This is the first in a series of articles on this topic.
We are familiar in the United States with grievance politics fomenting violence and jeopardizing democracy. Yet many of the same people who decry willful ignorance among Republicans are guilty of the same practice when they consider Israel and Palestine.
Historical narratives require the selection of salient facts that provide a narrative ark that gives the story a comprehensible shape. A sense of grievance tends to result in a selection of facts that justifies the grievance. We can see this on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, as explained by Palestinian Dr. Hiba Husseini and Israeli Dr. Yossi Beilin in “The Holyland Confederation as a Facilitator for the Two-state Solution,” available at monmouth.edu. This book shows that there is sufficient reason for grievance on both sides, but each side tends to ignore reasons for grievance on the other side.
Jews and Arabs coexisted reasonably well under the Ottoman Empire. In 1800, historic Palestine was occupied by about 200,000 Arabs and 7,000 Jews. During the nineteenth century the sentiment of nationalism arose in Europe. Many Germans reflected the spirit of nationalism by considering Jews to be foreigners who were replacing real Germans in Germany.
Waves of pogroms after the assassination of Russian Czar Alexander II motivated 2.5 million Jews to flee Eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914, mostly to the United States, but a small number to historic Palestine as well. The Ottomans allowed Jews to buy land from absentee landlords in Palestine, resulting in the displacement of Arabs through no fault of their own.
Although, the land bought by Jews was no more than 7 percent of the land west of the Jordan River, Palestinians couldn’t see why they should suffer through displacement for the sins that Europeans perpetrated against Jews. The decision by Jews to hire only fellow Jews, not Arabs, exacerbated Palestinian grievance, which fostered a sense of nationalism among them.
During the First World War, Western powers fighting the Ottoman Empire were understood by Arabs to have agreed in 1916 to Arab independence after the war if they would join the fight against the Ottomans, which they did. The next year, the British Balfour Declaration seemed to contradict this pledge through promotion of a Jewish homeland in part of the same territory. Arabs weren’t consulted nor were their interests considered even though they constituted over 90 percent of the area’s population of nearly 800,000.
After the War, pogroms in Ukraine took about 100,000 Jewish lives. The United States all but closed its door to Jews in 1924, so Jews couldn’t understand why they shouldn’t move to what they considered their historic homeland. Husseini and Beilin write that the Jews didn’t think they were harming Arabs by not giving them jobs, while the Arabs saw immigrant Jews as trying to take their homes and replace them.
Thus, by 100 years ago, resentment on both sides was reasonable. Jews could reasonably resent their atrocious treatment by Europeans and want to move. European antisemitism put them between a rock and a hard place, so they had little sympathy for Arab grievances. Arabs were also between a rock and a hard place. They resented the Ottomans for selling land to Jews, Jews for failure to include them in economic development, and Europeans for allocating land to be a Jewish homeland when it was overwhelming populated by Palestinians.
Matters soon became worse for the Arabs. At the San Remo Conference in 1920 the British were given a mandate to administer Palestine on both sides of the Jordan river. The mandate reconfirmed the Balfour Declaration, which became international policy through confirmation by the League of Nations in 1922. Nevertheless, both Arabs and Jews considered the British administration to favor the other side.
Arabs decided that violence was now their only recourse, as international organizations run by Europeans tended to favor Jewish immigration. Violence was needed to keep their homes and land. They initiated violence in 1921, 1929, and 1936, with significant casualties among Jews, Arabs, and the British, who placed new limits on Jewish immigration. The violent Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 set back all peacemaking efforts.
The Peel Commission in 1937 recommended partitioning the area between Jews and Arabs, which David Ben Gurion and other mainstream Jews accepted, but more strident Jews wanted all of Palestine as did most Palestinians. The UN authorized such a two-state solution in 1947, but Arabs tried to prevent its implementation through a war that lasted into much of 1948.
Both sides were guilty of ignoring the legitimate needs of the other side. The Arabs were more violent, but they were the ones suffering an invasion without legal recourse.
Look for the next post covering Israel’s War of Independence, the Six-Day War, and beyond.
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