Israel Unlike the Historical State

¶ … Israel

Unlike the historical state of Israel, the modern state of Israel owes credit for its creation to a series of secular actions, despite the religious nature of the country. In order to understand its creation, it is important to look at historic events immediately preceding the creation of Israel, the wars that followed the creation of Israel, and current Israeli occupation of lands that were initially outside of Israeli control. Many people attribute the creation of Israel to Hitler's actions during World War II, and assume that the League of Nations created Israel as a way of making amends to the victims of the Holocaust. However, that explanation, while partially accurate, is overly simplistic, and ignores the larger political influences that led to the creation and enduring existence of the modern state of Israel.

It is important to understand that, despite Israel being under non-Jewish rule from the Middle Ages until the creation of the modern state of Israel, many Jews still lived in Israel. In fact, Jews have been moving from Europe to Israel since the Middle Ages. However, the movement of European Jews to Europe dramatically increased in pace in the late 1800s, when many European countries began to increase their persecution of Jews. In response, Theodor Herzl promoted the return of Jews to Israel and the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel; this movement was known as Zionism. Prior to World War I, approximately 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine as part of the Zionist movement. During World War I, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour made the Balfour Declaration, which favored establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. In response, the Jewish Legion assisted the British in conquering Israel. However, Israel was not designated as a separate state. There was tremendous Arab opposition to the creation of an independent Jewish state, largely driven by the fact that an Arab state, Palestine, already existed in the proposed space. Despite the opposition, the League of Nations gave Great Britain control over Palestine, with the purpose of establishing an independent Jewish state. Arab opposition to an increasing influx of Jews resulted in Great Britain restricting the number of Jews who could immigrate to Palestine, but the rise of Nazism caused an increase in both legal and illegal Jewish immigrants. By the end of World War II, about one-third of Palestinians were Jewish.

Great Britain announced plans to withdraw from Palestine in 1947. In response, the United Nations approved Resolution 181, which allowed for the partition of Palestine into two different lands: Arab Palestine and Jewish Israel. The Arab world, including the Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee, rejected the plan. Despite their objections, Israel was declared an independent state on May 14, 1948. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq declared war on Israel; this conflict became known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The war lasted approximately a year and resulted in a renegotiation of Israel's borders. Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan took control of Israel's West Bank. In 1949 the Green Line was the name of the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors. However, the end of the war did not bring peace. The 1950s were marked by a series of skirmishes between Israel and various Arab countries, but none of these skirmishes resulted in significant boundary differences.

The next significant war occurred in 1967, when Egypt, Jordan, and Syria expelled UN peacekeepers and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea. Israel struck out against these countries, in the Six-Day War. This was had a dramatic impact on Israel's borders, because Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights from its neighboring Arab Countries. By the 1970s, Palestinians were engaging in violent anti-Israel protests, such as murdering Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics. However, the next official act of war began on October 6, 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. This attack exacerbated the existing religious tensions, because it was launched on the high holy day of Judaism, Yom Kippur. Israel managed to repel the Egyptian and Syrian forces, but suffered territorial losses. In the late 1970s, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and began negotiating its withdrawal from occupied Palestine. The withdrawal never occurred, and in 1982 Israel because involved in the Lebanese Civil War so that it could destroy Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bases, which had been used to attack Israel. Israel's involvement transformed the Lebanese Civil War into the First Lebanon War. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon. In 1987, Palestinians again protested the Israeli occupation, with six years of violence in occupied territories that is now referred to as the First Intifada.