In October 2023 the world changed. Interesting times. Before I progress, kindly note that I am not anti any people or any religion but I want to highlight the facts that I have read, sure I don’t have all the information but I have tried to educate myself as best as I can and ask questions and not just consume selective media. I have felt the need to do this because I once believed a lot that I read and now with some of the evidence that I am witnessing for myself, the innocent lives lost, the ‘mistakes’, the provocation, the destruction of property and disregard of international law, I decided to take a few moments and read some more.
A question I like to ask people that tell me about collateral damage is, if you were caught in a hostage situation, would it be right and acceptable for the SWAT team to bomb the whole place knowing they would take the hostage takers, irrespective of the hostages and bank employees? Does that make sense? For sure go after those fools who did what they did on that day in October, and deal with them accordingly, but damn, is it right for the poor kid watching Barney to be taken out too? Therein lies my frustration with the world and its silence. Was it any other country would we be as silent…think clearly about your answer because I was around when Russia invaded Ukraine….
How far does one go to discuss this region? As far back as when the Canaanites lived there? To the times of the Bible? Well, living in Europe, I am finding that a fair amount of people don’t believe in religion yet some want to refer to the Bible to support their claims…hmm. But then what would we say to Native Americans? Even closer to home expropriation without compensation?
Well, we can’t change what has been so below I will try and illustrate some of the history that I read.
Between 1880 – 1914 the 1st and 2nd Aliyahs took place. These were the immigration of Zionists facing violent riots and massacres aimed at expelling them from Eastern Europe largely. This resulted in the early settlers in Ottoman controlled Palestine. Land was purchased by Jewish people and they began to farm and build in that region. Tension and the seeds of conflict were sown on the back of land ownership disputes and the migration. Armed forces/militia such as Bar-Giora (formed in 1907) and Hashomer (formed in 1909) were formed to protect the Jewish settlements against Arab attacks.
World War 1 was still raging on and a few significant things happened. One was called the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence which was a series of letters between Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the Arab leader of Mecca and Sir Henry McMahon, between 1915 and 1916. The Brits promised Arab independence and support of Arab self-determination in exchange for a revolt against the Ottomans. The Brits had colonial interest in the region mainly around the control of oil resources and trade routes. The Arabs held up their end of the bargain, but the Brits did not uphold their promises for a few reasons which included ambiguities around the areas to be included and some of the things which will come to light later.
Roughly at the same time, the British and the French, wanting to protect their interests in the region, concocted a secret deal, through the Sykes-Picot Agreement, where they would divide the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern territories after WW1, amongst themselves. This was not fully implemented because of resistance and other treaties and it resulted in arbitrary borders that ignored ethnic and religious divisions, thus leading to future conflicts in the region.
In 1917, hoping for Zionist influence that would result in America joining the war, as well as strong pro-Zionist sentiments among the British officials (which may not all have necessarily been altruism but rather support to reduce their number in their country), led to the drafting of the Balfour agreement. This took the form of a 67-word letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild announcing support for a Jewish home in Palestine.
After WW1, the League of Nations, which later became the UN, granted Britain control over Palestine a term called the British Mandate was used to describe this. Tensions grew during this time which resulted in a few more conflicts.
One of the earlier conflicts was the Arab Riots in 1920 which was caused by increased immigration and land purchase coupled with the British mandate’s support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, the riots erupted in Jerusalem resulting in attacks on Jewish neighbourhoods. The outcome was an increase in British military presence in the area. This also led to the establishment of a Zionist underground militia called Haganar, which would later become the basis of the Israeli Defence Force. 47 Jews and 48 Arabs were killed during these riots.
A year later the Jaffa Riots which had its roots in economic competition and resentment of Jewish presence in Jaffa. The riots took the form of attacks by Arab mobs on Jewish neighbourhoods, resulting in great property damage, loss of life and the imposition of curfews by the British. 120 Jews and 40 Arabs were killed.
The deadliest of these early riots were called the Arab Revolt which occurred between 1936 – 1939. These took the form of widespread uprising involving protest, violent attacks and strikes. The British responded with heavy military assault. This conflict resulted in roughly 5800 casualties from all 3 sides, with roughly 86% being Arab.
Both Arabs and Jews were growing in their opposition of the British presence in the region and in 1931, a more radical and violent group of Zionist militias, called Irgun split from Haganah. Between 1936 and 1939, they carried out bombings and other operations against Arab civilians.
During the Arab Revolt, The Peel Commission (formally the Royal Commission), was established in 1937, to investigate the root of this tension and to find a long-term solution to the conflict. The recommendation of the Commission was the partitioning of Palestine into 2 separate states with the Jewish state covering roughly 1/3rd of the land including the coastal areas and the fertile northern regions and the Arab region the rest, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem as international zones, controlled by the Brits. Arabs rejected the plan and called for an Arab state "with protection of all legitimate Jewish and other minority rights and safeguarding of reasonable British interests". They also wanted Jewish immigtation and land purchase to end. They saw this as a betrayal of the word given by the British earlier. The Zionist factions were torn. The faction led by David Ben Gurian believed that this was a step towards the establishment of a Jewish state, but other Zionist factions including Revisionists rejected it, because they only got part of the land. The opposition from both parties made this attempt at a solution unworkable and thus more violence resulted.
With the Brits close to their wits end, they issued the White Paper of 1939, a policy document aimed at quelling the unrest and replacing the Peel commission. This document included a limitation of Jewish migration to Palestine to 75000 over 5 years, limited land purchases and proposed a single Palestinian state within 10 years where power would be shared between Arabs and Jews. The British saw WW2 approaching and didn’t want to antagonize the Arab leaders across the region because they needed to protect their oil and other interests in the region, could this be an explanation of the policy shift? This white paper was vehemently opposed by the Zionists as it went against the undertakings made in the Balfour Declaration. Even though this was closer to what the Arabs wanted; they too opposed it because it didn’t halt the immigration nor result in the immediate establishment of an independent state. The War broke out and these policies were never implemented.
In September 1939, the Great War began. A staggering 75 million people are estimated to have died in this war. Between 1941 and 1945 was the period where 6 million Jewish people were barbarically slain because of a human ideology of a superior race. The British had imposed restrictions on immigration to Palestine, but the situation was dire for those fleeing Europe.
Irgun was growing impatient with the lack of British expediency and in 1946 they bombed the King David Hotel, which housed the British administrative headquarters of the Palestine mandate, killing 91 people. Round about 1940, the Stern Gang was formed through a split from Irgun and their goal was to expel the Brits from Palestine using extreme violence. In 1944, they assassinated the British Minister of State Lord Moyne in Cairo. They also conducted the Deir Yassin Massacre in 1948 attacking an Arab village leaving hundreds of Arab civilians dead.
An elite strike force called Palmach was formed in 1941 to defend against threats during WW2 and also to prepare for the withdrawal of the British.
All 3 of these forces (Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) were disbanded and incorporated into the IDF.
In June 1945, the UN Charter was signed and in October 1945 it was established to replace the League of Nations which had failed in its primary objective which was to prevent conflicts like WW2. The UN had more powers and maintaining international peace and security was key to its effective functioning. In order to do this a number of international laws and treaties were signed to prevent another world war, namely:
- United Nations Charter (1945):.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):
- Geneva Conventions (1949):
- Genocide Convention (1948):
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966):
- International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966)
Facing increased tension from both the Zionists and the Arabs, and their failure to broker peace, the British decided to relinquish their control of Palestine and place the matter at the door of the newly formed United Nations
A few questions….
Were Britain’s in/actions a factor in the genesis of the current conflict in the region?
Did the Zionists/Jewish people take up arms and act violently against the British when they felt they would not get their homeland? Is that any different from Palestinian militant resistance in the quest to maintain the land which they occupied as a majority?
How would you feel/react if you were an Arab and this was becoming your reality?
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