The Israeli - Palestinian Conflict: Why Israel Should Maintain Occupation - Coursework Example

The Israeli - Palestinian Conflict: Why Israel Should Maintain Occupation Introduction Being arguably considered an inextricable part of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle accounts for over six decades of unceasing violence, which has brought about serious loss of life, including massive civilian casualties, and a staggering trail of devastation throughout the region (Amnesty International n.p.; Gelvin 166-169; Tessler 269-273, 407, 465, 533-535). Both sides in the conflict have understandably developed their own narratives concerning the legitimacy and rightness of their cause and aspirations, which are predominantly grounded in the “villainy of the opposing party” and consisted of certain historical facts as well as a number of myths and misinterpretations (Tessler xi). On the other hand, besides the internal dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian tensions, there are historical and international conditions, including two major wars during the twentieth century, nationalism, the Cold War rivalry, the rise and spread of radical Islamic terrorism, etc., that have actually determined the course of the struggle between those two communities (Gelvin ix). This paper is intended to expound Israel’s perspective on the issue, taking into consideration the variety of factors that have contributed to the formation and evolution of the conflict, hence the persistence of violence in the area. In order to put the Israeli position in proper context, distinguishing – as much as possible – between facts and propaganda, the paper attempts an insight into the historical, political and socioeconomic realities woven into the fabric of the Israeli-Palestinian argument. Thus, the paper explains why Israel should maintain the status quo, i.e. occupation of the contested territories, until a mutually satisfactory solution of the conflict is achieved. Israel’s Historical Rights From Early Antiquity to the Bar Kochba Revolt Long before the creation of modern Israel, the narrow strip of land that included Syria, Canaan and Phoenicia had been subject to the struggle between then superpowers – Egypt, various Mesopotamian empires, and the Hittite Empire (Matthews 19). There is archeological evidence, like the Merneptah Stele – a monumental inscription describing a campaign of the pharaoh Merneptah into Canaan, which actually contains the first mention of Israel outside the Bible – indicating the presence of an ethnic group named Israelites in Canaan at the end of the thirteenth century B.C. (Matthews 19; Miller and Hayes 80; Bard 1-2). On the other hand, the term “Palestine” is thought to have been derived from the Greek word “phylistiim” arguably used for describing an Aegean tribe, which, according to archeological evidence, in the twelfth century B.C., inhabited the Mediterranean coastal area of present-day Israel and Gaza Strip, being a substantial part of the so-called Sea People’s invasion of Egypt (Bard 2; Miller and Hayes 83-84). However, the appellation “Palestine” did not appear before the establishment of Roman control – whether direct or indirect – of that land bridge whose strategic value as “a highway for trade and the movement of armies” was recognized by Rome too (Matthews 19; Smallwood 1; Bard 2). According to the Bible, which is the main source of information concerning the emergence and fate of the ancient Jewish statehood, the first Israelite kingdom under Saul was established in approximately 1000 B.C. (Miller and Hayes 120; Bard 2). Later on, the second Jewish king, David, expanded his rule northward into Galilee and westward into Transjordan, while Jerusalem became the “administrative, military, and cultic center of the kingdom” (Miller and Hayes 185). David’s son, Solomon, is thought to have ruled over a kingdom, which embraced present-day Israel, along with a large segment of the northern Transjordan, whereas most of the Mediterranean coast would have been under the control of the Philistines – who held the present-day Gaza Strip – and the Phoenicians (Miller and Hayes 214). Following the split of the united monarchy after Solomon’s death, two separate kingdoms emerged, i.e. the northern kingdom located in the hill country north of Jerusalem, named Israel, and the southern kingdom named Judah, which encompassed Jerusalem, extending southward to the Negeb (Miller and Hayes 218). Besides the mutual hostilities, the Philistines became a constant threat to the Judean kings; on the other hand, an Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom resulted in its annihilation in 722 B.C., while Judah survived until 586-587 B.C., when the Babylonian empire engulfed the remnants of the Davidic kingdom (Bard 2). From that time on, these lands were successively dominated by a number of foreign powers, including the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I of Egypt and his successors, the Seleucids in Syria, and finally, Rome, whose partial control in 63 B.C. developed into complete one (Smallwood 1). Three major Jewish revolts challenged Roman rule, as follows – the first revolt in A.D. 64-74, which is well-documented by one of the direct participants in those events, Josephus Flavius, in his work “History of the Jewish War”, the revolts against Rome under emperor Trajan in 115 – 117 A.D. and the rebellion of 132 – 135 A.D., aka the Bar Kochba revolt; although historians widely admit that they know very little about the second revolt, there is enough written – papyri, inscriptions, historical writings, etc. – and archeological evidence of massive uprisings of the Jewish communities in Egypt, Cyprus, Parthia, Armenia, and Judaea (Bloom 167-185). From the Sykes-Picot Agreement and Balfour Declaration to the UN Partition Plan The 1916 secret convention between France and Britain, dubbed the “Sykes-Picot Agreement”, had been intended to divide the hitherto Ottoman-controlled Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon into British- and French-administered areas, as well as to create an independent Arab state, or alternatively, a confederation of Arab states as the fulfilment of an earlier British promise (Tucker 134). In Palestine, due to the holy places, the convention envisaged the establishment of an international regime; however, in 1919, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was revised, in order to include the Iraqi province of Mosul and Palestine into the British sphere of influence in return for the British support of French control over Syria and Lebanon (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sykes-Picot Agreement n.p.; Tabarani xx). Being considered “a foundation stone of modern Israel”, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 reflected the Palestine realities by that time – apart from the 130 000 acres of land, of which 90 000 acres under cultivation, acquired by Jewish settlers, the Jews accounted for one-ninth of the overall Palestine population in 1914; furthermore, the Jewish community in Jerusalem amounted to 40 000 people out of the city’s 60 000 inhabitants (Schneer 6-12). Following the Conference at San Remo in 1920, the British introduced civil rule in Palestine; subsequently, in 1921, the Emirate of Transjordan had been established as an autonomous political division (Tabarani xxi). The growing Jewish-Arab tensions between 1936 and 1946 called forth partition as an option open to both communities (Bell 137); thus, the Morrison-Grady plan, publicized in 1946, and eventually, the UN Resolution 181, aka the UN Partition Plan, provided for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state (Galnoor 280; Hertz 1; Smith 30). It’s noteworthy that all Arab nations voted against the resolution (Hertz 1). Political, Socio-Economic and Security Considerations The 1948 attack on Israel by a military coalition, which included Egypt, Jordan, and Syria’s armies, not only denoted a blatant violation of the international norms, which was aimed at rejecting the historical rights of Israeli people over the land of their ancestors, but also produced two important outcomes, as follows – Israel’s self-affirmation and the advent of pan-Arab nationalism – despite some differences in the objectives of the Arab states – with the Palestinian cause as the flagship (Smith 30; Gelvin 166). In turn, another Arab-Israeli war – the Six-Day War of 1967 – directly involved Palestinians in the conflict, thus substantiating the Israeli right for self-defense and the necessity of reducing Israel’s most recalcitrant internal adversaries to “a manageable minority” due to the practical impossibility of winning them over to the Israeli statehood cause (Smith 31; Gelvin 166). The Yom Kippur War in 1973 led to the US’s interference in the conflict and UN Resolution 338 (Smith 33). The Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 respectively, along with the vast expansion of Israeli settlements, were mainly driven by security considerations, i.e. to expel PLO from Lebanon, which has become a base for attacking Israel, although certain economic motives could also be viewed behind those actions; ironically, however, they provided the grounds for the uprisings in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1987, aka the Intifada (Smith 37). The ultimate failure of the Oslo Accord, blown up by the second Intifada, in fact, indicated that Palestinians were anything but ready to exchange the in-principle rejection of Israeli statehood in the region, along with their own image as “a synonym for trouble” in both political and economic terms, for a lasting peaceful settlement of the conflict and reconciliation (Brown 7; Allen 173). With the transfer of control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank to autonomous Palestinian rule, things have gone from bad to worse, insofar as Hamas – being based on the radical Islamic ideology and employing terrorist tactics – emerged as a new key player on behalf of the Palestinian cause. The control over the distribution of the significant international donor effort aimed at reconstruction and development of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in fact, added a relatively new dimension in the conflict, i.e. the economic one, which not only boosted Hamas’s influence in the Palestine territories, but also created a deep dependence on humanitarian aid (Allen 164); that, in turn, facilitate the influx of raw recruits in the various Palestinian armed groups. The frequent outbreaks of violence in the Gaza Strip, most notably the recent one, being provoked by “an upsurge in rocket firing into Israel” (Amnesty International n.p.), epitomizes that process, which poses a serious threat to Israel’s homeland security. Conclusion Given the aforesaid, there are three lines of reasoning behind Israel’s occupation of the contested territories until the attainment of a mutually beneficial solution for both sides in the conflict, as follows – first, it’s Jewish people’s historical right to rebuild Israeli statehood in the lands of their ancestors, which has been continuously rejected by pan-Arab nationalism and accordingly opposed by PLO and other Palestinian organizations; second, due to the permanent threat to Israeli national security, along with the threat to the personal security of Israeli citizens, both external and internal, Israel – which is a secular state and parliamentary democracy according to the Western standards – has become a state under siege, hence the self-defense consideration appears of paramount importance in the face of Palestinian and religiously-inspired terrorism. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the woes of occupation may well persuade Palestinians into departing from terrorist tactics and their opposition to Israeli statehood in exchange for cooperation and reconciliation that would put an end to the conflict. Works Cited Allen, Lori A., “Martyr Bodies in the Media: Human rights, aesthetics, and the politics of immediation in the Palestinian intifada”, American Ethnologist February 2009: 161-180. Print Amnesty International, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories: Amnesty International Report 2014/15, 2015. Web. April 4, 2015 < https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/> Bard, Mitchell G., Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Chevy Chase, MD: American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), Inc., 2012. Print Bell, Walter F. “Arab Revolt of 1936 – 1939”. The Encyclopedia of Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History. Ed. Spencer C. Tucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008. 135 – 137. Print Bloom, James J. The Jewish Revolts against Rome, A.D. 66 – 135: A Military Analysis. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010. Print Brown, N. J., Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Print Encyclopaedia Britannica. Sykes-Picot Agreement. 2014. Web. 5 May 2015 Galnoor, Itzhak. The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Print Gelvin, James L., The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred years of War. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print Hertz, Eli E. “UN Resolution 181 – The Partition Plan, November 29, 1947”. Web. 5 May 2015 Matthews, Victor H., A Brief History of Ancient Israel. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Print Miller, J. M., and Hayes, John H., A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1986. Print Schneer, Jonathan. The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, New York: Random House, 2010. Print Smallwood, E. M., The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian, a Study in Political Relations. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Print Smith, Charles D. “Arab – Israeli Conflict”. Encyclopedia of the Palestinians. Revised Edition. Ed. Phillip Mattar. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2005. 29 – 41. Print Tabarani, Gabriel G. Israeli – Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration, the Complications and the Road for a Lasting Peace. Bloomington, IN: AurhorHouse, 2008. Print Tessler, M., A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994. Print Read More