The Never Ending Arab Israeli Conflict - Coursework Example

The Never Ending Arab Israeli Conflict Introduction This essay aims at explaining the Arab Israeli conflict. It will look at the causes of the conflict and why it seems like it will never end. The essay will also critically analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of both the Arab and Israeli narratives of the conflict. The key issues negotiated in the conflict will also be discussed. This is all in an aim to try to understand the issue so many times talked about on the news, history books and even conversations amongst people in informal settings. Causes of the Conflict Zionism is considered the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Israelis. Zionism is an ideology assuming that part or maybe the whole of the land of Palestine belongs to the Jews. These assumptions have not only once, but frequently led to organized conquests, expulsions, land dispossession and brutal violence (Carter, 2006). This notion started in the 19th Century and it is still not dying out. Zionism could be referred to as some form of colonization. This is because Zionists pick out Palestine, the region assigned to Great Britain in 1923 by the League of Nations, as some form of emigration destination. The Zionists originate from large countries lived by Jews in the past and even up to today. This emigration is unlawful because the local population had no say in the issue, only that foreigners decided on it. The local population also had no power to repel this invasion of sorts or even to disapprove the political and ideological justifications of it. They had poor economic and political development and could do completely nothing about the whole issue. There are some contrasts, however, to the justifications put across for this emigration (Morris, 2009). No proof can be provided to prove that the then Great Britain government in 1917 had any authority as to assign Palestine to any other people other than its original people. Moreover, even if the United Nations assigned part of Palestine to immigrants in 1947, its Charter states that it needed permission from the original population of the region. Zionists are however quick to justify their occupation of Palestine. They put forward the argument that they have historical rights to the land since they are descendants of Jews who lived in Palestine thousands of years ago. Throughout all the conflicts, the indigenous Palestinian Arabs have been supported by the larger Arab world. However, when in 1948 the Israeli state was established and the five Arab armies’ invasion that caused the full-fledged Arab Israeli conflict (Morris, 2009). The victory of Israel and the expansion of its original borders while the Arabs armies were defeated thus failing to establish the Palestinian Arab state as the United Nations had planned out, resulted in the transformation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the mandated Palestine to the Arab-Israeli conflict as currently known. The strengths and weaknesses of the different narratives of the conflict Different parties have different narratives of the conflict. This is an issue in itself since there should be a common understanding of the issue at hand. On the other hand, these differences could also have some strengths and this shall be explored. The Arab side of it will be the first one to be discussed and then the Israeli side. The Arabs believe that there are political, philosophical as well as spiritual incompatibilities between Arabs and Israelis. This is to mean that even if the political issues are resolved, there would also be the Zionism and the Arab nationalism to resolve. They therefore live in different worlds and dialogues are not possible therefore should not even be considered. This is a very sad ideation since it means that there may never be a solution to the conflict (Kershner, 2005). The Israelis are depicted as victims by most of the world. This is because many people explain the situation as the Arabs desiring to destroy the Israelis simply because they are Jews. This is regardless of the fact that the Israelis are not ruled and controlled by Jews who make up a nominal amount of the state ruling elite class. There is also the opinion that Arabs want to eliminate Israelis since they are democratic and secular thus threaten the autocratic power structure of the Arab-Islamic world. However, this democracy of the Israelis is somewhat questionable under serious scrutiny which shows of that Israeli is mostly a corporate state with the government owning and controlling almost ninety percent of the country’s assets. According to this narrative, Arabs disturb the peace of the Jews unjustifiably. They should not make decisions for other nations on what philosophies to follow or what religious ideations to follow. Their invasion and attack of the Israelis is therefore deemed as terrorism (Quandt, 2005). It is therefore true to accurate to say that it is Israeli’s secularism that is a great threat to the Arab-Islamic civilization as most Muslim scholars point out. Evidence of this is the fact that Arabs killed true Jews long before the establishment of Israel’s secular state. Even if anti-Zionism is mostly the main reason for the killings, the Zionists are mostly secularists. Basic Jewish sources and Jewish history state that Jews are being punished by their god because they have rejected and turned away from Him. Their God will therefore use different ways and peoples to condemn and humiliate them. This contends that God is using the Arabs to achieve this. The Jews believe this and some religious Jews advocate for the Israelis to turn back to their God and denounce secularism. This explanation depicts the Arabs as not guilty of their actions and their actions as justifiable. Israelis are condemned and seen as suffering because of their own for irrational and suicidal decision of adopting secularism. Key issues of the conflict. The Arab- Israeli conflict is very complex in nature. There is no single Arab-Israeli dispute but rather many distinct and interrelated ones. The core dispute is the classic conflict between two nations claiming ownership and campaigning for possession of the same land. Where all this came from is as discussed earlier in the essay where the Palestinian community was dispersed during Israel’s war of independence. There was also the pre-eminence of the Pan-Arab ideologies and Arab state interests. Another dispute is the one between Israel and Arab nationalism. It is a conflict with various dimensions such as national, political, cultural and religious. The two sides refer to their historical and cultural legacies. This is explained with the Jews aiming at reviving their original homeland after the Second World War and the Holocaust specifically. They just wanted to return and renew their original homeland. The conflict erupted when they collided with the Arabs who were on a movement to regain revival and power after they had also been tired of the Western world. This collision was because the Arabs associate Zionism and Israelis with the West. There have also been a series of bilateral disputes between Israel and her neighbors who happen to be Arabs. These disputes are caused by geopolitical rivalries between them plus many other factors. Arabs leaders have been ambitious and therefore form allies with others like Egypt so as to compete against Israel which is also powerful and ambitious and has a desire to get a land bridge to the eastern Arab world through the South of the Negev Desert. Syria is also another country in conflict with Israel because of the hegemony in the Levant and has therefore attached itself to Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause. The last one is that the conflict is somewhat a larger international conflict. The Arabs and the Israelis have always sought support and the alliance of international nations each campaigning for its respective cause. The problem comes in when the foreign powers and other parties intervene either with ulterior motives or even genuine interest to help one of the two (Finkelstein, 2003). This is because they are superpowers in the Middle East and therefore conflicts among them will always affect the globe as a whole. The nations also have geopolitical factors to consider such as their closeness to the Soviet Union since it is open to change which could make it a base for the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Americas. Conclusion The underlying and hidden causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict are obscured by those analysts and critics. This is the main reason why there has been no noticeable impact of the peace processes nations have embarked on to bring peace to the two peoples. Faulty narrations of the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war should be discerned and official documents by historians could also be necessary in coming up with concrete information. History should therefore demystify the faulty accounts to give the whole thing a fuller and more honest account (Inbar, 2000). The conflict between Israelis and Arabs is a product of history. That history can never be changed however; the future course of the two peoples can be altered. It should be an interest of every nation in the world to try and help them resolve their conflict using means that are not military in any way. This will help reduce the instability in the Middle East. There are very many indicators pointing out as to how impossible this is but this does not mean that peace negotiations could not be somehow successful in ending the suffering of the innocent people in those countries little by little. These efforts however require a deep understanding of the causes and the nature of this complex conflict. References Carter, J. (2006). Palestine. New York: Simon & Schuster. Finkelstein, N. (2003). Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. London: Verso. Inbar, E. (2000). Arab‐Israeli coexistence: The causes, achievements and limitations. Israel Affairs, 6(3-4), 256-270. doi:10.1080/13537120008719582 Kershner, I. (2005). Barrier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Morris, B. (2009). One state, two states. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale Univ. Press. Quandt, W. (2005). Peace process. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Read More