Beveridge: To understand conflict in Mideast, consider the history
Reid K. Beveridge has covered politics in four states and Washington, D.C., since 1964. He also is a retired Army and Army National Guard brigadier general, with service in the Middle East.
“Everything would be fine if the Jews would just leave.”
Boiled down, that is basically Hamas’ position. Hamas and the Palestinians have never accepted Israel’s right to exist as a nation. And, until recently — with the Abraham Accords and the developing relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia — that also has been most Arabs’ position.
There is a long history in the area of the Middle East that can generically be called Palestine. Palestine, by this reckoning, includes all of Israel as we know it today, plus the kingdom of Jordan and much of Lebanon and some of Syria. That history begins with Abraham nearly 4,000 years ago. This Abraham is recognized by three of the five great religions of the world, of which Islam is one.
The Jewish residence in greater Palestine began with Abraham’s journey from what is now Saudi Arabia to what is called Canaan in the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It accelerated with Moses’ and Joshua’s return from Egypt, with many thousands of Abraham’s great-great-grandchildren.
Hamas presumably wants something like what happened in the first century A.D. That was the defeat of the Jewish uprising of 69-73 A.D. and the eventual dispersal of most of the Jews living in Israel to various places in the Roman Empire. That diaspora continued until World War II and the Holocaust.
After the fall of Rome, Palestine (including what is now Israel) was ruled first by the Byzantine Empire and, after the rising of Islam in the eighth century, mostly by the Ottoman Turks.
During the interwar years, Palestine was ruled by the British and French under a League of Nations mandate decreed by the peace treaty that ended World War I. The national boundaries were those mostly drawn by a young Winston Churchill, then British colonial secretary.
But the idea of a Jewish national home had come to the fore as early as 1917, with the Balfour Declaration and the work of Theodor Herzl, an early proponent of Zionism, which advocated for a Jewish nation on Palestinian land on the east end of the Mediterranean Sea.
After World War II, many, perhaps most, European Jews vowed “never again” and began to move from Germany, Poland and various other European countries to Palestine. This exodus had actually begun in the 1880s on a smaller scale, mostly from Russia during the czars’ antisemitic pogroms. And, until about 1947, the indigenous Palestinians hadn’t objected to this immigration, saying there was plenty of room for all.
This second exodus was different, however. Now, tens, even hundreds of thousands of Jews were arriving from Europe. For one thing, there were a lot more of them. And second, they were a different breed. Many were highly educated and skilled. And they quickly got organized and began to take over. The Palestinians and other Arabs were appalled.
And worse, from the Palestinian point of view, the Jews wanted to be a nation. The United Nations, Great Britain and the United States agreed and recognized the new Israel. The 1948 war of independence quickly followed, when the Arabs attacked Israel from three directions. But, to widespread surprise, it did not go well for the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies. It did not go well because the Israeli army in the form of two organizations, the Haganah and the Irgun, had fought with the British in North Africa. The Arabs, who had sided with Adolf Hitler, mostly sat out World War II.
This produced the geography we see today. The West Bank protrudes into the center of Israel because Jordan’s Arab Legion was more effective than the other Arab armies. The Gaza Strip stems from the Egyptian army’s intrusion into what is now southern Israel.
Three more wars followed: 1956, 1967 and 1973. The Six-Day War of 1967 was the most decisive, when Israel got the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza back, plus the Sinai part of Egypt. But, in getting those areas “back,” Israel also got millions of hostile Arabs. On the other hand, after their defeat in 1973, the leaders of Egypt and Jordan got tired of losing wars to Israel and signed peace treaties. Cold and unfriendly peace, to be sure, but peace nonetheless.
Then, for his efforts, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was promptly assassinated. And, more to the point, even when Israel was prepared to give land for peace when outgoing President Bill Clinton gathered the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at Camp David in 2000, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat walked away rather than recognize Israel’s right to exist. Even at the height of his power, Arafat was more afraid of assassination than he was in favor of creating a Palestinian nation.
Now, 23 years later, we have what we have. Palestinians in the form of Hamas refuse to concede Israel’s right to exist. They vow to drive the Jews into the sea. Or kill them all. Hence, the signs that Israel and Saudi Arabia were getting closer to a peace treaty were simply too much for Hamas (and its sponsor, Iran) to bear.
“Everything would be fine if the Jews would just leave.”
This will not end well for the Palestinians. Nor should it, unless you are in favor of a second Holocaust.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
