Palestine is a historic region on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, comprising parts of modern Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Also known as the Holy Land, Palestine is an area sacred to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It is traditionally believed to be that promised to the Hebrew tribes by God according to the Bible, as well as, the scene of Jesus' life and the traditional site of Muhammad's ascent to heaven. The earliest known settlements in Palestine, e.g. Jericho, may date from 8000 BC when an independent Hebrew kingdom was established. After 950 BC this kingdom broke up into two states, Israel and Judah. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans in turn conquered Palestine, which subsequently fell to the Muslim Arabs by 640 AD. The area was later the focus of the Crusades and a popular destination for European Jews escaping the Inquisition in Spain and the surrounding nations. From 1516, Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.
By the late 19th century, Zionism, which had arisen in Europe as a result of increased anti-Semitism there, aimed to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. During World War I, the British, who captured the area, appeared to support this goal and in 1922, the League of Nations approved the British mandate of Palestine. Jews began immigrated to the area in large numbers despite Arab opposition. At this point, tension and violence between Jews and Arabs, something which had remained uncommon and isolated in the area for centuries, began to intensify. The British, unable to resolve the problem, turned the Palestine question over to the UN in 1947 at a time when there were about 1,091,000 Muslims, 614,000 Jews, and 146,000 Christians living in the area.
In Nov. 1947 the United Nations divided Palestine, then under British mandate, into Jewish and Arab states. Six months later the British withdrew, and on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. The neighboring Arab states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq rejected both the partition of Palestine and the existence of the new nation. In the war that followed (1948–49), Israel emerged victorious and its territory increased by one half. Arab opposition continued, however, and full-scale fighting broke out again in 1956 (the Sinai campaign), 1967 (the Six-Day War), and 1973 (the Yom Kippur War.) Israel emerged from these conflicts with large tracts of its neighbors' territories with heavy controversery surrounding the means by which it acquired weapons and supplies for its militaristic success.
In 1978 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat signed the Camp David accords; a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was subsequently signed (1979) in Washington, D.C., and Israel withdrew from the Sinai by 1982. Little progress was made, however, with respect to the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and in 1981 Israel annexed the Golan Heights (captured from Syria in 1967). Israel's fierce, intermittent fighting with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon led to a devastating Israeli invasion in 1982. Later, Israel withdrew (1985) but maintained a 6–12 mi (10–20 km) security zone there just north of the border. Begin retired in 1983 and was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir.
Indecisive elections in 1984 and 1988 resulted in an awkward coalition government, led by Labor party leader Shimon Peres (1984–86) and Shamir (1986–90). In June 1990, after the coalition collapsed, Shamir formed a right-wing government. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there were increasingly violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops in the occupied territories.
Soviet Jews began emigrating to Israel in large numbers in 1990, strapping Israel's resources, and Iraq launched missiles at Israel during the Persian Gulf War. Israel began peace talks with Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians in 1991. In 1992 the Labor party and its allies won the largest bloc of seats in parliament, and Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister.
In 1993 Israel signed an accord with the PLO that led to Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho in mid-1994; an accord the following year called for the expansion of self-rule to all Arab cities and villages in the West Bank by 1996. A peace treaty with Jordan was signed in 1994. However, in the subsequent year, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist and Peres succeeded him as Prime Minister.
Under an accord signed in 1998, Israel agreed to withdraw from additional West Bank territory, while the Palestinian Authority pledged to take stronger measures to fight terrorism. In the May 1999 elections, Labor returned to power under Ehud Barak, a former army chief of staff, who formed a coalition government. In September, Barak and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, signed an agreement to finalize their borders and to determine the status of Jerusalem within a year. By March 2000 Israel completed handing over additional West Bank territory; in May it withdrew from South Lebanon. Further peace talks deadlocked in July, and in the fall of that same year, a new cycle of violence erupted in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself when Ariel Sharon, known for his slaughter of Palestinian civilians throughout his career, visited a Jerusalem holy site, accompanied by over a thousand armed Israeli soldiers. When some Palestinian youths threw stones, Israeli soldiers responded with live gunfire, killing 5 on the first day, and 10 on the second.
In Feb. 2001 Sharon defeated Barak for the prime ministership. Sharon formed a broad national unity government and pursued a hard line with the Palestinians, leading to reoccupation of West Bank towns in 2002 in an attempt to end attacks against Israelis. Labor left the government in Oct. 2002, forcing Sharon to call for elections in Jan. 2003, which resulted in a victory for his Likud bloc and brought a four-party, mainly right-wing coalition to power.
In May, 2003, Sharon’s government accepted the internationally supported “road map for peace” with some limitations; the plan envisioned the establishment of a Palestinian state in three years. Talks resumed with Palestinian authorities, who also negotiated a three-month cease-fire with Palestinian militants, and Israel made some conciliatory moves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli settlements continnued to expand, as did the number of soldiers, and military action against Palestinians, within the West Bank and Gaza. Suicide bombings and Israeli revenge attacks resumed. In August of that year, and again in October, Israel attacked Syria for the first time in 20 years, bombing what it termed a "terrorist training camp" in retaliation for suicide bombings.There is little to no evidence to prove these allegations.
Israel’s ongoing construction of a 400-mi (640-km) fence and wall security barrier in the West Bank, potentially enclosing some 15% of that territory, brought widespread international condemnation in late 2003, and a July 2004 commission launched by the International Court of Justice (requested by Palestinians and the UN General Assembly) termed its construction illegal under international law as it was being constructed on Palestinian lands. Meanwhile, an Israeli court ruling (June) ordered the wall to be rerouted in certain areas because of the hardship it would cause Palestinians.
In March the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin heightened tensions in the occupied territories, especially the Gaza Strip. Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the latter, while supported by most Israelis, was rejected in a nonbinding vote (May, 2004) by Likud party members. The plan then resulted in defections from his coalition, but Sharon vowed to complete the withdrawal, which was being undertaken for security reasons, by the end of 2005. In Oct., 2004, he secured parliamentary approval for the plan. The government also planned and followed through with expansion to settlements in the West Bank. Sharon formed a new coalition that included the Labor party, which supported the Gaza withdrawal, in Jan., 2005. He subsequently agreed to a truce with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and in Mar., 2005, Israeli forces began withdrawing from Jericho and other West Bank towns.
This has not however culminated in any significant change to the area which continues to be the scene of daily intensifying carnage and occupation. with 119 Israeli children killed by Palestinians and 971 Palestinian children killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000, 1,030 Israeli adults and at least 4,437 Palestinian adults killed since September 2000, and 6,845 Israelis and 31,815 Palestinians injured since that same time. (http://www.ifamericansknew.org/) Israelis, primarily within the territory penetrated in 1948, are required to participate in their country's military machine and Palestinians, mainly in the West Bank and Gaza, continue to live under the oppressive rule of warfare between the Israeli military and those Palestinian factions opposing it in the streets.
To read an eloquent article by an Israeli Jewish journalist researching the parallels between her parents' experience in Nazi Germany and life today for Palestinians, click here.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in an odd and oppressive limbo. They have no nation, no citizenship, and no ultimate power over their own lives.
Since 1967, when Israel conquered these areas (the final 22 percent of mandatory Palestine), Palestinians have been living under Israeli military occupation. While in some parts Israel has allowed a Palestinian “autonomous” entity to take on such municipal functions as education, health care, infrastructure and policing, Israel retains overall power.
According to international law, an occupying force is responsible for the protection of the civilian population living under its control. Israel, however, ignores this requirement, routinely committing violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of principles instituted after World War II to ensure that civilians would “never again” suffer as they had under Nazi occupation. Israel is one of the leading violators of these conventions today.
Israeli forces regularly confiscate private land; imprison individuals without process – including children – and physically abuse them under incarceration; demolish family homes; bulldoze orchards and crops; place entire towns under curfew; destroy shops and businesses; shoot, maim, and kill civilians – and Palestinians are without power to stop any of it.
When a child is arrested, for example – often by a group of armed soldiers in the middle of the night – parents can do nothing. Knowing that their son is most likely being beaten by soldiers on the way to the station, stripped and humiliated in prison, quite likely physically abused in multiple additional ways, and destined to be held – perhaps in isolation – for days, weeks, or months (all before a trial has even taken place), parents are without the ability to offer protection of any kind. Quite often, in fact, they cannot even visit him.
Finally, when the military trial under which their son is to be sentenced – often for years (sometimes decades) in prison – all they can do is hire a lawyer whose efforts, at best, will reduce the ultimate sentence by a few months. Rarely, if ever, can even the most skilled lawyer do more than afford the child a friendly face in court and be an outside witness to the injustice of the proceedings. Meanwhile, the presence of such a lawyer provides Israel cover for its “judicial system.”
Perhaps most significant – and rarely understood by people in the outside world – is the fact that Palestinians live, basically, in a prison to which Israel holds the keys.
They cannot leave Gaza or the West Bank unless Israeli guards allow them to. If they have been allowed out, they cannot return to their homes and families unless Israeli guards permit it.
Frequently, in both cases, Israel refuses such permission.
Academics invited to attend conferences abroad, high school students given US State Department scholarships to study in the United States, mothers wishing to visit daughters abroad, American citizens returning to their families, humanitarians bringing wheelchairs – the list goes on almost without limit – have all been denied permission by Israel to leave or enter their own land.
Living under such hardship and humiliation, in the year 2000 the Palestinian population began an uprising against Israeli rule called the “Intifada.” This term – rarely translated in the American media – is simply the Arabic word for uprising or rebellion – literally, it means “shaking off.” The American Revolutionary War, for example, would be called the American intifada against Britain.
This is the second such uprising. The first began in 1986 and ended in 1993 when the peace negotiations offered hopes of justice. (Sadly, in the following years these hopes were crushed after Israel, rather than withdrawing from the West Bank, as promised, actually doubled its expansion in these areas.)
During this first uprising, which consisted largely of Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli troops (very few Palestinians had weapons), Palestinians were killed at a rate approximately 7-10 times that of Israelis.
One of the ways Israeli forces attempted to put down this rebellion was through the “break the bones” policy, implemented by Yitzhak Rabin, in which people who had been throwing stones – often youths – were held down and had their arms broken. On the first day of this policy alone, one hospital in Gaza treated 200 individuals for fractures in just a few hours.1
Today’s uprising – termed the “Second Intifada” – was sparked when an Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, known for his slaughter of Palestinian civilians throughout his career, visited a Jerusalem holy site, accompanied by over a thousand armed Israeli soldiers. When some Palestinian youths threw stones, Israeli soldiers responded with live gunfire, killing 5 the first day, and 10 the second.
This uprising has now continued for over five years, as Israel periodically mounts massive invasions into Palestinian communities, using tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets. Palestinian fighters resisting these forces possess rifles and homemade mortars or rockets at best. A minute fraction strap explosives onto their own bodies and attempt to deliver their bombs in person; often they kill only themselves.
While the large majority of Palestinians oppose suicide bombings, many feel that armed resistance has become necessary – much as Americans supported war after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, only a small portion take an active part in the resistance, despite the fact that virtually all support its aim: to create a nation free from foreign oppression.
Most Palestinians attempt – with greater or lesser success – to go on with their lives, raise their children, attend school, go to work, celebrate festivals, organize weddings, raise their crops, provide for their families – all the things that preoccupy people around the world.
As Israel constructs a wall around them, however, prevents them at checkpoints from traveling from town to town, destroys their crops, prevents children from traveling to schools and the sick and injured from getting to the hospitals, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live even an approximation of a normal life.
Most Palestinians feel that the Israeli government’s intention is to drive them off the land, and there is a great deal of evidence that this is the goal of many Israeli leaders.
At the same time, however, there is a small but determined minority of Israelis, joined by citizens from throughout the world, who are coming to the Palestinian Territories to oppose Israeli occupation. These “internationals,” as they are often called, take part in peaceful marches, attempt to help Palestinian farmers harvest their crops despite Israeli military closures, live in refugee camps in the hope that their presence will prevent Israeli invasions and shelling, and walk children to school.
They are sometimes beaten, shot, and killed.
Some Israeli soldiers are refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, stating: “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.”
Meanwhile, the semblance of Palestinian autonomy continues. Elections held in January, 2005, resulted in new Palestinian leadership that will govern under occupation and will attempt to negotiate eventual Palestinian liberation. Yet even this election demonstrated Israel’s power, as various Palestinian candidates were arrested, detained, and sometimes beaten by Israeli forces. This aspect, however, like so much else, was rarely reported by the American media.
End Notes
1. “Under orders from Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin, ‘Soldiers armed with cudgels beat up those they could lay their hands on regardless of whether they were demonstrators, or not, breaking into homes by day and night, dragging men and women, young and old, from their beds to beat them. At Gaza’s Shifa Hospital 200 people were treated during the first five days of the new policy, most of them suffering from broken elbows and knees. Three had fractured skulls.’” (PALESTINE AND ISRAEL: THE UPRISING AND BEYOND, David McDowall, University of California Press, 1989, p. 7.)
To view an extremely detailed map of Palestine history, Palestinian dispossession, Israeli establishment, and statistics of geopolitical circumstances, past and present, click here.
To view statistics on fatalities, detainees, prisoners, destruction of property, disputed areas, settlements, resources, and other issues, compiled by an Israeli Human Rights Organization, click here..
