The Arab-Israeli conflict has been referred to in different terms over the last sixty years, namely, the Palestine Question, the Palestine-Jewish Question, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, the Arab-Zionist Conflict.
Lack of consensus as to what to call this conflict reveals only the tip of its complexities. These are made up of a mixture of ideological, religious, and political factors. Combined, they have led to more than a half-century of inter-community violence, several wars, and regional instability.
More significantly, they have caused an estimated 100,000 casualties, the disintegration of Palestinian society, billions in economic costs, and the loss of opportunities to millions of people for a better life. All parties concerned are to blame, as is the international community, which has all too frequently failed to bite the bullet and impose a fair peace with which all sides could live. In early 2008 the hope was that the worst has occurred and that the prospects for peace are better now than in the past few years. But as experience painfully reveals, every time a new depth has been reached, leading to the belief that the conflict has reached bottom, another lower level is reached. This was the case with Israel’s invasion of Gaza on December 27, 2008, and the harm that it caused the Palestinians during that attack. The accumulation of human, material, and moral harm has led to bitter harvests. Recent events might suggest to some that no worse can happen, but it can.A more rational approach based on mutual understanding and an appreciation of the conflict’s complex dimensions is indispensable to advancing the goals of peace and reconciliation. Yet, the protagonists are so polarized that even a description of the conflict raises claims of partisanship by one side or the other. This extends to comprehensive
xii • Guide to Documents on the Arab-Palestinian/Israeli Conflict: 1897-2008 analytical works that evidence shared experiences and the commonality of values between Palestinians and Israelis. Indeed, no scholar on either side has ever presented an account of the two peoples’ history which has satisfied both Arabs and Jews.
Perhaps it is because Arabs and Jews share such a momentous history that everything in this conflict is perceived as being larger than life and that even slight disagreement raises fundamental issues central to the culture, identity, and self-esteem of each side. The divisiveness of the conflict has conditioned the protagonists’ perceptions of each other and of themselves. This has in part shaped their actions, which have been characterized by an evolving cycle of violence that has so far proven difficult to arrest.At the risk of over-simplification, the conflict can be summed up in the following formulation: two groups of people—related by race, ancestry, belief, and culture—find themselves competing over the same territory and are driven by different nationalistic and religious goals.
For those on both sides who are willing to share the land and accept the concept of two states living in peace with each other, conflict is not inevitable. For them the possibility of peace and reconciliation is not hopeless. However, for those who seek exclusive control over land, the conflict is intractable and peace only attainable when one side triumphs over the other. Because the forces of division are stronger than those of rapprochement, they represent the more visible aspect of the conflict. These forces of division have so far successfully managed to thwart peace efforts through their strategies of polarization and radicalization.
In its sixtieth anniversary Israel stands at a most vital crossroads. Never has this cliche been more appropriate. The fate of the state, no less, is at stake. It was after all none other than Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who warned that if Israel remained bogged down in the Occupied Territories and a Palestinian state is not established this might be “the end of the Jewish state.” Israel must assume that the territorial phase of Zionism is over, and that its victory in the 1948 war can be sealed only when the national dignity of the Palestinians is restored, and their right to live in dignity in their own independent state is implemented on a territory that is geographically contiguous and economically viable.
This is not impossible, and the dismantling by Israel of the settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005 proves that the march of folly of settlements’ expansion is not irreversible. For, against the ominous predictions of those who saw the spectre of civil war looming over Israel if a massive dismantling of settlements was carried out, in Gaza, the disengagement proved to be an anti-climax. It showed that Israel is a society mature enough to face the challenge of defining its permanent borders without internal political and social upheavals. The task remains of course laden
with difficulties, for it would be wrong to draw an automatic analogy between the Gaza experience and the case of the more sensitive lands of Eretz-Israel, as Israelis and Jews call Judea and Samaria, and which the Palestinians call “the West Bank”—not to speak of Jerusalem which the Palestinians call, with religious reverence, al-Quds, the holy city. But the precedent has been established and, for the first time in its history, the State of Israel challenged the Eretz-Israel taboo and survived and similar steps in furtherance of place are possible.
For the Israelis, it is vital to assume that no change in the international system, however radical it may be, will spare them the hard and painful choices that they have to make. They will also hopefully learn the lesson from their attempts to quell the Intifada or dismantle the Hamas regime in Gaza. In this respect, they are not the first in history to learn that states, however strong, do not really have a deterrent power against national uprisings. Internationally legitimized borders will offer Israel more deterrence power than F-16 raids on targets, however legitimate, that end up killing innocent civilians, without really deterring attackers. For Israel, the capacity to deter its enemies remains vital. But, as the United States has learned the hard way in Iraq, this is an era where power without legitimacy only breeds chaos, and military supremacy without international consent for the use of force does not offer security.
Israel’s respect for its international border with Lebanon has given more security to its northern villages than twenty years of military occupation of that country. Only when a free and independent Palestinian state will acquire a vested interest in preserving regional order and have a democratic government based on the Rule of Law, can real peace prevail.Peace with the Palestinians will, sooner or later have to be comÂplemented with a peace agreement between Israel and Syria, whose parameters are only too well known. Only then might the conditions be created for an accommodation between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds, and a regional system of security with the elimination of weapons of mass destruction be possible. Any attempt to develop such a regional system before the Arab-Israeli conflict has been solved is doomed to failure.
One would also expect that the Palestinian national movement would reshape itself to allow for an end to the latent civil war in their midst between secular and religious nationalists. This is not going to be a smooth or easy affair. For, not all these trends of national disintegration have to do with the failure of the peace process, nor is the decline of secular nationalism a strictly Palestinian phenomenon. Throughout the entire Arab world the incumbent regimes have failed to address vital issues of social, economic, and cultural alienation. Loyalty to the state and to the nation is being
xiv • Guide to Documents on the Arab-Palestinian/Israeli Conflict: 1897-2008 superseded everywhere by alternative loyalties, such as the family, the tribe, but first and foremost by loyalty to Islam as a form of government. Seen from a wider regional perspective, the Palestinian problem in the last twenty years has mirrored the broader Middle East where we can see a growing challenge to state institutions representing regimes which failed to provide their part of the bargain in the social contract. Alienation has brought about the emergence of powerful non-state actors whose goals include enmity toward Israel and the United States, as well as against the American-led peace process.
The sixty years of war and conflict that we have witnessed in that small part of the Middle East, reveal, if anything, how little human consideration each side has given the other. Efforts at peacemaking have invariably been of a state-centric nature, ignoring the human dimension of what peace is really about. Peace, if it is not to be a mere cease-fire, can only occur when the protagonists to a given conflict have embarked on a process of reconciliation. It is when people reach out to understand each other, to have compassion for one another, and translate that into action that peace does occur. A piece of paper on which the word agreement is written is worth no more than the value of the paper it is written on.
For sure, old grievances must be settled; wounds must be healed, victims must be satisfied, truthful history must be written, memorials have to be established, and the lessons of the past must be learned in order to avoid repeating the previous mistakes. In short, justice in the broadest human and material sense must be part of the peace process. And contrary to what many believe, it is not as difficult a course to embark upon once the will to do so has been marshaled.
Peace is not only a matter of assuaging the feelings of the opponent. It is about providing security and confidence in the future. The former, however, should not overshadow the latter. It is mostly confidence in the future that provides assurances for security. Confidence in the future requires hope for sustained economic development with integration of the economies of those who were once enemies. As they become economically dependent on one another, no matter what their respective economic strengths may be, and as they come to share reciprocal concerns for their security, they can achieve conditions of peace that no document, no matter how well drafted, can ever match.
What has been lacking in the last decades of peace process efforts is not only such a broad vision of the future, but a detailed blueprint of how to achieve it.
If only, as a matter of academic exercise, authorities on the Israeli and Palestinian sides convened a group of experts covering various aspects of economic and social develop as well as security, the group of experts would likely produce such a blueprint. This wouldinclude a common system for utilities, sharing of natural resources, a common transportation system, free movement of goods and people, a common banking and financial system with convertible currencies, an urban development plan, harmonization of laws and enhancement of legal capabilities, and so on. There is just so much that can and should be done, and that in itself would establish confidence in the future.
At this point, there is little for the Israelis to look forward to, other than maybe a lull or stoppage in violent interaction, but even less for the Palestinians, whose economy has been devastated, their national unity shattered, and the good will that came from their victimization at the hands of Israel wasted by their in-fighting and by suicide bombings which have killed innocent Israeli civilians. Neither side has much to offer the other if things stay as they are. But they have much to offer to one another if they have a shared vision of their future relations and economic development.
The Israeli-Palestinian vision should not stop with them. It can and should expand to include a regional security system that would encompass Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. That could lead to a regional economic union that would thrust that part of the world into a new era similar to the one that Europe experienced when it first founded the Common Market and then the European Union. There is no reason why a regional vision cannot transform the economies and well-being of all of the states mentioned above and establish a strong foundation for peace and security.
What must be stated, however, is that none of that can take place without the marginalization of those who believe in the exclusivity of their survival or of the hegemony of their relationship with the other. If peace is to occur it will be because those in Israel who seek territorial expansion and hegemony over the Palestinians will have been politically marginalized, and violent and intolerant extremists among the Palestinians will have also been marginalized.
The Holy Places in Palestine and Israel, represent that which most links the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. More particularly, the monotheistic concept that exists in Judaism and Islam constitutes a significant commonality between these two religions. Yet, notwithstanding that which links the Abrahamic faiths, we have witnessed throughout times devastating conflicts between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. At times these conflicts have taken on a religious characteristic, at others a political one. No matter the reason, in the end, it has always resulted in human tragedy and material destruction.
For three religions who acknowledge the existence of one God, who has created a single humanity and who has communicated to that single humanity through a succession of prophets and messengers, it is hard to understand why there is not greater harmony in that part of the world between people who are, after all, cousins.
War is not inevitable and peaceful co-existence and cooperation is possible. Leaders with vision must emerge on both sides, supported by their respective external constituencies to frame the new discourse of peace in terms with which the people in question can identify.
It may be self-evident to state that people can walk into the future while looking exclusively at the past. Admittedly, it is not easy to turn one’s back to the past without breaking faith with it, and that is not what is suggested.
Each community, Palestinian and Israeli, will have to forge their new identities in view of the future that they will seek to chart for themselves. Israelis will have to see themselves as something more than emanations of the holocaust, and Palestinians will have to see themselves as more than victims of Zionism.
M. Cherif Bassiouni and Shlomo Ben Ami done respectively in Chicago and Toledo,
February 2009.