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· 1 · Arab-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian Interactions
“The sad thing is the inhumanity on both sides. Too many people have been killed and wounded. It is heartbreaking.”—Raja Shehadeh (as quoted by Anthony Lewis in Shehadeh, 2002, p. x)
“A long war is degenerating—it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations. This bloody conflict has been going on for much too long. It is doing terrible things to Israelis, to Palestinians.”—Amos Oz (as quoted in Abé and Sandberg, 2017, para. 15)
The above quotations, the first by Raja Shehadeh—Palestinian lawyer and writer—and the second by Amos Oz—the late Israeli Jewish writer, novelist, and journalist—speak of the anguish and costs of war. Standing on either side of the Palestinian-Israeli divide, they obviously wish for a halt to what war is doing to their people and for peace. But why do Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews find themselves in this unfortunate predicament?
Arabs and Jews have lived in historic Palestine for centuries, if not millennia. In addition to being at home, they were attracted by the land’s historical and religious roots. Their shared experiences often written in blood and fire, saw successive regimes, with the Ottomans (1516–1917) and the British (1920–1948) being among recent examples. Israel’s creation in 1948, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the resultant Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) transformed historic Palestine forever. Arabs and Jews parted ways as most of ←15 | 16→what was designated to become the Arab State (of Palestine) was taken over by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. This state of affairs remained until June 1967 when Israel conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Today, Israel is still in possession of East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank where hundreds of thousands of Jews have settled, and it besieges Gaza. In June 1967, Israel also conquered the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. While it has returned the former, it still maintains control over the latter. In March 2019, President Donald Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, thus overturning a half-century of American policy in the Middle East.
This chapter is important as it provides the historical context within which most peacebuilders have grown and to which they respond frequently. There is no intention to blame or to give preference to any one side. There is enough blame to go all around; innocence is not the exclusive domain of one individual or community. There is no attempt to be comprehensive, for that would require volumes, but to highlight certain historical aspects that clarify the interconnectedness and progression of events. Two parts follow. The first gives a top-down narrative of Arab-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian relations, mainly through the historical record. The second presents a bottom-up narrative, basically explaining the impact of events on the lives of ordinary Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, and how they reacted to them. The reason for this contrast is to show the gap between the two narratives, thus voicing the urgent need for top-down political leaders to think more deeply about how their decisions do have consequences and to depoliticize the conflict in order to put a human face on the other, thus limiting violence, creating understanding, and enhancing the potential for building bridges of peace.
Top-Down Narrative
The Ottoman Empire ruled most of the area we know today as the Middle East, including historic Palestine, for four hundred years. This rule had a mixed record, intermittently tough as Palestine did not enjoy significant progress—administratively, economically, and educationally. It was initially insulated from external connections but in later years opened up to European influences in the form of consulates, educational institutions, missionary work, trade, and colonies—French, German, and Russian. Whatever common and relatively pleasant existence Arabs and Jews enjoyed began to change in the late 19th century. The chasm between both national communities developed ←16 | 17→after the budding and competing Palestinian nationalism and modern political, as opposed to classical religious, Zionism or Jewish nationalism began to lay claim to the same land and assert itself on the local populations to think of themselves as radically different and separate from each other.
Starting in 1882, indigenous Jews, living mostly in the four cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed, were joined by Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe who were escaping persecution and an undignified life. The increased Jewish population and the new Jewish agricultural settlements created concern among the Arabs. In 1891, a number of Palestinian A’ayan (Arabic for Notables) sent a telegram to the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul urging them to halt Russian immigration and Jewish acquisition of Arab land. This concern intensified as the Zionist program that was set in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 started to be felt. In March 1899, for example, Yusuf Diya’addin Pasha Al-Khalidi, the former Muslim mayor of Jerusalem, wrote a letter to Zadok Kahn, the Chief Rabbi of France, stating that a Jewish state is not possible in Palestine due to opposition from the Turks and the indigenous Arab population, and hence Jews would be better off elsewhere. “But in the name of God,” he stated, “let Palestine be left in peace” (as cited in Beška, 2007, p. 29). Theodor Herzl, who received the letter from Rabbi Kahn, responded to Al-Khalidi by assuring him about Jewish immigration into Palestine: “[T];he Jews have no belligerent Power behind them, neither are they themselves of a warlike nature. They are a completely peaceful element, and very content if they are left in peace. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing to fear from their immigration” (as cited in Khalidi, 1971, p. 92). Albert Antebi, a leading Jewish Ottoman citizen who appreciated more cultural and economic than ideological and political