Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, Part 3: Modern Israel
A look at the modern State of Israel
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
In Part 1, we saw the history of Israel, from the earliest mentions all the way to the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948. In this part, we will look at the history of that modern state.
A very important element to realize is that after the end of this war, there was no Palestinian state. Instead, Egypt controlled/occupied the Gaza Strip, and Jordan controlled/occupied the West Bank. Even then, there was no Palestine! On December 1, 1948, King Abdullah of Transjordan even took the step to annex the West Bank with the ‘East Bank’, Transjordan. Here we see a return to the old idea, with a single territory, divided by the River Jordan: Cis and Trans Jordan. This was formalized on April 24, 1950, when the parliament of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan resolved in favor of “complete unity between the two banks of the Jordan, the eastern and western, and their union in one single state.” (Source Kramer)
In June of 1967, Israel launched a preemptive war against Egypt, that had threatened to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and mobilized and amassed their army on the border with Israel. Egypt had also ordered the immediate withdrawal of UN forces that were stationed in the Sinai region. Jordan had given control over its army to Egypt, as well, and entered the fray on Egypt’s command. Syria joined as well, with sporadic attacks from the Golan Heights.
Israel’s response was swift, both in the sudden preemptive attack on Egypt, as against Jordan and Syria. Within 6 days, Israel had seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights.
Here it is important to note another point. Where in 1948 Jordan did not hesitate to annex the West Bank, in 1967 Israel did not do that, “But for five decades it has administered the rest of the West Bank as occupied territory de facto (though not de jure) under a military administration and subject to the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Kramer continued, and pointed out that “in the course of these 53 years, Israel’s standing in the territory has become so encrusted with practices, agreements, legal rulings, tacit understandings, and precedents that any move toward unilateral annexation, even if only of a part of the West Bank, would appear to be a sharp departure from the status quo that Israel itself constructed.”
By doing so, Israel effectively tied itself into knots that cannot easily be undone. The implication of this is absolutely vital: Israel never intended to ‘steal the lands of the Palestinians’, but reserved that territory as a separate entity. Yes, the later settlements blurred that, but have to be understood as a balancing act with internal forces, and the indomitable expanding drive of humans. Americans, of all people, should understand that very well. We’ll talk about the settlements in some more detail later, as it is an important factor and stumbling block.
Kramer added another great point: “Third, Abdullah didn’t fret over “demography.” Annexing the West Bank tripled the total number of people under his rule, in the process turning his original East Bank subjects into a minority. For him, it was a price worth paying. A ruler in the late-Ottoman style, he didn’t reign over a nation-state, and he didn’t think it mattered who formed the majority of his subjects. He had his Bedouin army, and that’s what kept him on top.
True, he had political opponents on the West Bank who detested him. But to all of his new subjects he was a fellow Arab, and to most of them a fellow Muslim and descendant of the prophet: a Hashemite. Many West Bankers had ties to the East Bank stretching back to the not-too-distant past when there wasn’t a Jordan separate from Palestine. Professing loyalty to Abdullah wasn’t a huge stretch. And he gave all of the West Bankers full Jordanian citizenship. That didn’t cost him much at all, because Jordan wasn’t and isn’t a democracy.”
This is another reason why Israel never annexed the West Bank, if you want a less than altruistic reason. They simply cannot afford to incorporate millions of Arab Palestinians, and risk becoming a minority within their own country. As a democracy, giving citizenship to millions of Palestinians at once, means they lose their state the very next elections. Chew on that realization for a bit. Demanding Israel at all times act 100% democratic within their unique set of circumstances, among people who do not share that same burden, is tantamount to demanding they embrace suicidality. It is not that simple.
This is the perfect moment to bring this to mind: Look at the Presidential Elections in the Palestinian Authority. There are only TWO. The first one in 1996, when Yassir Arafat was elected with 88.2% of the vote, and the next in 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas won with 62.52% of the vote. There have been no other presidential elections since. Even though Abbas’ four-year term was set to expire on 15 January 2009, he postponed elections by a year. But on December 16, 2009, the Palestinian Central Council announced an indefinite extension to Abbas’ presidency.
The history of presidential and parliamentary elections (also only 2 in total) is more complicated, with Hamas disputing the legitimacy of the leadership of the PLO, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. A continuous back-and-forth only kept delaying and postponing elections, not in the least because of an insistence that Arabs in East-Jerusalem would be allowed to vote, as well, even though this undermines the Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Where are the calls to demand democracy from the Palestinians, the same way it is demanded of Israel?
Again, another great insight by Kramer, talking about the differences between the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and the problems for Israel if it were to try to emulate such a move today: “Any annexation of territory populated by Arabs would be done against their will. A century ago, these things didn’t matter. Indeed, there would have been no Balfour Declaration in 1917 had Jewish historical rights not been given preference over the rights of the country’s “existing non-Jewish communities” (as the Declaration phrased it). But in the present world order, legal arguments and historical claims, however weighty, usually don’t trump the desires of a present-day population.”
We look at the whole of the current problem between Israel and the Palestinians through our modern understanding. Back in 1917, with the Balfour Declaration, and in 1947, when the UN voted in favor of Resolution 181, to partition the western part of the British Mandate of Palestine territory, a lot of those concerns did not weigh as heavy yet, and the perceived immediate need for justice and security for the Jews, and their perceived right to self-determination and thus, a state of their own, were enough to outweigh the concerns about those already living in those territories (roughly 1 million Palestinians, 550,000 Jews, and 135,000 Christians, based on the 1945 Village Statistics). More about that decision of relocation of a population later.
In the 1950s and 1960s an incessant string of attacks by ‘fedayeen’, and the IDF reprisals, continued the violence. This was an armed movement from what is now Gaza into Israeli territory, coupled with an attempted infiltration of Palestinians who tried to sneak back into Israel. Where the first of those infiltrations were simply by people trying to get back belongings, take back houses, or to harvest crops in fields they left behind, this gradually developed into violent robbery and attacks, when fedayeen took the place of civilians. Here we see the earliest form of terrorism as a tool against Israel.
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines ‘fedayee’, the singular word for fedayeen, as “a term used in Islamic cultures to describe a devotee of a religious or national group willing to engage in self-immolation to attain a group goal.” They are linked to the 11-13th century sect of ‘assassins’, and later became the term to denote those who fought from the shadows against opponents (through political or other assassinations, guerilla warfare, terror attacks, bombings, etc., instead of through open warfare or rebellion).
This phase included the Suez Crisis, when Britain, France, and Israel, beginning on 29 October 1956, attacked Egypt over the Egyptian decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. Israel’s invasion of the Sinai Peninsula was successful, but the US and the USSR forced Israel to retreat, but Israel managed to keep their access to the Strait of Tiran open, giving access from Eilat to the Red Sea. The UN stationed troops at the Egypt-Israeli border (UNEF).
In 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser told Israel they would close the Strait of Tiran again, mobilized the Egyptian Army, concentrated it near the Israeli border in the Sinai, and ordered the immediate withdrawal of the UN forces between them and Israel. Israel saw this, and launched a preemptive strike, catching the Egyptians by complete surprise.
As Michael Doran wrote for Hudson, “History records Israel’s triumph in 1967 as the Six-Day War, but the key operations that clinched the victory took closer to six hours than six days.” Synchronized waves of aerial attacks took out planes, runways, left-over planes, and then the Egyptian army positions and tanks that had become sitting ducks. Yet as the Egyptian general staff was gripped by panic as all those reports came in, one after the other, the same method used to whip up support from the population now turned against them.
BBC explains the role of the radio station ‘Voice of the Arabs’: “The mood was whipped up by Nasser's ubiquitous radio station, Sawt al-Arab, the Voice of the Arabs. Broadcasting from Cairo to the rest of the Middle East, it was a vital tool of Nasser's foreign policy. Throughout the crisis, its chief announcer, Ahmed Said, read out a series of blood-curdling threats to Israel.”
As the Israeli war planes decimated the Egyptian positions and their military command started to panic, BBC painted what happened on the streets: “But outside on the streets the people were celebrating. Crowds poured into the city by evening on buses provided by the ruling party. Voice of the Arabs was their trusted source of news and truth, and it was pushing out fantasy.
By 20:17 it was reporting that 86 Israeli aircraft had been destroyed and that Egyptian tanks had broken into Israel. At the headquarters of the Sinai front, General Mohamed Abdel Ghani Gamasy listened "with growing horror" to what he knew was a pack of nonsense.”
Jordan entered the fray, despite being warned repeated by Israel not to, as did Syria, which had sporadically bombarded Israel from what they thought were impregnable fortifications on the Golan Heights, with about 250 artillery pieces, 40,000 troops, almost 500 mechanized guns (tanks and artillery), and a vast network of trenches, bunkers and other fortifications, overlooking the low-lying Israeli territories.
Some stories state that Syria was lured into the war because of false reports of Egyptian successes, and a misinterpretation of a returning Israeli squadron as an Egyptian air attack on their way to Tel Aviv. Others state that Syria felt untouchable, from their high ground fortifications. The USSR had also played a role, it seems, giving false reports of Israeli army movements towards the north, signaling an impending attack.
Either way, Jordan attacked from the West Bank territories, to be swiftly met with an Israeli counterattack that took back all of the West Bank. When Syria did some initial shelling, no response from the Israel made them think they could continue with impunity, and even launched a land attack, that in part never materialized because of inexperienced troops and problems on the ground, or that got quickly met with a swift response that took the Syrian troops completely by surprise.
Interestingly, an article on sixdaywar.org chronicles an instance of ‘fake news’ that backfired:
“At 8:45 in the morning on June 10, however, Damascus radio announced the fall of Quneitra, while the Israelis were still about 10 kilometers from the town. This was apparently intended to provoke Soviet intervention by suggesting an Israeli advance to Damascus, but it backfired. Hearing that the town had fallen, Syrian defenders throughout the Golan feared that they would soon be cut off, and they panicked and fled. By nightfall all Syrian resistance on the Golan Heights had collapsed.
Israeli losses during the Golan operation were 115 killed and 306 wounded. Syrian losses are estimated to have been 2500 killed and 5000 wounded, with another 591 taken prisoner.”
False news is constantly used to signal international forces to come help (in this case), or to attack Israel (physically or diplomatically). This is another such documented case, but here it completely backfired, leading to the collapse of their own lines, and the fall of the Golan. At times, though, the false stories survive, and become part of the narrative, as actual ‘history’ (such as the whole story of Deir Yassin, more about that later). This IS a pattern, even if not a coordinated one, and we should recognize it for what it is: false stories, aimed to discredit Israel and garner sympathy and support for the Palestinian side. This might look like an outlandish claim here, but my follow-up articles will extensively make that case, with actual case studies.
Either way, after 6 days, Israel had conquered the whole Sinai Desert, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, in a stunning military triumph.
In an article by the Middle East Forum, the aftermath of the 6 Day War was described very poignantly: “No sooner had the dust settled on the battlefield than the Arabs and their Western partisans began rewriting the conflict's narrative with aggressors turned into hapless victims and defenders turned into aggressors. Jerusalem's weeks-long attempt to prevent the outbreak of hostilities in the face of a rapidly tightening Arab noose is completely ignored or dismissed as a disingenuous ploy; by contrast, the extensive Arab war preparations with the explicit aim of destroying the Jewish state is whitewashed as a demonstrative show of force to deter an imminent Israeli attack on Syria.” Here we see the force of the media being arrayed against Israel, through attempts to change history. Those false stories became embedded in the Palestinian minds, further cementing their idea of themselves as ‘victims’, and Israel as the eternal ‘aggressors’.
Egypt can deploy massive troop numbers in the demilitarized Sinai desert, breaking the 1956 agreements, expulse UN observers and peacekeeping troops, close the Streets of Tiran, make diplomatic moves to form a pan-Arabic war coalition, and still Western writers will try to act as if that was just grandstanding, without really wanting to actually attack Israel for real, that Israel was ‘overreacting’, and trying to abuse that situation to further their own goals and expansion. All the talk of Nasser and other Palestinian leaders, including PLO chairman Ahmad Shuqeiri, about ‘exterminating’ Israel was, of course, also only ‘for show’.
After this humiliating loss, the Arab League formulated the famous ‘three no’s’ in their 4th summit in Khartoum: No Peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel, No negotiations with Israel.
Next, there was the ’War of Attrition’ from 1967-1970, as a series of shelling, and other skirmish attacks, mostly along the Suez Canal. It saw increased Soviet support to Egypt, in the supply of state of the art anti-air missile systems, and the involvement of Soviet pilots in soviet Migs. It ended in a stalemate, giving Israel a false sense of victory.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973 was a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria. After the criticism of Israel of their preemptive strike in the 6 Day War, they were hesitant during the rising tensions in the early 1970s. As Michael Doran continued in his story, he described the behind the door diplomacy between Israel and the US. Nixon impressed on Golda Meir, then the prime minister of Israel, that it was absolutely imperative that if there were another conflict, Egypt and the other Arab countries would be seen as the aggressors, and not Israel.
“Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan made their calculations on October 6, 1973 with the understanding that they had entered a quid pro quo with Washington: the Nixon administration offered a strategic partnership, which included a commitment to provide arms; in return, Israel agreed not to launch a preemptive strike—not to deploy the tool that had made victory in 1967 all but certain—lest it risk drawing the United States into direct conflict with the Soviet Union.”
This made Israel slow to respond. Another reason for this surprise is the sense of invincibility of the IDF. After all their successes, they had not once tasted defeat. The sudden attack surprised them, and being forced to retreat was a very new experience for the Israeli soldiers. Panic set in among the Israeli leadership, and they realized they needed outside help: the United States. That brought in a lot of problems, including the difference in opinions and visions among different presidents and different advisors, including Williams Rogers and Henry Kissinger.
Doran sketches the difficult tight-rope the US experienced with Soviet involvement in the Middle East. Initial requests for aid were fulfilled only piecemeal and unreliably. Was this because of hampering from US officials? Trying to teach Israel a lesson, ‘bleeding’ it, as Admiral Zumwalt wrote in his memoir when describing the aims of Kissinger towards Israel, with the goal to make Israel more compliant? Perhaps actions of Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, known to have little sympathy for Israel? Or was it because Nixon was distracted in full Watergate scandal?
Either way, after the first week of fighting, Nixon stepped in and demanded to go all-out in delivering US support. He realized that the Soviets were exploiting the American restraint, building up their own support for the Arabs, and thus, their influence. Soviet leader Brezhnev was sending massive resupplies to the Syrian and Egyptian armies, showing that diplomacy was not on the agenda for the Arabs.
So the US stepped in, big time.
As Doran beautifully described: “Nixon called Kissinger on October 14 to emphasize that the resupply must not only be effective, but massive. “We are going to get blamed just as much for three planes as for 300. . . . Henry, I have no patience with the view that we send in a couple of planes. My point is, . . . if . . . we are going to make a move, it’s going to cost us. . . . I don’t think it’s going to cost us a damn bit more to send in more.” Two hours later Nixon called back for an update. “If I contribute anything to [this] discussion, it is [this]: don’t fool around with three planes. . . . Just go gung-ho.”
And they did. A total of 550 U.S. transport planes flew to Israel over the next few weeks. At its peak, one plane landed every fifteen minutes. Within a few days, the U.S. effort had surpassed the Soviet airlift to Egypt and Syria.”
And to show the precarious position Nixon was in: “When the administration placed nuclear forces around the world on alert, critics accused Nixon of manufacturing the crisis to distract from Watergate. If anything, the opposite was true. Fear that the United States might look impotent due to the president’s political travails convinced Kissinger and everyone else around the president of the necessity of sending a signal of seriousness to Moscow.”
The fighting was a shock for Israelis. They saw troops come back, bewildered, retreating for the first time ever. About 2500-3000 soldiers died, in 2 weeks of fighting (compared to less than a thousand in the 3-4 years of the War of Attrition).
The massive US aid helped, and Israel struck back. There were small gains by Egypt, that managed to maintain a foothold across the Suez Canal into the Sinai. Israel, however, managed to stop the onslaught, and hit back hard. They crossed the Suez Canal as well, into Egypt, and established a bridgehead, coming as close as 40 miles to Cairo, the Egyptian capital. Meanwhile, in the North, they managed to come within striking distance of Damascus, Syria’s capital.
The conclusion of the war is also very important, and Doran makes a succinct summary:
“And that brings us to the most crucial fact about the Yom Kippur War: it was a joint Israeli and American victory, even if it was for Sadat a successful military operation of the kind that he had envisioned from the beginning. By simultaneously repulsing the Syrians and the Egyptians and going on to threaten Cairo and Damascus, even in the face of an overwhelming surprise attack, the IDF demonstrated that there was no way an Arab military coalition could defeat it by conventional means. Syria has remained Israel’s enemy, but it hasn’t dared to attack again. Egypt became an American and Israeli ally, and the relationship between the Jewish state and the United States emerged stronger than ever. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s best weapons proved to be no match for America’s.”
Israel forced a stronger position among her neighbors, and the US managed to upstage the Soviets in the Middle East, establishing dominance. It did not help with the Palestinians themselves, but it did set the stage to start slowly increasing normalization of relationships with the Arab nations.
Map of the Southern campaign:
And for the northern campaign:
When the PLO relocated from Jordan to Lebanon, and began to use that as a base from which to attack Israel (the Palestinian Insurgency, from 1971 to 1982), this fighting boiled over and caused the Lebanese civil war in 1975, initially between the PLO and Christian militias, but later between a whole host of different groups, that would fight against each other in rapidly and unpredictably changing alliances. In 1978, Israel responded by invading Lebanon, making certain territorial gains in a ‘Security Zone’ in Operation Litani, but withdrew almost immediately under UN pressure.
(Map showing power balance in Lebanon, 1983: Green – controlled by Syria, purple – controlled by Christian groups, yellow – controlled by Israel, blue – controlled by the United Nations)
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again, after their ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov, was assassinated. This was done by a gunman from the Abu Nidal Organisation, but Prime Minister Begin used this to attack the PLO, Abu Nidal’s enemy, as well as other factions in Lebanon (Syrian, leftist and Muslim Lebanese forces). They even occupied Beirut, until they withdrew to South Lebanon in 1985, seen as the end of the war. The continued Israeli presence in Southern Lebanon led to the South Lebanon Conflict, from 1985 until full withdrawal by the IDF in 2000. In part, it can be seen as an extension of the Lebanese civil war, until that ended in 1990.
This conflict is more of an occupation-as-buffer fight, with Hezbollah fighting a guerilla war. As Hezbollah increasingly started to shell the Israeli Galilee province, more and more people started to question the reason for the IDF’s presence in Lebanon. This became an election promise by Ehud Barak, who, upon winning election in 1999, started the withdrawal process immediately upon assuming office. Israel still holds on to a small territory called Shebaa Farms, adjacent to the captured Golan Heights, and thus Lebanon (nor Hezbollah) does not consider the withdrawal complete, even though this area was governed by Syria until 1967 when Israel took control of it. But who lets facts get in the way of a good story, or a good fight?
The importance of these fights is how it shows that Israel is aware of their relations with their neighbors, but also that it should protect her own citizens. Palestinians brought the fighting to Israel by attacking from South Lebanon, through incursions of armed fighters, or through mortar and rocket attacks. This places Israel in a very difficult position: let those attacks happen, or counter, and risk the certain avalanche of international disapproval as ‘the aggressor’, violating the sovereignty of other states.
Meanwhile, Palestinians within Israel did not sit still, either. The first and second Intifada broke out, setting the West Bank and Gaza regions aflame, with terror attacks on Israeli soil as well. Part of the reason for those uprising was the continued occupation, and the growing Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.
At this point, Israel began to negotiate for peace. Land for peace, was the idea. The Sinai dessert was returned to Egypt in 1982, the security zone was returned to Lebanon (in 1982, and again in 2000), and in 1993, through the Oslo Accords, Israel under Yitzhak Rabin recognized the Palestinian Territories, and the Palestinian Territories, led by the PLO under Yasser Arafat, recognized the sovereignty of Israel. With this the PLO was given control over the Gaza strip and the West Bank, and for the first time ever Palestinians ruled themselves. Still temporary, as an interim solution, and under an Israeli umbrella, but autonomous nonetheless.
In 2000, Bill Clinton attempted to reach an accord in the last month of his presidency, hoping to break the stalemate with a far-reaching plan.
“ Creation of an independent Palestinian state with contiguity on 94-96% of the West Bank with additional compensation from a land swap with Israel of 1-3%, resulting in close to an equivalent 100% of the West Bank, and 100% of Gaza. The plan also called for a dedicated link between the West Bank and Gaza.
Jerusalem divided under the principle that existing Arab areas would be Palestinian and Jewish ones Israeli. This would apply to the Old City as well, which would thus be divided.
Regarding the Temple Mount/Haram, the Parameters acknowledged that there were a number of formulations already discussed and Clinton suggested two more. The Parameters envisioned some form of control or sovereignty of the Temple Mount by the Palestinians, the Western Wall by Israel, and a shared arrangement under the Mount. The Parameters acknowledged that some of the formulations were more about the wording and less about day-to-day control.
Palestine would be a non-militarized state, with certain security guarantees for Israel.
On the issue of refugees and “Right of Return” the Palestinian refugees would not be able to “return” to locations inside Israel without Israeli approval, instead, they could return to the new State of Palestine. This formulation would be “consistent with the two-state approach…the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian People and the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.” Clinton referred to refugees returning to “historic Palestine,” but only to the portion comprising the new Palestinian state, to satisfy that the “Right of Return” had been met.
End of conflict agreement that would end to all claims and satisfy all relevant U.N. resolutions.”
Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak accepted this plan, which meant an almost complete acceptance of the demands of the Palestinian Authority. Yasser Arafat, however, rejected this deal.
This could have ended the whole problem, create an independent Palestinian State, and solve the refugee crisis. None of that mattered, as Arafat did not think it was enough, even though just about 100% of his demands had been met. But indeed not 100%: Arafat did not even negotiate in bad faith, he did not want to negotiate, at all.
Salo Aizenberg wrote a fantastic article, exploring this episode, and shows conclusively that Arafat indeed rejected peace in 2000. He quotes all the important players, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. He was present in DC at the time, and impressed on Arafat that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries would fully support him if he choose to accept the peace proposal. Prince Bandar recollects the moment he finds out Arafat said no: “I wanted to cry, my heart was burning at how the opportunity was lost again and perhaps for the last time, as if I was seeing a movie playing in front of my eyes. An opportunity comes, and it is lost.”
At some point Arafat claimed: “It is important to note at this point that Resolution 194, which serves as the basis for a just settlement for the Refugee Problem, determines the return of the Palestinian refugees ‘to their homes’ and not ‘to their homeland’ or ‘historical Palestine.’ The essence of the Right of Return is the freedom of choice: the Palestinians should be given the right to choose their place of living, including the homes from which they were expelled. There is no historical precedent of a people that gave up its fundamental right to return to its homes, whether they were expelled or ran away out of fear.”
This is absolutely crucial! Apart from the mistake (there is historical precedent, look at the Sudetendeutsche, for example), Arafat absolutely shows that he did negotiate in bad faith. He did not want a two state solution: by this very literalist interpretation of the right to return, and this very stubborn and maximalist position on this demand, he in effect wanted 2 majority Palestinian states... There is no place for Israel, and never was, in the mind of Arafat and many other Palestinians.
But immediately revisionist stories started to pop up, trying to claim that Arafat was not to blame for this breakup of the negotiations. As Aizenberg explains: “Why is it important to continually establish the truth over a 20-year-old event? Why do those who are more strident towards Israel gravitate towards revisionist narratives to absolve Arafat of fault? Because acknowledging that Arafat rejected a plan that would have given Palestinians a state and nearly everything they seem to desire even now would greatly impact the discourse on the conflict today. By absolving Arafat or blaming “both sides,” the 2000-2001 peace talks become a non-factor in the discussion of the conflict today, just another in a long line of failures which then allows Israel’s detractors to bring everything back to “the settlements” and “the occupation,” meaning the lack of peace is all Israel’s fault.”
In 2020, Dennis Ross, a US negotiator, said in an article on The Hill about Saudi prince Bandar’s claims: “This past year, one former Palestinian negotiator, despairing about the current reality, wistfully said to me, “Can you imagine where we would be if we had accepted the Clinton parameters?”” This is the tragedy, that a blindly maximalist position prevented peace, condemning all involved to years and years of bloodshed and hatred, to the point where things are so much more difficult to solve.
Ross continued: “After Arafat rejected the Clinton parameters, other Arab officials echoed similar, if less dramatic, views to me. But none were prepared to say anything publicly. None were prepared openly to criticize the Arafat decision or counter the Palestinian story misrepresenting what had been offered. That was then — when the Palestinians could portray the diplomacy one way, and leading Arab figures would not challenge their story, even when they knew it was wrong.” The importance of the Palestinian question, whipped up as a battering ram against Israel, backfired for most Arab leaders. It became impossible to openly challenge the Palestinians. This, too, is a recurring theme in this whole history. To this day, it is difficult to contradict Palestinian claims, with the media as their watchdogs to protect ‘orthodoxy’ and compliance.
As Aizenberg explained, a proper understanding of what really took place is vitally important for any rational assessment of the current situation. Whatever her faults, Israel was willing to make very hard decisions. Ehud Barak knew full well that Yitzhak Rabin paid the ultimate price for making a similarly hard decision in the pursuit of peace for Israel, as he was assassinated by a religious hardliner in 1995. Still, he agreed to Clinton’s proposal, a near full acceptance of all the Palestinian demands.
Whatever happened after, it is not the ‘Settlements’, or an ‘apartheid state’ and ‘discrimination against Palestinians’ that caused all this. It was the refusal of Arafat to accept a peace proposal that give him just about all he had had demanded.
On the preceding Camp David summit in July, people involved in the process had this to say:
“Broadly, from the Israeli perspective and backed by Ross and numerous observers, Arafat and his team rejected all proposals and did not offer reasonable counterproposals of their own. Arafat famously denied that a Jewish Temple existed on the Temple Mount and instead insisted that the real temple was built in Nablus. The fact that Arafat could not accept even the most basic Jewish history in the region was seen by both the Israelis and Clinton as an insult to their intelligence and a sign that Arafat was not negotiating in good faith. From the Palestinian perspective the offers were not sufficient, their delegation was not properly respected by the Americans and Israelis, and they were forced into a process that was set up as a trap for them.”
A similar complete rejection of very far-reaching Israeli concessions took place during peace talks between then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authorities. This plan involved even returning the Arab quarters of Jerusalem to PA control. This proposal was rejected based on disagreement on the percentage of land swaps. In the immediate aftermath, in what basically amounts to a Palestinian civil war/coup, Hamas split the Palestinian Authority in two, where Fatah would rule the West Bank, and Hamas would rule Gaza. Unilateral Israeli actions, such as the ‘Gaza disengagement’, in which Israel, under Ariel Sharon, forced the evacuation of 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza and 4 in The West Bank, as a token of goodwill, under the idea of ‘land for peace’, are ignored.
'Just as it was dangerous for Israeli politicians to make resolute decisions towards peace (Rabin was assassinated for his acceptance of the Oslo Accords), it was dangerous for the Arab leaders. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated, by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Wiki explains: “Although the motive has been debated, Sadat's assassination likely stemmed from Arab nationalists who opposed Sadat's peace initiative with Israel and the United States relating to the Camp David Accords.” Yet Olmert and others in Israel kept trying. Until they didn’t. And now Israel is no longer backing down, as something snapped in the minds of many Israelis.
Haviv Rettig Gur wrote an article for The Times of Israel on October 16, 2023. “Hamas does not yet understand the depth of Israeli resolve!” We have to understand that October 7 is the 9-11 of Israel. Every Israeli was shocked to their core, and all of them remember exactly when they first heard the news.
Even as he gives a strong position, to explain the resolve of Israel and Israelis to continue and end this fight, without backing down, he still finds the time and space and wisdom to put things properly in perspective: “That enemy is not the Palestinian people, of course, even though support for terror attacks is widespread among Palestinians. The enemy is not exactly Hamas either, though Hamas is part of it. The enemy is the Palestinian theory of Israelis that makes the violence seen on October 7 seem to many of them a rational step on the road to liberation rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet another in a long string of self-inflicted disasters for the Palestinian cause.”
Haviv Gur asks a poignant question, that supporters of the Palestinian cause often ask: “What would you do if faced with decades of Israeli occupation?” He answers for many Israelis, in the negative. He explains that in the minds of many Israelis, Hamas would have attacked the same way, even if the occupation had ended 20 years ago. He backs it up, too.
“The fall of 2000 saw the start of a wave of some 140 suicide bombings in Israeli cities and towns, killing grandmothers and infants in buses and pizzerias and driving the political left from power so comprehensively that a generation later it has scarcely recovered.
The shattering effect of this mass murder wasn’t caused just by the shock and trauma of the attacks. It was also the timing.
In 2000, the peace process hadn’t yet seen two decades of stagnation. No far-right parties sat in the ruling coalition. Ending the occupation was an idea that won an election. Negotiators at Camp David were reported to be discussing shared Israeli-Palestinian sovereignty on the Temple Mount. There were no Israeli soldiers in any Palestinian city or town — they’d been pulled out over the previous three years — and Palestinian incomes and college education rates were rising. Things seemed to be falling into place. Peace, many Israelis assumed, was imminent.”
When asked, Palestinians give all kinds of excuses, pointing at everyone except themselves. Not Arafat, who squandered a unique chance for peace. No, the Second Intifada, in 2000, was started because of that irresponsible visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon! That the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem said that he had called with the Mufti of the Al-Aqsa mosque, asking if Sharon could visit, and that permission was given ‘as long as he does not enter any mosque’. This is denied now, of course.
Haviv Gur sheds a different light on the reasons for the violence: “Palestinian intellectuals have since offered better answers, including that the violence began as an internal Palestinian uprising against Yasser Arafat’s increasingly tyrannical regime in Ramallah, a kind of presaging of the Arab Spring in 2011, and was quickly deflected by a frightened Arafat into a campaign of terrorism targeting Israeli civilians.”
Israelis felt something was wrong, even if they could not fully comprehend it: “To them, it felt like all Palestinians had rallied to the murderous campaign. To recruit hundreds of suicide bombers (some 140 made it past the Israeli security services; a much larger number tried or made plans to), one needs an infrastructure of recruitment, a leadership that offers religious and social validation for the attacks, supply networks, laboratories and engineers to produce the bombs, a basic intelligence apparatus to help the bombers past Israeli security, along with bank accounts, safe-houses and the like.”
He then explains how this newfound realization makes Israelis immune to outside pressure: “If the response of Palestinian politics to the Oslo peace process was the mass murder of Israeli civilians, and the response of Palestinian politics to the stagnation of the peace process under Benjamin Netanyahu is the mass murder of Israeli civilians, then Israeli policy isn’t the cause of Palestinian mass murder of Israeli civilians.”
They all know about the different failed peace attempts. They all know the claims and demands of the Palestinians. They hear, loud and clear, ‘from the river to the sea’, and what that means for them. They see that confirmed in the words of Palestinian leaders, and in the logo’s of their organizations.
October 7, even if their own government had a hand in that intelligence failure, disregarding warnings from Egypt and other allies, is a turning point. Just like the Lusitania and Pearl Harbor were for Americans in WWI and WWII. Just as 9-11 was, as starting point in the war against terror. The similarities are absolutely striking, and need to be including in any rejection of the Israeli response.
“Then came Saturday, and the death of Israeli questions. For a moment, Israel’s guard went down. Hamas was free to live out its intentions. It did so with blazing clarity and purpose.
It is obvious to Israelis that Hamas’s brutal strategy cannot liberate Palestinians, so the violence can’t be explained to them as an attempt at liberation. Nor does Hamas bother to articulate its strategic rationale to Israelis, as Algeria’s FLN once did so clearly to the French. It asks them to flee or die, but can’t articulate where they should flee to.
Israelis are now convinced that the massacre on October 7, in its enormity and astonishing cruelty, and especially in the joy with which it was carried out, wasn’t a Palestinian miscalculation, because Palestinian independence wasn’t its goal.
The goal on October 7, as in the fall of 2000, was simply the complete removal of the Jews from this land.
With clarity comes closure. Israelis are unified as never before, and not just by the horrors perpetrated by Hamas. Their question is answered at long last. The brutality they once saw as a question turned out to be the answer, the purpose and end of much of Palestinian politics.”
In the ensuing war, it is clear that the only strategy Hamas has, is to force the IDF to cause as many casualties as possible, in order to Hamas to use that to force the world to demand Israel stop, and to isolate Israel. So Hamas can regroup, rinse, and repeat.
This analysis was written within 10 days of that attack, and now, almost 10 months later, we see the truth of it. Israel has not backed down. There is no real backlash within Israel, either. On May 30, 2024, Pew Research did a poll in Israel, about support for the IDF operation in Gaza. “A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 39% of Israelis say Israel's military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, while 34% say it has not gone far enough and 19% think it has gone too far.”
As PBS points out, “As the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza, there’s a bitter battle for public opinion flaring in the United States, with angry rallies on many college campuses and disruptive protests at prominent venues in several major cities.”
It is a war for the public opinion, alright. From the beginning, that was the goal. Capture the global public opinion, and force Israel into surrender. While Hamas regroups, and finds ways to their end-solution: the removal of the State of Israel. Make it into a Palestinian majority state. Even though in public they will say whatever is expected of them. This duplicity is very old, and still goes on. No one in the West seems to be catching on, or holding the Palestinians responsible.
In 1989, the Chicago Tribune made note of this duplicity: “Interestingly enough, few in the media doubt the sincerity of PLO`s Chairman Yasser Arafat in relation to his few peaceful statements while everybody seems to have forgotten the PLO resolutions two months ago in Tunis, calling to intensify the armed struggle against Israel.”
A lot more could be said to explain what happened, and what is happening, as all those details help paint a fuller understanding.
Next, I will dive deeper into the refugee problem, a core element that has exacerbated the whole problem tremendously. This, too, is an important element that sheds light on the moral standing of both sides.