Views on the Arab–Israeli conflict

The Arab–Israeli conflict is the result of numerous factors. Reasons cited for the conflict therefore vary from participant to participant and observer to observer. A powerful example of this divide can be Palestinians and Israelis. In a March, 2005 poll 63% of the Israelis blamed the failure of the Oslo Peace Process on Palestinian violence, but only 5% of the Palestinians agreed. 54% of Palestinians put the blame on continuing Israeli settlement activity, but only 20% of the Israelis agreed. It is therefore difficult to develop a single, objective reason for the conflict, so this article will present some of the arguments made by each side, in turn.

Israeli views

There is not a single "Israeli view"; there are many different Israeli views, which differ widely.

Israeli peace offers

In 2000, at Camp David, the Palestinians were offered a nominally independent state. Led by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians rejected this offer. When U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Israelis asked the Palestinians to offer a counter-proposal, Arafat declined and returned to the West Bank. Later, further negotiations did take place, but they were terminated. In his book The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Dennis Ross, the American ambassador and facilitator, writes that the idea the Palestinian state would be a "Bantustan" was a myth, and provides maps showing an offer that included contiguous territory.

Arab peace offers

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has stated that it is prepared to recognize the state of Israel on the basis of the removal of settlements and retreat from Palestinian territory back to the 1967 borders.

Arab hostility

Many if not most Israelis believe that the conflict is largely a result of Arab attempts to destroy Israel, and that only Israeli military power stands between them and annihilation. They characterize the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War as attempts to destroy Israel. As evidence of this intent, pro-Israeli literature often places a heavy emphasis on statements made by Arab leaders during and preceding the wars. The following quotes are mainstays of these arguments:

• "If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt. ... The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel." (Gamal Abdel Nasser's speech to Arab Trade Unionists, May 26, 1967)
• On May 30, 1967, Nasser proclaimed: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations." (Isi Leibler, The Case For Israel, 1972, p. 60.) After Iraq joined the Arab military alliance on June 4, its president Abdur Rahman Aref announced: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map." (Leibler, p. 18)

Self-defense

SC 242, the Land for peace formula, was adopted on November 22, 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and the Khartoum Resolution. It called for withdrawal from occupied territories and for "termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and mutual "acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence" by Israel and the other states in the area, and recognized the right of "every state in the area" to live "free from threats or acts of force" within "secure and recognized boundaries".

Immediately after the Six-Day War, Israel offered to return the Golan Heights to Syria and the Sinai Peninsula (including the Gaza Strip) to Egypt in exchange for peace treaties and various concessions, but Syria and Egypt refused the offer and this offer of land for peace was very soon withdrawn. Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President at the time, proposed negotiations towards peace with Israel in the early 1970s but Israel refused the offer, claiming that it held unreasonable preconditions. Later Israel signed the Camp David Accords (1978) with Egypt and subsequently withdrew from all Egyptian territory it occupied.

Many, including the original framers of the resolution, have noted that the English-language version of SC 242 did not state all territories occupied during the conflict, recognizing that some territorial adjustments were likely and rejected previous drafts with the word all (see UN Security Council Resolution 242). The French language translation of the text did include the definite article. Israel considers it has complied with this sense of the resolution when it returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982.

Israelis argue that the continued Jewish presence in the area throughout the past three millennia, and the deep religious ties maintained by Judaism with the Land of Israel, give Jews a continuing and valid claim. Although the 1800 years preceding the establishment of Israel saw limited Jewish presence, they emphasize that the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel and Jewish Diaspora were due to foreign conquests. They also point out that since antiquity, Jewish beliefs were frequently branded as "obsolete" (see Against Apion, Supersessionism). It may also be noted that historical grounds are not the only reasons given for the establishment of a Jewish state.

Refugee issues

The text of UN Resolution 194 refer to a "just settlement of the refugee problem" and does not specifically mention either the Palestinian refugees or the Jewish refugees, nor what a "just solution" would entail. Nevertheless, this resolution is the primary basis for the concept of a "Right of Return" and is often referenced as if it were such. For example, in 2004, Resolution 59/117, the UN General Assembly "[n]otes with regret that repatriation or compensation of the refugees, as provided for in paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III), has not yet been effected and that, therefore, the situation of the Palestine refugees continues to be a matter of grave concern".

Settlements

Israel's settlement supporters argue that the Fourth Geneva Convention does not technically apply to the territories, since they have no "High Contracting Party", and claim that the Convention in any event only applied to forcible transfers of populations into or out of captured territories. However, a conference of High Contracting Parties in 2001 "reaffirmed the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem" and "they reiterated the need for full respect for the provisions of the said Convention in that Territory."

Palestinian and other Arab views

There is not a single "Arab view"; there are many different Arab views, which differ widely. Nevertheless, Palestinian perspectives have mostly remained static throughout the conflict.

Illegitimacy or illegality of Israel

See also International law and the Arab–Israeli conflict.

Palestinians claim they have International law on their side.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 orders that "Independent Arab and Jewish States... shall come into existence in Palestine". Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan of partition in the resolution and indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division.[8] Their reason was that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.[6] [9] Israeli founding father and author of Resolution 181 Abba Eban claimed that Israel "tear[s] up its own birth certificate" when it ignores UN resolutions.

Palestinians hold that Israel disregards the following UN resolutions/International Law provisions:

• UN General Assembly Resolution 194 calls for "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property" not naming either Palestinian refugees or Jewish refugees. Palestinians hold that this resolution should allow for the Palestinian exodus to return to their homes in Israel. Israel has blocked the return of these refugees and confiscated their land as "absentee".
• UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War, emphasizes "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security," and calls for "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and for the recognition of the "sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force". These territories occupied included the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula. The Palestinian Authority intends eventually to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel maintains control of the West Bank and maritime/aerospace control of the Gaza Strip.
• The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from confiscating occupied land and transferring its own population to that territory.
• UN Security Council Resolution 446 declares that the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.

Historical treatment of Jews in the Arab world

Further information: History of the Jews under Muslim rule

Many Muslims and contemporary western historians assert that Jews were treated better by Muslims than by other rulers who persecuted them. One pertinent example is the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain after the fall of their last refuge there, the Muslim kingdom of Granada in 1492. This resulted in the migration of Jews (especially those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition) to the Ottoman Empire, including the present-day region of Israel and surrounding areas. Authoritative works summarizing Jewish treatment within Muslim lands written by Jews have concluded that although occasional violent persecution did occur, it was not systemic nor continuous and substantially better than treatment by Christians in the pre-modern era. (Lewis, 1984)

Treatment of Palestinians

Arab publications and others have compared Zionism to German Nazism and other historical examples of oppression and ethnic cleansing. Many Arabs, and others, believe Israel practices a form of Israeli apartheid against the Palestinian people, as bad as, or worse than, that practiced by South Africa, and that Zionism is a form of colonialism and has been carried out through extensive ethnic cleansing against the "indigenous people of Palestine", even though Jews are also indigenous to the area encompassing modern day Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and are closely related to the Palestinian Arabs.

Israel's Family Reunification Law allowed the Interior Minister to grant permanent resident status to West Bank Palestinians who have family members in Israel. A recent revision to this Law required that the Interior Minister "shall not grant" citizenship except in exceptional cases; recent additional modifications allow some citizenships, but limit based on age. In his comment to the Knesset Interior Affairs committee on July 19, 2005, Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin stated that "11% of those involved in terror attacks are Palestinians who entered Israel via the Family Reunification Law."

Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Map of Israeli settlements, in navy blue, in the West Bank

There are currently 246,000 Jewish settlers living in settlements in the West Bank, not including 200,000 Israeli Jews who live in annexed East Jerusalem. Ongoing settlement development and growth are major reasons Palestinians claim the peace process has failed, and the issue figures prominently in the larger narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict among non-Palestinian Arabs.

To monitor and control Palestinian movement, Israel has established 50+ checkpoints in and around the West Bank. As well, recently, Israel has begun construction of a controversial West Bank barrier.

During Fateh Central Committee meeting on September 5, 2005, "[r]eferring to the lands Israel would evacuate in Gaza Strip, President Abbas said that 97.5% of these lands were state-owned lands".

Mutual claims

Biased text books

Many Palestinian school textbooks, including those distributed and sponsored by the Palestinian Authority since 1994, have historically minimized or ignored Jewish history of the land prior to the 20th century. Israeli textbooks and school curriculum also often ignore Palestinian history. Texts and school curriculum on both sides are accused of propagating "myths" about the history of the conflict, and relegating important points of view and facts.

Peace and reconciliation

Despite the long history of conflict between Israelis and Arabs, there are many people working on peaceful solutions that respect the rights of peoples on all sides. See projects working for peace among Israelis and Palestinians.

Currently active List of Middle East peace proposals include:

• Geneva Accord
• Road map for peace
• The People's Voice

See also

• Arab–Israeli conflict
• Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict

References

This article "Views on the Arab–Israeli conflict" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Views on the Arab–Israeli conflict. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• Ben Segenreich
• Alleged Ouze Merham interview of Ariel Sharon
• Arab rejectionism
• 1947 Aden pogrom

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