The Core of the Conflict

And the reason why it so difficult to resolve

There is a core to the Israel/Palestinian conflict. And it has virtually nothing to do with the lands that Israel controls since 1967 (though that obviously exarcebates things), and a lot to do with 1948, and even more to do with the preceding years. It’s a historical core which remains very relevant today.

For two thousand years, Jewish communities had faced persecution wherever they were - including in Muslim lands. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, as persecution even in enlightened Europe got worse, many Jews realized that a refuge was needed, since no country would take in large numbers of Jewish refugees and reliably protect them.

Various Jews came up with the idea of creating some sort of Jewish homeland in Palestine, a place with which they had a strong religious and historical connection and the only land with which there was any sort of ancestral claim. And as the persecution and massacres of Jews started in Europe (decades before the Holocaust), thousands of Jews fled. Even many who were not political Zionists came to Palestine, simply because they had nowhere else to go.

At the time, there were a lot of Levantine Arabs in Palestine - around 500,000 by 1900 -and very few Jews. The Arabs of Palestine certainly considered Palestine to be their home, with good reason. Still, they did not yet have a distinct national identity as Palestinians; they were part of a much larger community of Levantine Arabs inhabiting an area that extended from Turkey to Egypt, and which was subsequently divided into Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Many Jews and non-Jews around the world felt that it was appropriate, amidst the many vast Muslim Arab states, for the Jews to have one tiny homeland.

But, contrary to what is often claimed, the Jews did not come with a plan to oppress and/or drive out the Arabs that were in Palestine. In fact, there was no plan of any sort, certainly not a collective one. For the most part, the Jews didn't even think that much about the Arabs (which may sound strange, but was normal in those circumstances). To the extent that they did think about them, they assumed that they would be able to make the land agriculturally productive enough to support a much larger population, and they hoped to bring in enough Jewish immigrants such that the Arabs would be a minority (with full protection and equal rights), and/or that some sort of mutually acceptable political compromise would be worked out. Scattered claims of early Zionist figures which seem to indicate otherwise, often utterly distorted and taken out of context by anti-Israel polemicists today, do not reflect the general approach, which was absolutely not one of oppression or driving Arabs out.

But here's the problem: the Arabs did not believe that. They sincerely believed that the Jews were coming to drive them out. (It's not entirely clear why they believed that; it could be that certain figures were inciting them.) This was in addition to the general Muslim religious discomfort with the idea of the Jews having sovereignty in an area of historic Islamic conquest (which would explain inciting Arabs to believe that they were under existential threat).

Accordingly, the Arabs tried to prevent what they feared would be their own ethnic cleansing, along with a disgrace to Islam, by trying to commit ethnic cleansing on the Jews. They incited and engaged in violence. They refused to try to come to any kind of compromise. They rejected the Peel Commission and the Partition Plan. And ultimately they declared war outright, with the goal of ethnically cleansing the Jews from Palestine.

As a result of this, the Jews quite reasonably and justifiably concluded that they would never be able to establish a secure homeland if it included a large number of hostile Arabs who were trying to destroy it. Consequently, while the Jews were always ready to work out a compromise, an approach developed of responding to violence with violence. And after the attempted war of exterminating Israel in 1948, the Jews decided that the many Arabs who fled for a variety of reasons (including some being driven out) would not be allowed back in. After all, there were many Muslim Arab states, including several for Levantine Arabs, but only one Jewish state. Not all Arabs left/ were driven out, and those Arabs that remained received full rights.

In the years that have since elapsed, the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters have never come to terms with the Jews' need, right, and historic legality to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Palestinians do not see themselves as having had any reason to share any of the land merely in order to save Jews from persecution in Europe (and they ignore persecution in Muslim lands). They reinforce this by denying the historical connection of the Jews to the land. They (falsely) portray the Jews as having come with a goal to drive them out and steal Arab land.

Perhaps most signficantly of all, the Palestinians absolve themselves of any responsibility for having avoided any kind of compromise and instead violently trying to drive out the Jews, with all the consequences that their approach created when it failed. In their view, since they had no reason to ever compromise, all the consequences of not compromising are entirely the fault of the Jews.

Thus, the Palestinians and their supporters blame the Naqba, and all their suffering due to the Israel-Palestinian conflict since then, entirely on the Jews. Israel has no legitimacy; it was born in sin and it has committed utterly unjustifiable and endless harm since then. And what they therefore seek is justice.

What does justice mean? At the very minimum, it means the return of all the Palestinians, including descendants of the original refugees, to all of Palestine. Which, of course, results in the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, and the (inevitably violent) displacement of many Jews. From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.

Hence, an impasse is reached. On the one hand, there are millions of Jews who came for legitimate reasons; they had (and still have) nowhere else to go. They formed a majority, received international support to declare a state, and expect the right of every sovereign state to live in peace and security. But from the Palestinian perspective, Israel needs to be undone.

This is why the Palestinians see themselves as historic victims of a terrible crime. And if you don’t understand why Jews came to Israel and how they approached it and why things turned violent - which many Westerners do not care to know or understand - the Palestinians seem to be correct! With such a perspective, genuine peace - based on a compromise which respects the rights of both sides - is impossible. Justice needs to be served.

Of course, there are deep sociological reasons for hatred of Jews, which has existed in many different places and religions and cultures and times. And there are many people, including Jews, who do not want to know the real historic roots of the conflict, either because it portrays Jews in a less positive light than they want, or because it portrays Jews in a more positive light than they want. But a more thorough grasp of both the historic development of the conflict, along with understanding how others misunderstand it, is crucial.

For further reading:

Adin Haykin, There Was No Zionist Ethnic Cleansing Plan in 1948

Benny Morris, Explaining Transfer: Zionist Thinking and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem