Before most of you folks go about your daily Israel-bashing, heres some history for you (this took me years of research to compile): The Israeli-Palestinian conflict really only started during World War I because of British & French strategic interest in the Mediterranean Sea. This was a major trading route; the Mediterranean Sea gave whoever controlled it access to India. The British Empire sought to control the Mediterranean trading route, and for this reason, it was necessary to control the Suez channel. But the presence of the Ottoman navy based in The Lavant was a threat to interests of the British, so the British & the French decided to divide the Middle East into smaller entities/countries to make it impossible for the Ottoman Empire to control them all. During WW1, they implemented this idea. One of the Ottoman provinces was Ottoman Syria (which included the modern countries of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, & Israel), which was divided by the British & the French in what was called the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Basically these two European empires, with the assent of the Russian Tsarist govt drew a line from Iraq & Al-Hasa (Saudi Arabia) all the way to Mediterranean Sea in the west. The French controlled the north & the British controlled the south. To prevent the rise of any future regional power, the region was even further divided: the Maritime Christians received their own piece of land, the predominant maritime region of Syria was turned into a separate country & it was named after Mount Lebanon, the topographical characteristic of the region. Now prior to this, Lebanon had never existed as an independent state & its main reason for unity was religious demography. The British were allied with several Arab tribes & clans & they had made conflicting promises to various players. The most important British ally was the Hashmite people (remember them from Laurence of Arabia?) who were the rulers of the Hejaz region in the Arabian peninsula. But neither the British nor the French intended to keep their promises & instead played all of the smaller players against each other. And when the Sykes-Picot agreement was exposed by the Bolsheviks/the newly-established Soviet Union, it caused turmoil for the region & embarrassed the British. By 1900, the Saudi clan had launched a reconquest of the Arabian peninsula from Kuwait. By 1925, the Saudis gained control over the eastern & central parts of the peninsula & established the 3rd Saudi state (which would eventually become modern day Saudi Arabia). So the Hashemites lost the peninsula to the Saudis, but by then, the British had given the Hashemite clan two new kingdoms: one in Iraq & one another kingdom to the north of the Arabian peninsula (to the north of the eastern side of the Jordan river). The Hashemites were centered on the town of Amman & this region was then renamed Trans-Jordan (which basically meant the other side of the Jordan river). After the British empire withdrew in 1948, that land became Jordan & remained under the rule of the Hashemite clan & their people. But the native people of Jordan were still ethnically the same as the people on the other side of the river-- thats why even today, some politicians say that Jordan is actually Palestine because they are the same nation. As for western Palestine, European Jews had been moving into this region under Ottoman rule since the 1880s (which was known as the first Aliyah, but all throughout history Jews immigrated to Israel, such as Vilna Gaons group etc). They joined relatively small Jewish communities that had existed there for centuries. This movement was mostly secular & part of the Jewish national movement, also known as The Zionist movement. The pre-existing Jews were mostly smaller groups with religious motives (The Zionist movement was not religiously motivated & even the first Israeli PM was an atheist). The European Jewish settlers raised funds & purchased lands from landlords in Cairo, Damascus, & Beirut, who had gained ownership of the land under the Ottomans. The landlords sold the land out from under the feet of the local Arab population, thereby dispositioning them. From the Jewish point of view, this was a legitimate acquisition of land. From the perspective of the local Arabs, this was a direct assault on their livelihood as the majority of the Arabs were evicted from their lands. So it began first as a real estate transaction & winded up as partition, disposition, & conflict. After WW2, the region changed again, there was a massive immigration of Jewish people after the holocaust & they slowly became the majority in the land. During this time, nationalism had also reached the Arab world. The newly-established Syrian state & the nation saw Palestine, Lebanon, & Jordan as part of historic Syria. They saw the Sykes-Picot agreement as a violation of Syrian territorial integrity & opposed the existence of an independent Jewish state for the same reason they opposed Lebanese & Jordanian independence. Syria saw the population of these territories as Syrians & not independent nations. Nationalism also affected Jordan & after the division of British Palestine mandate in 1948, Jordan took control of the West Bank & East Jerusalem, but there were deep tensions with the Palestinians & the newly-arrived Hashemite people. So the rulers of Jordan, the Hashemite people, they saw Israel as a guarantee of Jordanian security against Palestinians. The Hashemite clan never wanted an independent Palestinian state because they could have granted it independence between 1948 & 1967. Instead, in 1970, the Hashemites fought a bloody war against the Palestinians forcing the PLO out of Jordan & into Lebanon (this became known as Black September). And it was followed by another war, The Lebanese Civil War, in which Syria actually invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO & Fatah. Because just like Jordan, Syria was also unwilling to accept the concept of Palestinian statehood. So, this is where the modern tensions between Lebanon, Syria, Hezbollah, Jordan, & the Palestinians come from. And aside all of this, Egypt also did not recognize the Palestinian nationhood (Morsis Muslim Brotherhood is a different story of course). In 1948, the Egyptian army drove into Gaza, because Egypt saw Gaza & the Negev desert as an extension of the Sinai Peninsula. So, the Egyptians viewed the region as an extension of Egypt, not as a distinct state. A few years later, Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt by overthrowing the monarchy of Egypt & Sudan & his ambitions went even further. He had a vision of a single united Arab republic (both secular & socialist). This concept became a reality in 1958 when Egypt & Syria joined hands to form a new federation, the United Arab Republic. This new union became a threat to Jordanian national interests & so the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan & Iraq also joined hands & established a confederation called The Arab Federation. But this alliance collapsed in the same year because the Hashemite rulers in Iraq had lost control of the land in a coup by Nassers military officers. But the Nassers idea of a United Arab Republic went even further than just Egypt & Syria. This idea also saw Palestine as part of this union & not as an independent state. And this is where Arafat had his role: basically he was allied with Nasser & promoted Arab nationalism. And the key point to Arab nationalism at the time was Palestine, but Arab nationalism did not necessarily imply an independent Palestinian republic. Furthermore it is important to understand that Nassers vision of a socialist union of Arab nations was hostile to the conservative monarchies in the Arabian peninsula. Nasser intended to overthrow these monarchs (as was done in Iraq), so this, in turn, triggered the Arab Cold War, which was Arab national republics, mostly quasi-socialist & Pan-Arabist in orientation (backed by the Soviet Union) consisting of mainly Egypt, Syria, & Iraq vs. the conservative Arab monarchies (backed by the US) consisting of mostly Saudi Arabia & Jordan (and initially, Iraq). In the end, Palestine is at the crossroads of the Arab world. It is critical to understand that Palestinian nationalism did not simply emerge just against Israel. Palestinian nationalism represents a challenge to the Arab world. Syria sees Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, & Israel as historic Syrian lands. And Syria claimed to have rights to those lands. Egypt follows the concept of Nasser for a united Arab republic & central to this plan is expanding its territories to Palestine & Israel. By following this concept, Egyptian & Syrian interests clash over Palestine, but then Saudi Arabia gets involved because they need to protect their interests against Nassers anti-monarchy concept. And then there is the Hashemite clan in Jordan, which is still very fearful that the last vestige of Hashemite monarchy could collapse under the weight of Palestinians. The direct enemy of Palestine is Israel, but even if Israel ceases to exist, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, & Saudi Arabia would immediately clash over Palestine.
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 19:53:25 +0000