The Arab-Israeli Conflict Secondary Source Review

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Overview
This is an analysis, much like the preceding one regarding the Islamic Revolution of 1979, that will examine four authors’ works in order to contextualize the events, politics and discourses that contribute to Palestinian or Jewish immigrants. Methodologically, this will be achieved by, analyzing the work of the “New Historians” of Israel and using their work to detail the aforementioned goals. Each author, is considered an academic forefather to the “New History” of Israel and therefore are more than qualified sources of information.


One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
Author: Tom Segev

Segev dissects the British Mandate of Palestine so thoroughly that the documentation and citation sometime become overwhelming. His care and attention to detail provide a feeling of complete understanding of a nearly incomprehensible topic. The piece is broken into three parts that serve as a chronological barrier as well as a thematic one. The establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine in 1917, as a result of WWI created the possibility for the widening of a thousand year old rivalry between Arabs and Jews. Segev traces a ten-year line from the mandate in 1917 to 1927 where the rise of violence within occupied Palestine become so consistent that the next section of the book is simply labeled “Terror.” The forced relocation of and economic apartheid that was enforced on Palestinians to the benefit of Zionist immigrants and the Jewish economy (Segev, 286-8). Escalated conflagrations eventually led to an all out war over Jerusalem that began in 1928 over the use of a screen to shield male and female parishioners of the Western Wall (Segev, 298). Poor British leadership, the eventual threat of Hitler and WII, and the poor economic and strategic position of Palestine increased the potential for conflict that raged after the Yom Kippur incident and eventually spilled over into a massacre in Hebron in 1929 (Segev, 314). Political calculations within both Britain and the United States explicitly warned of antagonizing “the extremely important Jewish vote,” which subsequently led to the publishing of the White Paper that detailed British intent to support the establishment of a Jewish state of Israel (Segev, 338). This type of diplomatic maneuvering was lost on most Arab leaders who saw it as a clear signal of Western intent to promote Zionism at the expense of Islam; in many cases this concept was radicalized to the point of Jewish world domination conspiracies, much like those of Hitler.
The political strength of the Zionist Jewish Agency (JA) allowed it to outmaneuver its Arab counterparts and conduct sit-down meetings with high-level Western diplomats (Segev, 345-6). This gave the Zionists added confidence in their local dealings with Palestinian Arabs who still held the majority of the population during this time. This gave rise to both Arab and Jewish nationalist movements that were militantly demanding their own states respectively. These groups conducted open terrorist campaigns against the British, the United States and each other (Segev, 350). At this point in the 1930’s it seemed that “all crime [in Israel] took on a nationalist tinge,” that was turning lines in the sand into concrete pillboxes (Segev, 351). The British wished to undercut tensions by providing jobs for both Arabs and Jews in hopes that economic prosperity who lessen tensions as it had done for the Empire in India (Segev, 356). By pursuing these appeasing policies Britain was sending mixed messages when it would commit the slaughter of an entire Jewish or Arab village in retaliation to a terrorist attack. This would eventually lead to never ending waves of violence that would force peace loving Jews, Arabs and others into forced displacement.
As the 1930’s gave way to the 1940’s, pro-Zionist policies were beginning to show their effect to the population of Palestine and the local Arabs were not happy. According to Segev in the 1930’s the Jews were only 17 percent of the population of Palestine and by the mid 1940’s 30 percent of the country was Jewish, nearly 500,000 (Segevn, 378). As Arabs grew increasingly upset with the British policies and Zionist appropriation of their homeland, Zionists were gaining control of police forces and governmental structures (Segev, 381). The Arabs felt that they were being forcibly denied the rights to governance, but were also being forced to assist in the creation of a Jewish state. This in turn popularized Arab nationalist movements that were met by Zionist terrorist organizations, some of which were sponsored by Jewish governing agencies, such as the Haganah (Segev, 385). Increasing Zionist terrorist attacks and racist rhetoric on both sides deteriorated the political scene until the Zionist leadership determined that war with the Arabs was inevitable (Segev, 393). While this decision could be seen as potentially moot in an area where so much violence was occurring almost daily, but this was a conscious decision by Jewish leadership to use the advance of WWII to eliminate the Arab threat in their lands, that had already been guaranteed to them by the British. As these tensions flared, the British were forced into WWII and subsequently began to suppress dissent within the country violently (Segev, 425). Fearing the creation of a new Ireland in Palestine the British began to quickly determine an exit strategy that in no part took into consideration the stability of the region or political equality of Jews and Arabs.
WWII proved to be beneficial to the establishment of a Jewish homeland because Zionist leadership used the preoccupation of the British to politically ensure the creation of Israel. More radical elements of Zionist organizations declared war on the British in 1944 (Segev, 456). As the Zionist political establishment grew stronger during the war the Arab leadership was marginalized by it. Without a solid central leadership authority anyway Palestinian Arab’s were politically dead once Khalil al-Sakakini turned to the Nazi’s for help during the war. Thus as the war ended, leaving Britain economically insolvent, and the United States victorious the desire of the once great empire to control Palestine was fading more quickly than Britain’s economy. In order to speed up the exit of the British Jewish terrorists increased their attacks, which provoked a tired, poor British army to carry out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Bible (Segev, 476). “Black Sabbath” as the day was called, further reduced British intentions of mandating a peaceable transition of power, which was potentially impossible anyway as the new Hegemonic power, the United States had began to flex its political muscles in the region. The recent holocaust and its subsequent international exposure forced the hand of many humanitarian-minded policy makers to establish a Jewish state (Segev, 491). This may very well have been false seeing as many of the Jews displaced by the Holocaust were European and did not wish to live in Israel. The British gave control of Palestine to the United Nations who voted for partition and a two-state solution in 1947 (Segev, 496). A lack of Arab political subtlety and the weakness of the United Nations prevented the Arabs from obtaining concrete guarantees of a homeland. Many historians argue that the inability for Palestinian Arabs to mobilize was due to their lack of a nationalist spirit that was destroyed as many Arabs fled the terrorist campaigns of Zionists and WWII (Segev, 508). In May 1948 the British finally left Palestine and the much more politically, economically and militarily capable state of Israel invaded Arab territories mandated by the United Nations in order to reclaim Jerusalem (Segev, 518).
The 1948 war to reclaim Jerusalem displaced large portions of the Palestinian population who either fled or were forced into “Iron Cage” open-air prisons that Israel uses to control citizens of the occupied West Bank and Gaza.



The Iron Cage
Author: Rashid Khalidi

While the largest portion of information regarding the British Mandate period and the establishment of Israel is provided above, Khalidi provides a unique Arab perspective to the historiography of the conflict. Primarily his piece provides insight into the 1948-9 dispossession of Palestinians from their homes (Khalidi, XIII). Khalidi is important because rather than blaming the British or Israel for the failure of Palestine to achieve a homeland, he blames the lack of Palestinian leadership that is the result of multiple causes and historical events. He recognizes the intrinsic weakness of Palestine, compared to Israel or even the United States and uses this t contextualize his argument about weak central Palestinian leadership. He claims to not be a “revisionist” historian in the vein of other New Historians because he believes that there is no corpus of Palestinian history and therefore is not able to be “revised,” (Khalidi, XXXVIII). His historiographical output follows in the vein of Edward Said and the post-colonialist discourse that denies the validity of sources of history that are tinged by Imperialist or bigoted ideology. The issue of Palestinian immigration is not directly addressed in those terms. It is defined as the situation of being “stateless” while being subsequently detained within your own land by an allegedly foreign government (Khalidi, 189). Inevitably the failure of the Palestinian leadership to effectively capitalize on opportunities during the British Mandate have allowed for the potential of millions of refugees and “prisoners” as Khalidi refers to Palestinians in Israel. While not an incredibly thorough dissection of this piece was necessary, it does provide a unique context into the Palestinian viewpoint of British and Israeli occupation. When used in parallel with primary documents this source will be invaluable in narrating the struggles of Palestinians and why they would chose to leave their homeland.

Coming in the next days reviews of "The Israel Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War" by James L. Gelvin and "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Illan Pappe