http://www.zmag.org/shalom-meqa.htm

[From Z Magazine, May 2002]

Question & Answer

Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis

by Stephen R. Shalom

What are the modern origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

During World War I, Britain made three different promises regarding historic

Palestine. Arab leaders were assured that the land would become independent; in the

Balfour declaration, Britain indicated its support for a Jewish national home in Palestine;

and secretly Britain arranged with its allies to divide up Ottoman territory, with Palestine

becoming part of the British empire. Historians have engaged in detailed exegesis of the

relevant texts and maps, but the fundamental point is that Britain had no moral right to

assign Palestine to anyone: by right Palestine belonged to its inhabitants.

In the late years of the 19th century, anti-Semitism became especially virulent in

Russia and re-emerged in France. Some Jews concluded that only in a Jewish state would

Jews be safe and thus founded Zionism. Most Jews at the time rejected Zionism,

preferring instead to address the problem of anti-Semitism through revolutionary or

reformist politics or assimilation. And for many orthodox Jews, especially the small

Jewish community in Palestine, a Jewish state could only be established by God, not by

humans. At first Zionists were willing to consider other sites for their Jewish state, but

they eventually focused on Palestine for its biblical connections. The problem, however,

was that although a Zionist slogan called Palestine "a land without people for a people

without land," the land was not at all empty.

Following World War I, Britain arranged for the League of Nations to make Palestine

a British "mandate," which is to say a colony to be administered by Britain and prepared

for independence. To help justify its rule over Arab land, Britain arranged that one of its

duties as the mandatory power would be to promote a Jewish national home.

Who were the Jews who came to Palestine?

The early Zionist settlers were idealistic, often socialist, individuals, fleeing

oppression. In this respect they were like the early American colonists. But also like the

American colonists, many Zionists had racist attitudes toward the indigenous people and

little regard for their well-being.1

Some Zionists thought in terms of Arab-Jewish cooperation and a bi-national state, but

many were determined to set up an exclusively Jewish state (though to avoid

antagonizing the Palestinians, they decided to use the term Jewish "national home" rather

than "state" until they were able to bring enough Jews to Palestine).

Jewish immigration to Palestine was relatively limited until the 1930s,.when Hitler

came to power. The U.S. and Europe closed their doors to immigration by desperate jews,

making Palestine one of the few options.

Who were the indigenous people of Palestine?

Pro-Israel propaganda has argued that most Palestinians actually entered Palestine

after 1917, drawn to the economic dynamism of the growing Jewish community, and thus

have no rights to Palestine. This argument has been elaborated in Joan Peters' widely

promoted book, From Time Immemorial. However, the book has been shown to be

fraudulent and its claim false.2 The indigenous population was mostly Muslim, with a

Christian and a smaller Jewish minority. As Zionists arrived from Europe, the Muslims

and Christians began to adopt a distinctly Palestinian national identity.

How did the Zionists acquire land in Palestine?

Some was acquired illegally and some was purchased from Arab landlords with funds

provided by wealthy Jews in Europe. Even the legal purchases, however, were often

morally questionable as they sometimes involved buying land from absentee landlords

and then throwing the poor Arab peasants off the land. Land thus purchased became part

of the Jewish National Fund which specified that the land could never be sold or leased to

Arabs. Even with these purchases, Jews owned only about 6% of the land by 1947.

Was Palestinian opposition to Zionism a result of anti-Semitism?

Anti-Semitism in the Arab world was generally far less severe than in Europe. Before

the beginning of Zionist immigration, relations among the different religious groups in

Palestine were relatively harmonious. There was Palestinian anti-Semitism, but no people

will look favorably on another who enter one's territory with the intention of setting up

their own sovereign state. The expulsion of peasants from their land and the frequent

Zionist refusal to employ Arabs exacerbated relations.

What was the impact of World War II on the Palestine question?

As World War II approached, Britain shrewdly calculated that they could afford to

alienate Jews -- who weren't going to switch to Hitler's side -- but not Arabs, so they

greatly restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. But, of course, this was precisely

when the need for sanctuary for Europe's Jews was at its height. Many Jews smuggled

their way into Palestine as the United States and other nations kept their borders closed to

frantic refugees.

At the end of the war, as the enormity of the Holocaust became evident, for the first

time Zionism became a majority sentiment among world Jewry. Many U.S. Christians

also supported Zionism as a way to absolve their guilt for what had happened, without

having to allow Jews into the United States. U.S. Zionists, who during the war had

subordinated rescue efforts to their goal of establishing a Jewish state,3 argued that the

Holocaust proved more than ever the need for a Jewish state: Had Israel existed in 1939,

millions of Jews might have been saved. Actually, Palestine just narrowly avoided being

overrun by the Nazis, so Jews would have been far safer in the United States than in a

Jewish Palestine.

During the war many Jews in Palestine had joined the British army. By war's end, the

Jewish community in Palestine was well armed, well-organized, and determined to fight.

The Palestinians were poorly armed, with feudal leaders. The Mufti of Jerusalem had

been exiled by the British for supporting an Arab revolt in 1936-39 and had made his way

to Berlin during the war where he aided Nazi propaganda. From the Zionist point of

view, it was considered a plus to have the extremist Mufti as the Palestinians' leader; as

David Ben Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community in Palestine and Israel's first

prime minister, advised in 1938, "rely on the Mufti."4

What were the various positions in 1947?

Both the Palestinians and the Zionists wanted the British out so they could establish an

independent state. The Zionists, particularly a right-wing faction led by Menachim Begin,

launched a terror campaign against Britain. London, impoverished by the war, announced

that it was washing its hands of the problem and turning it over to the United Nations

(though Britain had various covert plans for remaining in the region).

The Zionists declared that having gone through one of the great catastrophes of

modern history, the Jewish people were entitled to a state of their own, one into which

they could gather Jewish refugees, still languishing in the displaced persons camps of

Europe. The Zionist bottom line was a sovereign state with full control over immigration.

The Palestinians argued that the calamity that befell European Jews was hardly their

fault. If Jews were entitled to a state, why not carve it out of Germany? As it was,

Palestine had more Jewish refugees than any other place on Earth. Why should they bear

the full burden of atoning for Europe's sins? They were willing to give full civil rights

(though not national rights) to the Jewish minority in an independent Palestine, but they

were not willing to give this minority the right to control immigration, and bring in more

of their co-religionists until they were a majority to take over the whole of Palestine.

A small left-wing minority among the Zionists called for a binational state in

Palestine, where both peoples might live together, each with their national rights

respected. This view had little support among Jews or Palestinians.

What did the UN do and why?

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two

independent states, a Jewish state and an Arab state, joined by an economic union, with

Jerusalem internationalized.

In 1947 the UN had many fewer members than it does today. Most Third World

nations were still colonies and thus not members. Nevertheless, the partition resolution

passed only because the Soviet Union and its allies voted in favor and because many

small states were subject to improper pressure. For example, members of the U.S.

Congress told the Philippines that it would not get U.S. economic aid unless it voted for

partition. Moscow favored partition as a way to reduce British influence in the region;

Israel was viewed as potentially less pro-Western than the dominant feudal monarchies.

Didn't Palestinians have a chance for a state of their own in 1947, but they rejected it

by going to war with Israel?

In 1947 Jews were only one third of the population of Palestine and owned only 6%

of the land. Yet the partition plan granted the Jewish state 55% of the total land area. The

Arab state was to have an overwhelmingly Arab population, while the Jewish state would

have almost as many Arabs as Jews. If it was unjust to force Jews to be a 1/3 minority in

an Arab state, it was no more just to force Arabs to be an almost 50% minority in a

Jewish state.

The Palestinians rejected partition. The Zionists accepted it, but in private Zionist

leaders had more expansive goals. In 1938, during earlier partition proposals, Ben Gurion

stated, "when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will

abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine."5

The Mufti called Palestinians to war against partition, but in fact very few

Palestinians responded. The "decisive majority" of Palestinians, confided Ben Gurion,

"do not want to fight us." The majority "accept the partition as a fait accompli," reported

a Zionist Arab affairs expert. The 1936-39 Arab revolt against the British had mass

popular support, but the 1947-48 fighting between the Mufti's followers and the Zionist

military forces had no such popular backing.6

But even if Palestinians were fully united in going to war against the partition plan,

this can provide no moral justification for denying them their basic right of self-

determination for more than half a century. This right is not a function of this or that

agreement, but a basic right to which every person is entitled. (Israelis don't lose their

right to self-determination because their government violated countless UN cease-fire

resolutions.)

Didn't Israel achieve larger borders in 1948 as a result of a defensive war of

independence?

Arab armies crossed the border on May 15, 1948, after Israel declared its

independence. But this declaration came three and a half months before the date specified

in the partition resolution. The U.S. had proposed a three month truce on the condition

that Israel postpone its declaration of independence. The Arab states accepted and Israel

rejected, in part because it had worked out a secret deal with Jordan's King Abdullah,

whereby his Arab Legion would invade the Palestinian territory assigned to the

Palestinian state and not interfere with the Jewish state. (Since Jordan was closely allied

to Britain, the scheme also provided a way for London to maintain its position in the

region.) The other Arab states invaded as much to thwart Abdullah's designs as to defeat

Israel.7

Most of the fighting that ensued took place on territory that was to be part of the

Palestinian state or the internationalized Jerusalem. Thus, Israel was primarily fighting

not for its survival, but to expand its borders at the expense of the Palestinians. For most

of the war, the Israelis actually held both a quantitative and qualitative military edge,

even apart from the fact that the Arab armies were uncoordinated and operating at cross

purposes.8

When the armistice agreements were signed in 1949, the Palestinian state had

disappeared, its territory taken over by Israel and Jordan, with Egypt in control of the

Gaza Strip. Jerusalem, which was to have been internationalized, was divided between

Israeli and Jordanian control. Israel now held 78% of Palestine. Some 700,000

Palestinians had become refugees.

Why did Palestinians become refugees in 1948?

The Israeli government claim is that Palestinians chose to leave Palestine voluntarily,

instructed to do so via radio broadcasts from Arab leaders who wanted to clear a path for

their armies. But radio broadcasts from the area were monitored by the British and

American governments and no evidence of general orders to flee has ever been found. On

the contrary, there are numerous instances of Arab leaders telling Palestinians to stay put,

to keep their claim to the territory.9 People flee during wartime for a variety of reasons

and that was certainly the case here. Some left because war zones are dangerous

environments. Some because of Zionist atrocities -- most dramatically at Deir Yassin

where in April 1948 254 defenseless civilians were slaughtered. Some left in panic, aided

by Zionist psychological warfare which warned that Deir Yassin's fate awaited others.

And some were driven out at gunpoint, with killings to speed them on their way, as in the

towns of Ramle and Lydda.10

There is no longer any serious doubt that many Palestinians were forcibly expelled.

The exact numbers driven out versus those who panicked or simply sought safety is still

contested, but what permits us to say that all were victims of ethnic cleansing is that

Israeli officials refused to allow any of them to return. (In Kosovo, any ethnic Albanian

refugee, whether he or she was forced out at gunpoint, panicked, or even left to make it

easier for NATO to bomb, was entitled to return.) In Israel, Arab villages were bulldozed

over, citrus groves, lands, and property seized, and their owners and inhabitants

prohibited from returning. Indeed, not only was the property of "absentee" Palestinians

expropriated, but any Palestinians who moved from one place within Israel to another

during the war were declared "present absentees" and their property expropriated as well.

Of the 860,000 Arabs who had lived in areas of Palestine that became Israel, only

133,000 remained. Some 470,000 moved into refugee camps on the West Bank

(controlled by Jordan) or the Gaza Strip (administered by Egypt). The rest dispersed to

Lebanon, Syria, and other countries.

Why did Israel expel the Palestinians?

In part to remove a potential fifth column. In part to obtain their property. In part to

make room for more Jewish immigrants. But mostly because the notion of a Jewish state

with a large non-Jewish minority was extremely awkward for Israeli leaders. Indeed,

because Israel took over some territory intended for the Palestinian state, there had

actually been an Arab majority living within the borders of Israel. Nor was the idea of

expelling Palestinians something that just emerged in the 1948 war. In 1937, Ben Gurion

had written to his son, "We will expel the Arabs and take their places ... with the force at

our disposal."11

How did the international community react to the problem of the Palestinian refugees?

In December 1948, the General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which declared that

"refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should

be permitted to do so" and that "compensation should be paid for the property of those

choosing not to return." This same resolution was overwhelmingly adopted year after

year. Israel repeatedly refused to carry out the terms of the resolution.

Did the Arab countries take steps to resettle the Palestinian refugees?

Only in Jordan were Palestinians eligible for citizenship. In Lebanon, the government

feared that allowing Palestinians to become citizens would disturb the country's delicate

Christian-Muslim balance; in Egypt, the shortage of arable land led the government to

confine the Palestinians to the Gaza Strip. It must be noted, however, that the Palestinians

were reluctant to leave the camps if that would mean acquiescing in the loss of homes

and property or giving up their right to return.

It is sometimes implied that the lack of assistance to Palestinians from Arab nations

justifies Israel's refusal to acknowledge and address the claims of the refugees. But if you

harm someone, you are responsible for redressing that harm, regardless of whether the

victim's relatives are supportive.

Hasn't there been a population exchange, with Jews from Arab lands coming to Israel

and replacing the Palestinians?

This argument makes individual Palestinians responsible for the wrong-doing of Arab

governments. Jews left Arab countries under various circumstances: some were forced

out, some came voluntarily, some were recruited by Zionist officials. In Iraq, Jews feared

that they might be harmed, a fear possibly helped along by some covert bombs placed by

Zionist agents.12 But whatever the case, there are no moral grounds for punishing

Palestinians (or denying them their due) because of how Jews were treated in the Arab

world. If Italy were to abuse American citizens, this would not justify the United States

harming or expelling Italian-Americans.

How were the Palestinians who remained within Israel treated?

Most Arabs lived in the border areas of Israel and, until 1966, these areas were all

declared military security zones, which essentially meant that Palestinians were living

under martial law conditions for nearly 20 years. After 1966, Arab citizens of Israel

continued to be the victims of harsh discrimination: most of the country's land is owned

by the Jewish National Fund which prohibits its sale or lease to non-Jews; schools for

Palestinians in Israel are, in the words of Human Rights Watch, "separate and unequal";

and government spending has been funneled so as to keep Arab villages underdeveloped.

Thousands of Israeli Arabs live in villages declared "unrecognized" and hence ineligible

for electricity or any other government services.13

Following 1948, didn't the Arab states continually try to destroy Israel?

After Israel's victory in the 1948-49 war, there were several opportunities for peace.

There was blame on all sides, but Israeli intransigence was surely a prime factor. In 1951,

a UN peace plan was accepted by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, but rejected by

Israel. When Nasser came to power in Egypt, he made overtures to Israel that were

rebuffed. When Nasser negotiated an end to British control of the Suez Canal zone,

Israeli intelligence covertly arranged a bombing campaign of western targets in Egypt as

a way to discourage British withdrawal. The plot was foiled, Egypt executed some of the

plotters, and Israel responded with a major military attack on Gaza.14 In 1956, Israel

joined with Britain and France in invading Egypt, drawing condemnation from the

United States and the UN.

How were the Occupied Territories occupied?

In June 1967, Israel launched a war in which it seized all of Palestine (the West Bank

including East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt), along with the

Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. Large numbers of Palestinians, some

living in cities, towns, and villages, and some in refugee camps, came under Israeli

control. (In 2001, half the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories lived in

refugee camps.15 The Israeli conquest also sent a new wave of refugees from Palestine

to surrounding countries.)

Israel's supporters argue that although Israel fired the first shots in this war, it was a

justified preventive war, given that Arab armies were mobilizing on Israel's borders, with

murderous rhetoric. The rhetoric was indeed blood-curdling, and many people around the

world worried for Israel's safety. But those who understood the military situation -- in Tel

Aviv and the Pentagon -- knew quite well that even if the Arabs struck first, Israel would

prevail in any war. Nasser was looking for a way out and agreed to send his vice-

president to Washington for negotiations. Israel attacked when it did in part because it

rejected negotiations and the prospect of any face-saving compromise for Nasser.

Menachem Begin, who was an enthusiastic supporter of this (and other) Israeli wars was

quite clear about the necessity of launching an attack: In June 1967, he said, Israel "had a

choice." Egyptian Army concentrations did not prove that Nasser was about to attack.

"We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."16

However, even if it were the case that the 1967 war was wholly defensive on Israel's

part, this cannot justify the continued rule over Palestinians. A people do not lose their

right to self-determination because the government of a neighboring state goes to war.

Sure, punish Egypt and Jordan -- don't give them back Gaza and the West Bank (which

they had no right to in the first place, having joined with Israel in carving up the stillborn

Palestinian state envisioned in the UN's 1947 partition plan). But there is no basis for

punishing the Palestinian population by forcing them to submit to foreign military

occupation.

Israel immediately incorporated occupied East Jerusalem into Israel proper,

announcing that Jerusalem was its united and eternal capital. It then began to establish

settlements in the Occupied Territories in violation of the Geneva Conventions which

prohibit a conquering power from settling its population on occupied territory. These

settlements, placed in strategic locations throughout the West Bank and Gaza were

intended to "create facts" on the ground to make the occupation irreversible.

How did the international community respond to the Israeli occupation?

In November 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 242. The

resolution emphasized "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and

called for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territory occupied in the recent

conflict." It also called for all countries in the region to end their state of war and to

respect the right of each country "to live in peace within secure and recognized

boundaries."

Israel argued that because resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from

"territories," rather than "the territories," occupied in the recent conflict, it meant that

Israel could keep some of them as a way to attain "secure" borders. The official French

and Russian texts of the resolution include the definite article, but in any event U.S.

officials told Arab delegates that it expected "virtually complete withdrawal" by Israel,

and this was the view as well of Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.17

Palestinians objected to the resolution because it referred to them only in calling for

"a just settlement to the refugee problem" rather than acknowledging their right to self-

determination. By the mid-1970s, however, the international consensus -- rejected by

Israel and the United States -- was expanded to include support for a Palestinian state in

the West Bank and Gaza, perhaps with insignificant border adjustments.

How did the United States respond to the Israeli occupation?

Prior to the 1967 war, France, not the United States, was Israel's chief weapons

supplier. But now U.S. officials determined that Israel would be an extremely valuable

ally to have in the Middle East and Washington became Israel's principal military and

diplomatic backer.

Why, given the U.S. concern for Middle Eastern oil, was Washington supporting

Israel? This assumes that the main conflict was Israel vs. the Arabs, rather than Israel and

conservative, pro-Western Arab regimes vs. radical Arab nationalism. Egypt and Syria

had been champions of the latter, armed by the Soviet Union, and threatening U.S.

interests in the region. (On the eve of the 1967, for example, Egypt and Saudi Arabia

were militarily backing opposite sides in a civil war in Yemen. Israel had plotted with

Jordan against Palestinian nationalism in 1948, and in 1970 Israel was prepared to take

Jordan's side in a war against Palestinians and Syria.)

Diplomatically, the U.S. soon backed off the generally accepted interpretation of

resolution 242, deciding that given Israel's military dominance no negotiations were

necessary except on Israel's terms. So when Secretary of State Rogers put forward a

reasonable peace plan, President Nixon privately sent word to Israel that the U.S.

wouldn't press the proposal.18 When Anwar Sadat, Nasser's successor, proposed a peace

plan that included cutting his ties with Moscow, Washington decided he hadn't groveled

enough and ignored it. But after Egypt and Syria unsuccessfully went to war with Israel

for the limited aim of regaining their lost territory, and Arab oil states called a limited oil

embargo, Washington rethought its position. This led in 1979 to the Israeli-Egyptian

Camp David Agreement under which Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in return for

peace and diplomatic relations. Egypt then joined Israel as a pillar of U.S. policy in the

region and the two became the leading recipients of U.S. aid in the world.

What progress was made toward justice for Palestinians during the first two decades

of the occupation?

The Palestine Liberation Organization was formed in 1964, but it was controlled by

the Arab states until 1969, when Yasser Arafat became its leader. The PLO had many

factions, advocating different tactics (some carried out hijackings) and different politics.

At first the PLO took the position that Israel had no right to exist and that only

Palestinians were entitled to national rights in Palestine. This was the mirror image of the

official Israeli view -- of both the right-wing Likud party and the Labor party -- that there

could be no recognition of the PLO under any circumstances, even if it renounced

terrorism and recognized Israel, let alone acceptance of a Palestinian state on any part of

the Occupied Territories.

By 1976, however, the PLO view had come to accept the international consensus

favoring a two-state solution. In January 1976 a resolution backed by the PLO, Egypt,

Syria, Jordan, and the Soviet Union was introduced in the Security Council incorporating

this consensus. Washington vetoed the resolution.19

The 1979 Camp David agreement established peace along the Egyptian-Israeli border,

but it worsened the situation for Palestinians. With its southern border neutralized, Israel

had a freer hand to invade Lebanon in 1982 (where the PLO was based) and to tighten its

grip on the Occupied Territories.

What was the first Intifada?

Anger and frustration were growing in the Occupied Territories, fueled by iron-fisted

Israeli repression, daily humiliations, and the establishment of sharply increasing

numbers of Israeli settlements. In December 1987, Palestinians in Gaza launched an

uprising, the Intifada, that quickly spread to the West Bank as well. The Intifada was

locally organized, and enjoyed mass support among the Palestinian population. Guns and

knives were banned and the main political demand was for an independent Palestinian

state coexisting with Israel.20

Israel responded with great brutality, with hundreds of Palestinians killed. The Labor

Party Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, urged Israeli soldiers to break the bones of

Palestinian demonstrators. PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir, who from Tunis had advised the

rejection of arms, was assassinated (with the approval of Rabin); Israel was especially

eager to repress Palestinian leaders who advocated a Palestinian state that would coexist

with Israel.21 By 1989, the initial discipline of the uprising had faded, as a considerable

number of individual acts of violence by Palestinians took place. Hamas, an organization

initially promoted by the Israelis as a counterweight to the PLO,22 also gained strength;

it called for armed attacks to achieve an Islamic state in all of Palestine.

What were the Oslo Accords?

Arafat had severely weakened his credibility by his flirtation with Saddam Hussein

following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. (The Iraqi leader had opportunistically tried to

link his withdrawal from Kuwait to an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.)

Israel saw Arafat's weakness as an opportunity. Better to deal with Arafat while he was

weak, before Hamas gained too much influence. Let Arafat police the unruly

Palestinians, while Israel would maintain its settlements and control over resources.

The Oslo agreement consisted of "Letters of Mutual Recognition" and a Declaration

of Principles. In Arafat's letter he recognized Israel's right to exist, accepted various UN

resolutions, renounced terrorism and armed struggle. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin in his

letter agreed to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestine people and

commence negotiations with it, but there was no Israeli recognition of the Palestinian

right to a state.

The Declaration of Principles was signed on the White House lawn on September 13,

1993. In it, Israel agreed to redeploy its troops from the Gaza Strip and from the West

Bank city of Jericho. These would be given self-governing status, except for the Israeli

settlements in Gaza. A Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established, with a police

force that would maintain internal order in areas from which Israeli forces withdrew.

Left for future resolution in "permanent status" talks were all the critical and vexatious

issues: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders. These talks were to commence by

year three of the agreement.

In September 1995 an interim agreement -- commonly called Oslo II -- was signed.

This divided the Occupied Territories into three zones, Area A, Area B, and Area C. (No

mention was made of a fourth area: Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.) In area A, the PA

was given civil and security control but not sovereignty; in area B the PA would have

civil control and the Israelis security control; and area C was wholly under Israeli control

(these included the settlements, the network of connecting roads, and most of the

valuable land and water resources of the West Bank). In March 2000, 17% of the West

Bank was designated area A -- where the vast majority of Palestinians lived -- 24% area

B, and 59% area C. In the Gaza Strip, with a population of over a million Palestinians,

6,500 Israeli settlers lived in the 20% of the territory that made up area C. Palestinians

thus were given limited autonomy -- not sovereignty -- over areas of dense population in

the Gaza Strip and small, non-contiguous portions of the West Bank (there were 227

separate and disconnected enclaves),23 which meant that the PA was responsible chiefly

for maintaining order over poor and angry Palestinians.

How did Israel respond to the Oslo Accords?

Whatever hopes Oslo may have inspired among the Palestinian population, most

Israeli officials had an extremely restricted vision of where it would lead. In a speech in

October 1995, Rabin declared that there would not be a return to the pre-1967 borders,

Jerusalem would remain united and under exclusive Israeli sovereignty, and most of the

settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty. Rabin said he wanted the "entity"

that Palestinians would get to be "less than a state."24 Under Rabin, settlements were

expanded and he began a massive program of road-building, meant to link the settlements

and carve up the West Bank. (These by-pass roads, built on confiscated Palestinian land

and U.S.- funded, were for Israelis only.)

In 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli and he was succeeded as

prime minister by Shimon Peres. But Peres, noted his adviser Yossi Beilin, had an even

more limited view than Rabin, wanting any future Palestinian state to be located only in

Gaza.25 Yossi Sarid, head of the moderate left Israeli party Meretz, said that Peres's plan

for the West Bank was "little different" from that of Ariel Sharon.26 Settlements and by-

pass roads expanded further.

In May 1996, Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu who was openly opposed to the Oslo

accords was elected prime minister. Netanyahu reneged on most of the already agreed on

Israeli troop withdrawals from occupied territory, continued building settlements and

roads, stepped up the policy of sealing off the Palestinian enclaves, and refused to begin

the final status talks required by Oslo.27

In 1999, Labor's Ehud Barak won election as prime minister. Barak had been a

hardliner, but he had also confessed that if he had been born a Palestinian he probably

would have joined a terrorist organization28 -- so his intentions were unclear. His

policies, however, in his first year in office were more of the same: settlements grew at a

more rapid pace than under Netanyahu, agreed-upon troops withdrawals were not carried

out, and land confiscations and economic closures continued. His proposed 2001

government budget increased the subsidies supporting settlements in the Occupied

Territories.29

What was the impact of the Oslo accords?

The number of Israeli settlers since Oslo (1993) grew from 110,000 to 195,000 in the

West Bank and Gaza; in annexed East Jerusalem, the Jewish population rose from 22,000

to 170,000.30 Thirty new settlements were established and more than 18,000 new

housing units for settlers were constructed.31 From 1994-2000, Israeli authorities

confiscated 35,000 acres of Arab land for roads and settlements.32 Poverty increased, so

that in mid-2000, more than one out of five Palestinians had consumption levels below

$2.10 a day.33 According to CIA figures, at the end of 2000, unemployment stood at

40%.34 Israeli closure policies meant that Palestinians had less freedom of movement --

from Gaza to the West Bank, to East Jerusalem, or from one Palestinian enclave to

another -- than they had before Oslo.35

What was U.S. policy during this period?

The United States has been the major international backer of Israel for more than

three decades. Since 1976 Israel has been the leading annual recipient of U.S. foreign aid

and is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. And this doesn't include all

sorts of special financial and military benefits, such as the use of U.S. military assistance

for research and development in the United States. Israel's economy is not self-sufficient,

and relies on foreign assistance and borrowing. During the Oslo years, Washington gave

Israel more than $3 billion per year in aid, and $4 billion in FY 2000, the highest of any

year except 1979. Of this aid, grant military aid was $1.8 billion a year since Oslo, and

more than $3 billion in FY 2000, two thirds higher than ever before.36

Diplomatically, the U.S. retreated from various positions it had held for years. Since

1949, the U.S. had voted with the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly in

calling for the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In 1994, the Clinton administration

declared that because the refugee question was something to be resolved in the permanent

status talks, the U.S. would no longer support the resolution. Likewise, although the U.S.

had previously agreed with the rest of the world (and common sense) in considering East

Jerusalem occupied territory, it now declared that Jerusalem's status too was to be

decided in the permanent status talks. On three occasions in 1995 and 1997, the Security

Council considered draft resolutions critical of Israeli expropriations and settlements in

East Jerusalem; Washington vetoed all three.37

What happened at Camp David?

Permanent status talks between Israel and the Palestinians as called for by the Oslo

agreement finally took place in July 2000 at Camp David, in the United States, with U.S.

mediators. The standard view is that Barak made an exceedingly generous offer to Arafat,

but Arafat rejected it, choosing violence instead.

A U.S. participant in the talks, Robert Malley, has challenged this view.38 Barak

offered -- but never in writing and never in detail; in fact, says, Malley, "strictly speaking,

there never was an Israeli offer" -- to give the Palestinians Israeli land equivalent to 1%

of the West Bank (unspecified, but to be chosen by Israel) in return for 9% of the West

Bank which housed settlements, highways, and military bases effectively dividing the

West Bank into separate regions. Thus, there would have been no meaningfully

independent Palestinian state, but a series of Bantustans, while all the best land and water

aquifers would be in Israeli hands. Israel would also "temporarily" hold an additional 10

percent of West Bank land. (Given that Barak had not carried out the previous

withdrawals to which Israel had committed, Palestinian skepticism regarding "temporary"

Israeli occupation is not surprising.) It's a myth, Malley wrote,39 that "Israel's offer met

most if not all of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations" and a myth as well that the

"Palestinians made no concession of their own." Some Israeli analysts made a similar

assessment. For example, influential commentator Ze'ev Schiff wrote that, to

Palestinians, "the prospect of being able to establish a viable state was fading right before

their eyes. They were confronted with an intolerable set of options: to agree to the

spreading occupation ... or to set up wretched Bantustans, or to launch an uprising."40

What caused the second Intifada?

On September 28, 2000 Ariel Sharon, then a member of Parliament, accompanied by a

thousand-strong security force, paid a provocative visit approved by Barak to the site of

the Al Aqsa mosque. The next day Barak sent another large force of police and soldiers

to the area and, when the anticipated rock throwing by some Palestinians occurred, the

heavily-augmented police responded with lethal fire, killing four and wounding hundreds.

Thus began the second Intifada.

The underlying cause was the tremendous anger and frustration among the population

of the Occupied Territories, who saw things getting worse, not better, under Oslo, whose

hopes had been shattered, and whose patience after 33 years of occupation had reached

the boiling point.

Who is Ariel Sharon?

Sharon was the commander of an Israeli force that massacred some seventy civilians

in the Jordanian village of Qibya in 1953. He was Defense Minister in 1982, when Israel

invaded Lebanon, causing the deaths of 17,000 civilians. In September 1982, Lebanese

forces allied to Israel slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian non- combatants in the Sabra

and Shitila refugee camps, a crime for which an Israeli commission found Sharon to bear

indirect responsibility. As Housing Minister in various Israeli governments, Sharon

vigorously promoted the settlements in the Occupied Territories. In January 2001, he

took office as Prime Minister.

How did Israel respond to this second Intifada?

Israeli security forces responded to Palestinian demonstrations with lethal force even

though, as a UN investigation reported, at these demonstrations the Israeli Defense

Forces, "endured not a single serious casualty."41 Some Palestinians proceeded to arm

themselves, and the killing escalated, with deaths on both sides, though the victims were

disproportionately Palestinians. In November 2001, there was a week-long lull in the

fighting. Sharon then ordered the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud,

which, as everyone predicted, led to a rash of terror bombings, which in turn Sharon used

as justification for further assaults on the PA.42 By March 2002, Amnesty International

reported that more than 1000 Palestinians had been killed. "Israeli security services have

killed Palestinians, including more than 200 children, unlawfully, by shelling and

bombing residential areas, random or targeted shooting, especially near checkpoints and

borders, by extrajudicial executions and during demonstrations."43

Palestinian suicide bombings have targeted civilians. Amnesty International

commented: "These actions are shocking. Yet they can never justify the human rights

violations and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions which, over the past 18

months, have been committed daily, hourly, even every minute, by the Israeli authorities

against Palestinians. Israeli forces have consistently carried out killings when no lives

were in danger." Medical personnel have been attacked and ambulances, including those

of the Red Cross, "have been consistently shot at."44 Wounded people have been denied

medical treatment. Israel has carried out targeted assassinations (sometimes the targets

were probably connected to terrorism, sometimes not,45 but all of these extrajudicial

executions have been condemned by human rights groups).

The Israeli government criticized Arafat for not cracking down harder on terrorists

and then responded by attacking his security forces, who might have allowed him to

crack down, and restricting him to his compound in Ramallah.

Israeli opinion became sharply polarized. At the same time that hundreds of military

reservists have declared their refusal to serve in the West Bank and Gaza

(www.couragetorefuse.org), polls show 46% of Israelis favor forcibly expelling all

Palestinians from the Occupied Territories.46

What has U.S. policy been?

U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic support has made possible the Israeli

repression of the previous year and a half.

Much of the weaponry Israel has been using in its attacks on Palestinians either was

made in the United States (F-16s, attack helicopters, rockets, grenade launchers,

Caterpillar bulldozers, airburst shells, M-40 ground launchers) or made in Israel with

U.S. Department of Defense research and development funding (the Merkava tank).

On March 26, 2001, the Security Council considered a resolution to establish an

international presence in the Occupied Territories as a way to prevent human rights

violations. The United States vetoed the resolution. Because Israel did not want the U.S.

to get involved diplomatically, Washington did not name a special envoy to the region,

General Zinni, until November 2001, more than a year after the Intifada began. Bush met

four times with Sharon during the Intifada, never with Arafat. In February 2002, Vice

President Cheney declared that Israel could "hang" Arafat.47

What caused the current crisis?

As the Arab League was meeting to endorse a Saudi peace proposal -- recognition of

Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders -- a Hamas suicide bomber

struck. Sharon, no doubt fearing a groundswell of support for the Arab League position,

responded with massive force, breaking into Arafat's compound, confining him to

several rooms. Then there were major invasions of all the Palestinian cities in the West

Bank. There are many Palestinian casualties, though because Israel has kept reporters out,

their extent is not known.

In the early days of Sharon's offensive, Bush pointedly refused to criticize the Israeli

action, reserving all his condemnation for Arafat, who, surrounded in a few rooms, was

said to not be doing enough to stop terrorism. As demonstrations in the Arab world,

especially in pro-U.S. Jordan and Egypt, threatened to destabilize the entire region, Bush

finally called on Israel to withdraw from the cities. Sharon, recognizing that the U.S.

"demand" was uncoupled from any threat of consequences, kept up his onslaught.

Is there a way out?

A solution along the lines of the international consensus -- Israeli withdrawal from

territories occupied in 1967, the establishment of a truly independent and viable

Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem -- remains

feasible. It needs only the backing of the United States and Israel.

Don't the Arabs already have 22 states? Why do they need another one?

Not all Arabs are the same. That other Arabs may already have their right of self-

determination does not take away from Palestinians' basic rights. The fact that many

Palestinians live in Jordan and have considerable influence and rights there, doesn't mean

that the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or who were expelled

from their homes and are now in refugee camps aren't entitled to their rights -- any more

than the fact that there are a lot of Jews in the U.S., where they have considerable

influence and rights, means that Israeli Jews should be packed off across the Atlantic.

How can terrorists be given a state?

If people whose independence movements use terrorism are not entitled to a state,

then many current-day states would be illegitimate, not the least of them being Israel,

whose independence struggle involved frequent terrorism against civilians.

Won't an independent Palestinian state threaten Israeli security?

Conquerors frequently justify their conquests by claiming security needs. This was the

argument Israel gave for years why it couldn't return the Sinai to Egypt or pull out of

Lebanon. Both of these were done, however, and Israel's security was enhanced rather

than harmed. True, the Oslo Accords, which turned over disconnected swatches of

territory to Palestinian administration, may not have improved Israeli security. But as

Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the Oslo agreement and Sharon's current Foreign

Minister acknowledged, Oslo was flawed from the start. "Today we discover that

autonomy puts the Palestinians in a worse situation." The second Intifada could have

been avoided, Peres said, if the Palestinians had had a state from the outset. "We cannot

keep three and a half million Palestinians under siege without income, oppressed, poor,

densely populated, near starvation."48 Israel is the region's only nuclear power. Beyond

that, it is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Surely it cannot need to occupy

neighboring territory in order to achieve security. Nothing would better guarantee the

Israeli people peace and security than pulling out of the Occupied Territories.

Isn't the Palestinian demand for the right of return just a ploy to destroy Israel?

Allowing people who have been expelled from their homes the right to return is hardly

an extreme demand. Obviously this can't mean throwing out people who have been living

in these homes for many years now, and would need to be carefully worked out. Both

Palestinian officials and the Arab League have indicated that in their view the right of

return should be implemented in a way that would not create a demographic problem for

Israel.49 Of course, one could reasonably argue that an officially Jewish state is

problematic on basic democratic grounds. (Why should a Jew born in Brooklyn have a

right to "return" to Israel while a Palestinian born in Haifa does not?) In any event,

however, neither the Arab League nor Arafat have raised this objection.50

Don't Palestinians just view their own state as the first step in eliminating Israel

entirely?

Hamas and a few other, smaller Palestinian groups object not just to the occupation

but to the very existence of Israel. But the Hamas et al. position is a distinctly minority

sentiment among Palestinians, who are a largely secular community that has endorsed a

two-state settlement. To be sure, Hamas has been growing in strength as a result of the

inability of the Palestinian Authority to deliver a better life for Palestinians. If there were

a truly independent Palestinian state, one can assume that Hamas would find far fewer

volunteers for its suicide squads. It must be acknowledged, though, that the longer the

mutual terror continues, the harder it will be to achieve long term peace.

Is a two-state solution just?

There is a broad international consensus on a two-state solution, along the lines of the

Saudi peace proposal. Such a solution is by no means ideal. Palestine is a small territory

to be divided into two states; it forms a natural economic unit. An Israeli state that

discriminates in favor of Jews and a Palestinian state that will probably be equally

discriminatory will depart substantially from a just outcome. What's needed is a single

secular state that allows substantial autonomy to both national communities, something

along the lines of the bi-national state proposed before 1948. This outcome, however,

does not seem imminent. A two-state solution may be the temporary measure that will

provide a modicum of justice and allow Jews and Palestinians to move peacefully

forward to a more just future.

--------------

Stephen R. Shalom teaches political science at William Paterson University and is the

author of Imperial Alibis (South End Press).

Notes

1.As Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am put it, his fellow Jews "treat the Arabs with hostility

and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of

these deeds." Quoted in Jews For Justice in The Middle East, The Origin of the

Palestine- Israeli conflict, 3rd ed., P.O. Box 14561, Berkeley, CA, 94712, available at

http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html. return

2.. Norman G. Finkelstein, "A Land Without a People: Joan Peters's 'Wilderness'

Myth," in Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, New York: Verso, 1995,

pp. 21-50. return

3.See the sources cited by Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel

and the Palestinians, updated edition, Cambridge: South End Press, 1999, p. 169n10.

return

4.Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: Pantheon, 1987,

pp. 66-67. return

5.Quoted in Jerome Slater, "What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian

Peace Process," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 116, no. 2, 2001, p. 174. return

6.Flapan, pp. 55, 73-77. return

7.Flapan, pp. 153-86. return

8.Flapan, pp. 187-199. return

9.Christopher Hitchens, "Broadcasts," in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship

and the Palestinian Question, ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, New

York: Verso, 1988, pp. 73-83. return

10.Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1987; Norman G. Finkelstein, "'Born of War, Not By

Design," in Finkelstein, Image and Reality..., pp. 51-87. return

11.Slater, pp. 173-74. return

12.See Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 308-11; and sources in Noam Chomsky, Towards

a New Cold War, New York: Pantheon, 1982, p. 462n33. return

13.Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Contorl of a National Minority,

University of Texas, 1980; Human Rights Watch, Second Class: Discrimination

Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools, Sept. 2001,

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/. On Israeli-Arab "unrecognized"

villages, where some 100,000 people are forced to live without basic government

services, including electricity and water, see

http://www.assoc40.org/index_main.html. return

14.Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 4th ed., Boston:

Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001, pp. 237-38. return

15.John Dugard, Kamal Hossain, and Richard Falk, "Question of The Violation of

Human Rights in The Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine," Report of the

human rights inquiry commission established pursuant to Commission resolution S-

5/1 of 19 October 2000, E/CN.4/2001/121, 16 March 2001, para 29. return

16.Quoted in Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p. 100. return

17.Smith, pp. 306, 334n10. return

18.Henry Kissinger, White House Years, Boston: Little, Brown, 1979, p. 376. return

19.Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, chap 3, esp. p. 67. return

20.Smith, pp. 418-21. return

21.Smith, pp. 422-24. return

22.Richard Sale, "Israel gave major aid to Hamas," UPI, Feb. 24, 2001. return

23.Geoffrey Aronson, "Recapitulating the Redeployments: The Israel-PLO 'Interim

Agreements'," Information Brief No. 32, Center for Policy Analysis, 27 April 2000.

return

24.Slater, p. 177, citing speech to Knesset of 5 October 1995, printed in Report on

Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories 5 (November 1995). return

25.Slater, p. 178n9, quoting Ha'aretz, 7 March 1997. return

26.Slater, p. 178n9, quoting Report of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

Israeli-Palestinian Security,1995. return

27.Slater, p. 179. return

28.Smith, p. 490. return

29.Slater, pp. 180-81. return

30.Edward Said, "Palestinians under Siege," in The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's

Apartheid, ed. Roane Carey, New York: Verso, 2001, p. 29; Allegra Pacheco,

"Flouting Convention: The Oslo Agreements," in Carey, p. 189. return

31.Sara Roy, "Decline and Disfigurement: The Palestinian Economy After Oslo," in

Carey, p. 95; Pacheco, p. 187. return

32.Roy, p. 95. return

33.Roy, p. 101. return

34.CIA World Factbook 2001. return

35.Roy, pp. 98-100. return

36.Clyde R. Mark, Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, Updated March 15, 2002, CRS Issue

Brief for Congress, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, Order

Code IB85066. Available at http:///www.fpc.gov/CRS_REPS/Crs_abs.htm. return

37.See the list of vetoed Security Council resolutions on Palestine at

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/index.html. return

38.Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," New York

Review of Books, August 9, 2001. See also Deborah Sontag, "Quest for Mideast

Peace: How and Why It Failed," New York Times, 26 July 2001, p. A1; and the

critique of the Barak offer on the website of the "Peace Bloc," Gush Shalom,

http://www.gush-shalom.org. return

39.New York Times, July 8, 2001. return

40.Slater, 184, citing Ha'aretz, 24 November 2000. return

41.Dugard et al., para. 22. return

42.Suzanne Goldenberg, "Middle East: Israeli strikes dim hopes for peace mission:

Sharon accused of trying to sabotage visit," Guardian, Nov. 26, 2001, p. 6. return

43.Amnesty International, 58th UN Commission on Human Rights (2002), Background

Briefing, IOR 41/004/2002, March 11, 2002. return

44.AI statement before Commission on Human Rights, March 26, 2002, MDE

15/027/2002. return

45.Dugard et al., paras. 56, 62, 64. return

46.Ha'aretz, March 12, 2002. On the reservists, see http://www.couragetorefuse.org.

return

47.Clyde Mark, Palestinians and Middle East Peace: Issues for the United States,

Updated March 19, 2002, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress,

Order Code IB92052. return

48.Jason Keyser, "Peres Says Mideast Peace Process Flawed >From Outset," Associated

Press, Feb. 21, 2002. return

49.See Arafat, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2002, and Dugard et al., para. 31 for further

discussion. return

50.For discussion of the right of return, see Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return,

ed. Naseer Aruri, London: Pluto, 2001. return