CONFLICT

Palestine, a land in dispute:

Countless civilisations have lived throughout History between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea, whether ruling themselves or subdued to alien powers.

One such civilisation is the Hebrew people which was dispersed during the Roman Empire era and which Modern day Jewry regards as their forebears;

Another is the Arab civilisation which settled in the country in the 6th century following the spread of Islam. The people of Palestine has been eversince predominantly Arab and Muslim beside Christian and smaller confession minorities. 

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The roots of the conflict are in Europe and not in Palestine. Concerned with antisemitic persecution and the risk of assimilation of the Jews into mainstream cultures, the Zionist movement was formed in the late 19th century. It advocated the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine and modelled upon the colonial European patterns it sought the support of the empires of the time including antisemitic regimes. 

At the downfall of the Ottoman Empire (1516 to 1917), the League of Nations trusted Palestine to a British Mandate (1922-1947). The UK started to foster Jewish immigration and settlement until this threatened the region's demographic balance. The first clashes (1929, 1936) erupted when the indigenous Arab people became aware that the Mandate - instead of preparing them to rule their homeland - was but a transition period from Turkish to Jewish domination and usurpation.

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Then the Second World War broke out with the dreary nazi holocaust and the murder of 6,000,000 Jews which Zionism would never stop to instrumentalise through the claim that Israel is the moral legatee of the victims. The reality is far more complex because during the conflict:

Some Zionists collaborated with the Nazis who wanted to expel the Jews from Europe and rejected any destination for the deported Jews other than Palestine. This shady deal meant death for thousands of European Jews;

Some Palestinians and Zionists fought for the Allies against the Germans in Northern Africa and the French in Lebanon, in the hope that their projects would be supported by the Allied victors;

A Palestinian faction – led by mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini collaborated with the Nazis: it is a pet-topic of the Israeli propaganda.

When, after the war, Great Britain announced in 1947 it would terminate the Mandate and leave Palestine, the Zionists intensified their military activity.

Then the UN General Assembly - under US pressure – passed a partition plan (Resolution 181) splitting Palestine into a future Jewish state and a future Arab state blatantly favoring the zionist project. The Zionists accepted partition which they saw as a means to establish a state and get international  recognition and a hardstep for future expansion.

An already tense state of things degenerated into a conflict: the state of Israel was proclaimed followed by the1948 War, when the Israeli army defeated poorly-equiped and badly-led armies of five Arab countries, unable to stop Israel's conquest of  territories beyond the 1947 partition plan boundaries  and the “Nakba” expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians. Israel came to occupy 77% of the territory leaving only the remaining 22% to the Palestinians: Gaza strip - 1, 5% and the West Bank - 20,5% - under Egyptian and Jordan administration  respectively, in addition to the refugee problem.

On June 5th 1967, Israel attacked Syria, Jordan and Egypt in a blitzkrieg-style war later called the Six Days' War. The overwhelming Israeli army invaded parts of these three countries, later to retire, save for Syria's Golan Heights and the rest of Palestine, Gaza strip and the West Bank, since referred to as "occupied territories”. Another 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982 in the midst of civil war and conquered the capital Beyrouth. An agreement was reached that the 30,000 Palestinian fighters - among whom Yassir Arafat -  would live the country and that no harm would be done to the refugee camps. However it was left to the Lebanese Phalange militias to perform the killing of over 3,000 at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, witnessed and supported by the Israeli army. The worldwide outrage was such that Israel Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was compelled to resign. Local armed pressure forced Israel to leave Lebanon in 2000, leaving  20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians dead civilians behind.

Since then the conflict has been focused on the “occupied territories” since 1967 where the new Jewish settlements, the Israeli army's omnipresence and the destruction and sabotage of the Palestinians' social and economic life have led to the 1st and 2nd Intifadah, the failure of the "Peace Process" and unending violence which we can see everyday in the papers and television.