Tutorial : Israel-Palestine conflict

  

To a mere 3% land area by the jews in Palestine before 1917 to 87% land occupation by the Israeli jews in 2000 is one of the happening global conspiracy ever known.

In the late years of the 19th century, Some Jews concluded that only
in a Jewish state would Jews be safe and thus founded Zionism. And for many orthodox Jews, especially the small Jewish community in Palestine , a Jewish state could only be established by God, not by humans. At first Zionists were willing to consider other sites for their Jewish state, but they eventually focused on Palestine for its biblical connections. Following World War I, Britain arranged for the League of Nations to make Palestine a British colony to be administered by Britain and prepared for independence. To help justify its rule over Arab land, Britain arranged that one of its duties as the mandatory power would be to promote a Jewish national home.
 

Who were the jews that came to Palestine

The early Zionist settlers were idealistic, often socialist, individuals,
fleeing oppression. In this respect they were like the early American
colonists. But also like the American colonists, many Zionists had racist
attitudes toward the indigenous people and little regard for their well-being.

Some Zionists thought in terms of Arab-Jewish cooperation and a bi-national
state, but many were determined to set up an exclusively Jewish state
(though to avoid antagonizing the Palestinians, they decided to use the
term Jewish "national home" rather than "state" until they were able to
bring enough Jews to Palestine). Jewish immigration to Palestine was relatively limited until the 1930s.when Hitler came to power. The U.S. and Europe closed their doors to immigration by desperate jews, making Palestine one of the few options.

Who were the indigenous people of Palestine?

Pro-Israel propaganda has argued that most Palestinians actually entered
Palestine after 1917, drawn to the economic dynamism of the growing Jewish
community, and thus have no rights to Palestine. The
indigenous population was mostly Muslim, with a Christian and a smaller
Jewish minority. As Zionists arrived from Europe, the Muslims and
Christians began to adopt a distinctly Palestinian national identity

How did the Zionists acquire land in Palestine?

Some was acquired illegally and some was purchased from Arab landlords with
funds provided by wealthy Jews in Europe. Even the legal purchases,
however, were often morally questionable as they sometimes involved buying
land from absentee landlords and then throwing the poor Arab peasants off
the land. Land thus purchased became part of the Jewish National Fund which
specified that the land could never be sold or leased to Arabs. Even with
these purchases, Jews owned only about 6% of the land by 1947.

Before the beginning of Zionist immigration, relations among the
different religious groups in Palestine were relatively harmonious. No people will look favorably on another who enter one's territory with the intention of setting up their own sovereign state. The expulsion of peasants from their land and the frequent Zionist refusal to employ Arabs exacerbated relations

Impact of World War II on the Palestine question

At the end of the war, as the enormity of the Holocaust became evident, for
the first time Zionism became a majority sentiment among world Jewry. Many
U.S. Christians also supported Zionism as a way to absolve their guilt for
what had happened, without having to allow Jews into the United States.
U.S. Zionists, who during the war had subordinated rescue efforts to their
goal of establishing a Jewish state, argued that the Holocaust proved more
than ever the need for a Jewish state: Had Israel existed in 1939, millions
of Jews might have been saved.By war's end, the Jewish community in Palestine was well armed, well-organized, and determined to fight. The Palestinians were poorly armed, with feudal leaders.

What were the various positions in 1947?

Both the Palestinians and the Zionists wanted the British out so they could
establish an independent state. The Zionists, particularly a right-wing
faction led by Menachim Begin, launched a terror campaign against Britain.
London, impoverished by the war, announced that it was washing its hands of
the problem and turning it over to the United Nations (though Britain had
various covert plans for remaining in the region).

The Zionists declared that having gone through one of the great
catastrophes of modern history, the Jewish people were entitled to a state
of their own, one into which they could gather Jewish refugees, still
languishing in the displaced persons camps of Europe. The Zionist bottom
line was a sovereign state with full control over immigration. The
Palestinians argued that the calamity that befell European Jews was hardly
their fault. If Jews were entitled to a state, why not carve it out of
Germany? As it was, Palestine had more Jewish refugees than any other place
on Earth. Why should they bear the full burden of atoning for Europe's
sins? They were willing to give full civil rights (though not national
rights) to the Jewish minority in an independent Palestine, but they were
not willing to give this minority the right to control immigration, and
bring in more of their co-religionists until they were a majority to take
over the whole of Palestine.

A small left-wing minority among the Zionists called for a binational state
in Palestine, where both peoples might live together, each with their
national rights respected. This view had little support among Jews or
Palestinians.

What did the UN do and why?

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two independent states, a Jewish state and an Arab state, joined by an economic union, with Jerusalem internationalized.In 1947 the UN had many fewer members than it does today. Most Third World nations were still colonies and thus not members. Nevertheless, the
partition resolution passed only because the Soviet Union and its allies voted in favor and because many small states were subject to improper pressure. For example, members of the U.S. Congress told the Philippines that it would not get U.S. economic aid unless it voted for partition. Moscow favored partition as a way to reduce British influence in the
region; Israel was viewed as potentially less pro-Western than the dominant feudal monarchies.

The  dramatic happening

In 1947 Jews were only one third of the population of Palestine and owned only 6% of the land. Yet the partition plan granted the Jewish state 55% of the total land area. The Arab state was to have an overwhelmingly Arab population, while the Jewish state would have almost as many Arabs as Jews. If it was unjust to force Jews to be a 1/3 minority in an Arab state, it was no more just to force Arabs to be an almost 50% minority in a Jewish state.

The Palestinians rejected partition. The Zionists accepted it, but in private Zionist leaders had more expansive goals. In 1938, during earlier partition proposals, Ben Gurion stated, "when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine."

Why did Palestinians become refugees in 1948?

The  Israeli government claim is that Palestinians chose to leave Palestine voluntarily, instructed to do so via radio broadcasts from Arab leaders who wanted to clear a path fortheir armies. But radio broadcasts from the area were monitored by the British and American governments and no evidence of general orders to flee has ever been found. On the contrary, there are numerous instances of Arab leaders telling Palestinians to stay put,to keep their claim to the territory.9 People flee during wartime for a variety of reasons and that was certainly the case here. Some left because war zones are dangerous environments. Some because of Zionist atrocities. Some left in panic, aided by Zionistpsychological warfareAnd some were driven out at gunpoint, with killings to speed them on their way. Of the 860,000 Arabs who had lived in areas of Palestine that became Israel, only 133,000 remained. Some 470,000 moved into refugee  camps on the West Bank (controlled by Jordan) or the Gaza Strip (administered by Egypt). The rest dispersed to Lebanon, Syria, and other countries.

Gaza conflict

Israel evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, ending almost four decades of military occupation. However, after the militant Islamic group Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, Israel intensified its economic blockade of the Strip. At the end of 2008 it launched a major military assault on Gaza to halt cross-border rocket attacks.

In 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement, but it wasn't until the early 1990s, after years of an uprising known as the intifada, that a peace process began with the Palestinians. Despite the handover of Gaza and parts of the West Bank to Palestinian control, a final agreement has yet to be reached.
 
  
        

Here is a  quick recap.