Nationalism in the Middle East (PDF)

Case Study: The Middle East  The Middle East is an area that is often in the news as an area of conflict. The cause of much (but certainly not all) of the underlying tension is a struggle over the area called Palestine and who has the right to live there and control it. This con...

Case Study: The Middle East  The Middle East is an area that is often in the news as an area of conflict. The cause of much (but certainly not all) of the underlying tension is a struggle over the area called Palestine and who has the right to live there and control it. This conflict has its roots in the rise of two forces of nationalism, one Arab and the other Jewish, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The conflict was made worse during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as both superpowers supplied arms to the Middle Eastern countries. Their interest in the region was based partly on the fact that it is the major source of oil - which is a source of wealth and power - in the world. THE ORIGINS OF ARAB NATIONALISM AND JEWISH NATIONALISM (ZIONISM) ARAB NATIONALISM AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR At the end of the 19th century, most of the Middle East, including Palestine, was part of the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire. Most of the people there were Arab and there was a growing feeling amongst them that they should rule themselves. When Turkey became involved on Germany's side in the First World War (1914-1918), Arab nationalists saw this as an opportunity to break away and establish an independent Arab state. Britain was fighting against Germany and Turkey in the war, and wanted to weaken Turkey by encouraging an Arab revolt in its empire. In 1915-1916 a British government official in Egypt, McMahon, sent a series of letters to an Arab leader, Sharif Husayn of Mecca. In these letters, he stated that Britain was 'prepared to recognise and support the independence' of the Arabs. The letters were vague, though, about the precise borders of this future Arab state. With this promise of British support, the Arab Revolt against the Turks began in June 1916. With the help of British forces from Egypt, they defeated the Turks. Arab nationalists now expected Britain to honour its promise of support for Arab independence.  There is a long history of the persecution of Jews throughout Europe and in Russia. Many Jewish villages were destroyed, and Jews killed in Russia in the late 19 th century. These are victims of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903.  ZIONISM AND THE BALFOUR DECLARATION However, the British also made a promise of support to Jewish nationalists which conflicted with their promise to the Arabs. The Jews had lived in Palestine in Biblical times but had been expelled by the Romans nearly 2 000 years ago. After this, Jewish communities were dispersed throughout the Middle East, Europe and North Africa in a diaspora. In Europe, many countries passed laws which discriminated against the Jews. The situation was especially bad in Tsarist Russia, where Jews were often attacked and killed in violent pogroms. Many fled to Western Europe or the United States. However, even in Western Europe they did not feel safe from the effects of anti-Semitism. The rise of nationalism in Europe made matters worse because the Jews were seen as outsiders and foreigners everywhere, rather than as loyal citizens who were part of the “nation”.  Many Jews began to question whether they would ever be safe as long as they were an alien minority. One of these was an Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who organised the first 'Zionist' Congress in Switzerland in 1897. This was the start of the Zionist movement. Its aim was to create a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. A small but growing number of Jews, mainly from Russia, had already settled in Palestine, where they had bought land from Arab landlords and established farming settlements.  By the time the First World War started in 1914, Zionism was a small and struggling movement, and the Jewish community in Palestine formed less than 10% of the population. The Zionist movement wanted to get international support for their aim of establishing a Jewish state. British Zionists, led by Chaim Weizmann, succeeded in doing so in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration. This was a letter written by Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary. The letter confirmed the support of the British government for a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. This letter conflicted in spirit, if not in detail, with the promises already made in McMahon’s letters to the Arabs. The Zionists welcomed the Balfour Declaration as an indication of British support for their cause. Arab nationalists, however, questioned Britain's right to approve the establishment of a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, especially after Britain had agreed to support Arab independence. Source A: Theodor Herzl, the Austro-Hungarian Jewish writer who is seen as the founder of the Zionist Movement, saw nationalism as a solution to the 'Jewish question’. In his book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), published in 1896, he set out a detailed plan for the creation of a state for the Jewish nation. (Quoted in Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab world, Penguin Books, London, 2000, page 2.) If nationalism posed a problem to the Jews by identifying them as an alien and unwanted minority, it also suggested a solution: self- determination for the Jews in a state of their own in which they would constitute a majority. Zionism, however, wanted to create not merely a new Jewish state in Palestine, but also a new society, based on the universal values of freedom, democracy, and social justice.... Herzl concluded that assimilation and emancipation would not work, because the Jews were a nation. Their problem was not economic or social or religious but national. It followed rationally from these ideas that the only solution was for the Jews to leave the diaspora and acquire a territory over which they would exercise sovereignty and establish a state of their own.  THE BRITISH MANDATE OF Britain, however, had its ownPALESTINE ambitions in the Middle East. It wanted to maintain stability and control in this key region, partly because of the Suez Canal and partly because oil had recently been discovered there. In May 1916, Britain and France made a secret agreement to divide the Ottoman Empire between them after the war. This agreement was made before the Arab Revolt had even started, and over a year before the Balfour Declaration was made. In terms of the agreement Britain would control Palestine. The origins of later conflict over Palestine lie in these three contradictory agreements made by Britain during the First World War. After the war, the Arab lands in the Ottoman Empire became mandates of Britain and France: France took Syria and Lebanon, while Britain took Iraq, Transjordan (later called Jordan) and Palestine. Only Saudi Arabia became an independent Arab state. The hopes of Arab nationalists for independence and unity had not been realised. A map showing the British and French mandates in the Middle East.  THE JEWISH AGENCY AND THE ARAB UPRISING In 1920, when Palestine became a British mandate, the population was about 700 000, only 60 000 of whom were Jewish. The aim of the Zionist Organisation was to create a Jewish majority in Palestine by increasing the number of immigrants. They set up a Jewish Agency to administer Jewish affairs in Palestine. At first immigration was slow, but after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the numbers increased dramatically as Jews tried to escape from the Nazi race policies. As more immigrants arrived in Palestine, tensions increased and Arab opposition to Jewish immigration grew. In 1936, the Arabs organised a general strike, calling on Britain to limit immigration. This was followed by a three-year Arab uprising which was harshly suppressed by the British.  The British found it more and more difficult to keep control in Palestine. They were unable to satisfy the demands of both the Jews and the Arabs. By 1939, as another world war against Germany seemed likely, Britain thought that it was important to win the support of the Arabs. They wanted to make sure that the Suez Canal and the oil supplies in the region did not fall into the hands of their enemies. So, in 1939 Britain announced that there would be strict limits on Jewish immigration. The Zionists were angry about this change in policy, and some of them wanted to fight to force Britain to withdraw and then to seize power and establish a Jewish state. However, they postponed these plans when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Source B: A table showing the relative size of the Jewish population in Palestine during the period of the British mandate Date Total Jewish % of Jews Populatio populatio n n 1918 700 000 60 000 9% 1931 1 036 000 175 000 18% 1939 1 500 000 429 605 28% Source C: This Zionist poster is called 'A Hand for Immigrants' and it was produced in 1935 by the Committee of Women Workers of the General Union of Hebrew Workers (Histadrut). Activity 1: Analyse the complex situation page 143 1. Why did the Arab Revolt against Turkey start and what was Britain's involvement? 2. a) Use the text and Source A to explain the reasons for the formation of the Zionist movement and what they hoped to create. b) Explain why Herzl claims that an independent state is what Jews across the world need. (Refer to the second paragraph of Source A). 3. What was the Balfour Declaration and how was it significant? 4. List the three contradictory agreements made by Britain during the First World War in relation to Palestine. 5. Explain the connections between the mandate, the Jewish Agency and the Arab uprising between 1936 and 1939. 6. Use Sources B and C to explain why the Arabs asked Britain to limit Jewish immigration. 7. How did the British change their immigration policy in 1939 and why?  THE ORIGINS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL: 1945 - 1948 At the end of the Second World War in 1945, there were thousands of Jewish refugees in Europe who wanted to move to Palestine. However, the British government continued to apply its policy of strict limits to immigration. Many people around the world felt sympathy for the Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust, and they criticised this policy, especially when the British prevented ships carrying refugees from landing in Palestine. The Zionists increased their efforts to establish a Jewish state by smuggling immigrants into Palestine. They also launched a propaganda campaign in the United States to get support for the Zionist cause. Extremist Zionist groups, such as the Irgun and the Lehi (Stern Gang), used terror tactics to force the British to give up the mandate. They attacked British military bases, police stations, railway lines and bridges. The most daring attack came when Irgun commandos blew up the King David Hotel, which was the British military headquarters in Jerusalem. At the same time, the Arab League, an organisation of independent Arab states formed in 1945, urged Britain not to change its policy. Jewish refugees were not allowed to disembark from the ships which had brought them to Palestine.  THE PARTITION PLAN As the violence in Palestine increased, the British government decided to hand over the issue of Palestine to the newly formed United Nations (UN). The UN established a committee, UNSCOP (UN Special Committee on Palestine), to investigate the issue. It recommended the partition of Palestine into two separate states - one Arab and one Jewish. The Zionists accepted the plan even though there were aspects of it that they did not like. The Arabs rejected the partition plan outright, but there was nothing they could do to prevent it from happening. In November 1947, the UN formally accepted the partition plan. Britain announced that it would withdraw from Palestine in May 1948. Source D: This map shows the areas set aside for the Arab and Jewish states in Palestine in the UN Partition Plan of 1947. Jerusalem, which had sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, was to be an international zone administered by the UN. Source E: The historian, Mark Tessler, explains why the Arab League rejected the partition plan. From Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli -Palestinian Conflict, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana,1994, page 259.) They stuck with their long-held position that Palestine was an integral part of the Arab world and that from the beginning its indigenous inhabitants had opposed the creation in their country of a Jewish national home. They also insisted that the United Nations, a body created and controlled by the United States and Europe, had no right to grant the Zionists any portion of their territory. In what was to become a familiar Arab charge, they insisted that the Western world was seeking to salve its conscience for the atrocities of the war and was paying its own debt to the Jewish people with someone else's land.  PLAN D In the last few months of the mandate there was civil war in Palestine, as the Jews tried to strengthen their position before the mandate ended. In April 1948 they launched Plan D (short for Dalet, the Hebrew word for the letter D). Jewish forces occupied over 200 Arab villages, especially in the area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and took over the coastal towns of Jaffa and Haifa and the Arab areas of West Jerusalem. In the most controversial incident of the civil war, over 250 civilians in the Arab village of Deir Yassin were killed by Irgun commandos. On 14 May 1948, the final British forces withdrew and the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of the state of Israel. On the following day the armies of five Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq) invaded and the first Arab-Israeli War began. The war dragged on until 1949,when Israel signed separate armistice agreements with each Arab state. By then Israel had defeated the Arab armies and had occupied 78%of Palestine, instead of the 56% allocated as the Jewish state in the UN partition plan. There was no Palestinian state; those areas were under Israeli, Jordanian or Egyptian control. By the end of the war 760 000 Arabs had fled from Palestine to neighbouring countries as refugees, where they were placed in camps run by the United Nations. Most of them ended up in Gaza and the West Bank, under Egyptian or Jordanian control respectively.  Source F: The borders of Israel after the 1948War. Many of the areas that were to be the Arab state in the UN partition plan had become part of Israel. The Gaza strip was under Egyptian military control, and the area west of the Jordan River (the West Bank) became part of Jordan. The city of Jerusalem was divided between lsrael and Jordan. No state was allocated as Palestine or for the Arabs.  THE PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI INTERPRETATIONS OF THE 1948 WAR The 1948 War is called the War of Independence by the Israelis. The Palestinian Arabs call it al-Nakba, which is an Arabic word meaning disaster, or catastrophe. These two names for the war give some idea of the very different ways that it has been interpreted. The main issues on which historians have different views are the reasons for Israel's victory in the war, the reasons why so many Palestinian refugees fled, and who is to blame for the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Arab states after the war. Zionist historians see the war as a heroic victory for Israel over huge odds. Some compare it to the biblical story of David's victory over Goliath.  They believe that the Israelis won because they were better trained and led, and because they were more determined as they were fighting for survival. They blame the flight of Palestinian refugees on Arab propaganda: they claim that the refugees were encouraged to flee by Arab leaders who promised that they would return once Israel had been destroyed. They blame the Palestinians for rejecting the UN partition plan. They claim that the refusal of the Arab states to recognise Israel, and their aggressive attitude towards Israel, are the cause of the ongoing conflict. However, these views are challenged by other historians who say that Israel won the war because they had a larger force of experienced soldiers than the Arabs did; that there was rivalry and distrust between Arab leaders and therefore they did not work as a united force; and that the Palestinians themselves were divided and not well organised. Palestinian historians have always claimed that the refugees were forced to leave by the actions of the Israeli army who used acts of terror, such as the massacre at Deir Yassin. They claim that forcing the Palestinians to leave had always been part of the Zionist plan in Palestine. They accuse them of a policy of ethnic cleansing.  For 40 years the Zionist view of the Israeli victory in the 1948 War was accepted by most Israeli historians. However, in 1988, the year of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of Israel, a number of Israeli historians published books which questioned some of these views and openly disagreed with them. They came to be called the revisionist, or new, Israeli historians. The views of the revisionists were fiercely challenged in turn by pro- Zionist historians. As a result, there has been a lively debate among Israeli historians. The traditional Israeli view on why there were ongoing tensions after the 1948 War blamed the Arab states for their stubborn refusal to negotiate. On the other hand, revisionist historians say that Israel was responsible because they were not willing to give up some of the land they had conquered, or to allow the refugees to return. Thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes during the 1948 War. They became permanent refugees. Their suffering shows the human cost of nationalist policies.  DIFFERENT HISTORIANS' INTERPRETATIONS OF THE 1948 WAR There is no convincing evidence of a Zionist plot to ethnically cleanse, or A ZIONIST INTERPRETATION transfer, the Palestinians from their OF THE 1948 WAR homeland, as has been argued by some. The by now notorious 'Plan Dalet', shows Source G: A Zionist nothing of the kind. 'The objective of this explanation for the fleeing of plan', it read, 'is to gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state (according to the Palestinians by Norman the partition frontiers) and defend its Rose in 'A Senseless Squalid borders' - against an impending all-Arab War’, Voices from Palestine attack. In June 1946, an Arab conference, held in Syria, called for the mobilisation 1945-1948, The Bodley of all Arab resources, money, arms and Head,London,2009,pages 212- volunteers, the use of force - an army of 100 000 was mentioned - even anti- 213.At the end he mentions Western sanctions, all to prevent a David Ben Gurion who became Zionist occupation of Palestine. The the first Prime Minister of Israel Jewish Agency, and Ben Gurion in particular, took these threats extremely in 1948. seriously. 'Plan Dalet' was intended to counter an inevitable Arab assault on the Jewish state.  The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely a by-product of Arab and Jewish A REVISIONIST HISTORIAN'S fears and of the drawn out, bitter INTERPRETATION OF THE fighting that characterised the 1948 WAR first Arab-Israeli war. In smaller part, it was the deliberate Source H: In the 1980s Israeli creation of Jewish and Arab government papers were military commanders and declassified (this was allowed politicians... What happened in used this new primary evidence Palestine/ Israel over 1947-1949 to rethink the reasons for the was so complex and varied, the flight of the Palestinian The situation radically changing from Birth of the Palestinian Refugee date to date and place to place, Problem, 1947 - 1949, that a single-cause explanation of Cambridge University Press, the exodus from most sites is Palestinians. unlikely.  [On] 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders as well as young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were sent to the units on the ground to prepare for Source I: The revisionist the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the historian, llan Pappe, country.... Once the decision was taken, it took six months to maintains that Israel is fully complete the mission. When it was responsible for a pre- over, more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800 000 planned policy of expulsion people, had been uprooted, 531 and dispossession. Even the villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods title of his book reflects this. emptied of their inhabitants. The plan decided upon on 10 March It is called The Ethnic 1948, and above all its systematic Cleansing of Palestine, implementation in the following months, was a clear-cut case of an Oneworld, Oxford, ethnic-cleansing operation, regarded 2006,Preface pages xii-xiii. under international law today as a crime against humanity. Activity 2: Compare interpretations of the flight of the Palestinians and the ongoing tension after the 1948 War page 148 1. After 1945, what actions did the Zionists use to force Britain to give up its mandate in Palestine? 2. What was the UN partition plan and what were the responses to it? 3. What role did nationalism play in the first Arab-Israeli War (1948)? 4. Create a table like this one and use the information given in the text to fill it in: Group of Reasons for Reasons why Explanation of who historians Israeli victory refugees fled was to blame for the conflict Zionist Other historians 5. Study Source E and explain the three reasons for the Arab League's rejection of the partition plan. 6. Compare the maps of Sources D and F. Use them to explain why the Israelis call this the War of Independence and the Palestinian Arabs call it al-Nakba (meaning 'disaster' or 'catastrophe’). 7. Read the text on Plan D and Source G and then answer these questions. a) What argument does Norman Rose give when explaining the motivation behind Plan D? b) Quote one sentence that summarises his main argument. c) Do you think his interpretation is reasonable? Explain your view. 8. Both Sources H and I are written by revisionist historians; however, they do not agree with each other about the extent of Israel's responsibility for the flight of the Palestinians. Explain the different interpretations they give. 9. Source G, H and I are all written by Israeli historians. How do they show that not all Israeli historians interpret events in the same way?  ARAB NATIONALISM IN JORDAN, EGYPT AND SYRIA Although Arab nationalists had been disappointed when they did not get the independence and unity that they had hoped for after the First World War, support for Arab nationalism did not end. In 1945, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and North Yemen formed the Arab League. Its aim was to promote closer relations between the Arab states, but it did not take any further steps to establish closer union between them. The defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the 1948 War helped to promote support for Arab nationalism. The Arab states wanted revenge for their defeat, and they were also united by their support for the Palestinian cause.  In 1952, there was a revolution in Egypt and Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power. Under him, Arab nationalism became a powerful political force during the 1950s and 1960s. Nasser became the symbol of Arab nationalism. In many countries Arab nationalism and 'Nasserism' were regarded as the same thing. Nasser used Egyptian radio to spread the message of Arab nationalism. Other Arab leaders looked to Nasser to create a new pan-Arab movement which would achieve unity. These feelings were especially strong in Syria where there was popular support for a union with Egypt. In 1958 Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic (UAR). Arab nationalists welcomed it as the first concrete step towards pan- Arab unity.  However, conservative Arab leaders in countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia regarded Nasser as a radical and did not like his claim to be leader of the Arab world. No other countries joined the UAR and it lasted for only three years. Many Syrians resented the fact that the government and army of the UAR were dominated by Egyptians, and so in 1961, Syria withdrew. The collapse of the UAR was a blow to the hopes of Arab nationalists. Egypt continued to call itself the United Arab Republic, but the experiment of a pan-Arab state dominated by Egypt had failed. Another blow to Arab nationalism and unity was the defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan by Israel in a the 1967 War. Their defeat showed the weakness of the Arab armies compared to Israel, as well as the internal conflicts between their leaders. After the Arab defeat in 1967 and the death of Nasser in 1970, there was a move away from Arab nationalism. Many disillusioned young people in Egypt and throughout the Arab world began to turn to a politicised form of Islam to achieve political and economic goals. Source J: From a speech by Nasser on 26 July 1957, in which he promotes Arab nationalism. Our policy is based on Arab nationalism because Arab nationalism is a weapon for every Arab state. Arab nationalism is a weapon employed against aggression. It is necessary for the aggressor to know that, if he aggresses against any Arab country, he will endanger his interests. This is the way that we must advance. Source K: A statement made by Nasser at a press conference in Cairo, 28 May 1967. We accept no kind of co-existence with Israel. The rights of Palestinians should be given back to them. What happened in 1948 was an aggression against the people of Palestine. Israel expelled the Palestinians from their country and stole their property. Nevertheless, we see that the USA and some major powers like Britain say they are protecting Israel. We, the Arabs, are an ancient people with an ancient civilisation going back 7 000 years. We can wait and we do not forget easily. When the crusaders occupied our country we were under their behind as historical ruins. Therefore, no Arab will ever give up the rights of the Palestinians.  THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE: THE CONFLICT OF NATIONALIST ASPIRATIONS The creation of the state of Israel and the war of 1948 left the area of Palestine divided and weakened. Palestine became a highly contested area in which the nationalist hopes of the new state of Israel conflicted with growing Palestinian nationalism. THE PALESTINIANS After the 1948 War, the Palestinians were scattered. Only 160 000 remained in Israel, many of them in villages close to the borders. These villages were ruled by the Israeli army for the next 18 years, and anyone suspected of supporting Palestinian nationalism was imprisoned or expelled. About 760 000 Palestinians fled from their homes and villages during the war. Most of them went to the West Bank or Gaza, and others to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.  They ended up living in refugee camps run by the UN in all these countries. The camps were small and overcrowded and lacked basic infrastructure such as roads, water, electricity, and proper housing. Most countries did not welcome the refugees because of the strain that they put on resources, and strict controls were placed on them. Most of them had no other option but to remain in the camps. There are conflicting views on why the refugees were not assimilated. The Israeli view is that the Arab governments did this on purpose because they wanted to use the refugees' anger and bitterness in their conflict with Israel. Another view is that the Arab countries themselves had economic problems and could not cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees. Their economies were underdeveloped and could not provide enough jobs for their own people. The Palestinians themselves did not want to be assimilated: they saw themselves as victims of injustice and they wanted to return to their own villages and farms in Palestine.  Their hopes that Arab unity would help the Palestinian cause came to nothing when the UAR collapsed. Many of the refugees began to believe that the only way they could return to Palestine was to fight for it themselves. They formed organisations such as Fatah, which launched guerrilla raids into Israel from Gaza and Jordan. They saw themselves as a national liberation movement that was fighting to regain its homeland. The Israelis responded by sending military units on reprisal raids. The guerrilla attacks and the military response had the same effects on both sides of the border, civilians became the targets and victims of violence. In 1964 various Palestinian groups formed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Its leader was Yasser Arafat. Although they shared the same aim of wanting to create a Palestinian homeland, they disagreed on how this should be achieved. Some believed in diplomatic means and working through the UN; others believed that only an armed struggle would work. This map shows the movement of Palestinian Arab refugees in 1948. It also gives the United Nations estimates of the numbers of refugees reaching new areas. This photograph of a Palestinian refugee camp, set up after the 1948 War. By 2009 there were 4,8 million Palestinian refugees, and the UN was still running 50 camps for them. Source L: Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, pages 51-53. The failure to achieve peace with the Arab world in 1949 left the refugees in a limbo between an Israel which did not want to readmit them and Arab states which did not wish to absorb them.... The stalemate left the refugees in an unenviable, dangerous situation. Neither Israel nor the Arab states recognised the Palestinians as a national entity.... The refugees were marooned in a political no-man's land defined by the seemingly insurmountable hostility between Israel and the Arab states.... In this political stand-off where neither return nor integration was offered, the Palestinians began to define themselves as a nation and not merely as part of a wider Arab world. Source M: From D. Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, Faber & Faber, London, 1984,pages 266. He explains that the Palestinian refugees became obsessed with the idea of returning to their former homeland. There quickly developed a whole mystique of The Return. The inmates of the camps particularly, thought and spoke of nothing else. They made it an obsession. Just how they would return was not at all clear in their minds. But of one thing they were sure; one thing was self-evident, not worthy of discussion; this was that they would recover by force what had been taken by force. The Return dominated everything, but violence, a just and necessary violence, was an inevitable sub-theme. The Return shaped camp rituals and regalia; children were steeped in it from birth. Source N: This Palestinian Oath was chanted daily in the 1970s by Palestinian refugee children. (It is quoted in Elizabeth Greenup, Conflict in the Middle East: The Arabs and Israel, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 2004, page 82.) Palestine is our country, Our aim is to return Death does not frighten us, Palestine is ours, We shall never forget her. Another homeland we shall never accept! Our Palestine, witness, O God and History, We promise to shed our blood for you! Source O: Palestinian women were included in guerilla fighting against Israel.  THE JEWISH STATE When Israel was established in 1948, only 6% of the Jews in the world lived there. The Israeli government wanted to strengthen the Jewish state by encouraging Jews from all over the world to immigrate. The Law of Return (1950) recognised the right of any Jew to settle in Israel. There was a huge flow of immigrants and within three years the Jewish population had more than doubled. Many of them were settled in the houses, villages and towns deserted by the Palestinians. The first immigrants to arrive were survivors of the Holocaust, followed by large numbers from Eastern European countries. In contrast to this, only 2% of the Jews from other parts of the world - the United States, Western Europe, Latin America, Australia and South Africa - went to Israel. The largest number of immigrants came from the Arab countries where Jewish communities had lived peacefully for centuries. But after the events of 1948 there were attacks and anti-Jewish riots in some of them.  More than half of the number of immigrants who reached Israel between 1948 and 1952 came from the Arab countries, with the largest number (250 000) coming from Morocco. The immigrants spoke different languages and came from widely different social and economic backgrounds. But they shared the same religion, and Hebrew was adopted as the main official language. Many new immigrants went to live on co-operative farms, kibbutzim, where they shared the work and the property. Another way of trying to create national unity was getting all citizens, women as well as men, to do national service in the army. Israel welcomed Jews from all over the world. This photograph shows a Jewish woman from Ethiopia doing her national military service. Activity 3: Analyse competing nationalisms page 153 1. Which of these two events was more significant in promoting Arab nationalism: the formation of the Arab League, or the Arab defeat in the 1948 War? Explain your view. 2. How does Nasser promote Arab nationalism in Sources J and K? 3. Explain whether all Arabs supported Nasser's call for Arab nationalism and the creation of a pan-Arab Movement. 4. Read the text and give three different views on why the Palestinian refugees were not assimilated into the Arab countries in which they lived. 5. Compare Sources L and M and explain why the issue of the Palestinian return was so contentious and difficult to solve. 6. How do Sources N and O corroborate what is said in Source M? 7. With so many immigrants with diverse backgrounds coming into Israel, what did the Israeli government do to develop a sense of unity and nationalism?  THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT AFTER 1948 THE OCCUPATION OF THE WEST After 1948, there were three more wars between Israel and the Arab states. In 1956 (in what was called the Suez Crisis and the Sinai War), Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, after Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. They were forced to stop their attacks because of strong opposition from the UN, the USA, and the Soviet Union. After this, the UN sent a peacekeeping force to protect the border between Israel and Egypt. By 1967, tensions in the region had increased. The Israelis believed that the Arab states were planning to invade, so they attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In this war,(sometimes referred to as the 'Six Day War'), Israel defeated them and occupied vast areas of Arab territory including the region known as the 'West Bank’. This made the situation of the Palestinian refugees very much worse. Another 970 000 Palestinians were now under Israeli military control in the 'occupied territories’. The UN passed Resolution 242which called on Israel to withdraw from these territories, but Israel refused. Instead, they started to build Jewish settlements there. This map shows the Middle East region, the major oil producing areas and the important position of the Suez Canal. To get from Asia to Europe, ships had to use the canal, otherwise they had to sail all the way around Africa. When Egypt nationalised the canal, the British-and French- owned company that previously had control over it, lost a lot of revenue.  During the 1967 War, Israel occupied vast areas of Arab territory, including the Gaza Strip and Sinai (from Egypt), the West Bank (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). This meant that the whole of the area that had been Palestine was now part of Israel. Source P: Casualty figures of the Arab states in comparison to those of the Israelis in the 1967 War. (These statistics are quoted from Peter Mantin, Questions of Evidence: The Twentieth Century World, Hutchinson Education, London, 1988, page 97.) ISREALI Egyptian Front Jordanian Syrian Front TOTAL Front Killed 275 299 115 689 Wounded 800 1 457 306 2 563 ARAB (estimates) Killed 10 000 1 000 2 500 13 500 Wounded 20 000 2 000 5 000 27 000 Source Q: A Zapiro cartoon published in South Africa in the Mail and Guardian on 7 June 2007, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the 1967 War.  RESPONSES OF ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS TO THE 1967 WAR The Arab states were determined to hit back at Israel after their defeat in the 1967 War. They re-built their arms supplies, with help from the Soviet Union. They planned a surprise attack on Israel on the Jewish religious festival of Yom Kippur in 1973. Although the Arab armies had some initial success, Israel soon struck back. The war ended when both sides accepted the demands of the UN, the USA and the Soviet Union for a ceasefire. During the war, the Arab states reduced the supply of oil to Western countries, causing a sharp rise in oil prices and a serious economic crisis. This forced the West to recognise how much it depended on good relations with the Arab countries. After the 1973 War, Western countries put more pressure on Israel to resolve the Palestinian issue. They also put pressure on the Arab countries to negotiate with Israel.  The USA sent officials to the Middle East to persuade both sides to hold peace talks. Anwar Sadat, who had succeeded Nasser as leader of Egypt, was prepared to negotiate. In 1977, he became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, and the Israeli leader, Menachem Begin, visited Egypt in return. In 1978 the two leaders held peace talks, with the American President, Jimmy Carter, acting as mediator. They agreed that Israel would return Sinai to Egypt, although it would keep control of Gaza and the West Bank. In return, Egypt would recognise Israel. A peace agreement was eventually signed on March 1979, at Camp David in the USA. The Camp David agreement was the first between Israel and an Arab country. However, it was criticised by other Arab countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Libya. The Palestinians believed that they had been let down by their strongest ally. Many people throughout the Arab world regarded Sadat as a traitor for signing the agreement with Israel. Two years later he was assassinated by extremists in the Egyptian army. The 1973 War was the last full-scale war between Israel and the Arab states, but conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continued.  THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES AND THE INTIFADAS After the 1967 War, the Palestinians were more determined than ever to hit back at Israel. From Jordan, where the refugees now made up more than half of the population, Palestinian guerrillas launched raids into Israel and the Israeli army responded with counter-attacks into Jordan. There were increasing tensions in Jordan and clashes between Palestinian commandos and the Jordanian army. In September 1970, a radical group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked three large passenger planes and flew them to Jordan where they blew them up, after releasing the passengers. The government of Jordan felt that it was losing control and decided to expel the PLO. The Jordanian army attacked the guerrilla bases and forced them to flee, mainly to Lebanon. From there an extremist group, calling itself 'Black September' after the civil war in Jordan, continued a campaign of violence.  The best-known incident was the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. From Lebanon, PLO guerrillas continued to launch raids into Israel. The presence of the PLO in Lebanon increased tensions between the Christian and Muslim communities there and a civil war broke out in 1975. Israel secretly supported the Christians and in 1982, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. Their aim was to destroy the PLO camps, but they used such heavy- handed tactics that thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were killed. As the cities and countryside of Lebanon were destroyed, many people around the world (and in Israel itself) criticised the actions of the Israeli army. Eventually a ceasefire was arranged, and international forces took the PLO survivors to other countries. The headquarters of the PLO moved to Tunisia. Source R: Events in the Middle East were of international interest as is shown in this cartoon which was published in 1970 in Edmonton, Canada. It comments on the violence in Jordan. (In cartoons, peace is often shown in the form of a dove and an olive branch. Here the dove of peace sits on a bomb that is about to explode.)  THE INTIFADAS Meanwhile the Palestinians in the occupied territories had become increasingly bitter as more Jewish settlements were established. They were also angry about the military occupation by the Israeli army. In 1987 protestors in the West Bank and Gaza started an uprising called the Intifada ('uprising' in Arabic). They organised strikes and boycotts and protested by throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and tanks. To stop the protests, Israel used very harsh tactics, including mass arrests, beatings, imprisonment without trial, and shooting to injure or kill protestors. As a result of the Intifada, both sides realised that it would be in their interests to negotiate a solution. The result was a series of secret meetings between Israelis and PLO leaders which led to an agreement called the Oslo Accords in August 1993. It seemed as if a settlement had at last been reached. The PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, were jointly awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.  Over the next few years, Israel withdrew its forces from parts of Gaza and from many cities and towns on the West Bank. In 1994 Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. But not all Israelis agreed with the peace negotiations, and in November 1995 an extremist assassinated Rabin. In 1996 elections were held for a Palestinian Authority, which gave the Palestinians the right to limited self-government, and Yasser Arafat was elected to lead it by a large majority. However, Israel still possessed 60%of the West Bank and had control over land, security and water supplies. Many of the difficult issues that had been identified in the Oslo Accords, such as Jewish settlements, security and the rights of Palestinian refugees, were not resolved. Further talks at Camp David failed to resolve these issues.  The frustration and anger of the Palestinians led to a new Intifada in September 2000. Both sides committed terrible acts of violence. The Israeli army used fighter jets, helicopter gunships and tanks against civilians in an effort to crush the protests. Extremist groups among the Palestinians murdered Israeli civilians in suicide bombing attacks. The ongoing cycle of violence was difficult to resolve. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East show how nationalism is used by both the Israelis and the Palestinians to justify their actions and oppose each other. Each side believes that it has a historical and moral right to the region as part of either the Israeli nation or the Palestinian nation, a right that it will not give up. A resolution to this is therefore extremely difficult. Activity 4: Analyse the ongoing conflict in the region page 157 1. There were wars between Israel and her neighbouring Arab states in 1956,1967 and 1973. What were the outcomes of each? 2. Using the map of the 1967 War and Source P, explain why Zionist historians would present this victory as David triumphing over the giant Goliath. 3. How does Source Q satirise the Zionist interpretation of the 1967 victory? 4. Analyse Source R and explain the comment the cartoonist is making. 5. Explain the significance of the following: a) The Camp David agreement b) The actions of the PFLP c)The Oslo Accords d) The Intifada of 2000. 6. Why was Israel criticised so widely in relation to its actions in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank? 7. To help you to clarify the order of events in this unit, make a chronological list of all the events in this unit which are given with dates.