Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 8: Conclusion

A solid framework for this conflict

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 1: Introduction

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 2: A historical perspective

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, Part 3: Modern Israel

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 4: Refugees

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 5: Pallywood

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 6: Duplicity as an art form

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 7: Right of conquest

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 8: Conclusion

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So, this is what we got:

Israel is old, and mentioned by the Egyptians.
So are the ‘plst’, the Philistines, who gave their name to ‘Palestine’.
Yet unlike the Israelites, there is no continuity between those Philistines and the present day Palestinians.

In those thousands of years, Jews kept the memory of Israel alive, in a remarkable feat. This tenacity also isolated them from the cultures around, which they refused to assimilate with.

When in the 19^th century a lot of philosophical isms saw the light, including nationalism, Jews (emancipated enough to be part of this philosophical spearhead in the Western world) took note, and wanted to partake. But how can you be nationalist, without a nation of your own? This saw the birth of a secular drive to reclaim their homeland, Zionism.

This secular idea found support among religious groups in Europe, wanting to usher in the coming of their own messiah. Debate erupted over what this Jewish homeland was.

A side-note shows how the Emirate of Transjordan can be seen as a Palestinian state. As the full name implies: Palestina Transjordania. Palestine on that side of the river Jordan (as opposed to Palestine on ‘this’ side of the river Jordan, which is now known as Israel, plus West Bank and Gaza).

From the beginning, Jewish settlers, who legally purchased the land they built on (often at very high price), were targeted, if anything as ‘dhimmi’ under the ruling Islamic tradition.

While Jews managed to keep their identity, as a group they became hopelessly fractured. This changed during WWII, when Hitler’s Endlösung and subsequent holocaust absolutely devasted all Jews he could get his hands on, regardless of which group within the Jewish diaspora they belonged. ‘Never again’ became the new rallying cry, and the need for a country they could call their own, where they would be responsible for their own safety and protection (instead of having to rely on the protection of overlords), was now undeniable.

The newly established United Nations agreed, and proposed a partition plan, as successor to that of the British Mandate, in place after the fall of the Ottoman empire in WW1. This, too, is very important: Israel was founded out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, just like several others that did not exist until the end of the Ottoman Empire (and the French Mandate), and NOT installed on ‘Palestinian land’. The people living there were referred to as Arabs, at the time.

On May 15, 1948, the independence of the new state of Israel was declared, promptly followed by an invasion of the armies of all their Arab neighbors. Miraculously, and against all odds, Israel not only survived that war, but managed to carve out territorial gain.

All that you can read in much more detail in Part 2.

After the end of that war, the new borders roughly coincide with the current situation, where Egypt occupied Gaza, and Jordan the West Bank. This did NOT lead to any attempt to establish a Palestinian state by either of those Arab countries (!!).

The humiliation of having lost a war they were so certain to win, and the presence of several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees (some removed forcibly, a large number on their own, and a good many because the invading Arab armies had called for a ‘temporary’ retreat to safety as they would quickly take back control from the new Israeli state) became immediate stumbling blocks. While the hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Arab countries who were evicted from their own homes, often inhabited by their family for millennia, without any compensation, worked hard, together with the Jews already within Israel, to find a new home within the borders of Israel, the Arab nations never did go that far. Except Jordan, but as the Palestinians within their borders soon tried to overthrow the Emir, and even went as far as to assassinate him, they got quickly expelled, first to Syria, which did not want them, either, then to Lebanon, where the incoming Palestinians caused the costly Lebanese civil war, devastating what once was called the Switzerland of the Levant.

Several wars followed, each won decisively by Israel. The idea of ‘Land for Peace’ and far-reaching peace proposals (the preparations for which cost Israeli president Yitzhak Rabin his life, an assassination by a fellow Jew who vehemently disagreed with Rabin), just to show how much Israel, as a nation, valued the notion of peace, were all for naught, time after time rejected by Palestinian leaders (even when just about 100% of their demands were met, they always would find a new reason to reject the proposal).

In the meantime, Palestinian refugee camps, where the refugees were kept in horrid conditions by their fellow Arab host countries, became incubators for more violence and hatred. Open policies that encouraged violence and hatred, through the school system that imposed incredible revisionism and by glorifying terrorists, took care of the rest. From the beginning, the two-state solution was rejected by Palestinians. Instead, their goal was a single Palestinian homeland, ‘from the river to the sea’, with all the Jews driven out into that sea...

All that can be read in more detail in the previous parts.

Refined lawfare was instituted, where Palestinians realized that they could not face Israel on the actual battlefield. Instead, they would provoke Israel through continuous terror attacks, indiscriminately. Whenever Israel would counter, those actions would be depicted as violent, genocidal, murderous, ‘out of proportion’, until mounting international pressure would force Israel to cave in, and retreat. Meanwhile, the terror groups could lick their wounds, and get ready for the next round. Over and over.

In this process, any lie and falsehood would be employed, not in the least through what was dubbed ‘Pallywood’. Yes, a real thing, as I have shown. This grotesque manipulation of public opinion worldwide is still going on, through a variety of new ways.

At this point, that narrative of Palestinians as innocent victims of genocidal Israeli aggression has taken hold in the minds of many worldwide, and most definitely in the minds of Palestinians, subjected to constant messaging and force within Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is the occupier, and Palestinians the innocent victims.

Any attack by Israel is ‘unprovoked’, and any action by Palestinians, however gruesome and murderous, is explained away as ‘understandable’ and a reaction against ‘the unjust occupation’. That the Arab attacks and killings of Jews started long before the 'colonial occupation’ by Zionists had started, and even before there was such thing as ‘zionism’, is cavalierly brushed aside..

In a post WW2 world one cannot support hatred of Jews, that much is clear (luckily). But supporting those who make it their goal to kill as many Jews as possible, and create a Judenrein homeland from the river to the sea, is a perfect way out. Even if they say they only want to kill ‘zionists’, the result is the same.

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I come to several conclusions.

* First, there is such a reality of a people we call ‘Jews’, and Israel is their ancestral homeland. Yes, that ended for all intents and purposes in 135 a.D., with the end of the Second Jewish Revolt. Or, symbolically, through the destruction of the Temple and the ability to perform the Biblically prescribed sacrifices, in 70 a.D., when Titus laid waste to Jerusalem after a five-month siege. For some reason, Jews managed to maintain their identity, their religion, and their memories of ‘home’. “Next year in Jerusalem!” This, despite a diaspora across so many different regions and cultures, over a span of centuries and even millennia.

This stubborn insistence to keep their identity (among other factors external to the Jews themselves) eventually led to continuous clashes in their respective host countries, culminating in the Holocaust. As a result, many Jews finally united and agreed to the need for a country of their own, and the UN, with the global prestige of that organization, assigned part of the British Mandate territory to the Jewish survivors.

* This brings me to the second conclusion: Against all odds, the new state of Israel survived the military onslaught of being invaded by 5 Arab armies. It conquered territory. It did so several times, ceding back large parts in name of ‘land for peace’. By right of conquest, they earned their place. Israel is a reality, and here to stay. Israel did not invade, it accepted the partition proposed by the UN, and then fought for it, and kept it. By right, it is now theirs, even the conquered portions.

To deny this ‘right of conquest’ is to deny most of history. (And to deny the right of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia to exist, as they were created by the same external powers that created Israel, and on the basis of that same ‘right of conquest’!)

* This brings me to a 3^rd conclusion. This deals with the problem of refugees.

The Jews from Europe relocated out of their own free will, under auspices of the UN and the British Mandate. The local people were indeed not asked about their opinion, and many fled on their own accord, others forced by the Israelis, many others because they were so prompted by the invading Arab armies and their own radio and news messages. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jews were  forcibly expulsed from their ancestral homes all over the Arab world, an expulsion mostly finalized by 1967.

Where Israel did all they could to absorb those displaced Jews into their own country, the Arab community kept the Palestinian refugees in horrid conditions, perpetuating the unrest and hatred.

The whole story of the Nakba is NOT about the catastrophe the refugees underwent by being forced out by the Israelis, but is about the absolute humiliation of the Arab world, unable to subdue and remove the Jews from the region, not even with the might of their combined, modern armies against a rag-tag group of ill-equipped Jews. All the Arab rhetoric of massacring the Jews was turned around and projected on their own refugees, blaming Israel for it.

This cornerstone of the Palestinian cause is a fraud, a revisionist depiction of the birth of the State of Israel.

* And this leads to a 4^th conclusion:

Such revisionism and deception became a key element to counter Israel. What they could not achieve on the battlefield, they now tried to achieve on the world stage of public opinion. Lie after lie, they sought to discredit Israel. Their own children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. were force-fed those propaganda lies, with a strong dose of hatred: ‘Kill the Jews!’, while being taught to deny reality, in place for their own whitewashed Palestinian ‘history’.

Another reason for the deception was to hide their own main goal: the elimination of Israel, and the elimination of the Jews. This was talked about, from the beginning, and is still visible. It is visible on the maps on their own logos: 1 state, the Palestinian state, and in their own actions: indiscriminate terror and killing.

Copying the Algerian model, Fatah was aware that the main struggle was not the armed struggle, but the diplomacy within the United Nations, where pressure from worldwide public opinion was the gold standard.

* And a 5^th conclusion:

Israel is tired, and done. It has withstood attacks even before they were a nation (as a people, the Jews, they were singled out for centuries, not just in the West, but specifically and continually in the Arab world as well), it has ceded back land, it has made concession after concession, left day-to-day management of the Temple Mount (their own holiest site) to the Palestinians knowing they would abuse their control to destroy priceless archaeological information proving the Jewish history on that mount, Israel forced their own settlers out of Gaza at gun-point proving their commitment to even reverse settlements in order to achieve peace, they gave Palestinians control over the West Bank and over Gaza, they recognized their governments, they have shown how within Israel Arab Israelis can rise to the highest levels of power thus negating any accusation of anti-Arab hatred, and so on. This is what they did as a state, and any example of speech and actions of particular groups won't change that. Rabin showed that commitment, even against parts of their own community, and paid the highest price.

What have the Palestinians done? Keep attacking, through cowardly terror attacks that indiscriminately target civilians. Reject any peace plan that does not give them 100% what they want (which is the elimination of Israel, either through violence, or by forcing Israel to accept 5 million of refugees, ending their control over their own country, effectively giving up their own sovereignty). The October 7 attack was the last straw, and changed the minds of many Israelis, in a way that is very reminiscent of the immediate aftermaths of the attacks on the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, or 9-11. It presented a clear they-versus-us image, with the Palestinians in a very cruel position as attacker, rejecting all reason, and the Israeli population as the victim.

They have been shown willing to compromise on everything, except the right for Israel to exist. Palestinians have compromised on just about nothing, and insist Israel needs to be eliminated. From the river to the sea.

Israel realized: they are damned if they react, damned if they don’t.

* When we look at those 5 conclusion, a final conclusion presents itself. With the short memory of the public, and with the effects of decades of revisionism and propaganda, many people fail to see the underlying story, as depicted by those 5 previous conclusions. Looking at the current situation, no one party involved carries the full responsibility for the absolutely deadlocked mess Israel and the Palestinians are in. It is an inherited disaster, with failures on many levels.

But a picture emerges where one group desperately wants to live in peace, free from constant oppression, persecution and attempted genocide. In order to achieve that, they are willing to make far-reaching compromises, and their leaders show a willingness to make such hard decisions, even at the risk of assassination by factions in their own group.

The other group has attacked the first group long before there was any talk about that first group returning to their ancestral lands. They never accepted any compromise or settlement, and chose war and violence at every turn. At this point, the hatred for the other side is so engrained, through their own revisionist propaganda, that peace seems far away.

Yet at the same time Israel ‘took the bait’ and invaded Gaza, offering Hamas a golden opportunity to wage its war with the global public opinion against Israel, Hamas’ own negligence to care for her own people is coming back to hurt it, eroding their own support base.

Some say Israel cannot win this, but is that really the case?

From what I can see, Israel has a right to exist, in the place where they are now. All historical precedent shows and supports that. Palestinians made the wrong choice, from the beginning, to claim they wanted to ‘eliminate’ all the Jews, and never accept any concession, even before there was an Israeli state.

Claiming that Palestinians fight ‘Zionism’ and not ‘Jews’ is rather pointless. Where would Jews go to, if you expel them? Where CAN they go to? The State of Israel is a fait accompli. It is here, and survived many wars of aggression against it. This is their land. Palestinians squandered their allotment time after time, and each time, they ended up with less and less. Which is also the normal course of war: the more you lose, the less leverage you have.

And finally: we can never, NEVER, give in to terrorists who hide behind civilians (even worse, their OWN PEOPLE). The whole world needs to be shown, and understand, that such behavior is simply unacceptable.

That is my analysis, and the view based on it.

It will likely challenge your own views, and that is ok. Look at the facts I presented, the sources. When you have counter-examples, think about them: do they undermine my explanation, or is it simply a tit-for-tat: ‘but they did it too!’, ignoring the facts i brought up? I wrote in part 3, when I gave an example of a British report of Israeli officials (in vain) trying to keep Arabs to stay in their homes, that this does not mean that Israelis never forced Arabs out of their homes, nor that they never shot and killed civilians. But I also showed contemporary reports that show that Israel, from the beginning, had plans to keep Arabs, protect them, and care for them (even if such plans were not perfectly executed). It shows the INTENT of the new Israeli state, and it clashes completely with the false narrative of the Nakba. Any counter-example has to be more than anecdotal, and show a fundamental intent towards ethnic cleansing and genocide. (Which can be shown from the surrounding Arab nations in their remarks and words, before they got military beaten back.)

It is important to look close enough, at the whole body of information available. This is my attempt to add to that.

It is in NO WAY a blank endorsement of anything Israel does (or the Palestinians). There are many people within Israel, and throughout the world, who have written good criticisms of Israeli leadership and policies. Some I agree with, others I strongly disagree with. But that is ok, and how it should be. The side I offered does not touch upon actual policy, but aims to show the basics, the foundations, the framework, of this conflict, and thus, as relevant background, should help inform any review of actual policy.

Let me know in the comments what you think!