I don’t intend to start a flame war, but I think it would be helpful to express as much of both sides as possible, to maybe gain some insight into what’s actually going on over there.
- Modern Israel was formally established in 1948 (after thousands of years of persecution culminating in the holocaust), and drove the previous occupantsâpeasant farmers who we shall call “Palestinians”âoff their land.
- The neighbouring countries refused to accept the Palestinian people, arguably because they wanted the Palestinians to continue to cause problems for Israel (which has proved to be the case.)
- Israel and Palestine are now trapped in an endless cycle of hatred, terrorism and violent retribution.
Comments
I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim the Jewish people were first to lay claim to Israel. However, countless nations around the world have been created by a coloniser driving the natives off their land — our own for example — and I don’t see anyone advocating that the citizens of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the USA etc should all be annihilated, let alone shipped back to the UK. The key is integration, and for whatever reason, this is a concept the Palestinians and other Arabs have singularly failed to grasp. Personally, I think if the Palestinians weren’t so darn hostile, the Israelites would be quite happy to integrate, and they’d end up with a situation something like that here in NZ- not perfect, sure, but at least peaceful and improving. — Greg
Even here in NZ, there has been some redress of that, with the Maori people being returned some of the land that was taken from them. Also, colonisation had all but stopped by 1900, I believe, and is now seen pretty universally as a Bad Idea. What were the perceptions of colonisation in the ‘50s? But yes, arguing for annihilation is irrational and, I suspect, revealing of the anti-semitic roots of much of the struggle. â mattw
edited for factual accuracy- The modern nation state of Israel was established itn the late 40’s (47 or 48 I think) when the British pulled out of the area, which had been under their “protection” since the fall of the ottoman empire etc at the end of world war one, not in the 50s. Jewish migration into the area had been increasing for a considerable time before that. jim
From what I understand of the history the Zionist movement had been slowly moving people to modern Israel and buying land from the locals since approx 1900 and that the owners were happy to sell the land. After world war II the rate of migration rose drastically, but land was still purchased, either by individuals or groups. At the same time how ever some among the Islamic religious authorities started to push the idea that the Jews were invading and were responsible for numerous evils some sources claim they made heavy use of Nazi propaganda. This along with other disagreements between the local Arab population, The Jews population and the British lead to the formation of both Arab and Jewish terrorist groups. The deterioration of order led to rapid armament on the Jewish side. In 1948 with final withdrawal of British troops the Israel declares independence and the next day was attacked in the 1948 war which it ends up winning increasing the land it laid claim to by approx 50%. As A result of the war approx 700,000 Arabs fled the regions Israel gained control of, at the same time 500,000 Jews who had been living in Arab countries for up to 2,000 years fled to Israel as a result of increasing persecution. Any way effectively you have massive refugee problems on both sides Israel allowed the Jews refuges to settle in captured land and land it owned while, the Arab countries refused to allow the Arab refugees to settle any where. Also worth noting there is a significant Israeli Arab population these days however there is no Jewish population in any Arab country. And only in 2 Muslim countries. — eonsim
This is basically from memory as i don’t have any of my dad’s history books, so people may want to do some fact checking.
Up until the declaration on Israel as an independent state, Palestine had been under the mandate of the British government, the land was bought from Britain, not the Palestine state (which at the time did not exist). The state of Israel was created by 1947 UN Partition plan in which 55% of the Palestinian territory became Israel, only 45% was allocated to actual Palestinians.
The 1948 Arab-Israel war was started by the Arab states, who frequently had civilian targets, but was won by Israel, which as a result increased in size by (i am really unsure about this) another 20-25%. There were continual minor (relatively) confrontations through out the next 20 years, with Israel eventually attempting to occupy the Sinai peninsula — the international (eg. western) response to this eventually forced Israel to abandon this.
During the late 50’s to late 60’s a number of actions — in particular when Egypt blocking the one of (the only?) routes available the Israeli ships — led to yet another war, in which Israel won again, though it had vastly superior equipment predominantly provided by the US. It was through this offensive that Israel gained the control of what we now refer to as the “the disputed territories” (eg. the West Bank, Gaza Strip, etc)
The 70’s saw the start of what we would probably consider the modern conflict, especially the Palestinian attack on the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics. Since then there has basically been an ongoing stream of bloodshed caused by both Palestine and Israel. The recent plan by Israel to build a wall through the gaza strip to defend itself from militant groups in Palestine will effectively give Israel complete control of yet more of the Gaza strip.
It is quite clear to me that this conflict isn’t going to end any time soon, as we now have at least an entire generation raised on both sides hating the other, which is always a great way of achieving peace :(
As for culpability it is difficult to see any one event on either side as being the source of the conflict. This is because the blame does not lie with Israel, it lies with the UN and other states that decided to give Palestine to people who were not the original inhabitants — this isn’t anything new for the western states as the list of countries we’ve done this to is basically unending — NZ (we obliterated the Maori) and Australia (the Aboriginies) being really close examples.
To state the it’s okay for Israel to exist because people happily sold there land to Jews is identical to saying that if a number of foreigners by a large block of NZ farmland they should be allowed to declare it a seperate country. More importantly if the NZ government were to try and stop such absurdity the new owners of said farmland (or alternatively the “rulers”) would be allowed to use as much force as necessary to defend their land — and potentially conquer more of NZ in the process.
The other common argument — “no one was living there” — would allow Australia (for example) to occupy Fjordland — the fact that it’s part of a country is apparently irrelevant if people aren’t living there by that particular argument.
Of course, a truly critical difference between NZ, etc and Palestine/Israel is that the Maori are basically free to live anywhere — the Palestine/Israel equivalent would be to force the majority of Maori to live in say northland, maybe putting a border guard crossing along whatever latitude maybe Whangarei is (though they still wouldn’t have the same population density forced on them..)
The reason you don’t see high numbers of Jewish people in Arabic state is because they feel that Israel is effectively a large chunk of an what should be an Arabic state, so why do they need to live in another Arabic state.
That said I don’t think it’s right to go declaring war on them — all a war does is give a justification for the next war, in the other direction. The only war that has ever been truly justifiable was WW2 — WW1 was just a land grab, as were pretty much all of the wars prior to that…
— Ollie
interesting link that is relevant to discussion can be found here. It’s talking about a palestinian christian who has been in new zealand with tear fund â Jim
