ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

The origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back more than a century, when Jews, disillusioned with prospects for integration into European societies, began to immigrate to Palestine in 1882, not as individuals seeking to pray and die in Jerusalem but as a part of a political movement. In 1897, this political trend was further inspired by the First Zionist Congress, which called for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, thus spawning the modern Jewish national movement, Zionism. The land, which the Jews considered theirs by virtue of God’s will and historic rights, was, however, inhabited by another people, the Palestinians who had been living there for centuries, albeit not until recently as a political entity.
Yet the first Jewish immigrants to Palestine did not encounter resistance from the local population. It was only a few decades later that the Zionist movement began to be perceived as a threat by the indigenous Palestinian population, as well as by other Arabs. The turning point in the relationship between the two national movements, the Arab and Palestinian on the one hand and Zionism on the other, was the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, in which British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour promised a “national home for the Jewish People” in Palestine, adding that the British Government would pursue its “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . .”
This move by the British Government, which acquired mandatory power in Palestine in 1920, following the end of World War I, angered the Palestinians and resulted in an eruption of violence that was to continue, intermittently, to the present day. The Palestinians were further alienated by the massive Zionist immigration to Palestine, which had brought the number of Jews from 24,000 in 1881 (less than 5 percent of the population) to 85,000 by 1914 (12 percent of the total population). Immigration intensified further following the Balfour Declaration and the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933, swelling the number of Jewish immigrants to 368,845 between the years 1921 and 1945. In Jerusalem alone, the most significant city in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs (Muslims and Christians alike), the number of Jews grew from 53,000 to 70,000 during the four years from 1931 to 1935.
Consequently, in 1936 the Palestinians began a revolt against British policy in Palestine which was to last until 1939. One of the leaders of this revolt was al-Hajj Am-in al-Husayni, mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council in Mandatory Palestine (appointed to these posts by the British in 1920). When the revolt began, al-Hajj Amin assumed the presidency of the Arab Higher Committee, thus becoming a pivotal figure in the Palestinian national movement.
Several years before the revolt began, al-Hajj Amin had sought to bring the Palestinian national struggle against Zionism to the attention of the international Muslim community by (I) raising funds to refurbish the two revered mosques on al-Haram al-Sharif (“the Noble Sanctuary”) in Jerusalem, al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhrah); (2) holding an international congress of `ulama’ in November 1928, attended by delegations of Damascus, Beirut, and Transjordan; and (3) holding an international Muslim conference in Jerusalem in December 1931. This conference, attended by 150 Muslim scholars from all over the Islamic world, passed a resolution on the importance of Palestine and the holiness of Jerusalem for Muslims. [See the biography of Husayni.
The muftis drive to refurbish the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem occasioned a strong reaction from the Jewish populace, which claimed that this reconstruction would adversely affect the Western Wall, the ancient site of the first and second Jewish temples, and Jewish access to it. Thus, the national conflict took a religious turn in the Holy Land, the struggle over competing national goals assuming at times the shape of a religious war over holy places and symbols. This trend was reinforced by unfortunate events in another holy city for both Jews and Muslims, Hebron (al-Khalil). Sixty-four unarmed Orthodox Jews were massacred in Hebron on 28 August 1929 by Arabs in riots, which had erupted in several cities, echoing growing tension surrounding the refurbishment of al-Haram al-Sharif.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, there were intermittent calls for jihad by some groups-most notably by the imam of Haifa, Shaykh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam (1882-1935), and his followers. Likewise, during the 1936-1939 revolt, Syrian, Iraqi, and even the remote but active Indian and other Muslim religious authorities issued fatwas (religious legal opinions) endorsing jihad for the sake of Palestine as a duty. Conspicuous by their silence, however, were the `ulama’ of Egypt’s al-Azhar University.
Britain’s regional strategic considerations in the wake of the rise of German military power and its fear of losing credibility with the Arabs, forced it in subsequent years to balance its policy in Palestine. This led to the White Paper of 17 May 1939, in which the British government seemed to accept the Palestinian demand for national independence with an Arab majority (within ten years), restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine as well as land sale to the Jews. Naturally, this move angered the Jews, who were meanwhile building a formidable military force and a complex social infrastructure.
Clashes were inevitable between the Palestinians and the Jewish immigrants. With 1.2 million indigenous Palestinians and more than 650,000 Jews in the Yeshuv, the prestate Jewish settlement in Palestine, facing one another at such close quarters and each group holding fast to its claims in Palestine, the stage was set for further conflict when, in September 1947, Britain announced its intention to depart from Palestine on 15 April 1948.
Resolution 181 of the United Nations, issued on 29 November 1947, recommended the partition of Palestine into two states-one Arab and the other Jewishbut failed to avert a conflict. David Ben-Gurion (one of the founders of the Jewish state and later to become the first prime minister of Israel) and the other Zionist leaders accepted the UN resolution, because they understood that this was the best the Jewish community in Palestine could achieve under the given circumstances. The Arabs, however, elected to fight in an attempt to reverse what they viewed as an injustice that forced them to relinquish parts of their homeland.
After approximately six months of fighting between Arab and Jewish forces (December 1947-May 1948), the Palestinian and Arab volunteer forces were defeated. Following this major round of the military conflict, BenGurion, on 14 May 1948, announced the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel on parts of historic Palestine. As a result of the war in Palestine between Jews and Arabs, approximately 20,000 out of 27,000 square kilometers of the Palestinian land came under the control of the state of Israel; the remaining portions-the West Bank and the Gaza Strip-came under the control of the Jordanians and Egyptians, respectively. More than one million Palestinians either fled or were forced to leave by the Israeli forces. Many Palestinian cities, such as Haifa, Akka, Jaffa, Lidda, and Ramlah, and, above all, the western part of Jerusalem, as well as about four hundred villages, were virtually abandoned by the Arab Palestinian population as a result of this war. Those who left their homes became refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some Palestinians sought refuge in other Arab countries, including the Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in particular). Most, however, continued to feel like and be treated as foreigners in the countries where they took up residence, a mirror image of the situation of the Jews in Europe, at least in the last century. The Palestinian situation had the additional dimension that the Arab countries, with the exception of Jordan, and to a lesser extent Lebanon, as a matter of policy refused to grant the Palestinians citizenship in order to prevent any possibility of assimilation.
The defeat of the Arab armies, the massive immigration of the Palestinian population to neighboring Arab countries, and above all, the loss of a major part of Palestine to the Jewish forces (led by the Haganah), sent a shock wave through the Arab world, then in the throes of the early stages of decolonization. Many questions surfaced about the Arab regimes and their inability to deal with vital questions, such as foreign occupation of Arab/Muslim countries. Even the sincerity and commitment of the leaders of the Arab world were questioned, and a crisis of legitimacy soon developed. Consequently, several coups d’etat and revolutions were staged, most notably the 1952 revolution in Egypt, in search of better leadership and a brighter future for the Arab nations.
During this time, Israel was growing stronger militarily, economically, and demographically. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a massive Jewish immigration from the Arab countries added a new social and demographic dimension to Israeli society. Although the perceived Arab threat became a major factor in uniting, and indeed strengthening, the fabric of this society, the enormous support of world Jewry accelerated the advancement and extension of technology, agriculture, and medicine. Israel became an industrialized country complete with a military industry. It continued to rely on Western powers (France, Britain, and the United States), but sought to develop its own defense systems, including nuclear weaponry.
From Suez to the June 1967 War. Nine years after winning its first battle against Palestinian and Arab forces, Israel collaborated with France and Britain in defeating the Egyptian army in the Suez War of October-November 1956, during which Israeli forces occupied the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. One of the reasons for this war was the nationalization of the Suez Canal (on 26 July 1956) by the four-year-old Free Officers Revolution, which had brought about the demise of the monarchy in Egypt.
The main figure among these revolutionary leaders was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became president of Egypt in 1954 and eventually became the leader of modern Arab nationalism until his death in September 1970. Ironically, Nasser’s military defeat in the 1956 war strengthened him politically and morally, as the occupying forces were ordered by the United Nations to evacuate the Sinai, mainly because of the active role of the United States and the Soviet Union. With the Arab world expressing strong solidarity with Egypt, Nasser used the crisis to galvanize the Arabs, as well as the Muslim world, in his struggle against imperialism and Zionism.
Nasser’s commitment to Arab unity was put to the test in May 1967, however. Soviet and Syrian intelligence reports indicated that Israel was mobilizing massive troops on the border with Syria in preparation for an attack on Syria. Nasser, whose troops were busy in bloody battles in Yemen in support of the revolutionary forces against the imam, rushed to mobilize the remainder of his troops and station them along the southern borders of Israel. Nasser acted on the principle that aggression against any Arab country would be considered aggression against Egypt.
Three weeks of high military and political tension erupted into war early on the morning of 5 June 1967, when Israel attacked and destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, thus disabling the Arabs in less than two decades. This defeat, in what become known as the Six-Day War or the June War of 1967, was a major turning point in Middle East history. Within six days the Israelis occupied the remaining 20 percent of the Palestinian lands, which were then in the hands of Jordan and Egypt (the West Bank, including the eastern side of Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, respectively). They also reoccupied the Sinai peninsula and the portion of Syrian land known as the Golan Heights, which the Likud Government of Menachem Begin annexed in 1981, considering it a vital security zone. Nasser took full responsibility for the defeat and submitted his resignation as president of Egypt. Because of enormous public pressure, however, he remained in power until his death in 1970. [See the biography of Nasser.]
Ascendance of Local Nationalism. The Arab defeat gave the Palestinians an opportunity to become more active and indeed to take their fate into their own hands. Thus, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, gradually gained recognition among the Palestinians and the Arab nations and their leaders. Taking advantage of the Arab defeat, the PLO began to assert itself as an independent organization within the complex arena of Arab politics and became the champion of the Palestinian cause. Palestinian nationalism replaced Arab nationalism. The Palestinian issue, despite the efforts of Israel and its supporters, regained its status as the crux of the Arab-Israeli dispute and once again took center stage in Middle East politics. The Arab countries continued as players, but a sense of realism, supported by a growing sense of local patriotism, supplanted Arab nationalism and began to prevail throughout the Arab world, including among the Palestinians.
Anwar el-Sadat’s Egypt (1970-1981) led the way in this direction. Egypt continued to see itself and to be seen by others as the heart of the Arab world, but now the notions of Arab unity and Pan-Arabism were relegated to a back burner. Even the War of October 1973 against the Israeli forces in the Sinai and Golan Heights was intended above all to put Egypt and Syria in a better position to negotiate a political settlement. Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in November 1977 and the subsequent Camp David Accords (signed in September 1978), which brought about a “cold peace” between Israel and Egypt, demonstrated the point. Solving Egypt’s economic problems was Sadat’s main goal during his presidency, something for which he was willing to go the extra mile, including signing a peace treaty with Israel. Although not high priority of his, the Palestinian problem was clearly one Sadat wanted to solve; he even negotiated an autonomy plan with the Israelis for the Palestinians, although his formula was not accepted by the Palestinians or by the rest of the Arab world, and dissatisfaction with it brought about Egypt’s isolation for several years. Nor was the nation accepted by most Egyptian people, and it eventually led to Sadat’s assassination by a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad on 4 OctOber 1981.
Widening of the Conflict. Since the 1967 War, the Palestinians have been the main advocate of their own cause. Politically, they have established diplomatic relations with most countries of the world, and militarily, they have launched guerrilla attacks from any Arab country that has allowed them to do so (or could not prevent them from doing so), mainly Jordan and Lebanon. In Jordan, however, the PLO lost its bases following the September 1970 civil war, which the king and forces loyal to him launched against the Palestinian organizations. Consequently, the focus of military activity moved to Lebanon, a militarily weaker northern neighbor of Israel. With 300,000 Palestinians living there in refugee camps, a weak central government, and sympathy for the Palestinian cause from several political and religious factions, the conditions in Lebanon were conducive to establishing a Palestinian military and even a social infrastructure.
Responding to repeated attempted Palestinian raids on Israel, most of which had no military value, Israel occasionally launched massive counterattacks (such as the Litani River Operation in March 1978) or carried out fullscale military operations. With the cooperation of a military Christian faction led by Sa’d Haddad and his successor, Antun Lahd, the Israelis created a “security zone” in southern Lebanon to protect their northern settlements from repeated shelling and raids by Palestinian forces and their supporters in Lebanon. The Israeli counterraids on Palestinian positions disrupted the life of the southern Lebanese, many of whom fled to the northern parts of Lebanon to seek shelter and food in a country already devastated by civil war since 1975. Consequently, support for the Palestinians in that country eroded and the presence of Palestinian military force of any significance was finally eradicated following the June 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon (in Operation Peace for Galilee) and the eventual takeover of Beirut, the first Arab capital to be occupied by Israeli forces. Although PLO forces held out for eighty-two days against the strongest army in the Middle East, they were ultimately forced to leave Lebanon and move their headquarters to another Arab capital, Tunis.
Crystallization of Opposing Trends. The move to Tunis marked the beginning of the end of Palestinian attempts to confront Israel militarily. The failure of the Palestinian guerrilla movement to liberate any part of Palestine through military operations necessitated a shift in political attitudes among many Palestinians, a shift that was on the minds of many long before the move to Tunis. Already in 1974, Palestinian intellectuals close to the PLO chairman Yasir Arafat wrote several articles hinting at a willingness of the part of the Palestinian leadership to live side by side with a Jewish state. They first proposed a solution based on a secular democratic state in which all parties, Palestinians and Israelis, could live together. When Israel reacted very negatively to this proposal, the Palestinians eventually moved toward a compromise solution, acceptable to at least some Israelis, which became known as the two-state solution.
The harsh reality of more than 1.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since the 1967 war contributed to this compromising trend. A sense of realpolitik replaced the maximalist views of many Palestinians (i.e., demanding creation of an independent Palestinian state on the entire Palestinian land). Almost simultaneously, however, an opposing process developed among the occupiers.
In the early stages of Israel, the Arabs were blamed for their lack of willingness to reach a peace agreement with the Jewish state. After the 1967 war, however, Israel began to feel more secure and less threatened and began to see itself as the military superpower of the region. When the maximalists in Israel, the Likud Government and the right-wing political parties, gained power in 1977, the desire to trade land occupied during the 1967 war for peace decreased. The formula “land for peace” was replaced under the various Likud Governments (1977-1992) by another, “peace for peace.” The land occupied in 1967, according to this view, is part of the Holy Land, indeed the heart of the Holy Land. It is “liberated,” rather than “occupied,” land and, therefore, should remain under Israeli control. Israel essentially offered the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories two choices: (i) a limited autonomy if they wished to stay in the “land of Israel”; or (2) movement to Jordan where, some prominent Israelis argued, they could establish their Palestinian state, since the majority of the population living in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan were already Palestinians.
In order to assert their presence in the Occupied Territories, a number of Jewish settlements were built throughout the Occupied Territories with the support of Israeli governments (including the Labor government, which initiated the process before losing the 1977 elections). About 150,000 Jews currently live on that land as settlers and control about 50 percent of the Palestinian land, thus complicating the possibility of settling the dispute and reaching a formula for coexistence between the two nations. During the fifteen years (1977-1992) when the Israeli right wing had the upper hand in Israel, a spirit of defiance, indeed a Jewish fundamentalism, developed among many Israelis, often new immigrants from the United States and other Western countries. In view of Arab and Islamic impotence, coupled with strong political and generous financial and military support from the United States, the Israeli government felt no pressure to relinquish its claim to the entire Palestinian land. The Palestinians, although in many ways a major player in the Middle East conflict, had limited political or military options; they were the weakest link. Or so it seemed until 9 December 1987, when a unique combination of circumstances contributed to the eruption of an uprising against the occupying forces.
After more than twenty years of discrimination, the jailing of tens of thousands of Palestinian men and women by the Israeli forces, the confiscation of land, and the building of Jewish settlements in the heart of Arab towns and cities, the Palestinians launched their uprising or intifddah. This sociopolitical endeavor represents one of the major landmarks in Palestinian history. The Palestinians have fought their powerful occupiers with all means available, including stones, knives, boycotts, and strikes. The Palestinian people decided, once again, to take their fate into their own hands and not wait for salvation from the outside, not even from the PLO, their national symbol and, by Arab consensus since 1974, sole political representative. The Israelis, in an attempt to contain this phenomenon, adopted even harsher measures than those they had been practicing against the Palestinians since the occupation began in 1967.
In November 1988, in the midst of the intifddah, the Palestinians, through the PLO, expressed their desire to reach a historic compromise with the state of Israel, a compromise that would be based on a two-state solution. Once again Israel felt under no obligation to respond positively to the proposal. The Palestinian Declaration of Independence and the verbal declarations associated with it, which laid out the new attitude of the Palestinians and their desire to reach a compromise, were then overshadowed by more significant political events.
In August 1990, after Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, many Palestinians, for psychological and political reasons, expressed sympathy with Iraq, and the PLO was perceived as having followed popular sentiment in this matter. Along with the Iraqi people, the PLO and the Palestinian people paid a heavy price, as the rich Arab Gulf states halted financial aid to the Palestinians. The consequences of this for the Palestinians, individually and institutionally, have been severe, contributing to further decline in the ability of the Palestinians to withstand the pressures of the occupation and the conditions of the intifddah, which has brought about daily clashes between the Palestinians and the Israeli army.
Islamic Dimensions of the Conflict. In Palestine, most people have perceived the struggle as mainly a nationalist, secular one. Many prominent Christian Palestinians have taken part in the struggle alongside Muslim Palestinians, imparting to the Palestinian and Arab national movements a secular, rather than a religious, fervor. Indeed, in the 1920s, Palestinians even formed the Muslim-Christian Associations in a combined effort to combat Zionism.
The doctrine of jihad was not invoked throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict by any official government until an arson attack on al-Aqsa mosque took place in 1969. Following this event, King Faysal of Saudi Arabia called for jihad to liberate Jerusalem. He also organized the first summit of Muslim states in Rabat in September 1969, which was attended by representatives of twentysix states. In subsequent years, several summit meetings were held at which the issues of Palestine and Jerusalem were inevitably addressed, reflecting the broad sympathy and support these issues command in the Islamic world.
Subparagraph 5 of article a (A) of the charter of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) shows the centrality of Palestine to the Muslim countries: one of the organization’s goals is, “To co-ordinate efforts for safeguard of the Holy Places and support of the struggle of the people of Palestine, and help them to regain their rights and liberate their land.” The suspension of Egypt from the OIC was justified by Egypt’s material breaching of this article of the charter when it concluded the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978. In January 1981, the third summit of the OIC was held in Saudi Arabia, entitled “The Session on Palestine and Holy Jerusalem.” At the conclusion of this conference, the participants agreed to adopt jihad to save Jerusalem and to liberate the Occupied Territories.
Although the struggle has more commonly been seen as a national one, and although the PLO continues to be viewed as the sole representative of the Palestinians and Yasir Arafat the symbol of their struggle, Palestinians have been losing faith in their political leadership. The inability of this organization to solve political, social, and economic problems has led many people in the Occupied Territories to opt for an Islamic solution. More and more are becoming convinced that the secular national movement of the Palestinians is doomed to fail to achieve the goals of the Palestinian people, just as the Arab national movements in the rest of the Arab world have failed to solve the sociopolitical and economic problems facing their respective peoples. The Islamists in the Occupied Territories have enhanced their position by capitalizing on the weaknesses of the PLO. At the same time, they are working at the grassroots level to help people under the increasing economic difficulties resulting from prolonged occupation and lack of sufficient assistance from outside sources.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the cooperation between the West and the majority of the Arab world to expel Iraq from Kuwait, the United States and Russia jointly sponsored a peace conference dealing with the Middle East problem. The parties (Israel, the Palestinian representatives, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan) held their first meeting in Madrid on 30 October 1991. The process led nowhere, however, and once again the Palestinians lost hope for a peaceful, let alone just, solution. In addition, the PLO lost further credibility.
Meanwhile, however, some Israelis and Palestinians, working on the assumption that the open negotiations were not about to yield any immediate results, met secretly in Oslo, Norway, and struck an agreement on certain principles for the first stage of Palestinian-Israeli conflict resolution. This agreement was signed by Israel’s prime minister and the PLO chairman in Washington, D.C., on 13 September 1993, leading to a major breakthrough in Middle East politics. Yet the Declaration of Principles (DOP) is only a first step in the direction of a political solution for a century-old conflict, and there are many aspects of this conflict that have still to be addressed and were deliberately set aside for future negotiations, as they present major difficulties in the process of trying to reach a historic solution.
One of these issues is the question of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the spiritual capital of both the Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) and the Israelis (and Jews all over the world), and it is inconceivable for either of them not to have Jerusalem as part of their political identity. For Jews, Jerusalem is the site of their ancient temple and their historical capital, and in 198o they passed a law considering the entire city the undivided capital of Israel; for Christians, the city is the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was crucified and buried; for Muslims, the city is their third holiest (after Mecca and Medina), the site of the rock from which the prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven in the Night journey (mi’raj) and where the Dome of the Rock was built in 691 by an Umayyad caliph. This rock, according to rabbinic authorities, is the same rock, Rock Morieh, on which Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. A second mosque, alAqsa, also shares the site of the Temple Mount. This is why Jerusalem is called in Arabic al-Quds (the holy [city]). Indeed, all previous plans for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict suggested the internationalization of this city, precisely because of its importance of both nations, religiously and hence politically.
Since the signing of the DOP, however, the situation on the ground has not improved. In fact, acts of hostility between Israelis and Palestinians have increased, as many groups from both sides to sabotage the agreement by committing acts of violence against the other side. Leading the resistance wave against the DOP are political Islam and political Judaism. The Hamas (acronym for the Arabic Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah, Islamic Resistance Movement), which began as a political wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood at the end of 1987, and Islamic Jihad are leading the struggle against the agreement on the Palestinian side, whereas the religious-nationalist settlers in the Occupied Territories are leading the Israeli resistance.
It is ironic, however, that this conflict, which has until now been a conflict mainly between two secular movements, might end as a conflict between two religious communities. The present trend is in that direction. This was illustrated in most unfortunate terms on 25 February 1994, when a Jewish settler acting on his religious beliefs entered the IbrahimI Mosque in Hebron (where Muslims pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site of the graves of the prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and massacred more than thirty Muslims at Friday morning prayer during the month of Ramadan, the holiest month for Muslims. This act instantly brought the political negotiations to a halt.
In the Middle East, the two worlds of religion and politics cannot be entirely separated, and the dialectical relationships between them will continue. The majority of people, however, will persist in perceiving the struggle as a national struggle over territory and self-determination. To these people, the holy places are symbols for the existence and continuation of national life, whereas for others these symbols become the essence of the struggle.
[See also Arab Nationalism; Hamas; International Relations and Diplomacy; Israel; Jerusalem; Organization of the Islamnic Jihad; Palestine Liberation Organization; West Bank and Gaza.]
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SHUKRI B. ABED