8, No. 3 (1987) 347-363. Mezvinsky, Norton. “The Underlying Realities of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict after 11 September” Arab Studies Quarterly. 25, no. 8 (2003) 150-160. PIJ Policy Paper ‐ Israeli Settlements and the Two‐State Solution (27 January 2010) Retrieved on March 5, 2010 from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1146192.html Portugali, Juval. Implicate relations: society and space in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993 Shafir , Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1996. Smooha, Sammy. Israel, Pluralism and Conflict, London: Rouledge and Kegan, 1978. Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Indiana Series in Arab and Islamic Studies). BIoomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Read More