The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Looking Back To Make Sense of Today’s Events

In a way or another, conflict are always connected to the lack of respect of somebody's rights. Unfortunately too often a conflict between two opposing parts shows consequences that brunch out to an international context.

This is the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict too. It dates back to World War II when the League of Nations divided the territories of the Ottoman Empire into mandate territories.

In order to better understand the wave of violence and terrorism that permeates contemporary society, one cannot forget that politics can no longer be conceived of in terms of the nationals states. Rather if one wants to understand what is going on , he/she must remember it is the global, international frame that matters today. At the same time, contemporary history is linked to the past, one that cannot  be erased since it continually comes to surface.

On the 27th January the Day of Memory is celebrated so that people may be invited to reflect on some historical events which are worth being remembered and critically considered for mankind not to repeat the same mistakes.

In the same way, if one wants to be able to move safely in the complex context of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, he or she must be ready to make the effort to go back to the past or at least to remember what happened in the first decade of the 20th century when different European agencies had somehow promoted and organized the return of the Jew to their "promised land".

Such ideal movement pushed dozen of thousand of European Jew towards Palestine. This was known as the "Zionist dream" but there still is so much to do.

During the World War I, the British wanted to keep control of the Middle East and therefore tried to support Arab nationalism against the power of the Ottoman. To tell the truth Arab nationalism soon turned out into an anti-Western movement, a difficult group to cope with even for imperialistic Britain.

One cannot in fact forget the differences existing on the cultural and religious level separating the Middle East from the Western world, still visible as we could better understand during the analysis  on the dossier of Turkey’s possible joining the European Union. In addition, if you consider the riots and murders of the last days, you will soon understand that the gap has not been filled. Rather it sounds as if it were becoming deeper and deeper day after day.

Right on the first decades of the XX century, the Middle-East started to show the historic development of what would become today’s strategic area. On the one side that territory marks the boundaries between the territories dividing the West from the East; on the other everybody knows it keeps some of the biggest oil resources in the world.

Even if oil-exploitation had just started in the first decade of the 20th century, a compact anti-Western trend was becoming stronger and stronger. However Europe had understood ethnic and religious controversies in those territories could contribute to control the region. Therefore the new dominators soon realized that Zionism would be the right card to play. At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire crumbled and from the International Agreement following the war, Great Britain obtained the mandate to govern the region. It constituted a National Jew hearth there. During the same period Europe was developing a deep hatred against the Jew and therefore pushing them towards Palestine was the comfortable a solution to find them a place to live thus having them move to the Middle- East.

In 1935 Palestine had over than 1 million inhabitants, one third of whom were Jew; they were immigrants with a decent level of culture following the Zionist thought; they were helped and supported by the British and the Jew agencies of the different countries. Therefore they were able to buy the best lends and started the transformation of a poor traditional country into a place were economic and social background was rapidly evolving.

The kibbutz, a new agricultural farm form was born showing a cooperative frame and the agricultural landscape started to change rapidly and became highly productive. But the kibbutz is not to be thought of simply as a form cooperative working system but rather if gave shape to a new common life style , of studying together , sharing knowledge of ethnic and cultural values. It marks therefore the hope in a better future. It nourished therefore a strong utopian power far from the tensions of European society who was showing hostile attitudes towards the Jew.

As a result of the investments in new agriculture, waste lands were cultivated and, as it always happen, rapid modernization deepened the gap with the native population who had no financial resources and showed to refuse the culture of the newly arrived. Arabs became aggressive towards the new rich who also showed a good cultural level and a high degree of solidarity among themselves. On their side the Zionists organized their armed self-defence and in 1963 for the first time they had to face a really high-proportioned conflict.

The immigrant Jew population were in takers of a new modernity but they also brought conflicts with them they were settled by an imperialistic power that had replaced the Turkish of the Ottoman Empire who were Muslim and traditionalist. Further more the Jew were pushed by a strong religious ideal and determined to conquer Palestine which they considered the land God had promised them. The level of motivation was so high that they succeeded in something apparently unbelievable: they revived a dead language, Hebrew, a language that up to that moment was known only as a language used for rituals and cultural celebrations. During the Thirties a Cultural and Ritual University was founded and in the long run it became a cultural interlocutor on the international level.

After World War II: an urgent need for an Israeli State

During World war II the people who went back to Palestine was impressive also owing to Shoah and the extermination which paved the way to a Zionist project that could no longer be stopped. Thousand of persecuted took refuge in Palestine to escape the horror. The Promised Land was now perceived by the Europen Jew as their only possibility, the unique survival for their culture. Asking for a country of their own thus became sort of reward for the horror they were compelled to face. It was therefore supported by the public opinion of almost the whole world. Such a determination provoked the negative reaction of the Palestinian Arabs (on million people) that had been living for centuries n the Promised Land and were now sent away from their territories by the Hebrew presence. So that as a result a new tragedy was born out of the a recent one. The Cold war it self took advantage of the situation and transformed as a new occasion in the contrast between East and West.

The British started now to understand that such a huge migration to Palestine would compromise the balance of the territories and would go far beyond their imperialistic need of controlling those lands. They started therefore to be more cautious with Zionism and in a certain way more favourable to Arabs. In a few words they began to be in favour of a separation between the two communities who lived in Palestine so that the Jew who lived there could settle in one part of the land only. It followed that Zionist immigration began to be limited when not even hindered.

In 1947 a ship crowded with Jew people (Exodus) was stopped by the British Navy and sent back to Hamburg, from where it had sailed. The event opened hostilities between the Jew community, the Arab majority and British authorities and gave vent to a series of terrorist attacks and guerrillas.

The State of Israel and the Arab-Israeli War

Great Britain did no longer manage to control the situation and announced she would withdraw her troops from Palestine. In October 1947 ONU was in charge of the situation decided to create two different in States in Palestine: Jordan and Israel. Borders were marked and the city of Jerusalem was declared neutral. Arab people refused ONU proposal and on the same day when the British left the Palestinian territories ( 14^th May 1948) the Zionist leader David Ben Gurion proclaimed the birth of the State of Israel whose new capital city was Tel Aviv.

The birth of Israel immediately provoked war. The four Arab States on the borders (Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) besides Iraq attacked the new State but in spite of the inferior number , the Israeli army obtained a victory and what is more it succeeded to expand its territories beyond the ones marked by ONU. Only a few Palestinian Arabs accepted to remain within the Israeli borders. Most of them were sent away fro their houses that were assigned to Jew co loners. Most of the previous inhabitants found refuge in Arabian countries and especially in near Jordan of which territories they represented the largest part of the population.

The law of return which was voted by the Parliament in Tel Aviv, immediately recognized Israeli citizenship to any Jew people coming from whatever part of the world. American Jew , therefore like all others were perspective Israeli citizens and behaved like a very influential pressure group , coherent with their double identity and able to influence the policy of their own State; URSS and its allies vice versa adopted a policy in favour of Arab people. For Israel the support of USA was of vital importance but at the same time high –level conditioning. As a matter of fact Israel became a border zone , a military checker as well as a diplomatic checker. Its economy was largely dependent on American financial fluxes, sort of western window that could be compared to West Berlin as she was surrounded by a compact totally hostile Muslim world. Plenty of the Jew communities that were widespread in the Middle East, persecuted or sent away, moved to Israel and contributed to fuel the hatred against Palestinians.