By Oscar H. Blayton
The Israel – Palestine conflict (which includes Gaza) has captured the recent attention of the Western World and there are so many dimensions to this problem, that it cannot be fully explored in any one book, let alone a short column.
As in so many other troubled areas today, the violence between Israel and Gaza has been due to perceived existential crises and constructed notions of “right” and “wrong. “But regardless of whether there is a “right” or “wrong” in these types of conflicts, there is always blood, disaster and misery, and as citizens of our global community, we should not look away or dismiss the carnage as a natural consequence of human behavior. There are reasons why these conflicts arise, and most have roots that are deeply embedded in history.
For decades, the “Trouble in the Middle East” has had as its focal point the conflict arising out of the displacement of the people of Palestine by an influx of mostly European Jews after the Holocaust that occurred during World War II. The Holocaust was an embarrassment for all of Europe as well as for those around the world who identified with their European ancestry, and a pressing social need was felt to try to “make things right.” Millions upon millions of Jews had suffered an attempt to extinguish them and their culture by a nation gone mad with hatred and led by the worst sort of fascist dictator. When the fog of war had cleared after the Allied victory in 1945, the horror that the Nazis inflicted upon Jews created an impetus to accede to the decades-long call by Jewish activists for the safety of a Jewish state.
To get a clear understanding of the path that has led to the current intractable death struggle on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, we need to look back to events that took place during the waning years of the “First” World War.
In 1916, two years into World War I, it became apparent to England and France that the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany, would not survive the conflict. Because of this, England and France entered into the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement that divided much of the Ottoman Empire’s land between them like a holiday turkey. This agreement declared that Palestine was “Under the Protection of Great Britain, France and their ally, Russia.” But that portion of the agreement placing Palestine under the protection of the three allies was upended when British forces entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, and took control of the region from the Turks. General Edmund Allenby, commander of the British forces in the area, had been directed by Prime Minister David Lloyd George to take the city before the “Holidays,” and after its seizure, declared it “a Christmas present for the British people.” General Allenby, on his part, stated publicly, “The wars of the crusades are now complete.”
A little more than a month before the British took Jerusalem, Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, penned a significant letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community. This letter, which has come to be known as the “Balfour Declaration,” stated the intent of the British Government to use its best efforts to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. But the Declaration also stated, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ….”
It has been stated by many legal scholars that the Balfour Declaration constitutes the beginning of the state of Israel’s legitimation under international law. But international law is not always clearly black and white. However, with its foot in the door, through a series of events, conferences, and treaties, Britain easily obtained its objective with the League of Nations mandating Palestine to Britain, in June of 1919, thereby sanctioning its authority and control under international law and guiding it towards self-determination.
However, it appears that the British never intended for the Palestinians to achieve self-determination. In February 1919, three months after World War I ended, Balfour wrote to Britain’s Prime Minister, David Lloyd George that “in the case of Palestine, we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination, since the present inhabitants would surely deliver an ‘anti-Jewish verdict,’” But he expressed that since having a Jewish national home was of “world importance,” that would be an exception, but that having such a Jewish national home should not dispossess or oppress the then current inhabitants.
Less than two decades after World War I ended, the world was again in a global War that included the horrific Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany. After World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany, there was a rekindled surge of support for the creation of a Jewish state to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust could ever happen again.
While large numbers of Jews had migrated to Palestine since the end of World War I, the end of the Second World War saw a much larger flow of refugees. In May 1947, Britain, anticipating the difficulty in managing its mandate with the sudden influx of Jewish refugees, announced that it was handing the Palestine problem over to the newly formed United Nations and that it would unilaterally terminate its mandate on May 15, 1948. Responding to an impending international crisis, the U.N. General Assembly voted on a partition plan and passed United Nations Resolution 181 in November 1947. The Palestinian Arab population denounced this Resolution, citing that while the Palestinian Arab population numbered as much as twice the Jewish population, more than half the land was allocated to become a Jewish state.
Declaring the allocation of land in Palestine to be unjust, five Arab nations invaded the territory following the announcement of the independence of the state of Israel in May 1948. These hostilities ended in 1949 when Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. These agreements specifically stated that the Armistice Demarcation Lines were in no way to be considered political or territorial boundaries, leaving the territorial boundaries between Israel and Palestine open to question.
Wars and violent conflicts have plagued the region since Israel announced its independence in 1948. Notably, the Six Day War fought in 1967 between Israel and the former United Arab Republic, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. This war precipitated the U.N. Security Council passing its Resolution 242, which many believed mandated the creation of a Palestinian state. But recent arguments have been made that this is a “non-binding” resolution.
The history of modern-day Israel and Palestine is a narrative of failed statesmanship. The apparent racist assumptions by Britain and the Western powers about the inability of Palestinians to govern themselves led to distrust and disquiet on the part of Palestinians towards those nations. The perceived disparate treatment given to Palestinians as opposed to that given to Israelis has also fueled a sense of hopelessness, distrust and anger among the Palestinians towards the West. The West constructed a poorly conceived political “solution” to a problem for which it was partly to blame and placed the weight of that problem on the backs of a colonized people.
This very brief recounting of the diplomatic steps taken by Western nations regarding Israel and the Middle East points out how they created this mess. And as the rest of the world looks on, we see the leaders of those nations shirking their responsibility to make it right.
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