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History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Deborah J. Gerner

Introduction

The Palestinian issue remains one of the most significant and difficult dilemmas facing the international community. The ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians-a struggle over land and political control-is the result of a search for national identity and self-determination by two ethnonationalist groups in the context of nineteenth-century European imperialism, twentieth-century decolonization, and evolving international understandings of statehood and nationalism. Israeli-Palestinian hostility has directly or indirectly spawned half a dozen regional wars in the past five decades, threatened Western access to critical petroleum resources, provided a justification for increased militarization throughout the region, and led to civilian deaths as a result of terrorism by both state and nonstate actors. The United States, the Soviet Union/Russia, the European states (particularly Great Britain ), and the Arab countries have all attempted to manipulate or control the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to enhance their own perceived national interests. The United Nations has also been involved. It has passed numerous resolutions and has sent peacekeeping forces to patrol the Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese borders with Israel, but it has been kept out of an active mediation role. Overall, the policies of actors external to the conflict have frequently exacerbated rather than reduced tensions between the principal participants.

Historical Background

At the start of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire ruled much of the Arab world, including Palestine, the area now referred to as Israel, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip. With the Allied victory in World War I, Palestine came under the control of the British, who made contradictory promises to French, Arab, and European Zionist leaders about how-and by whom-the area was to be governed. In a series of letters exchanged in 1915 and 1916, Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemite family and governor of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner of Egypt, discussed the terms under which the Arabs would assist the British war effort by revolting against their Ottoman rulers. Britain promised that, in exchange for this support, the Arabs would receive independence after the war ended. At the same time, European Zionists (Jewish nationalists) felt that the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for a "Jewish national home in Palestine," provided international sanction for Jewish political aspirations to be fulfilled in the same small territory. In addition, Britain had signed a secret agreement with France specifying how these two countries would divide control over the Arab parts of the Ottoman Empire once the latter had been defeated.

Not surprisingly, these irreconcilable commitments led to tensions within Palestine between the Jewish and Palestinian communities. In 1922 about 88 percent of the population of Palestine was Arab (Muslim, Christian, or Druze). The Jewish community included a small group of long-time residents (living mostly in Hebron, Safad, Tiberias, and Jerusalem ), older immigrants who had fled persecution in Russia in the late 1800s, and more recent immigrants (particularly Zionists from Central Europe ). The number of recent immigrants increased dramatically in size following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, leading Palestinians to fear that a Jewish homeland would indeed be created-at Palestinian expense. Between 1936 and 1939, Palestinians engaged in a massive revolt against British rule. Initially the rebellion was nonviolent; however, after a British commission recommended splitting Palestine, the revolt flared again in a much more violent form. The commission's proposal was widely rejected and was not implemented. Instead, Britain issued a new, equally problematic, policy that limited Jewish immigration and land purchases.

In the aftermath of World War II and the near destruction of European Jewry, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of Resolution 181, which called for the creation of two states-one Jewish, one Arab-within a partitioned Palestine as soon as the British mandate ended in May 1948. The plan gave the proposed Jewish state 56 percent of the territory, including most of the fertile coastal area, although at this joint the Jewish community owned only 6 to 8 percent of the total land and made up about a third of the population. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were designated as international zones. Fighting between Palestinian and Jewish inhabitants began almost immediately after the United Nations announced its vote. Although small in number, the Zionist military forces were well-trained, well-armed, and well-organized; the Palestinians were not. By the time Britain withdrew and Israel declared independence, Zionist troops had conquered most of the areas allocated to Israel as well as some additional lands intended for the Palestinians. The surrounding Arab countries, which had territorial aspirations of their own and no interest in allowing a Palestinian state to come into existence, intervened militarily and took over those parts of Palestine not occupied by Israel. When armistice agreements were finally signed in 1949, Israel held 77 percent of Palestine, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip, and Jordan claimed sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the hilly West Bank. The name " Palestine " was wiped off the political map of the world.

Only about 150,000 Palestinians remained in what became Israel. A second, much larger, group of Palestinians-over 700,000 people by most accounts-who had fled the fighting found themselves refugees at the end of the war. Forbidden to return to their homes in Israel, many remained in refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and nearby Arab countries; others traveled to the Gulf, Europe, or the United States in search of work. Finally, a significant number of Palestinians who were living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before the war remained there and came under Jordanian or Egyptian rule.

The Palestinian nakba (catastrophe), with its massive dislocation, dispossession, and economic deprivation, stunned Palestinians and created an immediate and profound crisis for the Palestinian nation. Until the mid-1960s, most Palestinians within Israel were ruled under strict military regulations, many first imposed during the years of British rule. They had to obtain permission to travel in or out of their immediate area, faced restrictions on their economic activities, and were subject to arrest or even expulsion for political reasons. Egypt and Jordan pressured Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip not to challenge the status quo or engage in acts of resistance against Israel. Demoralized and without effective political or military direction (since Britain had expelled most Palestinian leaders in the late 1930s as part of the suppression of the Arab revolt), the Palestinian community entered into a period of political quietude that lasted well into the 1960's.

Less than 20 years after al nakba, during the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conquered the rest of the former mandate of Palestine as well the Egyptian Sinai (since returned to Egypt ) and the Syrian Golan Heights. In the aftermath, Palestinians faced further dislocation and economic hardship as well as renewed shock and disappointment in the failures of the Arab military forces. Whereas the Palestinians had been completely disheartened by the events of 1948 and to a large extent withdrew from political activities, this time their response was one of active resistance, born out of the conviction that none of the Arab states could be relied upon to help. In Gaza, women and men engaged in an insurrection that began in 1968 and lasted for three years. In the West Bank, charitable organizations provided an organizational structure through which Palestinians could undertake resistance activities. Outside the borders of mandatory Palestine, nationalist guerrilla groups took over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was established by the Arab states in 1964, and in 1969 elected Yasir Arafat chairman.

The mid-1970s, after the October War of 1973, was a period of increased international awareness of and support for the Palestinian national movement and for the PLO specifically. In October 1974, at the Arab League conference held in Rabat, Morocco, the Arab states acknowledged the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." The next month, PLO leader Yasir Arafat was invited to address the members of the United Nations; after his speech, the United Nations granted the PLO observer status within the organization. Despite these political victories, the Palestinians still lacked the ability to determine their own destiny rather than serving as pawns in the political games of the superpowers and the Arab countries. This was made brutally clear when Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords in 1978 and followed this with a peace treaty the next year, despite the failure of the accords to resolve any aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The message was reinforced when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to eliminate the PLO's political and military infrastructure in that country (where the PLO had relocated after being expelled from Jordan in 1970).

The outbreak in December 1987 of the Palestinian intifada (uprising) marked the beginning of a community-wide mobilization against the lengthy Israeli occupation. Strikes, demonstrations, tax resistance, boycotts of Israeli products, and other acts of civil disobedience were coordinated through locally based popular committees. Palestinian resistance activities also included stone throwing and the creation of barricades to hinder the movement of Israeli forces. Massive Israeli arrests of Palestinians (over 100,000 by the end of 1993), the "administration detention" of more than 18,000 suspected activists for periods of six months to several years, deportations, curfews and closures, and the sealing or destruction of hundreds of homes affected virtually the entire population. In addition, more than 300 Palestinians and 11 Israelis were killed in the first year of the intifada; by the end of the intifada, Palestinian deaths numbered over 1,000. *

On July 31, 1988, Jordan renounced its claim to the West Bank, creating new political opportunities for the Palestinians, and in November 1988 the Palestine National Council met and declared the independence of the State of Palestine. The following month, Arafat, in addressing the United Nations General Assembly, committed the PLO to "a comprehensive settlement among the parties concerned in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the state of Palestine and Israel and other neighbors within the framework of... Resolutions 242 and 338."** Arafat's explicit and very public declaration was an irrevocable act that changed forever the framework of the conflict and set the stage for the U.S.-sponsored Madrid Conference, the Oslo Agreement, and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict.

The Conflict

The core issues dividing the Israeli and Palestinian ethno-national communities have remained relatively constant over the years. They include the following:

• Borders: specific, fixed, agreed-upon boundaries for Israel and for the Arab states in the region, including whatever form of Palestinian state or political entity is created
• Status of Jerusalem
• Settlers and settlements: the political, civil, and national status of approximately 400,000 Jewish Israelis currently living on occupied land within the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip
• Refugees and the right of return: the political, civil, and national status of Palestinians currently living outside the borders of the historic Palestine
• Compensation for Palestinians and Israelis who were forced to leave their homes and property as a direct result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Natural resources: the allocation of resources such as water among the region's peoples
• Assurance of mutual security for all states and all peoples in the region
• Political, civil, and national status of Palestinians currently living within Israel
• Economic viability of all the states in the region
• Role of the international community in supervising a negotiated settlement.

Each of these points reflects a significant and controversial aspect of Israeli-Palestinian relations that must be addressed before their conflict can be fully resolved.

Management of the Conflict

Throughout the twentieth century, various efforts were made to arbitrate the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. The United Nations was heavily involved in the years following its vote to partition Palestine. It created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to take responsibility for Palestinian refugees, sent mediators to the region throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and passed dozens of General Assembly and Security Council resolutions calling for cease-fires, condemning aggressive actions by each of the parties, and suggesting approaches for conflict resolution.

In recent decades, the United States has attempted to take a leading role in managing the conflict and has worked to exclude the United Nations from participation. The close relationship between Israel and the United States has hampered the ability of the United States to serve as a neutral mediator, however. Furthermore, for 13 years, the United States refused to acknowledge or deal officially with the PLO because of a promise the United States made to Israel in 1975:

The United States will continue to adhere to its present policy with respect to the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], whereby it will not recognize or negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization so long as the Palestine Liberation Organization does not recognize Israel's right to exist and does not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.***

The two UN Security Council resolutions referred to-242 and 338-marked the end of the June 1967 and October 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, respectively. Palestinians maintained these resolutions were an inadequate basis for negotiation because, among other issues, they did not address Palestinian demands for self-determination, referring instead only to a "settlement of the refugee problem." Later, in 1984, Congress wrote the 1975 pledge into law and added that the PLO had to renounce the use of terrorism before there would be any formal diplomatic discussions between the two parties. In the absence of relations with the PLO, the United States was forced to rely on other Arab states to represent Palestinian interests; a task these countries did poorly and without enthusiasm. After Arafat's conciliatory statements in December 1988, the United States opened direct contacts with the PLO.

The inability of the United States and the international community to resolve the Palestinian situation became a problem for the United States when Iraq overran Kuwait in August 1990. There were urgent calls for Iraq to withdraw, and the United States immediately began to put together a coalition to reverse the invasion. Palestinians were livid, asking why the Iraqi occupation was instantly condemned while Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands was ignored and, in the case of the United States, implicitly supported through U.S. economic and military assistance to Israel. In order to build a broad coalition against Iraq-one that included a number of Arab states-the United States committed itself to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once the war ended. Throughout the spring and summer of 1991, the United States undertook a series of meetings with Arab and Israeli leaders that culminated in a regional peace conference, cosponsored by the United States and the former Soviet Union, in Madrid, Spain.

Over the next two years, the Madrid negotiations, now moved to Washington, D.C., dragged on with a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings that accomplished little. A U.S. commitment to Israel guaranteed that the United Nations would have no role in the process. Unexpectedly, at the end of August 1993, the Israeli government and the PLO announced they had been meeting secretly in Norway and had reached an interim agreement for Palestinian self-government. The Declaration of Principles (DoP), signed in September, outlined a process for transforming the nature of the Israeli occupation but left numerous issues unresolved, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the disposition of Israeli settlements, security arrangements, and final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Under the DoP, Israel was to relinquish day-to-day civil authority over parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank to a newly created Palestinian National Authority headed by Arafat, who returned to Gaza in 1994. Ultimate power, however, remained with Israel, which exercised its control by sealing off the Palestinian-governed areas from the rest of the Occupied Territories and from Israel for extended periods of time, an action that devastated a Palestinian economy already weakened by years of occupation. In addition, Israel continued to confiscate land and to build settlements and roads that served to separate Palestinian cities, towns, and villages from each other, exacerbating the fragmentation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Subsequent agreements in 1994 (Cairo Agreement), 1995 (Oslo II), 1998 (Wye River I), and 1999 (Wye River II) failed to address the fundamental weaknesses of the DoP. The 314 pages of the Oslo II agreement, for instance, extended Palestinian civilian jurisdiction over major population areas, specified the form that Palestinian elections for a legislative council and president would take, and set May 4, 1996, as the deadline to begin final status negotiations that would deal with outstanding issues. It did not, however, indicate the consequences of a failure to meet the May deadline. Nor did Oslo II contain provisions to halt the creation of new "facts on the ground" that would influence the final form of any eventual agreement. The Wye I agreement, which took nineteen months to achieve in part due to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish Israeli, simply rearticulated how Israel and the Palestinians were to carry out what they had already agreed to in Oslo II and were supposed to have finished more than a year earlier: interim steps toward a final status agreement. Wye River II set a new target date of September 10, 2000, for a permanent peace agreement.

With Palestinian-Israeli negotiations stalled and the final status talks not yet begun, U.S. President Bill Clinton called a summit at Camp David in July 2000. After two weeks of tense discussion, the conference ended without a deal, and by late September-following a provocative visit by Israeli Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon to the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount site-a second Palestinian intifada had begun. The massive and widespread violence rapidly dwarfed what had been seen during the first uprising. The Israel Defense Force killed alleged Palestinian militants, regularly shelled Palestinian police stations and other government buildings, and bulldozed Palestinian houses and crops, creating barren swaths of land. Israel also tightened its control around the Palestinian population enclaves and sent tanks and troops into areas that previously had been turned over to Palestinian control. Palestinian suicide bombings inside Israel and attacks on Israeli settlements reflected the increased level of violence. The U.S. "Mitchell Report"-released on April 30, 2001-called for a halt to the violence, a complete end to Israeli settlement expansion, and a return to what it called the "normal" conditions that existed before September 27, 2000. It had no impact. By late September 2001, more than 600 Palestinians and 170 Israelis had been killed. Few outside the region noticed the first anniversary of the uprising, however. Two weeks earlier, on September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four commercial planes leaving New York City and Boston and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon Building in Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania, killing about 3,000 people from dozens of countries. As the United States and its allies prepared for a war on terrorism, management of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer seems to be a priority, even as the ground situation in the Middle East steadily deteriorated to the point where it became necessary in the spring of 2002 to dispatch Secretary of State Colin Powell to a region shattered by almost daily Palestinian bombings and Israeli military reprisals, in a forlorn effort to paste together a new peace.

Significance

Strife between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Druze has now lasted more than a century. It is an archetypal example of a protracted, ethno-national conflict. None of the problems created by Britain's irreconcilable World War I promises, the partition of Palestine in 1948, and Israel's conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 are close to resolution. Despite its military superiority and support from the world's most powerful country, Israel has failed to crush Palestinian nationalism. Nor have the Palestinians succeeded in advancing their cause significantly, despite political support from other states in the region and the vast majority of United Nations member countries. There is a stalemate: neither can defeat the other, yet the terms under which each is willing to end their conflict are unacceptable to the other side.

The importance of this area-the Holy Land-to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam guarantees that, until the conflict is resolved, it will continue to occupy a position of importance internationally far beyond what would be expected given the small territory, resources, and population involved. Furthermore, the failure of the United States to resolve this ongoing dispute challenges its stature and credibility as a world leader. While international law could provide guidance regarding the shape a permanent resolution might take, it is frequently ignored-a situation unlikely to change as long as the United States maintains its dominant position in negotiations. The conflict over Palestine is a dangerous situation that shows little evidence of being resolved in the near future.

Notes

* The data on Palestinian human rights violations come from the Palestine Human Rights Information Center (Chicago and Jerusalem).

** "Yasser Arafat, Speech at U.N. General Assembly, Geneva, General Assembly 13 December 1988," Le Monde Diplomatique, online at Monde Dip I o. com/focus/mideast/ arafat8 8. en.

*** U.S. Congress, House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, The Search for Peace in the Middle East: Documents and Statements, 1967-1979. Prepared by the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 15.

This has been reproduced with permission from of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT. Middle East: The Palestinian Issue by Deborah J. Gerner /Joseph R. Rudolph Jr. of Encyclopedia of Modern Ethnic Conflict Readers. Copyright, 2003, by Joseph R. Rudolph Jr.

*Viewers have permission to reproduce, distribute, or use this information for non-commercial purposes provided attribution is given to When the Rain Returns: Towards Justice and Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel by an International Working Party. Published by the American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, 2004. For information on ordering the book >

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