Israel Locked in a History

ISRAEL Locked in a history of persecution, religious discrimination, and national consciousness, the Jewish people were granted their own land when, following World War II, the British withdrew from Palestine and the United Nations divided the war-torn land into two separate states. The UN created an Arab state and a Jewish state, Israel, against tremendous rejection by the Arabs, who felt that what was once their land was being redistributed without their approval.

The 1947 UN Partition created a very small state in the area of Tel Aviv, and, through a series of wars, Israel ambitiously expanded its borders. The Jews and the Arabs, both inextricably psychologically tied to this holy land, continue to mar the narrowly defined lines of the nation of Israel, Medinat Yisra'el, with perpetuated discontent, a series of largely disregarded peace accords, and a renewed violence since in the last five years. Today, Israel occupies 20,770 sq km, nestled between the Gaza strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Egypt.

It is home to the Old Testament land, the Dead Sea, the Jordan Rift Valley, the Negev desert, and the Sea of Galilee. The Jewish desire for statehood, and the belief that it should be in the holy land, is a religious cultural norm, based on the Holy Scriptures and a history of war.

Documented historically in their own religious texts, the Jewish struggle for nationhood and self-preservation has been actively pursued against the military strength of Assyria, Persia, Alexander the Great, Rome, and the Hebrews themselves, in addition to wars amongst themselves. The early modern call for Jewish statehood came as the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century reignited religious intolerance in Europe. The tension quickly billowed with the dawn of nineteenth century nationalism and radical anti-Semitism, forcing Jews out of their communities and into the ghettos they had historically struggled to leave.

In the 1890s, a French trial convicted a military officer named Dreyfus of spying for Germany; Dreyfus, tried on what has since determined to be fake evidence, was a scapegoat, being punished not for the accused actions, but instead for his religion. Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Jewish journalist responsible for reporting on the controversial trial, was stunned by the persecution emanating from the so-"enlightened" French government. Herzl concluded that, without a nation state of their own, the Jews would never be safe from persecution.

In 1896 he responded to the growing anti-Semitism and mounting difficulties which the Jews in Europe felt in their daily life by publishing Der Judenstaat. Immediately, he was enthroned as the leader of the political movement for Zionism. Zion, the hill in Jerusalem from which the great Jewish kings Solomon and David ruled, became the symbol of the movement that sought the return of the Jewish nation to the land of Palestine.

While not all Jews were Zionists, and many responded to the growing climate of tension by emigrating to Western Europe or America, the movement rapidly accelerated, and the first Zionist Congress was founded a year later. That same year, Herzl proclaimed that in fifty years, the Jewish state would be a reality; he was only wrong by one year.

The land without a people shall have a people without a land," Herzl declared as the dictum of the Zionist cause, and set his sights on the bucolic land of Palestine, a tiny corner of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Zionists, under Herzl's commanding lead, organized around the land cause with a Jewish National Fund, responsible for raising money abroad, and a Land Development Company that quickly scooped up parcels of the Palestinian land.

Jews had long coexisted with the local Arabs, a religiously peaceful demographic with whom the Jewish people had enjoyed longer periods of stability than with others, but disputes over land slowly deteriorated the relationship. Many of the Jews living in Jerusalem, in Palestine, disregarded the concept of Zionism. The strictly religious opposed a man-led movement for a Jewish state, believing that the Messiah was supposed to come and found one himself; the City of God, they believed, was to be the Work of God alone.

Roskin addressed the differentiation between the older Jews of Jerusalem and those following Herzl's powerful ideology. The young Zionists were a new breed. They were secular (some were even atheists), socialistic, and pioneering. Jewish nationalism was their religion, and working the soil was their form of worship." The LDC not only bought land, they also established the communities in which the new Zionist settlers could come to work.

They set up kibbutzim and moshavim, communal and cooperative farms that drained the swamps, irrigated deserts, and turned the previously infertile desert into vital land. The settlers revived Hebrew as the colloquial tongue, and rejoiced in their own Zion. In 1903, they founded the Hill of Spring, or Tel Aviv, just north of the port city Jaffa as the first modern Jewish city.

As World War I lit its way through Europe, the British encouraged the Zionist movement in Palestine as a means of creating sympathy among the Jews in the United States and Russia for the Allied cause. The war situation grew more tense, and the British were desperate for support. They encouraged the Arabs and the Jews in their various causes, and insinuated promises to both in return for their invaluable contributions, even if they could not be repaid.

Between 1915 and 1916, Sir Henry MacMahon, the English director of Egyptian affairs, and Sherif Hussein, leader of the Arabs, exchanged a series of letters in which the Arabs requested the entire Fertile Crescent for their own; the British skirted a direct answer, but Hussein thought that the deal was as good as cemented. Meanwhile, the British were also involved in a series of negotiations with France and Russia culminating in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, giving the Arabs the peninsula, but dividing the Fertile Crescent into spheres of influence.

In 1917, the British Cabinet then decried a new position in the Balfour Declaration, siding with the Jews in search of popular support from the powerful growing demographic.

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..." Although the Balfour Declaration did not directly impede the desires of the Arabs or cause any explicit rift, it indicated the shifting waters of association that would characterize the upcoming conflict between the Jewish Zionists, the Arabs, and the governing world.

In their still-imperial governing mindset, the British overlaid their "white man's burden" onto the jurisdiction of the Fertile Crescent, where in 1922, the League of Nations granted mandates to its two ruling nations, France and England. At first, the British honored their agreement to the Jews for a home in Palestine, causing a massive influx of Jewish immigration, with nearly 10,000 new Jews entering the area annually until 1931.

The Palestinian Arabs were frightened at their growing minority, and between 1920 and 1921, launched a series of riots against the Jews, initiating the violence that would mark the next eight-five years at least. By 1936, the two religious groups were caught in a near-civil war. The Jews, eager to cement the area they desired as theirs with land certificates if not governmental support, bought more land as quickly as they could. This only further angered the Arabs, whose responded directly with more violence.

The Jews created Haganah, their own self-defense group that would later become the Israeli army, which helped defend the Kibbutznicks from the nighttime Arab rioters. By 1939, the tension was so high that it threatened to be the next "powder keg" of Europe. The Jewish population now numbered 413,000, a minority, but a growing one; the Arab population, too, was growing, and more and more were joining their cause in defense of Islam.

Externally, the rest of Europe watched with warnful eye, noting both the strategic position of the region to continental politics as well as the profundity of natural resources. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was the first to intervene, sending two armies into the area, one through Russia and the other through Africa to support the Arabs in their revolt against the British.

The British feared for their territories and political arm in the region, and issued a White Paper in 1939 that strictly limited Jewish immigration and assuaged some discontent among the Arabs. The Jews reacted as if the British had reneged on a formal promise. Over the next forty years, only 75,000 more Jews would be permitted entrance to inhabit the area, betraying the promise for a Jewish homeland. Yet, they had no other recourse.

The onset of World War II, however, created a romantic ideal of the idea of Israel - not only was it supposed to be a Zion, but it was, in the imagination of Jews across the continent, a safe-haven from the Holocaust. Jews desperately sought entrance into the City of Spring, but the British stood firm on their proclamation, fearing Arab backlash.

"The Nazis kill us," the Jews cried, "and the British won't let us live." In 1945, the world discovered that its greatest fear had come true: the Nazi death camps all over Europe, ripe with the massacre of the Jewish people, cemented the Zionist call in those who lived.

"Israelis developed a mind-set to never again trust their fate to others - no one gave a damn during the Holocaust - and to this day the Israelis don't like outsiders proposing 'peace plans' that threaten their security." While the Jews would never be able to forget the fear caused by intrusting their fate to others, the modern world would never forget the guilt of what amounted to letting the Jews be brutally murdered and giving them no place to go; in an American legal court, that is paramount to homicide.

The Jewish survivors demanded to be let into Palestine and for a Jewish state to be created, and the UN pandered to their requests. In 1947, the UN partitioned the area of Palestine into a segmented region of Jewish and Arab states, leaving a neutral Jerusalem. While none of the Palestinian inhabitants were pleased with the nature of the UN partition, both sides were in little position to argue. However, while the major superpowers of the world now acknowledged a Jewish state of Isreal, the Arab states worldwide rejected it.

To them, this was equivalent to theft of their own land. In the early creation of the states, the path for the future was cemented: Israel would trust no one to help, and the Arabs would be unwilling to compromise. The policies of the Israeli state since its earliest day have been clearly summed up by the one mantra that characterizes all Jewish nationhood ideology: ayn brayra, meaning "no alternative." To them, the Jewish state was what Hertzl had warned of years ago: the only place for safety.

The Arabs, uncoordinated and poorly trained, fought the determined Israelies, but were defeated all the way to the West Bank and eastern walls of Jerusalem. The Jordanians of the West Bank stood their ground firmly, as did the Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese. All had been mandated by UN auspices to acknowledge a truce with Israel, but feeling perpetually threatened, the Jewish state sought to secure its borders through expansion, and soon brought these tenuous agreements to a screeching halt.

In 1956, during the Sinai Campaign for control of the Suez, France and Egpyt struggled for domination, and both the U.S.S.R. And the United States further intalged the situation. The Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser, saw himself as the torch-carrier of a pan-Arab movement, not merely an Egpytian leader and Arab. Arab Palestinians occupying the Gaza Strip, then ruled by the Egyptian Nasser, launched suicide missions into Israel called fedayeen, or self-sacrificers. The Israelies retaliated, and Nasser decided to wage battle in return. The U.S.S.R.

supported the army, selling it vast quantities of dangerous weapons, and Nasser created a visibly auspicious power directly on the border. Immediately, Israel was nervous. Characteristically, in fear of being attacked, the Israelies invoked ayn brayra and struck first. The Allied forces, now the ruling super powers on the international scene, reacted quickly, pulling their cards where and as soon as they could.

The United States and Britain refused their previous offer to Nasser to help rebuild the Aswan Dam, and Nasser, furiously, declared the Suez, previously a cooperative effort, to be solely Egyptian. While Nasser viewed the U.S. And Britain as overstepping their boundaries of power and exerting their force where it was not warranted, a vestige of Colonialism, the United States and Britain feared the greater calamity that could occur in an area so heated and, now, armed.

Britain and France enlisted the aid of Israel in a pact of mutual-benefit. In October of 1956, the Israelis "clobbered the Egyptians and streaked through the Sinai toward the Suez Canal." In an already-planned move, the British and the French stepped in as "peacemakers." They demanded that both the Egyptians the Israelis retreated to ten miles from the Canal, and when Nasser refused, the Europeans invaded and seized the Canal for themselves on November 5, leaving the Israelis with the Sinai peninsula.

International leaders were up in arms over the move, in what the United States thought was a sneaky trick by France and Britain, unbecoming of a world that would need to work together. Eisenhower was furious that the Europeans invaded against his wishes, and, as he feared, Nasser was not absolutely concurred, only beaten in one battle, leaving the Arab states worldwide entirely furious, but none more than Egypt itself. The Arabs sided with the Soviets, and the barely-pacified international powers struggled for a renewed peace again.

The UN resolved that the French and British needed to evacuate the Suez, which they did within one month; they also ordered Israel out of the Sinai. With recompense, the UN, led by the United States, promised to patrol the Sinai for Egypt with UNEF forces and provide access to the Tiran Straight for Israeli Shipping, secured with commitment from Israel.

During the next ten years, De Gaulle's France became fiercely francophillic and self-obsessed, distancing itself from the international scene and Israel specifically; meanwhile, the Arabs were gaining footing under the strength of the U.S.S.R. umbrella. The Israelis and Palestinian Arabs continued their violence, and in 1963, Israel launched an infrastructural campaign to diver water from the Jordan River from Syria and Jordan. The problem continued to brew, and in 1967, Nasser launched war.

While some attribute the onset of the Six Day War to cultural differences between the two societies, the Egyptians barked loudly and the Israelis bit back. Nasser's ferocious anti-Israel rhetoric and declared readiness for war were taken seriously and literally by the Israelis. This was in part the clash of two cultures: Arabs are given to exaggerated rhetoric, whereas Israelis are given to straight, blunt talk.

When Israelis heard on Egyptian radio Arab vows to drive them into the sea, they believed and acted on it." The Israelis launched an offensive against the Arabs, and the Syrians occupying Golan Heights shelled the Israeli farmers in the Upper Galilee. On April 7, Israel struck back, hitting Syrian guns and shooting down six MIGs. The Syrians claimed the Israelies were amassing troops to strike, and forced Nasser into responding.

While Israel vehemently denied the military action and even welcomed international forces, particularly the Soviets, to see that the accusation was false, Nasser came to the aid of Syria. May 18, 1967, Nasser ordered UNEF out of the Sinai and closed the Tiran port five days later. On the thirtieth of May, he and Jordan's King Hussein signed a pact for defense, adding to the one he already had with Syria. Israel was surrounded. Israel waited for the U.S.

To force open Tiran as promised, but the United States was knee-deep in Vietnam and unable to do anything. Israel felt, again, abandoned by the forces that swore to protect it, and on June 5 struck first in a quick action of preemption. Within hours, they destroyed warplanes and groundtroops of Egypt, marched through the Sinai, and reached the Suez Canal in three days.

Hussein, acting on his promise to Nasser, shelled the Israeli troops, and the Israelis stormed the Old City of Jerusalem and the West Bank with only three battalions. The Jews declared Jerusalem a reunified part of Israel ad by 1988, Hussein was forced to relinquish any claim to the West Bank. The Israelis were not through, and set their sights on the Golan Heights, which they knew were strategic and wanted for their own. When the U.S.S.R. threatened to step in, the UN intervened, and forced a cease-fire.

The UN passed Resolution 242, asking Israel to withdraw from territory it did not belong and for the Arab states to peaceful accept the Jewish state. Both sides reacted poorly, and while 242 set the stage for future peace accords, it also began the disregard for them seen throughout the history of Israel and Palestinian conflict. In 1973, war came again.

The new Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, planned a surprise attack on the Israelis in conjunction with Syria to retrieve the Sinai, Golan Heights, and West Bank, and, if not mostly, to destroy the morale of the Jewish people. On October 6, the joint forces struck, launching the biggest tank battles in history in the Golan Heights. The Israelis were shocked, and rushed in units to protect their forces and land. At the same time, the Egyptians took a nighttime stand through the Suez and into the Sinai.

With great cunning, General Ariel Sharon crossed his forces west of the Canal and cut the Egyptians off at the pass. The USSR and the U.S. took their sides strongly and, involved in their own rivalries in the Cold War, realized the only solution was to promote another UN cease-fire. Nixon put forces on alert, fearing Soviet invasion, and cut off the supply to Israeli forces to prevent further movement on their part. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict had reached a new height and illicited reaction around the world.

Arab members of OPEC embargoed oil shipments to countries pro-Israel and quadrupled the prices of petroleum. In 1977, Sadat amazed the world, and flew to Jerusalem for peace talks with the Israeli PM Menachem Begin. Sadat addressed Begin as an equal, not a loser in battle. Both leaders flew to Camp David for the first set of peace-talks in 1978, mediated by President Jimmy Carter and resulting in the Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

The treaty established the return of the Sinai to Egypt and the Israel, with a very important indirect win, splintered the Arab-bloc, and increased American financial aid. The treaty further called for a "Palestinian autonomy," but Begin showed no signs of acknowledging this promise, continuing his settlements on the west bank. Rising nationalism on both feuding sides fueled the next major feat, the 1982 war. The Lebanese Christians sided with Israel and together launched a June offensive into Lebanon.

Now Minister of Defense, Sharon and Begin called the operation "Peace for Galilee," citing it as an opportunity to make the area friendly and unified with the Christians. The Christians massacred Palestinians by the hundreds in Sabra and Shatila, the Israelis waged a brutal battle against the Syrians, and the Palestinians were evacuated from Beirut by a UN peacekeeping force. A Shi'a bomb exploded in a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 soldiers, and the United States cemented its association with the Christian side of the war.

The war so no real winner, and everyone left bloodied. Israel established a nine-mile-wide "security zone" in southern Lebanon, but the violence continued. The Israelis now controlled land occupied by the Palestinians, a growing population, and enforced an undemocratic police state upon its citizens, perceiving only Israelis as the true citizens. The Israelis spent all their time suppressing the Infitada, a growing problem to keep the violence of the Palestinians, who felt that they, with indigenous rights to the land were unfairly unrecognized, at bay.

The world played the Israel problem out in many ways, and the first Bush administration used it as a force in the Desert Storm war against the Arabs. Bush used his power from Kuwait and Saudia Arabia to encourage the Arabs to listen to him on the path to peace with Israel. Bush stood in staunch opposition to Israel, now financially disabled and under the leadership of western-disliked Yitzhak Shamir of the Likud party.

Washington refused to cooperate with Israel until it was willing to come to peace talks with the Arabs and halt the ever-growing West Bank settlements. The West Bank was the clear rubbing spot for both sides: to the Israeli conservatives, it was a sacred space, to the Arabs it was theft, and to the West, it was a problem. In the 1992 Israeli elections, Yitzhak Rabin took power from Shamir, and Rabin, cuckholded by a ten billion dollar loan from the United States, pledged to give land for peace.

Rabin saw a future of peace for the Israelis, whose Zionist ideology was thwarted by the day by day threat of actual violence and death. Arafat, now head of the PLO, faced eroding leadership and the growing power of the Islamic Jihad, and was desperate too for peace. Both parties had reached a point of extreme violence and needed a solution. Rabin and Arafat began secret negotiations in Oslo in 1993, and in August made a.