Barry Werner – A Summary of the Palestinian Conflict
The Jews of Europe were facing pogroms (murderous antisemitic riots) in the 19th century and a small group of Jews, who called themselves Zionists, understood that the situation was getting worse. They couldn’t imagine the horror of the Holocaust that would occur approximately 50 years later in the 20th century, but they were generally correct in their assessment. They sought to exercise the progressive ideas of Europe at that time which said that you could resolve such conflicts by giving nations a homeland. So, with help and encouragement from well-meaning non-Jews, they sought to reestablish the ancient Jewish homeland in the area called Palestine.
It was to be a migration, not an invasion. At that time, very few Arabs were living in Palestine. The Jews of Europe expected that they would bring the benefits of European modernity to the Arabs who lived there so that everybody would benefit from it.
The Arabs saw it differently. They didn’t want Europeans to change their way of life. But more than simply a resistance to change, they opposed Zionism because of the fanatic religious belief that Jews must be subservient to Muslims and the racist belief that non-Arabs must be subservient to Arabs in the lands that had been conquered by the followers of Mohammed in the 7th century.
When Israel was finally established in 1948, which by then was after the Holocaust, the Arab population of Palestine had grown tremendously, mainly due to Arab immigration from around the Arab world. Although the UN suggested partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, the Arab world violently refused and started an all-or-nothing war against the Jews. The Arabs lost, and the refugee crisis followed. (The Arab refugee crisis has been artificially inflated since then by the UN agency called UNWRA.)
The Palestinian conflict is an ongoing phenomenon that started over a hundred years ago and only changes form as time goes by. As Israel successfully defends itself against one kind of attack, the enemies of Israel change tactics and try a different kind of attack. Today, they shoot rockets from Gaza, and they are trying to get away with firing their rockets from Lebanon.
Many Palestinians want to be at peace with Israel, and most Israeli Arabs want to be fully integrated citizens of Israel. But, the leadership of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza continue to oppose what they call “normalization” with the Jewish state.
The moderate Arab states around Israel are politically unstable because of the religious fanatic Muslim Brotherhood. The educated people who run those governments see Israel as a partner against religious fanaticism. Unfortunately, too many people in the Arab world are still heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.
