The Left's long list of obsessions is somewhat eclectic; some might say incoherent embracing, as it does, diverse narratives such as modern monetary policy, transgenderism and climate change, amongst others. What they share, of course, is that none of them are buttressed by any actual evidence. All are simply the product of personalities that desire certain outcomes and which are further seized by a conviction that they are entitled to go to any lengths to secure them. Narratives are simply vehicles, designed to take them to their Promised Land.
But, sometimes, it's personal. Their support for the Palestinians (or, more accurately, their hatred of the Jewish people) is one such instance. Their animus is genuine, long-standing and provides no particular benefit – no consistent benefit, at least. It's simply the product of the vindictiveness with which Leftists are, by definition, imbued. This piece is an attempt to scatter some facts in the public square, most of them long forgotten, buried because they are inconvenient. The more one engages critical faculties that have been blunted by decades of naivety at the true state of the world around us, the more one realises how much of it is, disconcertingly, make-believe.
We are told that Israel has colonised the Palestinian homeland – the word 'apartheid' is increasingly bandied about – and victimises the Palestinian people. We are told that Gaza is an open-air prison, that the Gazans had no alternative but to strike out, a state of affairs echoed in the West Bank. The Jewish people have allegedly usurped the rights of the Palestinians and, consequently, the state of Israel is illegitimate. And so on.
First things first. The Jewish people are descendants of the Israelites who were themselves originally Canaanites; the Lebanese (previously Phoenicians) are also originally Canaanite. The Jewish homeland, Israel, existed (at minimum) 3,200 years ago, according to a non-Biblical, Egyptian text. In the tenth century BC, we know that there were now two neighboring
Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Despite being conquered, subjugated, massacred and exiled, there have always been Jewish people resident in the Levant, within the borders of modern-day Israel. They are the oldest, continually present people in the area.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian – he of Wall fame – changed the province's name from Judea to Palaestina (the Latin name for the Philistines, another ancient people who had largely been assimilated by the Babylonians towards the end of the seventh century BC), as a punishment for a Jewish revolt which ended in 135 AD.
Figure 1
The name stuck for the next hall millennium. Jerusalem had also been renamed Aelia and, when the Muslims invaded in the seventh century and inquired as to the name of the town, that's what they were told. It wasn't until the first crusade, in 1096, that the Muslims understood the propaganda value of identifying Jerusalem as a holy site – the city is entirely absent from the Koran - although it is claimed to feature in a dream sequence when Muhammad traveled to the most distant mosque (even though there was no mosque in Jerusalem at the time) - and it is generally accepted that Muhammad never visited the city. He was also responsible for expulsions and massacres of the Jews of Medina, having attempted to court them and been rebuffed.
During the subsequent Ottoman period, 1516 -1922, the Jews were joined on the land by two Muslim tribes, the Druze and the Bedouin. From the early nineteenth century, Muslim refugees from other lands also arrived. By 1900, Jews were the largest ethnic segment of the population of Jerusalem.
“Those who came included Algerians who left North Africa after France’s conquest in 1830; Circassian immigrants from the Russian Caucasus, whom the Turks settled in Syria-Palestine in the second half of the 19th century; and Senussi Muslims from Tripoli who trickled into Syria-Palestine after WWI to escape persecution in their own land. These people did not own the land where they settled and lived in unimaginable squalor.”(1)
By this time, modern Palestine was the part of the Empire that encompassed an area that included both what is modern day Israel and Trans Jordan, which was lands east of the Jordan River. The Jewish diaspora, or a large part of it, returned to the land in the years after World War I as the pogroms of Eastern Europe and increasing European anti-Semitism made life elsewhere intolerable, buying land from Ottoman landowners. The years 1916-1925 were notable for a flurry of activity concerning what was to become Israel as the Ottomans had allied with Germany and, upon the latter's defeat, were relieved of what remained of their Empire.
In anticipation of that outcome, the British and the French entered into the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916. France got what is now Syria and Lebanon and the British got what is now Israel.(2) The following year, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which stated:
“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people....”(3)
At the conclusion of the war, the Sykes-Picot agreement went into affect and the region became known as the British-Mandate Palestine (BMP) in 1920, after a meeting at San Remo. The concept of the Mandate, granted by the nascent League of Nations, was to confer a responsibility on Britain to dispose of parts of the defeated Empire to the benefit of the native people. It incorporated the Balfour Declaration in its text.(4) At this point, Trans Jordan was deemed to be part of Syria and, as such, fell into France's sphere of influence. It was intended that Trans Jordan become part of an Arab state or a confederation of Arab states, but the French swiftly lost interest in it. Trans Jordan was eventually added to the British Mandate in 1921.
In 1922, at another meeting of the Council of the League of Nations, the updated Mandate for Palestine was agreed. The preamble contained the following phrase:
“Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country...”(5)
The intention was clear. Palestine was to be the Jewish state and Trans Jordan an Arab state.
Figure 2
In 1925, the League of Nations recognized that Palestine and Trans Jordan were successor states under international law. So far, so clear. But, behind the scenes, matters were unraveling. The Arabs (not going by the designation Palestinians) had never accepted the Balfour Declaration and, together with the Christians – who also objected - were still a sizeable majority of Palestine's population. The wider Arab world felt that the Declaration was a betrayal of wartime commitments, which it may have been (although the mistranslation of correspondence from Arabic into English and vice versa may be the culprit instead). The British public was also unconvinced of Zionism and the government had been secretly examining whether it could reverse course without losing face.(6)
And there matters rested; the first iteration of the intractable mess that exists today had been created, but it wasn't characterized by rhetoric about Palestinians. It was simply about promises perceived to have been broken and the fact that the majority of the population was Arab. Yes, the Jews had been there first; in fact, they were there many centuries before the Arabs. But, in the 1920s, at least, there was limited sympathy for the Jewish people's plight. The Balfour Declaration did not find widespread acceptance, neither with the common man nor with many governments. Those Arabs living in the BMP rejected the entire premise of a Jewish state.
It is useful, I believe, to take several snapshots of the dispute. This, the first, reveals attitudes that are more defensible than those that became embedded in later years. I can see that the peremptory nature of the Declaration, which wasn't predicated on any articulated concept of Jewish victimhood, was bound to elicit a negative response from the Arab world. Nobody in authority attempted to justify the creation of a Jewish state by delineating the anti-Semitism that was undoubtedly a factor in many countries around the world and had been throughout recorded history. Instead, a separate draft of the Declaration – which proposed a “sanctuary for Jewish victims of oppression” - found no favor with the Zionists who were negotiating with the British government.(7)
It seems to have been both a matter of personal conviction for many government figures, who were greatly impressed by the Zionist movement in both the US and the UK, and also an intensely political act. The leading Zionist, Chaim Weizmann,
“...had argued that the declaration would have three effects: it would swing Russia to maintain pressure on Germany's Eastern Front, since Jews had been prominent in the March Revolution of 1917; it would rally the large Jewish community in the United States to press for greater funding for the American war effort, underway since April of that year; and, lastly, that it would undermine German Jewish support for Kaiser Wilhelm II.”(8)
There is no doubt that a tremendous amount of thought went into it, over many months. Despite this, there had been no liaison with the Arab world and, perhaps as a result, little understanding of the likely reaction. The Arabs believed that the British government had agreed to the formation of an Arab nation whose Western border was the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea all the way up to southern Turkey.(9) The British had floated the concept in correspondence between the government and the Sharif of Mecca, in exchange for the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916.
The Franco-Syrian War of 1920 was the first attempt to pre-empt the creation of a Jewish state and establish an Arab kingdom encompassing the entire Levant. It was an abject failure from the Syrian perspective and the French enforced their Mandate vigorously. In the BMP, Arab leaders initiated the 1920 Jerusalem riots, culminating in ten deaths and many injuries. This was merely the first outbreak of the violence that was to plague the BMP over the next couple of decades.
At this juncture, it's worth attempting to both set down some terminological exactitudes and, further, delineate the unraveling of the first of many false equivalences that litter any discussion of a conflict that is now a century old. Firstly, the terms Jewish and Palestinian are asymmetrical. Even if we were to accept the designation 'Palestine' for the area that became the BMP, 'Palestinian' would denote any person born within what is, in essence, simply a geographical area. By that token, individuals of different ethnic backgrounds – including the Jewish residents – were all Palestinians.
Whereas the term 'Jewish' is effectively a tribal denominator (with exceptions, such as those who marry into the faith), not a national one. Indeed, until 1967, what are now referred to as Palestinians were more usefully known as Palestinian Arabs. These individuals have an Arabic lineage, most often Egyptian, Syrian or Saudi. They have an Arabic culture, history and language. Indeed, before the War of Independence, it was the Jews who called themselves Palestinians. The designation only became available once they started calling themselves Israelis instead.
The fraudulent UN definition of 'Arab refugee' simply clouds the issue further, as it includes any Arab who is a 'refugee' (another term that we should treat with caution), provided they claim that they were in the BMP at some point between 1st June 1946 and 15th May 1948 which is, not coincidentally, the point at which a vast influx of Arabs seeking work and a better standard of living was at its peak. Now, of course, it includes all their descendants, too. Thus, a transient worker from Egypt who claims to have been present in the BMP in 1947 is officially a 'Palestinian'. As are any Jordanians who settled in the West Bank (what the Jews originally referred to as Judea and Samaria) during Trans Jordan's illegal occupation between the years 1948 and 1967.
The term 'occupied territories' is also problematic depending, as it must, on which of numerous superseding League of Nation's Mandates, UN resolutions, treaties and ceasefire agreements one wishes to designate definitive. Officially (and never alluded to), the UN itself holds that only territories captured in war from “an established and recognized sovereign” are occupied territories, a definition that would not include the West Bank or Gaza.(10) As demonstrated thusfar, the original Mandate was that the BMP was to be a Jewish state. This didn't happen until 1948, for several reasons (not the least of which was the inability to attract sufficient Jewish immigrants to achieve majority status within the Mandate), chief among them the refusal of the Arabs to accede. Every proposal since 1920 has watered down the original undertaking, rewarding Arab intransigence.
“Inherent in Palestinianism, from its origins, is the rejection of a Jewish state in any form. That opposition is not negotiable and not open to compromise; it is essential. Palestinianism was never for anything; its raison d'être was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. That purpose has never changed.”(11)
We also need to be clear eyed about the difference between the Jewish faith and Islam. The almost universal refusal to acknowledge the true nature of the latter (or, at the very least, the true nature of three influential and violent sects) is largely responsible for the failure to tell it like it is. The Jewish faith is, together with Christianity, the foundation for Western morality. It doesn't preach violence; it has no genocidal foundation. Not so Islam.
The truth is that the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the ayatollahs of Iran hate the Jews (as well as the rest of us) and believe that it is their duty to exterminate them, more evidence of which we have witnessed in the very recent past. “From the river to the sea” isn't a hymnal that preaches tolerance; it encapsulates the intention to create a solely Arab state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, wiping Israel from the map in the process.
“The conflict is not territorial, but existential; recognition of a Jewish state -- i.e., Israel – is anathema to the Palestinian cause. That explains why Palestinian Arab leaders refuse to accept it in any form. The problem for Palestinianism is not "the occupation" in 1967, but Israel's existence; seen as an exclusively Arab homeland, Palestine is an integral part of the Arab world, completely under Arab sovereignty. This is axiomatic; there are no exceptions and no compromises.”(12)
The British Mandate in Palestine was an abject failure from the outset. Violence between Jews and Arabs (usually instigated by Arabs, at least initially) was endemic. If the British had a plan, it was difficult to discern, although without their presence, the Jewish people would not have survived; as of 1922, they comprised a mere 12% of the population. As it was, the Black Hand (an anti-Zionist, anti-British jihadist group) was active between 1930 and 1935, bombing and shooting Zionist settlers and vandalizing the infrastructure.(13) The death of the leader, at the hands of the British, prompted much more widespread violence against Jewish civilians, some of whom were forced to safer areas.
The violence died down for around a year to allow the British to do what they do best – set up a talking shop. The Peel Commission, commendably, grasped the nettle by admitting that the Mandate was unworkable. By this stage, due to the growing oppression of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, there was massive Jewish immigration. The Arabs could feel the demographic ground shifting under their feet. The Commission was unusually straightforward at times:
"The continued impact of a highly intelligent and enterprising race, backed by large financial resources, on a comparatively poor indigenous community, on a different cultural level, may produce in time serious reactions.”(14)
In truth, the only way in which the original Balfour Declaration inspired Mandate could be fulfilled, was via the process that was then in motion; transforming the country into a majority Jewish state. Arab realization of this dynamic was, no doubt, a main driver for the violence that they had instigated and the national strike that they had imposed.
Hitler's victimisation of the German Jews (and he was far from the only anti-Semite with influence in the European theater) had the effect of, finally, bringing the impractical nature of the Mandate into sharp focus. Arab intransigence was baked in; their position had not changed in twenty years. They demanded a cessation of Jewish immigration and land purchases and argued that the creation of a Jewish state was a betrayal. When Peel floated the possibility of partition, they rejected that, too. Their representatives then largely boycotted the Commission's hearings.
Ultimately, the Commission reported that the Mandate had become unworkable and the only solution was, indeed, a partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arab portion was considerably larger and linked with Trans Jordan. The report stated that the land that would be allocated to the Jewish people was larger than their current area of settlement. It was accepted that, sooner or later, there would have to be a transfer of land and population, as there had been in 1923 between Greece and Turkey.
Palestinian Arab society rejected the partition plan wholesale, as did the entire Arab world at the subsequent Bloudan Conference.(15) The Twentieth Zionist Congress rejected the specific borders recommended by the Commission (they felt the proposed Jewish state would be too small), but signed up for further negotiations. This despite the fact that their original belief was that the Jewish state was to include Trans Jordan. They'd then accepted that it would be the smaller BMP, and were now being asked to live in only a fraction of that.
Without Arab agreement, the deal was off and hostilities were resumed in the autumn of 1937. The following year the British government reversed course, concluding that partition was impracticable and the Mandate limped on. The British forces were supported by around 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police officers and, eventually, the revolt was contained. But it became abundantly clear that the two communities could not be reconciled. The British, by way of a thank you to their Jewish allies, promptly passed a White Paper which severely limited Jewish land purchase and immigration, an act which ensured that there would be no further co-operation post World War II.(16)
With the Holocaust came renewed immigration, but the British maintained the ban on immigration. The annual quota was 15,000 and, once that was breached, the surplus were placed in displaced persons camps or deported to locations such as Mauritius. Illegal immigration continued, mostly by sea, but by the war's end, the camps held 250,000 people. The Americans lobbied the British, who were unmoved. The ban was still enforced and Jewish resistance to the British escalated. Bombings and shootings targeting the British became commonplace.
Figure 3
By the time that the British Labour Party reneged on its manifesto promise to allow mass Jewish immigration into the BMP after its victory in the 1945 General Election, the BMP was garrisoned by 100,000 British troops. However, it was now clear that the Mandate was on its last legs and the government announced that it would be terminated by August 1948 (which they subsequently brought forward to 14th May), by which time the British would have withdrawn. Yet another committee, an Anglo-American endeavor, had one last go at solving the unsolvable. It was recommended that one hundred thousand Jewish refugees were to be allowed into the BMP immediately, but fears of an Arab uprising in protest prevented implementation.
The British finally punted the problem upstairs, to the newly formed United Nations, which issued its report in August 1947. The result was, once again, a partition plan contained in Resolution 181 which, importantly, is simply a recommendation, not a legally binding edict.(17) By this stage, while Jewish immigration had changed the demographic mix, there were still twice as many Arabs in Palestine than there were Jews – 1.2 million as against 600,000. The Resolution gave the Jewish state 62% of the land. Perhaps understandably,the Jewish Agency (the shadow Jewish administration-in-waiting) agreed to the proposal and the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it out of hand, having again refused to cooperate. The wider Arab world was all on the same page. So much so that the newly formed Arab League, comprising seven Arab states (Egypt, Iraq, Trans Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen) endorsed a military intervention at their meetings in November and December of 1947.
Figure 4
It may be apposite to pause briefly and take another view of the moral dimensions as they applied post World War II. What, if anything, had affected the calculation in the previous thirty years? For the Arabs, a model of consistency, absolutely nothing. They'd held fast to their initial conviction that they were the rightful heirs to the BMP; they refused to countenance partition or the existence of a Jewish state.
The Jewish people were also steadfast in their claims to a separate state. However, they had twice demonstrated that they were prepared to accept less than they had been promised. Opinion would be divided on whether they had been offered too much and the Arabs too little, but it mattered not as there was no negotiation to be had. The urgency of the need for a separate Jewish state had, however, been conclusively demonstrated to be a solution to the persecution they had experienced during the Holocaust.
From one with no skin in the game, I find it difficult to be as sympathetic to the Arab position in 1947 as I could be to their position in 1917. There were any number of Arab states and only one Jewish state. The Jewish people had been decimated. The case for a separate state is far more compelling post-war and yet the Arab world, instead of demonstrating a degree of flexibility and empathy, instead made plans to take matters into the own hands militarily. With no treaty in place (or in prospect), the Mandate terminating and non-binding Resolutions that couldn't be enforced, the Arabs were about to invoke their right to self determination under Article 80 of the UN Charter, using force of arms.
The British were also in the cross-hairs. They had managed to alienate both sides in the coming war and were facing six months in which they hoped to avoid taking casualties whilst they wound down their administration. But their commitment to maintaining public order had evaporated and their authority went with it. They maintained a strong presence in Jerusalem and Haifa, on the coast, but gradually withdrew from everywhere else. The combatants were mostly left to their own devices, although the British air and sea blockade of the BMP remained in place and the regular armies of the surrounding Arab states were not permitted to intervene.
Harry Truman, the US president, wanted the UN (seemingly now regarded as the panacea to cure all ills) to intervene stating:
“...it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means... unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result."(18)
At this remove, it's difficult to be sure whether this proposal was any more than political theater, given that the UN was routinely ignored by the Arabs; nothing came of it, in any event and, on the afternoon of 14th May 1948, the Jewish leadership declared the establishment of the Jewish state, to come into force at midnight. The borders specified were those delineated in the UN Plan for Partition (Figure 3), although the only internationally recognized borders for the soon-to-be-former BMP were those established by the League of Nations in 1925, when both Palestine and Trans Jordan were recognized as successor states under international law; the US immediately recognized the new state, which they may not have done had the Jewish leadership laid claim to the entire Mandate. The remaining territory, what the Partition Plan had apportioned to the Palestinian Arabs, remained unnamed although British policy was to support its annexation by Trans Jordan. Five Arab states (Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq) plus contingents from Saudi Arabia and Yemen immediately invaded.
The initial phases of the Civil War, between the end of November 1947 and the beginning of the following April, had been characterized by Arab attacks in and around the main towns. The Jewish leadership was (initially) somewhat hopeful that the Partition Plan might still come to pass and concentrated on defending what they had. It is in this first phase that one of the most hotly disputed elements of the entire dispute took root; the flood of Palestinian Arabs leaving BMP/Israel. The Palestinian Arabs refer to this as the Nabka (the cataclysm) and lay the blame almost entirely at the feet of the Jews, emphasizing expulsion. The truth is more nuanced.
One should remember that, post the failed UN Resolution in October 1947 (and with the upcoming abandonment of the Mandate having already been announced), the future of Palestine was unknowable. The only certainty was that it would contain violence. Arab outnumbered Jew by two to one and the Arab League had made clear their intention to come to the aid of the Palestinian Arabs. The only factor holding them at bay was the British Army, which would be gone by mid May, although the volunteer Arab Liberation Army was active within Palestine from January onwards and the British had essentially removed their troops by mid-April. While the Jews were still hoping for partition, the Arabs were intent on establishing dominion over the entire country.
There is no doubt that Plan Dalet, the Zionist military plan that was operational in the last eight weeks of the Mandate, successfully captured territory that had been allocated to a future Arab state under the Partition Plan, but that was clearly not its primary function:
“Generally, the aim of this plan is not an operation of occupation outside the borders of the Hebrew state. However, concerning enemy bases lying directly close to the borders which may be used as springboards for infiltration into the territory of the state, these must be temporarily occupied and searched for hostiles according to the above guidelines, and they must then be incorporated into our defensive system until operations cease.”(19)
Figure 5
There is also no doubt that, during this time, Palestinian Arab society (never the most robust due to perpetual infighting, amongst other reasons) collapsed. Many Arab leaders left the country and, in addition to the 100,000 Palestinian Arabs who had already fled abroad, as many as 300,000 more joined them by the end of June. Up to this point, however, a sense of vulnerability and fear of attack were the the most common reasons for exile, rather than forced expulsions. That and a desire to be out of the firing line while the invading Arab armies disposed of the Jews, at which point those who had fled intended to return.
From July onwards – effectively until the end of November 1948 – the causes of the mass exodus were much more mixed. While some Palestinian Arabs were panicked by fighting in their communities, others were subject to expulsion:
"Many, perhaps most, [Arabs] expected to be driven out, or worse. Hence, when the offensives were unleashed, there was a 'coalescence' of Jewish and Arab expectations, which led, especially in the south, to spontaneous flight by most of the inhabitants. And, on both fronts, IDF units 'nudged' Arabs into flight and expelled communities.”(20)
Most Zionist leaders publicly opposed what became known as the 'Transfer Idea', the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs from what was now Israel, but were privately supportive of it, which is perhaps not the great sin that it has been perceived to be:
“...we can say that in general, the various proposals for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine were intended to remove the friction, either present or future, resulting from an Arab minority in a Jewish State and to enable each nation to live amongst its own people. It was considered, that after the initial trauma of transfer, both Arabs and Jews would live unmolested by each other in their own States.”(21)
In addition, the Jewish people were under an existential threat. The Arab population had been solidly behind its leadership's repudiation of every 'two state' solution that had been proposed. They did not believe that a Jewish state had the right to exist. It's hardly counter-intuitive, therefore, to state that they might not have wanted to remain. And, regardless of the private convictions of the Jewish leaders, there is little evidence that expulsion was a deliberate policy until the latter half of 1948. Even then, it was more a case of exploiting existing fears:
"The community became easy prey to rumor and exaggerated atrocity stories. The psychological preparation for mass flight was complete. The hysteria fed upon the growing number of Jewish military victories. With most Arab leaders then outside the country, British officials no longer in evidence, and the disappearance of the Arab press, there remained no authoritative voice to inspire confidence among the Arab masses and to check their flight. As might be expected in such circumstances, the flight gathered momentum until it carried away nearly the whole of the Palestine Arab community."(22)
It does seem extraordinary that the Arab society in Palestine was so under invested in its own survival. Their leadership melted away at the first sign of trouble, along with the upper and middle class. What local leadership remained urged Arabs to quit, clearly intimating that those who remained would be regarded as renegades.(23) Proportionately, they were far less likely to enlist and they relied on foreign Arabic forces for support. The Arab Liberation Army was poorly led and equipped and, even when bolstered by the invading armies, the Arabs could still not achieve parity.
In total, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled abroad (although the total is disputed), leaving behind a rump of approximately 156,000 within the new state of Israel and around 300,000 elsewhere with the borders of the former BMP. There can be no doubt that this exodus was an outcome that suited the Israeli leadership. This is clear from their subsequent actions, both in the destruction of abandoned villages and in their refusal to grant the displaced a right to return.(24) It allowed the Israeli leadership to fast-track the demographic change that was always going to be key to the success of a Jewish state. And, whilst it is apparent that there were a number of reasons for the Arab exodus, the Jewish leadership undoubtedly 'encouraged' it in its latter stages. Charges of what would now be referred to as ethnic cleansing are certainly adjacent to the truth, if only in a minor key.
Ordinarily, of course, we would recoil from that. But there are questions that are seemingly never asked, the answers to which must also be weighed in the balance. Firstly, wasn't that very outcome envisaged as a necessary outcome of Partition by the Peel Commission? Secondly, is the displacement of an ethnic group the greatest sin, or are there circumstances where it is the lesser of two evils?
The Palestinian Arabs, then and now, are committed to the destruction of the same Jewish state that they want to return to. In 1948, they were at war with the Jews and they had welcomed other Arabs armies onto their soil. They had also repeatedly rejected the so-called 'two state' solution. So, what was (is) a viable alternative? And why should Israel (or any country) be under a moral obligation to readmit a multitude that has always been dedicated to its destruction?
I can think of no sensible answer to the latter of those questions. As to the former, there was an answer, but the time for solving the 'refugee' problem was when it had recently occurred and before attitudes became entrenched. The absorption of the Palestinian Arabs into the populations of neighboring Arab countries might possibly have been achieved. Israel herself showed the way, by accommodating an estimated 650,000 Jews from the Muslim world between 1948 and the early 1970s; an exodus that is, in contrast, merely a footnote in history.(25)
But, unfortunately, Shias and Sunnis don't get along. The Palestinian Arabs are primarily Sunni; if, for example, the 400,000 in Lebanon were naturalized, civil war with Lebanese Christians and Shias would be the result. The half million in Syria, if naturalized, would destabilize a country of Sunnis ruled by a minority. Jordan doesn't want them, either. The Gazans and West Bankers won't revoke their 'refugee' status, because their leaders (and they themselves) know that this would be to normalize the 'two state' solution, which the Arab world will probably never accept. Even though they live within their own, politically autonomous areas.
Denmark conducted an experiment in 1992, when it granted extraordinary resident permits to 321 rejected Palestinian Arabs. It hasn't gone well. 204 of them have received a serious fine or jail time, as have 34% of their children, and a very large proportion of them are receiving welfare. Coincidentally, 34% is also the percentage of working age individuals who are actually working, as against a rate of 80% for ethnic Danes.(26) Perhaps the Lebanese and others have a point.
The exodus of 1948 continued unabated, despite the implementation of a truce on 11th June 1948. At that time, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) had control over nine Arab cities or towns (or mixed cities and towns) and the Arabs only had control of one in Israel. Trans Jordan had invaded what they referred to as the West Bank, which Israel hadn't claimed. The truce held until 8th July (and yet more partition proposals were rejected by both sides, although Israel agreed to extend the truce while the Arabs demurred) and the nature of the war changed over the next ten days, with large scale offensives by Israel and a defensive posture from the Arab forces. Then, another truce went into effect.
This one held until 18th October, when the latest UN proposed terms were, once again, unacceptable to the combatants. The Israelis let it be known that, from then on, any ground that they captured which was outside Israel's self-declared boundaries would be retained. The third phase of the war, lasting until 10th March 1949, consisted of a series of Israeli operations which pushed back the Arab armies. The UN continued floundering and passed Resolution 194 (designed to facilitate peace) which was ignored by both Israel and the Arab states.(27)
By 20th July 1949, Israel had signed separate armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria. An offensive to recapture the West Bank was contemplated (and would have been successful), but rejected by leadership as provocative to the Western powers. The “Green Line”, the armistice line, gave Israel more territory that the Partition Plan of 1947; 78% of the former Mandate. Egypt kept the Gaza Strip and Trans Jordan retained a much reduced West Bank.(28) Importantly, these lines were not recognized as borders under international law. And international law allows for the retention of land acquired in a defensive war. Further, the armistice agreement with Jordan
“...included acknowledgement that the armistice line would not prejudice future negotiations to determine Israel's permanent border.”(29)
Figure 6 Blue is Israel, Red the Partition Plan of 1947, Green the Green Line
The intention was that the armistices would lead to peace treaties. The Arab nations were adamant that the new military borders weren't permanent. However, a peace treaty signed with Israel would necessarily also confer recognition of Israel's statehood and this was not something the Arab world could contemplate. It took until 1978 with Egypt and 1994 with Jordan. Treaties with Lebanon and Syria have still not been achieved.
It may be useful to address the legal position of the West Bank. It had been part of the BMP and now, in 1949/50, it was being occupied Trans Jordan. As the Partition Plan had been rejected by the Arab nations and as the Green Line was merely an armistice border, the West Bank ought to have been regarded as a disputed territory, as it had not been re-designated at the expiry of the Mandate.
“Given that the Arab states prevented the formation of the sovereignty proposed by the 1947 partition resolution, Jordan's subsequent unrecognized annexation of the West Bank in 1950, as well as the fact that there has never been a Palestinian sovereignty in that territory, it has been posited that there is no legally recognized claim to who has sovereignty over the West Bank....Moreover, since the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, with the intent to form a Jewish state between the sea and the Jordan river, included the area now known as the West Bank, Israel has at least as legitimate claim to the territory as any other state or group.”(30)
This seems to me to be factually correct (still), notwithstanding the blizzard of subsequent UN resolutions and erstwhile legal opinions that have concluded that the West Bank constitutes 'occupied territory' that somehow belongs to the Arabs or the Palestinian Arabs. Until the latter reach agreement as to the disposal of this land (and the Gaza Strip), it is axiomatic that ownership is legally unresolved. The one designation that cannot be applied is that these territories are 'Palestinian', as they were subsequently wrenched from the grasp of Jordan and Egypt, not Palestine. Telling a lie repeatedly, and getting all the big boys to agree with it, doesn't change the fact that it is still a lie.
The Arab nations continued to nurture their hostility in the wake of their defeat. The Suez Canal misadventure of 1956, a joint invasion of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip by Israel, France and Britain, was launched after Egyptian president Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal (formerly owned primarily by British and French shareholders), simultaneously preventing the passage of Israeli shipping; a tactic he had already deployed in the Red Sea. The 'international community' was outraged and a ceasefire was enforced within ten days.
The next outbreak of hostilities occurred in the Six Day War of 1967. Three years earlier, Egypt, Syria and Jordan had unified their military command and, come 15th May, had massed troops along the Israeli border. Nasser's intentions were crystal clear:
"The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel."(31)
Things did not go as planned. Israel launched pre-emptive strikes, primarily against the Egyptian Air Force , destroying it in the process. The die was cast and, despite fighting a three front war, the IDF inflicted another humiliating defeat on the Arab armies. This time, Israel did capture the West Bank (from where Jordan had launched its attack), the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights (from where Syria launched its attack, after shelling northern Israel from the area for years) and the Sinai (Egypt's point of attack).
The war prompted yet more population displacement, as fighting enveloped the West Bank and Gaza. Of the approximately one million Palestinian Arabs in those areas, around 300,000 fled – mostly to Jordan, where they settled. Around 100,000 Syrians also abandoned the Golan Heights. There is some evidence of IDF soldiers with loudspeakers ordering West Bankers to cross the river into Jordan, but no other evidence of coercion.(32) Once again, the prospect of remaining in a war zone was unappealing.
The Arab nations were unrepentant. In September of that year they met in Khartoum to discuss how to regain what territory they had lost. The result was a Resolution that became known as 'The Three Noes”:
“...no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.”(33)
War was the only way those aims were going to be achieved. This despite an Israeli offer, on June 19th, to give up Sinai and the Golan in exchange for peace.(34) It was now a half century since the Balfour Declaration and yet, still, the Arab nations were not to be dissuaded from violence as the first and only option. There were, nonetheless, secret negotiations for the next six years, but these came to naught.
The UN, as ever anxious to weigh in, passed yet another Resolution (no. 242),(35) which effectively called for the implementation of 'land for peace' – Israel was to give up the 'territories' that had been annexed in exchange for peace. In the light of the Khartoum Resolution and the rejection of the offer in June, the chance of any early progress on that score was vanishingly small.
The Resolution is tortuously worded and prone to being taken out of context, particularly in terms of the preamble and in its treatment of the refugee problem. The preamble includes a section which addresses the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”,(36) which has been taken to mean that Israel must withdraw from the territories acquired. This seems to be rather unlikely, as it would provide succour to the aggressor:
“If one country attacks another, and the defender repels the attack and acquires territory in the process, the former interpretation would require the defender to return the land it took. Thus, aggressors would have little to lose because they would be insured against the main consequence of defeat.”(37)
Elsewhere, there is an explicit call for Israel to withdraw armed forces from “territories occupied in the recent conflict”, but the word 'all' is deliberately omitted and the requirement is linked to the recognition that every state in the area “has the right to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”, a state of affairs that had been explicitly rejected by Arab nations. (As an aside, in giving up the Sinai, the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank in the years since, Israel has forfeited 94% of these territories).(38)
The Palestine Liberation Organisation, founded three years earlier and dedicated to the elimination of the state of Israel, wasn't having any of it and wouldn't until 1993, ostensibly; but, even then things were not as they appear, as I will demonstrate in due course. The 'Palestinians' aren't mentioned specifically, neither was their an acceptance that the Israelis were occupying 'Palestinian' territory. The US Secretary of State, in 1994, stated:
"We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 as 'Occupied Palestinian Territory'. In the view of my Government, this language could be taken to indicate sovereignty, a matter which both Israel and the PLO have agreed must be decided in negotiations on the final status of the territories.”(39)
Arab sentiment (particularly the Egyptian flavor) was in no way mollified. Nasser had been shelling the Israeli troops occupying the Sinai since the beginning of July 1967 and a pattern of artillery fire, aerial warfare and raiding continued for over three years in what became known as the War of Attrition. Once again, rather than negotiate, an Arab country's first instinct was military conflict. Egypt naturally wanted to regain its territory and Israel, having been invaded from the south twice in twenty years, was intent on maintaining a buffer zone against a neighbor whose intent was still clearly malign. A ceasefire was declared in August 1970 (when it was becoming apparent that the war was developing into a Soviet-Israeli conflict) but, once more, no long term solution to the regional conflict between Arab and Jew had been arrived at.
And so, inevitably, a mere three years later, Egypt and Syria (together with contingents from Jordan and Iraq) were at it again, attacking the Sinai and the Golan Heights – the Yom Kippur War. Both countries initially made gains, only to once again taste defeat. Israel crossed the Suez Canal and got within 100km of Cairo. The IDF also advanced into Syria and was able to get close enough to shell the outskirts of Damascus. After one UN brokered ceasefire unraveled, the war eventually concluded after just under three weeks. The resultant UN Resolution (no. 338) called on all parties to negotiate a “just and durable peace in the Middle East.”(40) Israel and Egypt signed on, Syria, Iraq and Jordan didn't.
Figure 7
Any urge on the part of the Israeli leadership to return territory to countries that had repeatedly demonstrated hostile intent – and, in the process, adopt weaker, less defensible borders - would have been a dereliction of their duty to the people. Egypt, however, having failed to regain militarily what she would have been gifted diplomatically, at last saw that there might be another way. President Sadat's decision to negotiate a peace deal with Egypt shocked the rest of the Arab world, earned the country revocation of its membership of the Arab League between 1979 and 1989 and cost Sadat his life in 1981, when he was assassinated by Islamic jihadists who were incensed that he had signed the Egypt – Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, which involved an official recognition of Israel's right to exist, a normalization of relations and the return of the Sinai to Egypt. Sadat therefore became the first Arab leader to break the united Arab front vis a vis Israel.
Meanwhile, the PLO, still fully committed to a terror campaign against Israel, had been evicted from Jordan and had found a new home in Lebanon, where it established a state within a state and, in 1975, instigated a civil war with the Christians. The demographic balance had been upset by the Palestinian Arabs dual exodus' of 1948 and 1967 and the Christian majority now found itself outnumbered by Muslims. The PLO still found time to conduct guerrilla operations across the border into Israel, continually shelling northern parts in much the same manner as that previously adopted by the Syrians from Golan and which is currently practiced by Hamas in Gaza.
Israel had been assisting the Christians from as early as 1976 in their skirmishes with the PLO. The IDL briefly invaded South Lebanon in 1978, in retaliation for a massacre near Tel Aviv committed by the PLO from Lebanon. This resulted in a withdrawal by the PLO, preventing it from launching further attacks into Israel. The UN, Resolution in hand (no. 425), swiftly deployed peacekeeping troops and the IDL gradually withdrew. The vacuum was, however, filled by the PLO once again, the civil war escalated further and cross border attacks on Israel continued.
A ceasefire, brokered by the Americans in July 1981, lasted nine months, although it was deeply flawed:
“The cease-fire, as both the PLO and the Americans saw it, did not include terror attacks stemming from Lebanon and carried out against Jews in Europe and other locales.”(41)
Eventually, the Israelis tired of the game and, on 6th June 1982, invaded South Lebanon; properly, this time. Sixty thousand troops crossed the border and amphibious landings were also launched. The IDF encountered heavy resistance from a mixture of PLO fighters, Syrian forces and Islamic fundamentalists. The Syrians, who had been angered by the Golan Heights Law of 1981 (which formerly annexed the Heights), had also established 30 SAM missile sites in South Lebanon and the Syrian Air Force was deployed in defense of their ground forces. Nonetheless, the Israelis took out twenty nine batteries and 82 aircraft without losing one of their own.
The IDF was on the outskirts of Beirut by 11th June and Syrian forces were offered safe passage if they withdrew. Instead, the Syrian government reinforced along the Beirut-Damascus highway and total Syrian forces in the field eventually totaled six divisions. The Israelis therefore attacked the highway and, by 25th June, had pushed the Syrians back to their border and a ceasefire was negotiated. In the meantime, the IDF preferred to besiege Beirut, rather than engage in heavy street fighting. This lasted until August, when the PLO agreed to evacuate more than 14,000 combatants. Another 6,500 fighters from the group Fatah dispersed into other Arab countries and into Greece.
However, while the irregulars of the Palestinian Arabs may have gone, the Islamist militants remained and a different type of conflict took shape. Suicide bombings now took center stage and an increasing number of militias started forming in South Lebanon, including Hezbollah. Israel didn't withdraw to South Lebanon until June 1985 and conflict continued (mostly, now, with Hezbollah) until Israel finally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.
The attempt to oust the PLO from Lebanon was successful. However, the net effect was not as Israel envisaged, as she simply swapped one implacable foe for another. The South Lebanon Army, Israel's Christian ally, collapsed upon Israel's retreat and Hezbollah took full control of South Lebanon. One is struck by the sheer volume of Arabic entities dedicated to the task of wiping out Israel and the frequency of their attacks. Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, the PLO, Hezbollah...with more to add. And for what? Because of the Palestinian Arabs, as they would now like us to believe? What did the PLO hope to achieve by attacking Israel? The reintegration of their own? How could that possibly be an outcome? Instead, we would be well served by believing what they (and others) say their motivation is; to destroy Israel, which is code for another genocide of the Jewish people, one way or another. Those who doubt that – keep reading.
With the PLO gone from Lebanon (the organisation headquartered itself in Tripoli instead), other 'Palestinian' organisations stepped into the breach. Both they and Arafat had settled on a campaign of non lethal protests to be known as the First Intifada, commencing in December 1987; non lethal, because they feared the Israeli response to military action. The aim was to force the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Chaos ensued and soon there was widespread rock-throwing and road-blocking. Military vehicles, Israeli buses and Israeli banks came in for particular punishment; tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, were involved.
Israel used every tactic it could think of, including mass arrests, curfews, the cutting off of water and electricity and beatings. Over time, the injuries and deaths started mounting up. During the entire six year intifada, as many as 1,300 may have died at Israeli hands. Nearly 1,000 more deaths were the result of internecine warfare, mostly those suspected of collaborating with the IDF.(42) The 'Iron Fist' policy adopted by Israel did not ameliorate the violence and exposed her to international condemnation from all the usual suspects and others besides. The US recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian Arabs.
All of which could be seen as detrimental to Israel. However, the success of the Intifada also emboldened Arafat (as the narrative goes) and he managed to obtain backing for moderating the official position; the Palestinian National Council voted to recognize Israel's legitimacy, accepted all UN Resolutions since 1947 and, in principle at least, to adopt the so-called two-state solution. In theory, then, a huge game-changer – but only in theory, as events would soon show.
1987 also marked the founding of Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Where Arafat and the PLO (including the political wing, Fatah) were secular, Hamas was Sunni Islamist. When the thaw between the Israeli leadership and Arafat set in, in September 1993 with the exchange of Letters of Mutual Recognition (with the PLO renouncing the use of terrorism),(43) Hamas did not agree. How could it, when the following sentiments are taken from its Covenant?
“'Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it....
...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: 'The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them...'”(44)
The Second Covenant (2017), which allegedly guides them today, is less explicit, more woke, but still promises the "complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea."(45) The Oslo Accords, between Yitzhak Rabin (the Israeli Prime Minister) and Arafat were not to their taste either (nor were they to Rabin's killer of November 1994, an Israeli Jew), even though they promised interim self-government, the staged withdrawal of the Israeli military and a permanent settlement of all unresolved issues within five years.
Arafat's motivation must also remain suspect. He was supposed to ratify the Accords via the full PLO National Council, but didn't. He was also supposed the amend the PLO's Covenant, removing clauses that refer to Israel's destruction and a denial of her right to exist. He didn't do that, either.(46) The Palestinian Arabs are not actually bound by the Oslo Accords to this day, a fact little acknowledged. It is claimed that he acted in good faith but found that, upon his return from Washington (where Clinton had brokered the deal), the tide had moved against him and that opposition to the rapprochement had hardened.
Perhaps that is so, or perhaps it was merely an attempt to get something for nothing. The latter is far more likely; as early as May 1994 he was recorded as saying that the Oslo Accords
“...fell into the same category as the Treaty of Hudaibiya that was signed by the Prophet Muhammed with the people of Mecca in 628, only to be reneged on a couple of years later when the situation titled in Muhammad’s favor.”(47)
Hamas (and other extremist Islamists, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad) did their best to undermine implementation of the Accords. A suicide bombing campaign had claimed 188 lives in fifteen attacks by September 1997. The Israelis responded by erecting a barrier around Gaza to prevent further attacks, but relations deteriorated and progress on seeking permanent solutions slowed and then stopped. The Accords allowed for the return from exile of the PLO leadership and the Palestinian Authority took administrative control over areas A and B in the West Bank and most of the Gaza Strip on what was planned to be an interim basis, until negotiations concluded on a final end-state.
Figure 8
Hamas and their allies in Gaza weren't the only faction seeking to make their opposition to any cooperation with the Israeli clear by violent means. Hezbollah (funded by Iran, as is Hamas), another terrorist organisation committed to the obliteration of Israel,(48) had continued attacking Israeli targets in both South Lebanon and northern Israel, hadn't been dissuaded by a week long IDF operation in 1993 and so, in 1996, the Israelis tried again. They also blockaded major Lebanese ports – the main objective seems to have been to degrade Hezbollah's ability to fight and to force the Lebanese military to make good on a promise to disarm them. It didn't work and the shelling of a UN compound (in which a Hezbollah mortar team had taken refuge) which resulted in 106 deaths of refugees who had also taken refuge there, earned Israel international condemnation and forced an early end to the campaign.(49)
By the mid-90s, it was apparent that the nature of the aggression directed against Israel had changed and was largely being committed by irregulars; no set piece wars with foreign militaries were being conducted. Instead, state actors hostile to Israel had outsourced their aggression to Islamic militants. Hezbollah isn't populated with Palestinian Arabs, but with Lebanese Shia Muslims. Hamas, which is comprised of Palestinian Arabs, is sponsored by the likes of Syria, Iran and Turkey. Both are part of the Islamic Jihad.
And both are considerably less scrupulous about civilian casualties than regular military are. Neither are signed up to the Geneva Convention or similar and neither have any compunction about using civilians as human shields. In opposing them, Israel is continually at risk of international opprobrium either if mistakes are made, or if enemy combatants embed themselves in the civilian population. 'Bad optics' are a given and the jihadists know it and exploit it. And given the lack of action by the Lebanese authorities, any campaign against Hezbollah can only achieve a temporary reprieve, not a solution to the problem.
In the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA) took over civilian control in 1994. While the Palestinian Arabs who had stayed behind in what became Israel had limited rights under the martial law that had been imposed, they were still offered citizenship and were represented in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). In 1966, Arab citizens in Israel were granted the same rights as Jewish citizens under the law. Unlike with the Golan Heights, Israel did not annex the West Bank, nor Gaza and so the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza existed under a military regime between 1967 and 1982, having been granted Jordanian citizenship prior to that (although this was rescinded in 1988).
But the PLO dragged its feet. It held elections in 1996, but cancelled the next election in 1999. Israel withdrew from Jericho, most of the Gaza Strip and most of Hebron, but was reluctant to do more due to concerns about the security of Jewish settlers. Nonetheless, by September 2000, only around 2% of West Bankers lived in areas where Israel had complete control and by January 1997,
“...99 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip no longer lived under Israeli occupation. All of the Gaza Strip's residents and just under 60 percent of West Bankers lived entirely under Palestinian jurisdiction. Another 40 percent of West Bank residents lived in towns, villages, refugee camps, and hamlets where the PA exercised civil authority but where, in line with the Oslo accords, Israel maintained "overriding responsibility for security."”(50)
Prime Minister Netanyahu also ran into choppy water politically due to the protracted and difficult nature of the negotiations and lost power, which further delayed matters. Clinton once again stepped into the breach and attempted to rekindle cooperation with the Camp David Summit in July 2000.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank (particularly) had long been a bone of contention for the PLO leadership and its constituents. Many of the original settlements had begun life as military outposts, as Israel was concerned about the potential for future Arab invasions and were later expanded and populated with civilians. The settler movement has also populated the West Bank (both legally and illegally), independent of officialdom. While many are close to the Green Line, some aren't and any two state plan would have to find a way to do away with a considerable number of these communities, something that was done in the Sinai when it was returned to Israel and in Gaza, when the Israelis withdrew in 2005.
Opinion is divided as to who was to blame for the failure of the talks. Certainly, Arafat walked away and it is likely that he was unwilling to sign anything that gave up the so-called Right of Return, which would have been political suicide. They had another go six months later at Taba, in the Sinai, but the Israeli PM was standing for re-election in two weeks (he lost). This time Israel proposed giving the Palestinian Arabs 97% of the West Bank, a considerable increase on previous offers, and retaining only some of the larger settlement blocs. Arafat demurred. The Right of Return issue was sidestepped, although Israel suggested that it be interpreted as one of three concepts; return to Israel, to Israeli swapped territory, or the nascent Palestinian state.(51) Progress was made, but once again there was no agreement.
Arafat's good faith must also be in doubt, once again. Far from forswearing terrorism, as promised, he had launched the Second Intifada in late September 2000. It was not a popular uprising as claimed, but a planned campaign. Numerous PA officials made statements to that effect and even his wife confirmed the truth of it. The PA Minister of Communications stated that
“...it was planned since Arafat’s return from Camp David, and his rejection of President Bill Clinton’s peace proposals.”(52)
The PLO strategy, from 1974 onwards, has been a 'phased strategy'.(53) The Oslo process wasn't seen as an abandonment of this strategy, but rather a continuance. Arafat told the West what it wanted to hear, but told his own constituency that the 'phased strategy' was still in play, as was the Right of Return. Palestinian Authority leaders continually emphasized that they were all essentially immune to compromise:
“All Palestinians agree that the just boundaries of Palestine are the Jordan River and the Mediterranean … Realistically, whatever can be obtained now should be accepted [in the hope that] subsequent events, perhaps in the next fifteen or twenty years, would present us with an opportunity to realize the just boundaries of Palestine.”(54)
If the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs had wanted to do a deal with the Israelis, they wouldn't have been indoctrinating their people with lies about the Jews murdering Arab children to harvest their organs,(55) or injecting them with Aids,(56) or distributing chocolate laced with Mad Cow Disease (57) – all of which they were doing at around this time. They wouldn't have been minimizing the Holocaust,(58) denying the existence of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem,(59) or allowing their preachers to refer to Jews as the “descendants of apes and pigs”.(60) Not only that:
“Arafat refused to disarm the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad as required by the Oslo accords and tacitly approved the murder of hundreds of Israelis by these groups. He created a far larger Palestinian army (the so-called police force) than was permitted by the accords. He reconstructed the PLO's old terrorist apparatus, mainly under the auspices of the Tanzim, which is the military arm of Fatah (the PLO's largest constituent organization and Arafat's own alma mater). He frantically acquired prohibited weapons with large sums of money donated to the PA by the international community for the benefit of the civilian Palestinian population.”(61)(62)
There is, therefore, no reason to believe that the PLO was ever interested in peace and a two state solution and every reason to believe that Arafat was more committed to violence that he was to statehood for his people. The same goes for his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who has continued the practice by turning down peace initiatives and proposed deals in 2008,(63) 2011,(64) 2014,(65) and 2016.(66) Plus Trump's Peace Plan in 2020.(67)
Instead, the PLO's Second Intifada lasted until early 2005 (or longer, depending on whether the continuing terrorist attacks are viewed as part of the conflict). The IDF pull out from Lebanon in May 2000 (and Hezbollah's campaign against them) undoubtedly emboldened Hamas and Islamic Jihad (as well as the PA) and suicide bombings made a reappearance. This time they were much more prevalent; in total, sixty seven attacks (including 23 in 2002 alone) and 569 deaths (223 in 2002).(68)
Abbas, appointed in 2003 as a Prime Minister independent of Arafat (who had been caught paying terrorist brigades $50,000 a month),(69) proved unable to stop the bloodshed. Hamas in Gaza indiscriminately shelled Israeli communities and, between September 2000 and May 2004, the IDF found and destroyed ninety tunnels linking Gaza to Egypt.(70) The original security fence around Gaza (completed in 1996) was upgraded at a cost of $220 million and features a seven meter wall and other enhancements.(71) It had been effective at preventing suicide bombers from Gaza from carrying out their missions, but cannot prevent rocket attacks. As per the Oslo Accords, Gaza's airspace and territorial waters are still patrolled by Israel.
By 2004, the Israeli government was in damage control mode. PM Ariel Sharon announced that they were planning to transfer all Jewish settlers out of Gaza, a decision disparaged as rewarding terrorism. The IDF made numerous armored raids into Gaza, either to target Hamas leadership or in response to suicide attacks on crossings or rocket attacks. And, on 9th January 2005, in the Palestinian presidential election, Abbas replaced the recently deceased Arafat. But Hamas paid him no mind; appeals for a ceasefire fell on deaf ears and it was apparent that a schism was opening up in leadership circles.
Yet another plan – the Roadmap for Peace (the first step of which had been Arafat's appointment of Abbas) – was grinding through the gears, with the cessation of terrorism as a major priority. Having learned nothing from their engagement with Arafat, the US plan included a declaration of Israel's right to exist and the waiver of any Right of Return for Palestinian Arab 'refugees', automatically dooming it to failure, no matter what soothing words Abbas might utter. And, predictably, it hasn't led anyway as it could never have done, even if the PA had retained control of Hamas.
Figure 9
Sharon followed through on the Gaza disengagement plan in August 2005 and dismantled 21 Israeli settlements and removed residents by force, if it proved necessary. The settlements had been under fire for five years at the point, with over 6,000 mortars and grenades launched at them. Although protected by the IDF, small scale ground infiltrations by terrorists also caused fatalities.(72) Nonetheless, most residents wanted to stay and viewed the Disengagement law unconstitutional, but by September all had been removed (the total was well over 6,000 evacuees). The mob moved it to loot and destroy and the PA took full control of Gaza. Not for long, as it transpired.
Four months later, the PA held elections. Fatah, Abbas' party, was the dominant force in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), but was divided and corrupt. Hamas ran as Change and Reform and opinion polls put them a distant second in the lead-up to the election. Israel (unlike President Bush, who was confident that Fatah would prevail) was nonetheless fearful and did its best to put its thumb on the scale by detaining 450 Hamas operatives. Exit polls indicated that Fatah would emerge with the most seats; they were hopelessly inaccurate. Hamas won 3% more of the vote and a majority in the PLC and went on to form a government.
In fairness, the Palestinian Arab voter might not be the sharpest tools in the box. Either that, or intimidated. They knew what Hamas was – it had been around for nearly two decades, but they still voted it into power and yet, if exit polls have any credibility, 80% of them supported a peace agreement with Israel and 75% thought that Hamas should change its policies regarding Israel. Perhaps it was more of a protest vote against Fatah, rather than pro-Hamas. Nonetheless, the shock was seismic. The Quartet (the UN, the US, the EU and Russia) called on Hamas to recognize the existing agreements with Israel, to recognize Israel as a state and to renounce terrorism; Hamas, predictably, refused.
And so, a self-declared terrorist organisation whose Covenant calls for the destruction of Israel (responsible for the continuing rocket attacks from Gaza) was now the biggest party in the PLC. The PLO's indoctrination had been so effective that the electorate had voted for a party more extreme than Fatah. There was no indication that the result was not fair or accurate; over 900 international observers testified to that.
The election left Israel and the US in a very tight spot. The Americans, famously committed to 'democracy' (when it suited them), were now forced to confront the fact that a democratic election could result in an autocracy. Further, any pretense that both sides of the interminable dispute were good faith actors (despite decades of evidence to the contrary) could not now be maintained. According to the New York Times, Plan A was the following:
"The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again. The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election.”(73)
Accordingly, in February 2006, Israel, the US and others (including some Arab states) imposed economic sanctions against the PA, which included the suspension of international aid. Israel also suspended the transfer of customs revenue, which it had been collecting on behalf of the PA. Significant damage to the Palestinian Arab economy ensued and, by June, mechanisms were already being utilized to either bypass the PA or pay funds directly to Abbas. I imagine that those doing the sanctioning were able to persuade themselves that they were cutting Hamas out of the loop, while providing funds that benefited Gazans and West Bankers.
However, they were also simultaneously exempting the Hamas-led government from having to come up with the money instead, thus helping to damp down any popular unrest that may have resulted from shortages and hardship. Israel, in simply the latest of a string of invidious positions, found itself backing Abbas, the leader of an entity that had launched the Second Intifada and killed over a thousand Israelis, against another entity that was even worse.
Abbas and the Hamas government were obliged to share political power, but Fatah refused to cooperate. Abbas appointed a Fatah-affiliated official to the head of the Security Forces, so Hamas created its own forces. Abbas' Presidential Guard was enlarged and retrained (the US alone had committed $59 million for training and equipment). The parliament, boycotted by Fatah, became dysfunctional and Hamas relied on the import of cash to pay its debts. It was apparent that the situation was unsustainable.
By December, Abbas was already calling for early elections and armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas were intensifying, especially in the Gaza Strip. In early February 2007, the Saudis brokered a ceasefire and a patently doomed national unity government was formed between Hamas and Fatah. Nothing changed; the economic collapse continued, as did the violence and, by 10th June, battle was joined in Gaza. Abbas dissolved the government and declared a state of emergency and started to rule by presidential decree.
The fighting in Gaza was barbaric – nothing was off limits. Armed battles in hospitals, public executions, the throwing of prisoners off high rise buildings were all commonplace occurrences. Hamas had numerical superiority in Gaza, while Fatah was stronger in the West Bank. On 15th June, Hamas took over Gaza and Abbas appointed a Fatah Prime Minister and tasked him with forming a new government. As one, the international community recognized it as legitimate (somehow or other), lifted the sanctions regime and resumed funding the PA.
While the Western narrative is that Hamas instigated the violence, it may well a little more complicated than that. The US is partial to Plan Bs, too, and has not been shy in fomenting violence around the world when it suits its purposes. Confidential US State Department documents, published in Vanity Fair, show that the US collaborated with Abbas and the Israelis in attempting the overthrow of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.(74) It seems likely that Hamas saw what was coming and launched a successful pre-emptive assault.
In any event, Hamas now ruled Gaza and the PA ruled the West Bank. As a consequence, any attempt at negotiating a solution to the overall Arab-Israeli conflict was now destined to be more convoluted than ever. The PA is illegal under Palestinian Basic Law, Abbas is still serving a four year term as President nearly two decades later (and doesn't want to find a solution) and Hamas is still ruling Gaza and won't negotiate with Israel, anyway.
In July 2006, Israel was also engaged in a month long war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which was precipitated by a cross border raid by Hezbollah irregulars who killed three IDF soldiers on the ground and captured two others (who they also subsequently executed). The conflict had never really been curtailed, due to Hezbollah's insistence that Israel still occupied Shebaa Farms in the Golan, yet another disputed territory that had been within Syria's borders until the Six Day War. This is generally seen as simply a pretext to justify continued aggression by Hezbollah, which had repeatedly fired rockets and mortars into northern Israel in the years following Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000.
The IDF had clearly decided that enough was enough and that another dose of deterrence was required and launched a ground invasion, while imposing an air and naval blockade. The Israeli Cabinet was keen to spell out its intentions:
"Israel is not fighting Lebanon but the terrorist element there, led by Nasrallah and his cohorts, who have made Lebanon a hostage and created Syrian- and Iranian-sponsored terrorist enclaves of murder.”(75)
Which was a fine distinction to make, given that the political arm of Hezbollah was sufficiently embedded in Lebanese affairs as to have had two Ministers serving in its government at that time. And they were dug in securely in the south. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) attacked Hezbollah bases, its headquarters in Beirut, the homes of its leadership and infrastructure targets across South Lebanon. They also claimed to have knocked out most of the medium and long range rocket capability. The ground war was, however, inconclusive.
Figure 10
This time, though, Syrian and Lebanese forces did not engage the IDF. The Lebanese did not have the capability to withstand the Israeli armed columns. The Lebanese PM simultaneously held seemingly contradictory positions; he disavowed the original Hezbollah raids while also being supportive of the group. The inevitable UN cease-fire was delayed by the US and UK (and some Arab leaders), in the hope that Hezbollah would be routed, but after a little over a month of hostilities, UN Resolution 1701 was adopted by all relevant parties.(76) It called for the disarmament of Hezbollah and the full control of the country by the government. Hezbollah told the government that wasn't going to happen and the sore continued to fester after the IDF withdrew. However, the Lebanese Army and the UN between them deployed 27,000 troops in South Lebanon, displacing Hezbollah.
The indecisive nature of the outcome and the failure to disarm Hezbollah had political ramifications in Israel, possibly unfairly. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters had been killed and the subsequent period was the northern Israel's most peaceful since the 1960s. But there was to be little respite in the south. After the Hamas takeover, both Israel and Egypt had instituted a blockade of the Gaza Strip. The stated purpose was to protect Israeli citizens and prevent weapons and dual use goods from entering Gaza. The Palestinian Authority, interestingly, approved. Much has been written about the blockade, nearly all of it negative. I shall return to it shortly but, in the meantime, here is a view from the UN that you won't find bandied around elsewhere.
“Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza ... The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”(77)
That threat can be verified both through action and via other means, such as polling. As long ago as 2011, 73% of Gazans agreed with the need to kill Jews and only one in three then believed in the two state solution to the decades long impasse. The rest believed that starting with a two state solution was acceptable, but then it should become a single Palestinian state.(78) In 2008, Hamas resumed rocket fire into Israel after a six month hiatus, after Israel raided the Strip to destroy a tunnel. In a possible echo of what is currently being attempted, initial attacks targetted police stations, weapons caches and rocket firing teams, as well as political and administrative institutions.
A ground offensive commenced after a week of aerial bombardment. Hamas simply kept firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets in the south of Israel. The IDF employed measures designed to minimize civilian casualties, including widespread leaflet drops and phone messages. They also introduced the practice of 'roof knocking, whereby they would either call residents of a building which was suspected of harboring Hamas assets to give them 10-15 minutes to vacate, or they would drop non-explosive or low yield devices on the roof instead, to act as prior warning.(79) Captured militants confirmed that there were weapons caches in tunnels, in homes and in mosques, which were also the location for training sessions.(80)
Daily ceasefires of around three hours allowed for the supply of humanitarian aid. Hamas regularly used their own people as human shields, even going so far as to acknowledge the tactic in an interview,(81) and deliberately built its military infrastructure in the middle of densely populated areas.(82) They also went to considerable lengths to prevent the population leaving the war zone,(83) and hijacked ambulances in order to ferry their own soldiers to new positions (as reported by Gazans themselves).(84) The Israelis contended that the Hamas leadership used Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, as a command post, which would seem to be par for the course, given what else we know.(85)
On 17th January 2009, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire. While Hamas was routed, it was not destroyed. The IDF calculated that it would take many weeks and entail heavy casualties on both sides and among civilians to destroy Hamas, a cost it was not prepared to inflict. The Gaza Strip was devastated, with around 4,000 homes destroyed as well as mosques, factories and infrastructure. Over 50 nations donated humanitarian aid, but once it got to Gaza, it didn't always go those most in need.(86) The predicament of the Gazans is one to which I will return.
The blockade (by both Israel and Egypt, remember) was unpopular among Muslim activists, the Left, the UN and every other humanitarian organisation who couldn't find it within themselves to feel any sympathy for the victims of Hamas rockets, nor to make a cessation of those activities a pre-condition for the lifting of the blockade. A land convoy was allowed into the strip in January 2010 and in May of that year, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tried to breach the blockade. It was the Free Gaza Movement's ninth attempt (five had previously been permitted) to do so and consisted of six ships, three of them passenger ships and three cargo ships. There were 663 passengers and 10,000 tons of cargo.(87)
Israel had offered to transport non-blockaded goods, but the organizers refused. This is the leader of the Movement, allegedly a humanitarian committed to the cause of peace. He's seated second from left and two to his left is the Hamas PM of Gaza.
Figure 11
The flotilla was told to divert to the Israeli port of Ashdod (whereupon Israel would deliver the aid), but refused. Apparently, humanitarian aid took second place when it came to making a political point. An organizer stated that
"...this mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it's about breaking Israel's siege on 1.5 million Palestinians..We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of Gaza and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.”(88)(89)
Also involved was a Turkish charity with ties to terrorism networks, including al-Qaida.(90) Two of the activists in the flotilla had previously said that they wished for martyrdom (they got their wish)(91)(92) and Aljazeera had already published footage of other activists calling for battle against the Jews. The Israeli military intercepted the ships, was attacked with knives, clubs and stun grenades, fought back and ten activists died of gunshot wounds. Two soldiers were shot with their own weapons, but survived.(93) The desire to break the blockade was considerably diminished in the aftermath and relations with Turkey were fraught for some time.
Israel eased the blockade almost immediately, especially on building materials and dual use items.(94) But it is worth remembering that the Israelis are not simply being paranoid; nor are they deploying an excuse, simply to inflict hardship on the occupants of the Gaza Strip. On three occasions, between 2002 and 2011, the Israelis intercepted vessels loaded with weapons destined for either Hezbollah or Hamas.(95) Conditions were so bad in Gaza in 2010, it was feared that the opening of a new luxury shopping mall might have to be delayed. Gaza's 600 millionaires would not have been impressed.(96)
Figure 12
They need to be outfitted for their weekends in Gaza's five star resorts.
Figure 13
Which is not to say that there wasn't poverty and hardship but, in 2010, Gazans enjoyed a higher standard of living that Turkey; further, life expectancy and literacy rates were higher and infant mortality lower.(97) However, that erodes the victimhood narrative, so it's left unsaid.
Something else was also improving – the maximum range of the rockets that Hamas and affiliates were still firing into Israel.
Figure 14
And, come 2014, the Israelis felt obliged to once more seek to degrade Hamas in Gaza. The trigger was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.(98) The Israelis rounded up around 350 Hamas active militants from that area, Hamas responded with a fusillade of rockets from Gaza and, once more, battle was joined - this time, for seven weeks. It followed a familiar trajectory, with air strikes the prequel to a ground invasion. An initial ceasefire eight days into the conflict (brokered by Egypt and backed by the PA's Abbas) was rejected by Hamas, because they hadn't been consulted.(99)
Seemingly oblivious to the folly of negotiating from a position of weakness, Hamas and Islamic Jihad offered a ten year truce in exchange for the lifting of the blockade and the release of prisoners.(100) Israel rejected the offer and began the ground offensive, which was centered on the destruction of the tunnels that litter the Gaza-Israel border. These are extensive; the Israeli military estimates that Hamas has spent up to $90 million and poured 600,000 tons of cement (hence the original blockade of building materials) while building three dozen tunnels in northern Gaza Strip.(101)
Israel withdrew the IDF on 3rd August, four weeks into the war and, just over three weeks later an uneasy ceasefire took effect. The Israelis had accomplished the mission, destroying 32 tunnels.(102) The damage to Gaza was, once again, considerable. Mosques were targeted (with 73 destroyed), as the Israelis were now aware that Hamas made routine military use of them.(103) Hamas was on the defensive throughout, with little opportunity to engage the IDF and, while casualty numbers are impossible to verify, it is believed that around 2,000 Gazans died – how many of those were as a result of Hamas executions is not known.
Due to the extra difficulty of separating Hamas paramilitaries from the civilian population, it is also impossible to verify combatant casualty numbers on the Hamas side, but the Israelis lost 67 dead (73 if one includes civilian victims of rocket attacks), with 469 wounded.(104) There were the usual accusations of war crimes and the use of civilians as human shields. Liberal media outlets trotted out the all purpose canard that they had “seen no evidence” while, at the same time, Hamas acknowledged that they fired rockets from civilian areas.(105) Even Amnesty International, notoriously unwilling to condemn any Israeli opponent, was obliged to admit that
"...there are credible reports that, in certain cases, Palestinian armed groups launched rockets or mortars from within civilian facilities or compounds, including schools, at least one hospital and a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. In at least two cases, accounts indicate that attacks were launched in spite of the fact that displaced Gazan civilians were sheltering in the compounds or in neighbouring buildings."(106)
These are characterized as “unlawful”, although why one would expect Islamic jihadists who espouse the practice of suicide bombing and the extermination of the Jewish race to follow rules is a little difficult to fathom. The issue of proportionality, beloved of human rights groups and the mainstream media was given another airing, even though former diplomats and military experts concluded that the IDF acted within the bounds of international law.(107) And yet another conflict faded into history.
Attempts at reconstruction have been stymied by the ongoing inability of Hamas and Fatah to get along and also by corruption and theft. The PA accused Hamas of misappropriating the small matter of $700 million intended to go towards the rebuild,(108) and was then accused of redirecting overseas money to fulfil its own needs. Israel's military estimates that Hamas steals around 20% of the cement and steel that Israel allows to be delivered, so that they might repair their tunnels.(109)
Apart from the ever present rocket attacks from Gaza and border clashes in the north with Hezbollah, the four years of the Trump presidency was a boon time for Israel. The US moved its embassy to Jerusalem (a major reverse for the PA), the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran's so-called Nuclear Deal) was axed and Israel normalized its relations with four Arab League countries (the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco)(110)(111)(112) via the Abraham Accords. That respite ended, of course, on October 7th 2023, with yet another murderous rampage by Hamas.
I don't intend to go into the detail of the excesses of their 'fighters'; the evidence is there for all to see. But the actions of other players deserve a little scrutiny, particularly the media and the United States government itself. The media found itself in a position that has become uncomfortable for them, inasmuch as they were obliged to temporarily pause their ongoing offensive against all things Israeli and express horror and sympathy instead. They really don't like having to do that, although that wasn't always the case in the dim and distant.
It just is now and so, as soon as they could change tack, they attempted to do so with the story of the 'hospital bombing' that was fed to them by Hamas and which was demonstrably false from the outset.(114) This was much more familiar ground; the only problem was that the days of being able to control the narrative with lies and misinformation are slipping away and they haven't quite accepted it and recalibrated. Their confirmation bias was immediately exposed and they'd found that they'd provided both the tool and the nail that has been hammered into the coffin of their credibility – again.
It was only when the evidence of Hamas complicity started to mount that the 'fact checkers' bestirred themselves and only then in an attempt to muddy the waters.(115) Expect them to have learnt nothing. The words 'proportionality', 'humanitarian' and 'ceasefire' will feature in nearly every story about the war from here on in. The anti-Israeli (which is inseparable from anti-Semitism) bias will become difficult to miss.
And the Americans? Without them, this latest atrocity would not have happened for two reasons connected to Biden and one for which Trump is responsible, albeit indirectly. Firstly, the progressive Left hate the Israeli PM, Netanyahu. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Netanyahu, his ceaseless 'vaccine' advocacy chief among them. But Biden and his crew hate him because he is both a right winger and insufficiently humble. When he was re-elected in 2022, with a mandate for judicial reform, alarm bells started ringing. Even though the right wing wins most elections in Israel, this hasn't been an issue for American Leftists since 1992, when the progressive Chief Justice of the Supreme Court assigned himself the power of veto over the Knesset.(116)
But there was suddenly a danger that the judicial coup could be reversed, finally allowing a democratically elected government to rule effectively; and so the US (and others) and the Israeli Left set about undermining Netanyahu. The State Department dusted off its 'How to mount a color revolution' play-book and started funding the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (MQG),
“...the far-left organization at the epicenter of the Israeli left’s war against the Netanyahu government. MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on Dec. 29.”(117)
They have petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking to oust Netanyahu. Inevitably, the Soros-funded New Israel Fund and other Leftist NGOs organised and funded demonstrations, even going so far as to offer $70 plus gas money to disrupt Ben Gurion Airport.(118) The bought-and-paid-for media needed no second invitation to wade in and, just in case Netanyahu still hadn't got the message, Secretary of State Blinken paid a visit to the PA, promising more money and funding for a 5,000 strong Palestinian commando force to 'combat terror' by the very organisation that promotes a 'pay to slay' scheme whereby PA terrorists are given a bounty for every Israeli they kill.(119)
This on top of 'humanitarian' funding for Gaza and a clear Iranian favoritism, a continuation of Obama's foreign policy agenda which involved cosying up to the Muslim Brotherhood,(120) which had resulted in backdoor payments of billions of dollars. Biden attempted to revive the nuclear deal and, when that failed, waived sanctions on Iran, thus enabling Russia's development of enriched uranium on Iranian soil (121) and unfreezing of assets worth at least $100 billion.(122) Israel is widely assumed to be a nuclear power; allowing Iran (a known sponsor of Islamist terror groups including Hamas and Hezbollah with cash provided by the US)(123) parity would drastically alter the balance of power in the Middle East. Biden was at it again, just the other day. In addition to the $6 billion that his administration unfroze, $3.5 billion from the IMF was also funneled to Iran several months ago.(124) On top of the $70 billion extra that Iran has received from Biden, that it wouldn't have got under Trump.(125) But even Blinken has acknowledged that Iran is a bad actor:
“Iran has, unfortunately, always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas.”(126)
Which would be why Iran is at the top of Blinken's State Department list of state sponsors of terror and serial attacker of American troops in Iraq and Syria – something that has happened 83 times under Biden's regime,(127) and clearly also happened on 7th October.(128) But that hasn't stopped the US allowing the UN embargo on Iranian access to missile and drone markets from expiring, which it did this week, on 18th October.(129)
Of course, one can always cut out the middle man and give to Hamas directly, something else that Biden is doing with $100 million in 'humanitarian' aid to Gaza, which is ruled directly by Hamas. Apparently, the US will be quite cross if Hamas steals it and would be the first to condemn it.(130) The EU is topping the kitty up with €75 million more.(131)
Netanyahu and the Israeli state can read the runes, as can the Iranians. If a scintilla of doubt remained, comments like this (in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas raid in 7th October) from Rep Ocasio-Cortez
“...today is devastating for all those seeking a lasting peace and respect for human rights. I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms. No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region. An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives.”(132)
Or this from Rep Bowman:
“We need a way to end this deadly violence that is killing and traumatizing generations of Israelis and Palestinians alike—including the blockade of Gaza.”(133)
Or this from Rep Bush, who stated that the US needed to end its
“...support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.”(134)
will have removed it. While Hamas and its backers are the enemy on the ground, Israel's biggest problem is the US under Biden. Biden has weakened Israel while greatly emboldening Iran and its waging of proxy wars. Trump's sin was to engineer a measure of rapprochement between a smattering of Arab states and Israel, with power to add. Israel and Saudi Arabia were in advanced talks to normalize their relationship, which is intolerable to Iran simply because Israel's very existence is intolerable to Tehran.(135) Those talks have now been suspended (at least for the duration of the war) and the Saudis and Iran are talking to each other, not a situation that pertained before the Hamas assault.(136) Long term prospects are uncertain but for now, at least, Iran has got what it wants.
When I set out to write a brief history of the Jewish state and its struggle to survive, I didn't understand quite how many attempts there had been to wipe her out, but only an intellect of severely limited wattage could fail to see a pattern. Israel has been attacked by the Arab world time after time, by nation states initially and latterly by state backed terrorist entities. Every now and again, she has seen it coming or sought to tamp down the conflagration by virtue of her own pre-emptive strikes. The level of hatred and the sheer indefatigable nature of the continual existential threat from the Arab world must be globally unrivaled. It's difficult to accurately assess the effect that this would have on the psyche of a nation. We don't have to have a safe room and/or a bunker; Israelis do.
But there are some elements to the Gordian knot that can be dispensed with, some questions that can be answered and some attitudes questioned; in the first instance, about the Israelis. Anti-Zionists deny that the Jewish people should have a right to their own state and either that the 'Palestinians' were there first and/or should be allowed the Right of Return to the state of Israel.
The Balfour Declaration is a strange beast. Had it explicitly justified a Jewish state because of the long history of persecution that the Jewish people had suffered, it would have probably been less problematic for the majority of people. For reasons that I cannot identify (nor care to), the Jews must be the most consistently slaughtered people in world history; the Muslims, the Christian Germans, the Crusaders, the French, the English, the Spanish, the Russians, the Germans again...although some remained in what is now Israel, the majority of the Jewish people were expelled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, only for most to return in 538 BC.(137)
Those in the diaspora, as well as being massacred on a regular basis, were treated as second class citizens (the Magna Carta established basic human rights in England, but not for the Jews) and then expelled.
“There are at least 27 recorded expulsions from seventeen different countries between 1100 and 1600.”(138)
By 1917, it must have been abundantly clear that Jews were not safe, nor would they ever be. This must be the background to the Declaration, but it surely erred in merely asserting a historic bond with the land, even though that was also true. In the aftermath of Hitler's Final Solution, the need for a Jewish state was unarguable and UN Resolution 181 proposed the two state solution in Palestine. One might think that residual Arab resentment might have been tempered by the horror of the Holocaust, but it wasn't. Even so, on balance, the Jewish claim to the land is genuine in temporal terms (they were there long before any Arab population) and, in Western morality, on ethical terms, too.
But not in the Muslim world. The Shaif of Mecca believed he had been given assurances and, in any event, the Koran does not preach tolerance towards non-believers. Around one in twelve verses imply that Allah hates the adherents of other religions. If Allah created infidels to fuel the fires of Hell, there's little reason to believe that their lives are worth much in this life, either. And the Jewish people, in particular, are highlighted as the strongest enemies of the Muslims.(139)
Resentment and hatred for the Jews hasn't gone away. There's plenty of anti-Semitism to go around in many different countries; all you have to do is check the pro-Palestinian protests that broke out immediately after the latest slaughter.(140) And the bile spouted by Leftists everywhere, but particularly in America.(141) It's just that now, many of the Jews that would otherwise be targeted reside in Israel.
Then there are complaints about the treatment of the 'Palestinians'; that Israel is an apartheid state that occupies the 'Palestinian' territories. If we remove the emotion, the facts are straightforward. The BMP was a single state known previously known as Palestine. Trans Jordan was subsequently added, with the intention that Palestine was to be the Jewish state and Trans Jordan the Arab one. That would have meant that Gaza and what is now known as the West Bank would have both been in Palestine. This was rejected by the Arabs and so Resolution 181 proposed a partition of the BMP too. The Jewish leadership agreed to accept a smaller state, but the Arabs were not for compromise and battle was joined in 1947. Israel won the right to exist and adopted a temporary border (the Green Line) that was similar to the UN Partition Plan.
Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. Neither territory was 'Palestinian', regardless of the opinions of the legions of 'experts' on international law. The British had relinquished the Mandate and no legal entity had taken its place. The best description for these entities is the Israeli one; disputed territories and, notably, the rest of the Arab world did not recognize Jordan's claim, either. When Israel won them, in a defensive war in 1967, UN Resolution 242 stipulated that Israel's future borders were to be secure and decided via negotiation. What it didn't require is that Israel retreat to the Green Line, a fact continually overlooked by her detractors. No subsequent agreement was reached – thus the sovereign status of the West Bank was never settled. This was also the case with the Gaza Strip.
A potential solution – the Oslo Accords – were not ratified by the PLO. This is because the Palestinian Arabs have never been interested in a two state solution, no matter what they say. Arafat would have agreed to one as part of his 'phased strategy', had he not had to give up the Right of Return to get it, but it would only have been a stepping stone to a single Palestinian state. He and his colleagues were open about their intentions, to the Arab world at least. The Israelis have accepted or offered the two state option on numerous occasions in the past 76 years, but the Palestinian Arabs didn't want it, have never wanted it and, in all probability, never will want it; otherwise, it would have become a reality decades ago. Fundamental Islamic ideology forbids a two state solution, as any state existing in territory previously conquered in the name of Allah must be destroyed.
The Israelis had twice been attacked through the West Bank. The natural, militarily defensible border with Jordan was the Jordan River, as Judea and Samaria's mountain ridge look down on Israel' coastal plain
“...which contains 70 percent of Israel's population and 80 percent of its industry, and surrounds Jerusalem on three sides. The ridge looks down on Tel Aviv (12 miles from the Green Line, or the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan), and Ben Gurion International Airport (6 miles from the Green Line), among other vital areas. If Israel withdrew from these mountains, it would be extremely vulnerable to rocket attacks from its east. The "narrow waist" of Israel before the Six Day War was eight miles wide. Israel could be overrun quickly in a future war if it ever withdrew to the Green Line.”(142)
Israeli withdrawals from parts of Judea and Samaria were rewarded with the Second Intifada. Withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza have resulted in at least four wars and the comprehensive up-arming of Hezbollah and Hamas. But officially annexing the West Bank would have involved incorporating an Arab population that believed that the Jewish state didn't deserve to exist. It would also have threatened the nascent Jewish state demographically, so Israel chose not to do so. Indeed, incorporating all the 'refugees' from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank alone (without factoring in those in camps in neighboring countries) would lead inexorably to the destruction of the Jewish state.
As it stands, west of the Jordan River, the Jews make up less than 47% of the population (according to an Israeli demographer). At the end of 2021, there were 7.45 million Jews, 7.53 million Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs and 472,000 others. Gaza and the West Bank contribute over 5 million to the total.(143) The Right of Return to what is now the state of Israel is, therefore, a very big deal and the method by which it would be transformed into a Muslim caliphate. At least, that's the idea and the reason why the PLO has rejected every two state offer that's ever been made.
It's possible that a few of the 'refugees' are genuinely Palestinians, inasmuch as their Arab ancestors had lived in Palestine for several generations and they therefore considered themselves of the land, rather than as transplanted Egyptians or Syrians. However,
“...if your great-grandparents were kicked out of their village near Acre when they were kids and fled to a refugee camp in Lebanon, and then had children in the 1950s, who had kids in the 1980s, who had you in the 2010s, then you are not a citizen of Lebanon. You are a stateless Palestinian refugee. And the Palestinian cause means fighting for your right to return to that village near Acre, not fighting for your right to enjoy citizenship in the country where you and your parents and your grandparents were born.”(144)
Also omitted from any discussion of the 'Palestinian refugees' is the subject of their status in the Arab world. Put bluntly, nobody seems to want them. They have not been granted citizenship and assimilated, precisely because to do so would lance the boil and the Arab world has, historically, not wanted to do that. They have preferred to leave Israel stuck with the problem of millions of extremely hostile 'refugees' on her borders. They are deeply invested in the 'Palestinian cause', but completely underinvested in the people themselves. By contrast, Israel absorbed 1.6 million Soviet Jews between 1989 and 2006.(145)
Despite the danger associated with living cheek by jowl with a population that hates them, the Israelis have repeatedly tried to solve the problem of the 'occupied territories'. The PA has authority over them (nominally in the case of the Gaza Strip, given Hamas' hegemony), which makes for a dangerous existence. Israel's borders are not secure and are legally undefined. The chances of further military adventurism by the Arab world cannot be ruled out, especially now. I don't see what else the Israelis could have done in the fact of Arab intransigence and the Israeli presence in the West Bank hasn't been as damaging to the Palestinian Arabs as their absence is:
“Ironically, despite all the opposition to Israel in the West Bank, those who live there provide an example of how damaging Hamas is. The average wage in the West Bank is well over twice what it is in Gaza. The West Bank is also objectively safer for Palestinians than the non-occupied areas that Hamas controls.”(146)
The question of the Golan Heights is another stick with which to beat the Jewish state. Rather like the mountain ranges in Samaria and Judea, the Heights have proved to be strategically vital to Israel, as she has twice been attacked from that direction by Syria. The 1981 law annexing them may well be legally dubious, but the Israeli leadership's prime responsibility is the protection of its people. Returning the Heights to Syria would be a supreme act of folly in that respect.
Another complaint would be what many perceive as Israeli over-reaction and maltreatment of the Gazans, in particular. Israel has always favored a heavy handed response when attacked. I suspect that the reason for that lies in her geographic isolation and the nature and sheer abundance of her enemies. There is one Jewish state and 22 Arabs states; there are roughly 7.5 millions Jews in Israel and 1.9 billion Muslims worldwide, who form a majority in around 50 countries.(147)(148) She is surrounded.
Figure 15
Any hint of weakness will be seized upon by enemies who wish only harm. Even within the border of the former BMP, her citizens aren't safe, subject to random suicide attacks and periodic intifadas. The brutality visited upon her has been vividly exhibited with the latest Hamas atrocity, but it's nothing new. In the Muslim world, life is cheap and always has been. It's a fact that the West is unwilling to acknowledge, as it proselytizes and demands 'proportionality'; not a quality that the West itself has much familiarity with.
Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq, French civilians killed during the Normandy campaign...the list goes on. Fire bombing civilian population centers without even the pretense that targets were military in nature, dropping atomic bombs on cities, napalming villages and 'shock and awe' are apparently all acceptable (because we did them), but roof knocking and then destroying an apartment building known to be a Hamas asset isn't? How many people is one allowed to kill? The same number as the opposition killed, brutally and without warning? If we kill more, does that make us the bad guys? In World War II, the casualties suffered by the British and Americans were a small fraction of those suffered by the Germans. Is anyone going to make the argument that it is therefore the Germans who occupy the moral high ground? Didn't think so.
Gaza is the way it is because the population voted for Hamas and the entire raison d'être of that organisation is the destruction of Israel. The Israelis blockade it because they know that, if they didn't, the low-tech rocketry that is currently lobbed in their direction would be replaced by kit that could do far more damage. The Gazans are no innocents, either. It's difficult to characterize them as unfortunates caught in harms way and brutalized by the Israelis when 88.9% of them express support for the firing of rockets into Israel (149) and, as recently as 2021, 68% support continued attacks on Israel.(150)
Which is not to stay that they aren't still being brutalized; it's just that, for the most part, it's by their own side. As Netanyahu has observed,
“Here’s the difference between us. We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.”(151)
No category of person is recused. Hamas is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Gazan civilians. While the Israelis warn civilians to evacuate a building (sometimes they call several times to make sure that everyone is out), Hamas' policy is rather different. This report is actually from a Palestinian Arab:
“Hamas’s strict policy, though, was not to allow us to evacuate. Many people got killed, locked inside their homes by Hamas militants. Hamas’s official Al-Quds TV regularly issued warnings to Gazans not to evacuate their homes. Hamas militants would block the exits to the places residents were asked to evacuate. In the Shijaiya area, people received warnings from the Israelis and tried to evacuate the area, but Hamas militants blocked the exits and ordered people to return to their homes. Some of the people had no choice but to run towards the Israelis and ask for protection for their families. Hamas shot some of those people as they were running; the rest were forced to return to their homes and get bombed.”(152)
On other occasions, Hamas announces a curfew, stating that anyone on the streets will be shot, thus ensuring that people had to stay home even if they were about to be bombed. If the people protest, they are shot. In 2014,
“There were two major protests against Hamas during the third week of the war. When Hamas fighters opened fire at the protesters in the Bait Hanoun area and the Shijaiya, five were killed instantly. I saw that with my own eyes. Many were injured. A doctor at Shifa hospital told me that 35 were killed at both protests. He went and saw their bodies at the morgue.”(153)
Historically, 40% of Hamas' budget goes on tunneling. The tunnels that Hamas has built in the south of the Strip, for smuggling tons of weapons into Gaza (Israel calculated that Hamas had imported 40 tons of weapons through these tunnels within the first two months of their takeover in 2007)(154) are often dug by children. In 2012, sources within Gaza reported that Hamas had executed 160 of these children, to prevent intelligence leaks to Israel.(155)
Hamas confiscate food and medicine sent to the West Bank, to distribute amongst themselves or sell on the black market.(156) They recently robbed the UN compound in Gaza, liberating a large stockpile of fuel.(157) And, as we now know, after their recent rampage
“...Hamas militants took to Telegram to post videos too gruesome to watch. Israel’s soldiers, by contrast, took to X to post instructions in Arabic for civilians in Gaza to move to safe shelter. They are not the same.”(158)
An evacuation of the northern Strip, which Israel has declared a war zone, is logistically difficult but not impossible. The UN and other groups (the Red Cross, the Red Crescent) could accomplish much if they tried, but Hamas won't let them. As one of its leaders boasted in 2008,
“...For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry… The elderly excel at this, and so do… the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women and children.”(159)
Israel is held to a higher moral standard than Hamas (which is, in itself, problematic) and the terrorists know it and exploit it. Pictures of dead children are good PR, to be used at the correct time to pressure Israel to back off; or to get the 'international community' to do it for them. The West simply has no comprehension of the type of people its dealing with – we just don't seem to have the correct frame of reference. As Alan Dershovitz has opined:
“The strategy is as simple as it is cynical: Provoke Israel by playing Russian roulette with its children, firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hide behind its own civilians when firing at Israeli civilians; refuse to build bunkers for its own civilians; have TV cameras ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children; exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as “children” Hamas fighters who are 16 or 17 years old and as “women,” female terrorists.”(160)
There is no inherent reason why life in Gaza has to be so difficult. The problem is the Palestinian Arabs generally and Hamas, particularly. What nobody wants to admit is that tribal societies have a major problem with what is effectively socially sanctioned incest through cousin marriages. As of 2003, 45% of marriages in the Arab world were consanguineous and, as might be expected, this has resulted in an epidemic of genetic disorders.(161)(162) It hasn't done much for the average IQ either, which comes in at between 70-85 whether measured in the Arab world or in the West – a range that goes from mentally handicapped to well below average.(163) Making these statements isn't 'racist', incidentally. They just happen to be facts.
If Hamas showed as much interest in governing the Gaza Strip properly and less time smuggling weapons, firing rockets into Israel and paragliding into kibbutzen in order to slaughter the innocent, there wouldn't even be a blockade. As it is, the Strip is almost exclusively paid for by the UN (that would be us, in effect). Israel also does its bit, as it supplies water and electricity. But even with the border with Israel open (when the border post isn't being repeatedly trashed by the Gazans) and the passage of goods, Hamas blocks hundreds of trucks and forces them to turn around.(164) If the Arab world cared about the Gazans, they might offer safe haven – but they don't, with good reason.
“They share a long history of civil strife between the Palestinians and host nations. The tensions make more sense when you understand that Palestinianism is not so much a national identity as it is a violent revolutionary movement specifically purposed with seeking the destruction of Israel. When neighbouring states imported Palestinian refugees in the past, they found the violent revolutionary movements targeting their governments instead. See: Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, among others.”(165)
Even the Israeli Arabs don't want to live in a hypothetical Palestine with the Palestinian Arabs.(166) And, while the Lebanon and Jordan deny the 'refugees' political, social and civil rights, Israel extends full citizenship to Israeli Arabs and it's one of the few countries in the Middle East where Muslim women have full voting rights.(167) All of which are, once again, inconvenient facts.
The two state solution is also hopelessly flawed. If the Palestinian Arabs haven't accepted the premise in the past century and a bit, they aren't going to now, no matter how vociferous their protestations to the contrary. Plan A has always been the eradication of the Jews and Israel has never been consistently bellicose enough to convince them that this plan can never succeed.(168) The many compromises and concessions that the Israelis have made over the past decades (whether as a result of their own miscalculations or by dint of pressure from allies) have fed a belief that 'from the river to the sea' is still possible.
In turn, Israel will probably never accept the one state model. While the Jews have shown themselves willing to live alongside Arabs, the same cannot be said vice versa and, unfortunately, given the particularly virulent strain of anti-Semitism and revolutionary fervor that infects the Palestinian Arabs, none of their Muslim 'brothers' wants them either.
As long as the Right of Return mantra can be kept on life support, the PA will have no incentive to make the intractable tractable. In the here and now, Israel is faced with two main choices. It can go after Hamas in Gaza, an operation that only makes sense if the strategic objective is the eradication of Hamas. This would likely entail months of fighting tunnel to tunnel to winkle them out. The IDF would also be obliged to garrison the areas that it cleared or run the risk of Hamas reoccupying them. The world and his wife is already calling for a ceasefire, the Americans are holding up the operation anyway (ostensibly for hostage negotiations)(169), Iran, Egypt, Syria and Hezbollah are flexing and the US has sent naval battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean. The possibility that the conflict will broaden is unmistakable. Biden might get his World War after all.
The other option would be to exercise restraint (not to be forced to do so, but to choose to do so) and bring the war to a swift conclusion; then, reinvogorate talks with the Saudis and others, with a view to splintering the Arab coalition. There is evidence aplenty indicating that this is not a forlorn hope – numerous Arab intellectuals have condemned Hamas. One even called for its destruction:
“If Israel doesn't capitalize on international solidarity and support at this time to completely eliminate Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and to free Gaza from their control, it will miss an opportunity that may never come again. Any end to the current conflict that doesn't achieve this outcome means we are destined to face another one sooner or later, depending on the needs and interests of their Iranian puppeteers.”(170)
However, the Sunni Muslim world has begun to see Israel as a bulwark against the Shia extremists in Tehran, who exacerbate tensions in the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere. Israel is what might be termed a 'security producer' rather than a 'security consumer', a nation capable of protecting Sunni states against the ayatollahs.(171) As such, what happens now in Gaza is an important test of that faith. Restraint might cause the Shia nations to stand down (albeit, only until the next time), but it might also undermine confidence in Israel's deterrence value for the Sunnis. It wouldn't play well with the Israeli people either; a vote of 'no confidence' in the Knesset would not be unlikely. It might come anyway, given the failure to adequately defend Israeli citizens on October 7th.
The US can no longer be relied upon as long as the Left hold the reins in Washington, but without them holding off Hezbollah and the Syrians with the threat of air strikes, Israel faces the likelihood of a two front war. And one would imagine that the Americans are leveraging that factor for all they are worth; to what end, it's difficult to decipher. They will certainly attempt to run Israel's foreign policy from DC. By enabling Iran and attempting to take Netanyahu out, they have shown their true colors.
I appreciate that all of the above runs counter to the accepted wisdom, but we should perhaps expect that by now. The Left cannot lie straight in bed and, if we find ourselves in the same trenches as the narrative engineers and their fact-free hypotheses, it ought to give pause for thought. Are the people who gave us the plandemic, climate change and stolen elections (and who are planning to bring us a Pandemic Treaty, digital IDs and CBDCs) likely to be acting in good faith on this one issue and not on all the rest?
The Gazans are going to suffer, because that's what Hamas wants. It's a win-win – either the IDF leaves them in place, in which case normal service will soon be resumed or Israel retaliates, in which eventuality Hamas TV will provide wall-to-wall coverage of civilians who have died because they weren't allowed to make their way to safety, despite Israeli warnings; the latter not a courtesy extended to Iraquis, lest we forget.
We attempt to define the contest in terms that we understand and the West then cajoles the Israeli leadership to see it in the same way we do. But jihadists don't think the way we do, they don't value life in the same way and they don't share our morality. There is no 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' vibe – by way of illustration, there are no Jewish suicide bombers. Hamas (and the PA) possess what might, in our terms, be characterised as an Old Testament mindset. They have inculcated their hatred of the Jews in the next generations and yet the West's solution is for co-existence, either in neighbouring states or the same state; but one cannot coexist with evil.
There are no easy answers and I certainly wouldn't be prescient enough to supply them even if there were. It's not that Israel is without fault (real or imagined), but the mainstream has that cycle on permanent repeat. A measure of contrast, however, acts as a corrective to those with a sufficiently open mind. Israel has been under a permanent existential threat since its founding. We, in the West, cannot possibly understand how that feels and what we ourselves would do in response. I'm reasonably sure, however, that radiating weakness would not be in her best interests.
Citations
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Remo_conference
(5) https://israelforever.org/state/Mandate_for_Palestine_Jewish_State/
(6) Squiggle, John (2011). "Britain's Secret Re-Assessment of the Balfour Declaration. The Perfidy of Albion". Journal of the History of International Law. 13 (2): 249–283. doi:10.1163/15718050-13020001.
(7) Rhett, Maryanne A. (2015). The Global History of the Balfour Declaration: Declared Nation. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-31276-5.
(8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
(9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_Correspondence
(10) https://www.gov.il/en/departments/ministry_of_foreign_affairs/govil-landing-page
(11) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/09/o_palestine.html
(12) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/10/factfree_middle_east_negotiati.html
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Mandatory_Palestine)
(14) https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/Cmd5479.pdf
(15) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloudan_Conference_of_1937
(16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
(18) http://www.mideastweb.org/trusteeship.htm
(19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet#Outcome
(20) Benny Morris (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 00967 7 (pbk.), pg 490.
(21) Chaim Simons (2004) A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895 - 1947. Epilogue.
(22) https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-743153
(23) Mendes, Philip (2000). "A historical controversy: the causes of the Palestinian refugee problem". Academia. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
(24) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Infiltration_Law
(25) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#Views_on_the_exodus
(26)
?
(27) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194
(28) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements
(29) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/10/factfree_middle_east_negotiati.html
(30) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements
(31) Samir A. Mutawi (18 July 2002). Jordan in the 1967 War. Cambridge University Press. p. 95
(32) Benny Morris (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 00967 7 (pbk.), pgs 328-29.
(33) Morris, Benny (2001). Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881–1999. Vintage Books. pp. 346
(34) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum_Resolution
(35) http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/242
(36) Ditto
(37) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-meaning-of-un-security-council-resolution-242
(38) Ditto
(39) https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-189248/
(40) http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/338
(42) Gilad Sharon (2011). Sharon: The Life of a Leader. Translated by Mitch Ginsberg. Harper Collins. Chapter 14
(42) Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army, Routledge, 2008 pp. 81-84.
(44) https://www.memri.org/reports/covenant-islamic-resistance-movement-%E2%80%93-hamas#_ednref5
(45) https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
(46) http://www.mideastweb.org/plocha.htm
(48) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah#Armed_strength
(49) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qana_massacre
(50) Itamar Rabinovich (2008). Israel in the Middle East. UPNE. ISBN 978-0-87451-962-4.
(51) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit
"Political Program for the Present Stage Drawn up by the 12th PNC, Cairo, June 9, 1974,"Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1974, pp. 224-5.
(54) The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 10, 1994; Focus, Syrian television, Sept. 9, 1996, in International Media Review Analysis (IMRA), Sept. 9, 1996.
(55) Al-Jazeera (Doha), Jan. 13, 2002; al-Hayat al-Jadida (Gaza) Dec. 24, 2001.
(56) The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 17, 1997.
(57) Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Dec. 8, 1997.
(58) Mahmud 'Abbas, al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-'Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-Naziya wa's-Sihyuniya (Amman: Dar Ibn Rushd, 1984), introduction.
(59) Khaled Abu Toameh, "Sermons of Fire,"The Jerusalem Report, Mar. 23, 1995, pp. 20-1.
(60) https://www.meforum.org/605/arafats-grand-strategy
(61) "Camp David and After: An Exchange: An Interview with Ehud Barak,"The New York Review of Books, June 13, 2001.
(62) Die Zeit (Hamburg), June 7, Aug. 15, 2002.
(63) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Conference
(64) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Peace_Initiative
(66) Ditto
(67) https://www.dw.com/en/trump-reveals-israeli-palestinian-peace-plan/a-52179629
(68) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks#1990s
(69) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3243071.stm
(70) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#Views_on_the_Second_Intifada
(71) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_barrier
(72) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gush_Katif#Palestinian_attacks
(74) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804
(75) Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (12 July 2006)
(76) http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/1701
(77) Keinon, Herb. "Palmer report: Gaza blockade legal, IDF force excessive". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 3 September 2011.
(82) https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/world/middleeast/06scene.html?_r=1&hp
(83) https://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Desperate-on-the-Border-Extract
(84) https://www.smh.com.au/world/hamas-tried-to-hijack-ambulances-during-gaza-war-20090126-gdtb5x.html
(87) https://www.bbc.com/news/10203726
(88) Al Jazeera and agencies (28 May 2010). "Tensions rise over Gaza aid fleet". Al Jazeera English. Retrieved 25 June 2010
(89) https://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/31/gaza.flotilla.aid/index.html
(90) https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna37477182
(92) https://palwatch.org/page/1806
(93) https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896796,00.html
(97) http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001127.html
(100) https://web.archive.org/web/20140724234716/http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=713579
(104) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War#Result_and_post-conflict_events
(106) https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde21/1178/2015/en/
(107) https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Ex-generals-diplomats-absolve-Israel-of-Gaza-war-crimes-405888
(108) https://www.timesofisrael.com/fatah-official-accuses-hamas-of-stealing-700m-from-gazans/
(109) https://www.maannews.net/
(111) https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/politics/israel-uae-bahrain-white-house-analysis-intl/index.html
(112) https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/23/politics/trump-sudan-israel/index.html
(113) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55266089
(114) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67144061
(116) https://mishpacha.com/he-who-grabs-too-much-may-lose-everything/
(117) https://www.jns.org/how-biden-subverts-israeli-democracy/
(118) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/368319
(123) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/7/inside-the-ring-obama-era-cash-traced-to-iran-back/
(124) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/sen-kennedy-biden-previously-gave-iranian-regime-3/
(126) https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-october-8-2023-n1307318
(127) https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/20/joe-biden-the-ayatollahs-best-friend-forever/
(128) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-hamas.html
(133) Ditto
(134) Ditto
(138) Ditto
(141) https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/14/hamas-terror-madness-and-method/
(143) https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-now-a-minority-in-israel-and-the-territories-demographer-says/
(144)
(145) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_post-Soviet_aliyah#Absorption_characteristics
(147) https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/arab-countries
(148) https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muslim-majority-countries
(150) https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/845
(151) https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/gas_the_jews_doesnt_qualify_as_hate_speech.html
(152) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/hamas-forced-gazans-to-remain-in-harms-way.php
(153) Ditto
(154) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-smuggling-weapons-into-gaza/
(155) https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-have-executed-dozens-of-tunnel-diggers/
(156) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/ignoring-hamas-crimes.php
(158) https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/the_savagery_of_hamas.html
(159) https://dailycaller.com/2023/10/16/opinion-hamas-uses-western-morality-as-a-weapon-alan-dershowitz/
(160) Ditto
(161) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East
(162) https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-cousin-marriages-create-high-risk-of-genetic-disorders/a-60687452
(164) https://unitedwithisrael.org/israel-opens-crossing-into-gaza-hamas-blocks-passage-of-goods/
(165) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15516/arab-israelis-peace-plan
(166) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-status-of-arabs-in-israel
(167) http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
Figure 1 By Oldtidens_Israel_&_Judea.svg: FinnWikiNoderivative work: Richardprins (talk) - Oldtidens_Israel_&_Judea.svg http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-israel-and-judah-733-bce, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10872389
Figure 2 https://israelforever.org/state/Mandate_for_Palestine_Jewish_State/
Figure 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah
Figure 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet#Text_of_Plan_Dalet
Figure 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War#Aftermath
Figure 7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_338
Figure 8 https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2zm3mu/west_bank_areas_a_and_b_from_the_oslo_accords/
Figure 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Figure 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War#/media/File:Locations_bombed_Aug13_no_fact_box.jpg
Figure 11 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/06/smoking_gun_the_free_gaza_move.html
Figure 12 http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001127.html
Figure 13 https://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/2018/08/gazas-newest-luxury-resort-white-chalet.html
Figure 14 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rockets_from_gaza_(en).png
Figure 15 https://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2008/07/wa_img_karbala_interactive_map.jpg
https://open.substack.com/pub/ponerology/p/evil-only-comes-where-its-invited?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ypw1y
Thank you for this, a long and detailed article took a while to get through! I'm not sure if there is a solution but there definitely isn't with Hamas still around. I have always thought of them as the modern version of the Kapos. They have no respect for the people they are ruling with an iron fist. I feel genuine sympathy for the ordinary people in Gaza and Israel and think they are only used as pawns to be slaughtered for leaders who don't want peace. But to be a total conspiracy nut!!! There is no mention or talk of the 4 freedom of information releases at the start of October that showed the state of Israel signed contracts with Pfizer before any regulatory authorities approved the clot shots ( Either way we both know the approval process was fraudulent and a criminal enterprise regardless of what the regulator's said)