The history of Jews, Palestinians and Israel - Part 4
Settlements and Refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
“No one says he was loaded on a truck (or a boat) at gunpoint; no one describes being forced from his home by armed Jews; no one recalls the extra menace of enemy attacks, while in flight. The sight of the dead, the horrors of escape are exact, detailed memories never forgotten by those who had them. Surely Arabs would not forget or suppress such memories, if they, too, had them.” - The Arabs of Palestine by Martha Gellhorn (1961)
By
Palestinian Refugees in the 1960s
In 1961 journalist Martha Gellhorn traveled to several UNRWA run refugee camps in the Middle East, “where she went to see the ‘Palestinian Refugee Problem’ in terms of real life, real people,” reporting first-hand “how the Arab refugees and the Arab Israelis live, and what they say about themselves, their past and their future.”1 Her 22-page essay, The Arabs of Palestine, was published in an October 1961 edition of the Atlantic.
The quote at the top of this essay was from Gellhorn musing over the strange phenomenon where Palestinian refugees uniformly claim they were forcefully removed in 1948 (with many being killed) by a genocidal Israeli army. However, none of the Arabs (except for one) who told these stories experienced any of this violence themselves, and further, didn’t seem to know anyone who had. Yet, the stories were told with all the conviction of a people who had long ago internalized their victimhood.
In her opening paragraphs Gellhorn explains the position of “Arab politicians and apologists” concerning the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. She makes it clear that “doubt is treasonous. There can be only one truth, according to Arab politicians and apologists, and it belongs to them.”
As indicated by the refugees Gellhorn interviewed, what happened in 1948 was a conflict between Arab countries and the “Jews in Palestine.” The Nakba (catastrophe) was caused by the United Nations, who wanted a two-state solution - a “monstrous” and unacceptable decision. The United States and Great Britain, were using the U.N. as a tool for Western imperialism. The Arabs lost their 1948 war of annihilation because of interference by Western imperialists. And that, “by massacre, threatening broadcasts, pointed bayonets, and the murderous siege of cities, the Jews drove hundreds of thousands of Arabs out of their homeland.”
The refugees believed that after the Jews supposedly forced the Arabs into exile, they stole their homes and property, and would not let them return. Leaving refugees to languish in camps indefinitely. And further, the Arab apologists claim, “Israel has no right to exist, and the Arab nations will not sign peace treaties with it but will, by every means possible, maintain the state of war.”
Like a broken record, the preceding description of the conflict played over and over with each new refugee Gellhorn met. Even though she was able to see the humanity in them, and feel great empathy for their plight, Gellhorn noticed that the refugees lacked a similar capacity to feel any compassion for the Jews. Contemplatively, she notes her difficulty to “pity the pitiless.”
“Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them ?” - Martha Gellhorn (1961).2
Settlements and Intifada
“Israel's repossession of its ancient homeland is unique in history. It did not acquire territory belonging to another country and, therefore, has not violated international law. Arabs were not dispossessed in 1967; Jews were allowed to build communities, significantly, in areas that had once been Jewish” 3
The West Bank Jewish Settlements
According to international law, the region of Judea and Samaria, known as the West Bank, has never been part of any nation except for Israel. The 1922 San Remo resolution was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, allotting the Jewish people land in the Middle East, west of the Jordan River, including Judea and Samaria. Nothing has changed since then, the legally binding documents agreed to by the United Nations in 1948 still stand.
However, much of this land, including most of Judea and Samaria, was taken from the Jews by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria following the 1948 War of Independence. “Jordan illegally seized the ‘West Bank’ and east Jerusalem, and expelled all Jews from these Biblical homelands.”4 In 1950 Jordan annexed the West Bank. During their 19-year occupation many illegal land grants were given to Arabs, until Israel recaptured the region in the 1967 Six Day War.
The First Intifada (uprising) broke out around the 20-year anniversary of the Six-Day War. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991 (where Palestinian and Israeli diplomats broke a long-standing taboo and met publicly).5 However, some claim the end point was the signing of the Oslo Accords two years later.6
The Oslo agreements, signed between 1993 and 1999, saw the transfer to the newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) “security and civilian responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip.”7 However, a second Intifada began in 2000, resulting in an interruption in negotiations the following year to determine the permanent status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All subsequent attempts at re-initiating talks have failed.
Today, 95% of privately held land in the West Bank is owned by the Arabs. The Jews own the remaining 5%. However, the majority of land is unsurveyed (without proven ownership). The Supreme Court of Israel decided Arabs are to be extended cultivation rights, if they adequately and consistently work an area of unsurveyed land, they are entitled to acquire that land. Jews are not granted these rights.8 And worse, Arabs in Judea and Samaria are prohibited by the Palestinian Authority from selling land to Jews. A crime that carries a death sentence.9
Gaza Strip Jewish Settlement
The Jews had a presence in Gaza until 1929, when violent Arab riots forced them to leave. In an effort to stamp out the violence, the British appeased the Arabs by banning Jews from living in Gaza. A small minority of Jews returned in 1946 to establish the kibbutz Kfar Darom (later abandoned in Israel’s War of Independence) preventing the British from separating the desert region of Southern Israel ( the Negev) from the Jewish state.”10
In Israel's 1948 war for independence, many Arabs settled around Gaza City after fleeing or being expelled from contested areas. Israeli forces had conquered Gaza, but subsequently gave control of the area to Egypt in negotiations. Israel re-took Gaza in the 1956 Sinai Campaign against Egypt. Again returning Gaza to them under more Land for Peace deals (which were not upheld by the Arabs).
Israeli forces re-captured Gaza again during the 1967 Six-Day War. After which, a period ensued where Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully in Gaza (roughly two decades) before violence eventually erupted between Arab and Jewish citizens in 1987 leading to the riots that preceded the First Intifada (an event which marks the founding of the terrorist group Hamas).
The period during the Oslo negotiations (1993-1999) was relatively calm. Israel had agreed to withdraw from several areas within the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority was granted dominion over 80% of the area. But escalating violence culminated in the Second Intifada (2000). This meant Jewish soldiers and citizens living in Gaza settlements were increasingly attacked by Arab terrorists, leading to the imposition of stricter measures on Palestinians in Gaza, and more frequent military operations to prevent attacks against Jews.11
On August 17, 2005, Israel began to evacuate all Jews from Gaza. A total of 1,700 families were uprooted at a cost of nearly $900 million. One would think that after dislocating so many Jews, and after everything which occurred since the years leading up to the founding of Israel, that the international community would start to understand what Martha Gellhorn did in 1961: The Arabs are unable to compromise or live with the Jews. They cannot feel empathy for the Jews, consider the perspective of Israelis, or indeed, ever respect or recognize the humanity of Jewish people or the validity of the state of Israel. Their hatred is total.
But yet, by 2016 and beyond, some Western diplomats were still taking the position that Jewish settlements were an obstacle to Middle East peace.12 They weren’t the only ones, sadly, moral confusion around the Israeli presence in the Middle East is the result of centuries of antisemitic propaganda (a topic for a future essay). The spell of Jew hatred this propaganda has cast is not easy to break. But for the sake of the Jewish people, and for Western civilization in general, we must fight the evil of antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head.
Conclusion
Much of the chatter around occupation, land settlements, two-state solutions, etc., fails to recognize that the Palestinian struggle is about Judenfrei - ridding Palestine of all Jews, “from the river to the sea” - not evacuating certain settlements or negotiating parcels of land or a two state solution. Palestinians are not engaged in “resistance”, their aim is annihilation.
This presents an existential crisis for Israel who has been forced into a battle of eradication. Hamas, and the dominant Islamo-Fascist element of the Islamic world, will never cease in their efforts to annihilate Israel (the most peaceful and prosperous nation in the Middle East by far), leaving Israel with no choice but to apply a “final solution” to Hamas’ terrorism. In the final formulation, if Israel does not prioritize their people over Hamas, the Jews will never be safe.
Arguments for or against colonialism, and the colonial framework applied in British Mandate Palestine which led to the founding of the Jewish state, can be made all day long. But the fact remains, Israel is one of the only countries that was not established via military invasion. And while the region may be contested, Israel’s right to exist should not be. There have been too many people in Israel (including Arabs) for far too long living peaceful prosperous lives, for the dissolution of Israel to be considered either practically or morally. With almost ten million citizens of Israel, asking them to leave because of ancient Arab hatred and sketchy Palestinian claims to indigeneity is an insane impossibility. Israel is here to stay. Period.
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Thanks for reading. Incase you missed them, here is the introduction essay: Israel, Islam and Settler Colonialism and the first three of the 4-Part Series- The history of Jews, Palestinians and Israel - Part 1 and The history of Jews, Palestinians and Israel - Part 2 and The history of Jews, Palestinians and Israel - Part 3
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The Arabs of Palestine (Pg 19) Martha Gellhorn
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Another outstanding piece of solid writing and sound analysis based on hard facts
from James Pew.
May I add that with Islam, which means submission, is the claim of being the final religion.” Its expansionist disposition makes it unsuitable for shared spaces. Many Muslim leaders talk openly of conquering the world, as though Muhammad and his immediate successors hadn’t taken enough land long ago by the sword. Neither Jews nor Christians (as with Coptics) will know peace until Muslims tear themselves from their 7th-century ideological and intellectual shackles.