Israel and the Arab World: History, Conflict, and UAE Relations

Introduction

The history of modern Israel and the Arab world is a history of tension and violence that has persisted for decades. It is characterized by numerous wars, accusations of genocide, threats of annihilation, and bitter hostilities punctuated intermittently by peace agreements — such as the Camp David Accords, signed during the Carter Administration to ease tensions between Israel and Egypt. This paper describes the history of Israel, the nature of the hostilities between Israel and the Arab world, and the evolving relationship between the UAE and Israel.

History of Israel

Following World War I, England took control of Palestine, known then as the British Mandate. Prior to the war, the Ottoman Empire had controlled the region. The Zionist Movement, seeking a homeland for the Jewish people, had sought protection from the Ottoman Empire, which promised nothing of the sort. The English Lord Balfour, in the famous Balfour Declaration of 1917, filled the gap the Ottomans had left open by assuring Lord Rothschild — a leader within the Zionist Federation — that should the British win the war, there would be "a national home for the Jews" (Balfour Declaration, 1917). In the same declaration, however, Balfour also stipulated that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" (Balfour Declaration, 1917). This was an important qualification: like many others, Balfour had intimated the potential for tension and conflict to arise between the citizens of a Jewish state in a land long held by Arabs and the various peoples of the Arab world — both Islamic and Christian.

Jewish immigrants and Zionists began to settle in British Mandated Palestine in increasing numbers. During the 1930s, Hitler and German Zionists arranged the Transfer Agreement to resettle Jews from Germany in British Mandated Palestine (Yisraeli, 1971). However, some within the Zionist Movement were particularly hostile toward the British, especially during and after World War II. A Jewish militia known as the Haganah, along with the Jewish Resistance Movement, opposed the British through acts of terror, sabotage, and violence (Hoffman, 2011). In 1946, the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British maintained their military headquarters (Hoffman, 2020). Thereafter, the British government sought to cede the Palestine issue to the newly established United Nations.

It would not be until after World War II that Israeli statehood would come to be recognized in the West. To settle the matter of establishing a home for the Jewish people, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was proposed, recommending a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. The plan was adopted in 1947 by the UN General Assembly as Resolution 181, which established clear borders for Israel and Palestine. However, Israel would not respect those borders, instead pursuing a policy of expansionism over the ensuing decades — a policy that further exacerbated relations between Israel, Palestine (which Israel has refused to accept as a legitimate state), and the broader Arab world.

The first Arab-Israeli War commenced immediately after Israel declared statehood, which was recognized by both the Soviet Union and the United States in 1948. To increase its Jewish population, Israel passed the Law of Return in 1950, granting all Jews and people of Jewish ancestry the right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. Over the following decade, the population of Israel more than doubled. Israel also began secret nuclear development at Dimona, which created tension between US President Kennedy — who sought to establish better relations with the Arab world — and Israel (Gazit, 2000). Kennedy's assassination effectively brought that particular tension to an end.

Since that time, Israel has cultivated close ties with the West, particularly the United States, which provides funding to the Israeli state every year. Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid since World War II, having received nearly $150 billion from the US over that period (Congressional Research Service, 2019). Annually, it receives a grant of approximately $3 billion from the US.

Hostility Between Israel and the Arab World

The Arab world was not at all satisfied with UN Resolution 181: it divided Palestine into two states that satisfied neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians. The border partition also blocked Israel from accessing important cultural sites it associated with its national identity (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013). The Arab states viewed Israel as an intruder and occupier. The Arab-Israeli conflict led Egypt to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping in 1950. Israel responded by invading the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt initially promised to reopen the shipping lanes, but President Nasser closed them again in the run-up to the Six Day War in 1967.

From the very beginning, Israel had been seizing land from Palestinians. Arabs constituted a majority of the population of Palestine by a ratio of approximately 2 to 1 in 1948 and held 90% of the land. Palestinians saw their numbers and property decline at an exponential rate from 1948 onward. Following the declaration of Israeli statehood, the Palestinian population dropped dramatically to 150,000 across all of Israel, while Israel soon controlled 78% of the territory — an increase of 23% from the 1947 partition plan (Khalidi, 2007, p. 1). Those who remained saw their rights restricted and their property seized.

The suffering of the Palestinian people is best described by Khalidi (2007) in stark terms: "The degree of harm done to Palestinian society in 1948 is hard to convey. Over a few weeks in the spring of 1948, Jaffa and Haifa, the cities with the largest Arab populations in Palestine, which were the most dynamic centers of Arab economic and cultural life throughout the Mandate period, were conquered by Zionist militias" (p. 2). Those same militias then formed the core of the Israeli army and continued to disperse the Arab population and take possession of the land. Lydda, Ramleh, Acre, Safad, and other towns and cities that had been Arab were absorbed into Israel. Even in Jerusalem, approximately 30,000 Arabs were expelled, leaving a profound void in Arab society, where "the most highly educated, the wealthiest, and the most culturally active, had lost their property and become refugees" (Khalidi, 2007, p. 2). The displacement of Arabs from their land continued across hundreds of villages throughout the territory, with four hundred of five hundred Arab villages taken over by the Irgun, the Israeli army, or other militias (Khalidi, 2007).

The Palestinians who remained were treated not as equal citizens but as unwanted subjects ruled by martial law. The Arabs saw Israel as an enormous threat to their way of life, culture, and economic prosperity. From 1948 onward, the situation remained one of perennial tension throughout the territory and in neighboring states. The Palestinians described this loss as "the catastrophe" — al-Nakba — and it served as the foundation for their motivation to resist a state they viewed as illegitimate. Ramzy Baroud (2009) describes his own father's experience as a villager forced from his land and into the ranks of the Arab fighters opposing Israeli occupation from 1948 onward. The personal narrative is situated within the context of Ben Gurion's 1948 statement on Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine: "Not one refugee will return. The old will die. The young will forget" (Baroud, 2009, p. xi). Baroud did not forget — and many outside the zone of conflict would never hear the stories of the Arab fighters at all.

As tensions continued to escalate between Israel and its neighbors, the Six Day War appeared inevitable to many. Some scholars have posited that Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt was partly driven by fear of "a possible Egyptian surprise attack on the Dimona nuclear reactor" (Kurtulus, 2007, p. 229). Israel's military strength far surpassed anything Egypt and the other Arab states could muster, however. The Six Day War demonstrated how ill-prepared the Arab world was for an Israeli offensive, and Israel's power in the Middle East surged as a result (Popp, 2006).

The Yom Kippur War of 1973 followed, with Syria and Egypt both attacking Israel. Thousands died, and both the United States and the Soviet Union intervened. At the war's end, there was a greater sense of urgency around brokering peace in the Middle East — an urgency that led to the Camp David Accords under President Carter in 1978. Egypt's President Sadat aided that effort by pursuing a policy of Infitah — "open door" — with Israel to ease relations (Weinbaum, 1985). The Oslo Accords were subsequently signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Conclusion

Since its inception, Israel has had a tense relationship with its neighbors. At war with Egypt for the first few decades of its existence, it eventually signed a pact with that state under Sadat, who shifted away from Nasser's policies. Israel continues to remain opposed to Syria, Iran, and Iraq, however. Its alliance with the UAE does not fundamentally change the dynamic of Israel's situation in the Middle East; if anything, it is likely to heighten tensions between Israel and the newly consolidated axis of power comprising Russia, Iran, and Syria. The pact with the UAE has been in the works for some years and represents an extension of the longstanding collaboration between Israel's intelligence community and the intelligence services of the Sunni states. The Shia states remain in Israel's crosshairs — and Israel remains in theirs.