Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer

—part i—

the crisis

Why is there so much violence in the Middle East? Isn’t there violence on both sides?

The violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories has come from both sides. Its human tragedies are equally devastating for all victims and all their families. Innocents, including children, have been killed on and by both sides, and both sides have violated international law. But the violence by Israelis and by Palestinians is not an equal opportunity killer; it does not have the same roots, nor are the two sides culpable in the same way.

Palestinians in the territories live under Israeli military occupation. They are not citizens of Israel or of any state, and have no rights of protest or redress. The occupation is a violent daily reality, in which Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets control every aspect of Palestinian lives, and have recently brought social, family, and economic life to a virtual halt. In summer 2002, the US Agency for International Development determined that Palestinian children living in the occupied territories faced malnutrition at one of the highest levels in the world—higher than in Somalia and Bangladesh. By the summer of 2006, UN humanitarian agencies warned that poverty in Gaza was close to 80 percent, and unemployment over 40 percent. The occupation has been in place since 1967, although the current period has seen perhaps the most intense Israeli stranglehold on Palestinian life, and the highest levels of violence. What we often hear described simply as the violence in the Middle East cannot be understood without an understanding of what military occupation means.

Violence is central to maintaining Israel’s military occupation. It is carried out primarily by Israeli military forces and Israeli settlers in the occupied territories who are themselves armed by the Israeli military, and its victims include some Palestinian militants and a large majority of Palestinian civilians, including many children. Because military occupation is itself illegal, all Israeli violence in the occupied territories stands in violation of international law—specifically the Geneva Conventions that identify the obligations of an occupying power to protect the occupied population.

Palestinian violence is the violence of resistance, and has escalated as conditions of life and loss of hope breed greater desperation. It is carried out primarily by individual Palestinians and those linked to small armed factions, and is aimed mostly at military checkpoints, soldiers, and settlers in the occupied territories; recently more attacks, particularly suicide bombings, have been launched inside Israel, many of which have targeted civilian gathering places. Those attacks, targeting civilians, are themselves a violation of international law. But the overall right of an occupied population to resist a foreign military occupation, including through use of arms against military targets, is recognized as lawful under international law.

Why should we care about violence in the Middle East?

When we learn about it, which is not always the case, we all tend to care about violence and its effects on people’s lives wherever it may be. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the violence is on the front pages of our newspapers and a top story on radio and television on a daily basis. Many, all over the world, are particularly concerned about violence there because of the religious significance of the area—including historical sites holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Beyond the general concern about human suffering, many Americans have a special interest in events in the region because the US government is by far the most dominant outside power there, and decisions made in Washington are central to developments toward war or peace. And further, the US sends billions of our tax dollars in aid to the region, including about $4 billion in annual aid to Israel alone.

US, British, and European policy in the Middle East also plays a major role in determining how people in that region view our governments and citizens. If we are concerned about the rise in international antagonism not only to US policies but toward individual citizens of our countries, we need to take seriously what our governments do in our name elsewhere in the world.

Why is the Middle East so important to the US and internationally?

From earliest history, the Middle East, and the area long known as Palestine, were global crossroads of trade, science, scholarship, and religion in ancient civilizations. In more recent times, the discovery of oil in the region and the need of outside empires for reliable local allies led to the creation of western protectorates throughout the Middle East. As they struggle to rebuild after World World II, the European colonial powers long dominant in the Middle East lost much of their influence. France remained influential in Syria and Lebanon, but with the 1947 Partition Agreement in Palestine, Britain pulled back. Soon afterward, the US moved into the breach.

From 1967, through the beginnings of the twenty-first century, US policy in the region has been based on protecting the triad of oil, Israel, and stability. Stability has always been understood to include access to markets, raw materials, and labor forces for US business interests, as well as the stability imposed by the expansion of US military capacity throughout the region, including the creation of an elaborate network of US military bases. During the Cold War the US relied on Israel as a cat’s paw—a military extension of its own strategic reach—both within the Middle East region and internationally in places as far as Angola, Guatemala, Mozambique, and Nicaragua. With the end of the Cold War, Israel remains a close and reliable ally, in the region as well as internationally, for the now unchallenged power of the US—although the strategic value of Israel, in an era shaped by the US’s efforts to dominate countries and regions particularly antagonistic to Israel, appears to be diminishing. At the same time, widespread domestic support for Israel, most concentrated in the mainstream Jewish community and among the increasingly powerful right-wing Christian fundamentalists in the US, took root in popular culture and politics, giving Israel’s supporters great influence over Washington policymakers.

What caused the Israeli–Palestinian crisis that began in 2000?

The crisis began in September 2000, after the Camp David summit had collapsed, and with it the hopes of Palestinians that the negotiations of the Oslo process would finally lead to an end to occupation and creation of an independent Palestinian state. The uprising, or intifada in Arabic, was sparked on September 27, 2000, by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s highly provocative decision to walk, accompanied by about 1,000 armed Israeli troops, on the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, the Muslim holy site in East Jerusalem. (The complex is also known as the Temple Mount, the holiest site for religious Jews because the most sacred temple in Judaism was once located here—of which the Western, or Wailing, Wall, which borders the Haram al-Sharif, is believed to be a remnant.) The next day, Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian protestors, some of whom were throwing stones, killing several Palestinians, some on the steps and inside the doorway of the al-Aqsa Mosque. What came to be called the al-Aqsa Intifada began that day.

Why is the violence so intense?

Israel has increasingly escalated the weapons it deploys against the Palestinians. Numerous respected human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Human Rights have documented Israeli soldiers employing excessive force in their suppression of Palestinian demonstrators. Their reports cite the use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians, attacks on medical personnel and installations, the use of snipers with high-powered rifles, and attacks on children.

As the al-Aqsa Intifada ground on, Israel escalated to the use of tank-mounted weapons, helicopter gunships firing wire-guided missiles on buildings and streets to carry out targeted assassinations, and finally F-16 fighter bombers, which dropped 2,000-pound bombs in refugee camps and on crowded apartment buildings, resulting in significant civilian casualties.

Palestinians, unlike during the unarmed first intifada (1987–1993), had and used small arms, mainly rifles, against Israeli soldiers, tanks, and sometimes settlers; they also fired Qassam rockets that hit both military and civilian targets inside Israel. As the situation became more desperate, some young people turned themselves into suicide bombers, attacking either military checkpoints in the occupied territories, or civilian gathering spots inside Israel itself.

Isn’t Israel just trying to fight terrorism, as the US and the UK have tried to do in Afghanistan?

Whether or not one believes going to war in Afghanistan was an appropriate response to the crime against humanity committed on September 11, 2001, it is a far different scenario than that faced by Israel.

Israel has every right to arrest and put on trial anyone attempting to attack civilians inside the country. But it does not have the right to occupy a neighboring country, and if it is serious about ending attacks on civilians, it must be serious about ending that occupation.

Israel is occupying Palestinian land and harshly controlling Palestinian lives; Palestinian violence, even those extreme and ultimately illegal actions such as lethal attacks on civilian targets, is a response to that occupation. Israel does not have the right, under international law or United Nations resolutions, to continue its occupation, let alone to use violent methods to enforce it.

Since September 11, Israeli politicians led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successor Ehud Olmert have ratcheted up their rhetoric equating the US war on terrorism in Afghanistan and later Iraq with Israeli assaults in the occupied Palestinian territories. Immediately after the September 11 attacks, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu blurted out, It’s very good. Then, editing his words, he added, Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.

Israel has also used the escalating fear of terrorism in the US after September 11 to increase its support (financial, diplomatic, and political) from Congress and the American people. In fact, the Bush administration’s post-September 11 embrace of the extremist Sharon government has allowed new threats of even more dire Israeli attacks against Palestinians— up to and perhaps including forced transfer of Palestinians out of the occupied territories—to go unchallenged by Washington and to become part of normal political discourse inside Israel.

Are all Palestinians terrorists or supporters of terrorism?

The US State Department defines terrorism as: premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. Under that definition, Palestinian attacks on civilians inside Israel would be considered terrorism; so would attacks on Palestinian marketplaces by Israeli settlers in Hebron or elsewhere. Palestinian attacks on Israeli soldiers, military checkpoints, or other military targets would not fall under the definition of terrorism, although many US politicians and pundits describe them as such.

The vast majority of Palestinians have never participated in any armed attack against anyone. Many, perhaps most, Palestinians are opposed to attacks on civilians anywhere, and many are opposed to any attacks inside Israel. In the spring of 2002, a large group of well-known Palestinian intellectuals signed a public statement condemning suicide bombings against civilians. But virtually all Palestinians understand the desperation and hopelessness that fuel the rage of suicide bombers and their increasing (and ever-younger) followers.

Why are Palestinians in Israel at all?

When Israel was created as a state in 1948, 750,000 indigenous Palestinians, whose families had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years, were forcibly expelled by, or fled in terror of, the powerful militias that would soon become the army of the State of Israel. The one million or so Palestinians inside Israel today, who constitute just under 20 percent of the Israeli population, are those that remained and their descendants. Despite international law and specific UN resolutions, none of those forced into exile have been allowed to return. In fact, Israel’s admission to the UN in 1948 was conditioned on its willingness to abide by General Assembly Resolution 194 calling for the right to return and compensation.

From Israel’s creation in 1948 until 1966, the indigenous Palestinian population inside the country lived under military rule. Since that time, Palestinians have been considered citizens, can vote and run for office; several Palestinians serve in the Israeli Knesset, or parliament. But not all rights inside Israel are granted on the basis of citizenship. Some rights and obligations, sometimes known as nationality rights, favor Jews over non-Jews (who are overwhelmingly Palestinian) in social services, the right to own land, access to bank loans and education, military service, and more.

More than three times as many Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem than remain inside Israel proper. Millions more remain refugees.

Who are the Palestinians? Where did they come from?

Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the indigenous people of Palestine, who lived under the vast Arab/Islamic empire that from the seventh century dominated Palestine, during the rise of the Arabic language and Arab/Islamic culture. While the majority of Palestinians were peasants, Palestinian cities, especially Jerusalem, were hubs of Arab civilization, where scholars, poets, and scientists congregated and where, enriched by a constant influx of traders, they forged the city’s identity as an important national center. Islam’s religious and moral teachings remained the dominant social forces, but small indigenous Jewish communities remained as integral parts of the Palestinian community. They were the remnants of Palestine’s ancient Jewish kingdom, which was conquered by Rome in 70 CE, its people largely scattered. Along with groups of Christians, those Palestinian Jews maintained their faith and separate communal identities within broader Palestinian society throughout the rise of Islam.

Throughout the years of the Arab and then Ottoman empires in what is now the Arab world, there were no nation-states; instead the political demography was shaped by cities and regions. As in most parts of the Arab world, modern national consciousness for Palestinians grew in the context of demographic changes and shifts in colonial control. During the 400 years of Ottoman Turkish control, Palestine was a distinct and identifiable region within the larger empire, but linked closely with the region then known as Greater Syria. With World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine became part of the British Empire. But even before that, beginning in the 1880s, the increasing influx of European Jewish settlers brought about a new national identity—a distinctly Palestinian consciousness—among the Muslims and Christians who were the overwhelming majority of Palestinian society. The indigenous Palestinians— Muslims and Christians—fought the colonial ambitions of European Jewish settlers, British colonial rule during the inter-war period, and the Israeli occupation since 1948 and 1967.

What are the occupied territories?

When the British ended their Palestine Mandate in 1947, they turned control over to the United Nations. The UN Partition Agreement of November 29, 1947, divided Palestine into sectors: 55 percent for a Jewish state and 45 percent for a Palestinian Arab state, with Jerusalem to be left under international control as a corpus separatum (separate body). War broke out immediately. After the 1947–1948 war, the new state of Israel was announced in June 1948, made up of 78 percent of the land of what had been British Mandate Palestine under the League of Nations since 1922. Only 22 percent was left, made up of the Gaza Strip (a small piece of land along the Mediterranean coast abutting the Egyptian border), the West Bank, along the Jordan River, and Arab East Jerusalem. From 1948 until the June War of 1967, the