Settler communities within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons.
To comprehend the current conflict between Israel and Palestine, it is essential to understand its historical origins. This article serves as an explainer on the conflict’s roots and development. This is the first part of a two-part series.
Israel and the Balfour Declaration
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Britain took control of the area
known as Palestine. This area was inhabited by an Arab majority and a Jewish minority, along
with other smaller ethnic groups.
In 1917, the then-British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter addressed to British
Jewish community leader Lionel Walter Rothschild. The letter committed the British government to facilitating “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922 and enshrined in the British Mandate, which was created in 1923 and lasted until 1948.
During this period, the British government facilitated mass Jewish immigration, spurred by the rise of Nazism in Europe. Jewish settlers faced strikes and protests by Palestinians. Violence between Jews and Arabs, and against the British mandate, increased during this time.
The 1930s and the Arab Revolt
The murder of two Jews contributed to escalating tensions, culminating in the Arab Revolt from 1936 to 1939. In April 1936, the Arab Higher Committee urged Palestinians to launch a general strike, withhold tax payments, and boycott Jewish products to protest both growing Jewish immigration and British colonial rule.
The strike lasted for six months and was repressed by the British, who responded with mass
arrests and punitive home demolitions, a practice that has continued to be used by Israel against Palestinians.
The second phase of the revolt, led by a Palestinian fellahin (peasant) resistance movement,
began in late 1937, targeting British colonial forces. By the latter half of 1939, Britain had
amassed 30,000 troops in Palestine; homes were demolished, curfews were imposed, villages
were bombed, and summary killings and administrative detentions were widespread.
The British collaborated with the Jewish settler community, forming armed groups and a British-led counterinsurgency force of Jewish fighters named the Special Night Squads. At this time, arms were secretly imported into the Yishuv, and weapons factories were established to expand the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force that later became the core of the Israeli army. In the three years of the Arab Revolt, 415 Jews and 5,000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 – 20,000 Palestinians were wounded, and 5,600 were imprisoned.
The UN Partition Plan
By 1947, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. By this time, the Jewish population had grown to 33 percent of Palestine, while controlling 6 percent of the land. The plan was rejected by Palestinians as it allotted nearly 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state, including a significant portion of Palestine’s fertile coastal region.
The Nakba, the Creation of Israel, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
On May 14, 1948, the British High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham, withdrew
from Palestine, and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the state of Israel. Within hours,
Israel had de facto recognition from the United States and de jure recognition from the Soviet Union.
Fighting between Jewish and Arab groups had been escalating, and the day after Israel’s
statehood was declared, units from the armies of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon crossed into Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
During the war, massacres and acts of terror were conducted by and against both sides. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forcibly removed from their homes. This violence and dispossession is now known as the Nakba, or the ‘Catastrophe,’ resulting in the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem.
By the end of the war, Israel had captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. Jordan captured and later annexed the land which became known as the West Bank, and Egypt captured the Gaza Strip. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements.
In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, calling for the right of
return for Palestinian refugees. In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established.
The Naksa
On June 5, 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel gained control of the rest of historic Palestine, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
For some Palestinians, this led to further displacement, known as the Naksa, meaning ‘setback.’ Israeli settlement construction began in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The First Intifada (1987-1993)
After tensions had been steadily rising due to Israeli land expropriation and settlement
construction in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the first intifada erupted in the Gaza Strip in December 1987 after four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck collided with two vans carrying Palestinian workers. This was perceived as an act of revenge for the stabbing of an Israeli in Gaza a few days prior.
Protests spread rapidly to the West Bank, with Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli tanks and soldiers. Rioting shifted to more violent means – attacks with rifles and explosives – due to the severity of the Israeli military and police response.
In 1988, the Arab League recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem estimated 2,000 deaths due to the violence of the first intifada.
The first intifada led to the establishment of the Hamas movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority
The first intifada ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the formation of the Palestinian Authority. In the accords, Israel recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and agreed to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in stages. These areas were to be governed by the Palestinian Authority. Discussions relating to the creation of a two-state solution were underway, and matters were to be settled over the next five years. The Oslo Accords were rejected by Hamas, which initiated a series of suicide attacks against Israeli targets to halt peace talks.
In violation of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians imported arms and bolstered security forces, and Israel continued to build settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Talks broke down in the early 2000s due to mutual recrimination and diplomatic stagnation.
Shortly after, Ariel Sharon, the prime ministerial candidate for Likud, a right-wing Israeli
political party, visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, asserting Israel’s sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. As rioting broke out, Israeli police responded with force, and unrest erupted in the occupied territories, beginning the second intifada.
The Second Intifada (2000-2005)
The second intifada resulted in over 4,300 fatalities. Following a suicide bombing in March 2002 that killed 30 people, Operation Defensive Shield was launched by the Israeli army to reoccupy the West Bank and parts of Gaza. In 2003, Israel began constructing a separation barrier in the West Bank, similar to one built in Gaza in 1996. State-directed assassination of over 200 Palestinian military operatives and political leaders aided in suppressing the second intifada.
Although violence had subsided by 2005, conditions in the occupied territories worsened. Israeli settlement in the West Bank continued, and strict controls were placed on the movement of Palestinians and Palestinian goods, suppressing economic growth. Further, the Palestinian Authority lost political support due to charges of corruption. Hamas won the 2006 legislative election and took power by force in Gaza in 2007.
This article will be continued in the next edition of The Resolution.
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