Opinion: Understanding the Israeli/Palestinian Animus

US and Western European policy towards Israel and the Palestinians has for decades, been loosely described as something called the “Two State Solution”, i..e.. Israel and Palestine as independent countries. The 128 year path to Israel is fairly clear and involves the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the road to the state of Palestine remains uncharted. And the latter may help the US regain control of the Mideast Narrative.

Early Jewish/Israel History

722 BC	Assyrians conquer Kingdom of Israel.	Israelis expelled to Mesopotamia
538BC	Cyrus allows Jews to leave Babylon	Some 50,000 returned to Judah, most stayed	“Return to “Zion”*,  thus, Zionist
520BC	Babylonian Exile begins	Jewish Diaspora
63BC	Romans conquer Palestine	Roman Taxes: some Jews leave
70 AD	Romans destroy the Temple	Many Jews left
8th/9th Centuries	Muslim Civil Wars	Pushed many Jews out	Most Jews gone by 11th Century (Harsh Muslim discrimination)3

* Zion refers back to ancient times, when it was Jerusalem’s elite neighborhood.  

            The long march to Israel and Beyond. The following paragraphs provide the historical context for the century of mounting violence between Jews and Palestinians leading to the current devastating war and the on-going catastrophic humanitarian crisis. The US Government (USG) now confronts a situation with intense international,domestic and human implications. Can the Biden Administration change/improve these dynamics? Possibly

Zionism, for centuries remained a prayerful Jewish hope, that one day they could return to their homeland. However, in 1896, it became a political movement when Theodore Herzl, an Austrian Jewish activist and, journalist published a book called Der Juden Staat (The Jewish State).  He followed this in 1897 by organizing the first-ever Zionist Conference, where he was elected its president. He died in 1904, but  is considered the father of modern Zionism. .

Earlier in the 1880s, the European pogroms had begun to drive largely Orthodox Jews to Palestine, then ruled by the Ottomans. And between 1904-14, some 40,000 more joined them. In 1916, the two principal colonial powers in the Middle East, the United Kingdom (UK) and France, signed the Sykes/Picot Agreement, which divided a Middle East region into two parts.  Paris got Syria and London became the international administrator of Palestine.  In 1922,  the League of Nations confirmed the British occupation as the Palestine Mandate. The Palestinians automatically became 3^rd class subjects of the King/Emperor.

Thanks to the persistent lobbying in England by the very wealthy Lord Rothschild, the Zionist movement moved much closer to its Israel.  He had been pressing his friend Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to convince the prime minister to publicly endorse the Jewish homeland

On November 2, 1917 Balfour wrote a letter to Rothschild, later officially released by the British Government as the “Balfour Declaration”.  It called for “…a national home for the Jewish people ..” in Palestine.  Twenty years after Herzl’s book, the Jewish State had received the imprimatur of the British Empire – the world’s most powerful country.

However, starting in the 1920s, as more and more Jewish migrants arrived in the Mandate, relations between Zionists and the Palestinian Arab residents worsened. The data on the following censuses tracks the demographic impact of Zionist/Israeli pressure on Palestinians from 1922-48.

 

1922 Religious Census of the Palestine Mandate (British)

Total Population	Religion	Members
757182	Muslims	590,980`
	Jews	83, 794
	Christians	73, 034

The British Mandate continued through WWII. However, as the scale of the Holocaust revealed the Nazis had murdered 6 million Jews, a strong Allied consensus formed: the Mandate would end and the independent state of Israel would be declared. The question was when and how.

During the interwar period, Zionism had divided into two major factions: the moderates willing to work with the British and mutually agree on the timing and modalities of Jewish independence and the gangs. The latter didn’t trust the British and wanted to use  violence to force the issue. They functioned as  paramilitary groups targeted on the British security forces and on the British Mandate  Government.

1945 Religious Census of the Palestine Mandate (British)

Total Population	Religion	Numbers
1755200	Muslims	1106270
	Jews	553800
	Christians	135500

The Gangs attacked oil depots, warehouses, ambushed British units, but also carried out  major operations:  (1) 7/22/1946 – bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel housing the British Government’s secretariat & military Hqs., killing some 100 people; (2)  9/17/1948, 4 months after Israel’s independence, the Stern Gang killed Count Folke Bernadotte, UN peace negotiator and nephew of Sweden’s King. They considered him a British & Arab puppet.

1948 Religious Census  (British)

805900	Muslims	156000
	Jews	649600
	Christians	74500

During these 3 years, 50% of the resident Palestinians (some 750,000) fled or were expelled; 15,000 were killed and a number of Palestinian villages destroyed.

The Mandate territory was divided into Israel, (78%) and Gaza and the West Bank (22%); the latter ostensibly intended for the Palestinians. After Israeli Independence, various Arab countries invaded Israel at different times, but with US help, Jerusalem defeated them. Ultimately, the Israeli military developed into the most powerful in the Middle East.

Various US presidents, particularly Carter and Clinton, intervened to stabilize relations, reduce violence and protect some semblance of Palestinian “independence”. They negotiated with Israel and the PLO’s Arafat and produced the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Process, among other agreements. And then in 2004 Arafat died in France of a malignant infection or as his nephew said, Israeli poison.

By 2007,  HAMAS emerged as the toughest, most powerful  Palestinian political force and established authoritarian rule in Gaza. It organized its own battalions of well armed and trained men, eventually moved its political leadership to Qatar and built a portfolio worth $ hundreds of millions. It also dug multi acres of tunnels.

Terrorism and counter terrorism continued between HAMAS and Israel for years, the former with the support of Iran and its militant allies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, among others).

And then the Deadly Routine  Exploded. On October 7, 2023, HAMAS viciously invaded Southern Israel, killed some 1200 Israelis, raped others and took 240 more as hostages.  And shortly thereafter, Israel began its continuing large scale military retaliation. It invaded and destroyed most of Gaza City, killing some 35,000 Palestinians and driving about 1 + million civilians South, creating a massive humanitarian crisis. Israel’s control of the border crossings into Gaza has prevented adequate food, water and medical care from reaching those who desperately need it.  Starvation is expected. .

Considerable global attention, including American, has sharply refocused away from the 10/07/23 HAMAS attack, to the survival of several million Palestinian civilians and to ending the war. The result: Israel is becoming more isolated internationally and can no longer assume that the 76 years of virtually automatic  Western support, will continue.

The fissure between Jerusalem and Western capital’s was not eased recently, when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, (ICC) requested authorization to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister and HAMAS’ senior leadership. The US and Israel are not signatories and President Biden seriously objected to the move.. However, the prosecutor’s subsequent ill advised threat to 12 US Senators, who criticized his actions, may lead the ICC to question his request.  Their decision is expected soon.

The Biden Administration has come under considerable pressure from US Allies and numerous demonstrations on US campuses and elsewhere, demanding America stop sending military assistance to Israel and rescue several million suffering Palestinians.  White House strategic planning and policy making is further complicated because the President is in the middle of a reelection campaign. The opposing Party not only fully supports Netanyahu and the war, but asserts the pro-Palestinian activism, has strengthened domestic antisemitism and is threatening Jews at universities and elsewhere.

Netanyahu and his reactionary secular and Ultra Orthodox Jewish coalition, continue to defy the President and have started using their“toughness” to appeal to Israeli voters, whose support seriously declined during summer 2023 and dropped dramatically after 10/07/23.  But, why anger the US president? Easy, if they stopped the war, the governing coalition would collapse and they would lose the next election.  No longer the Prime Minister, Netanyahu’s corruption trial would resume.

In my follow-up article, I’ll suggest actions the USG could take that might substantially change the subject and possibly escape the circular policy loop where  it appears to be stuck.

~Tom Timberman