Arab – Israeli Conflict
Briefing Documents for Negotiators
Background:
Beginning about a century ago, conflicts began erupting between Palestinians and their Arab supporters in neighboring lands and Jewish settlers in the region. Riots and killings escalated in the 1920s and 1930s. It became war in 1947-1948, when Jewish settlers and refugees from the Holocaust established the nation of Israel on land that had been called Palestine. An intermittent war has continued since then. In 1987 and 2000, it took the form of Palestinian intifadas ("shaking off") that escalated from youths throwing stones to arson, sabotage, and murder. Since then it has included Palestinian suicide bombings, Israeli torture of prisoners, Palestinian sniper attacks, Israeli arbitrary detentions, Palestinian rocket attacks, Israeli missile attacks…etc
For 40 years, U.S. leaders, beginning with President Richard Nixon, have tried and failed to mediate a peace agreement establishing a Palestinian state and a secure Israeli state--a so-called "two-state solution." The other Arab nations largely support Palestine but President Jimmy Carter was successful in his 1979 mediation of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement.
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"As I see it, the confrontation between the Jews returning to Zion and the Arab inhabitants of the country is not like a western or an epic, but more like a Greek tragedy. It is a clash between right and right (although one must not seek a simplistic symmetry in it). And, as in all tragedies, there is no hope of a happy reconciliation based on a clever magical formula. The choice is between a bloodbath and a disappointing compromise, more like the enforced acceptance than a sudden breakthrough of mutual understanding ….We are here because this is the only place where we can exist as a free nation. The Arabs are here because Palestine is the home of the Palestinians, just as Iraq is the homeland of the Iraqis and Holland the homeland of the Dutch."
--Israeli novelist Amos Oz, "The Meaning of Homeland" in Under This Blazing Light
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Formation of Israel
In 1947, the United Nations voted 33-13 to partition Palestine into two states, one for an emerging Jewish state, the other for Palestinians, most of whom are Muslims. Arab countries in the region did not accept the UN plan, and armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded Israel. In 1948, Israel won what it calls its war for independence. Palestinians call it al-Nakba (the catastrophe).
During the fighting the Israeli army forced some 700,000 Palestinians from their land and into exile and refugee camps. Other Palestinians fled in fear. Many of those still surviving and their descendants, about 4 million people, continue to live in those camps, mostly in neighboring Arab countries.
The Palestinians who remained are in four areas: (1) Israel, where today 1.8 million Palestinian survivors of the 1948 war and their descendants are Israeli citizens; (2) East Jerusalem, population 270,000; (3) the Gaza strip, population 1.6 million; and (4) the West Bank, population 2.6 million.
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Various Stamps
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“Second Class citizens”
The Zionists consider the Arabs who reside in the occupied territories to be backward people, unworthy of equality of rights or treatment, and undeserving of justice. They therefore should not have the same rights as the Jews either in education or in employment, and not even in law. The newly occupied ands after the 1967 aggression are experiencing a severe terrorist rule, while the Arabs who remained in Israel after 1948 have led the life of second class citizens and their lives have been exposed to many aspects of danger.
The Arabs experienced serious racial discrimination in the field of employment. The majority of Arab workmen in Israel in 1963…were suffering either from the low level of wages in comparison with the wages of Israelis or from unemployment. The Arab citizen residing in Israel is a bearer of a grade ‘B’ nationality card to show that he is a non-Jew Israeli subject, whereas, the Jewish citizen is a bearer of a different kind of card.
(from Zionism- Racist Expansionist Movement, published by The Arab League Office in Britain, 1969).
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Map of UN Partition
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Map of Present Day
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On September 21, 2008Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel, resigned. He had been caught up for many months in a growing corruption scandal. Only hours after his resignation, the Israeli daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, interviewed him. An excerpt:
Yedioth Ahronoth: You must have done some soul-searching before your resignation.
Ehud Olmert: At the moment, I'd like to do some soul-searching on behalf of the nation of Israel….We have a window of opportunity--a short amount of time before we enter an extremely dangerous situation--in which to take a historic step in our relations with the Palestinians….The decision we have to make is the decision we've spent forty years refusing to look at with our eyes open….
And yet we are not prepared to say to ourselves, 'Yes, this is what we must do.' We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage [of territory elsewhere]-without this, there will be no peace.
…. Peace requires not only the shutdown of Israeli settlements scattered through the West Bank and the removal of Israelis but also establishing a Palestinian-controlled corridor between Gaza and the West Bank.
Yedioth Ahronoth: Including Jerusalem?
Ehud Olmert: Including Jerusalem--with, I'd imagine, special arrangements made for the TempleMount and the holy/historical sites. Whoever talks seriously about security in Jerusalem….must be willing to relinquish parts of Jerusalem….Whoever wants to maintain control over the entire city will have to absorb 270,000 Arabs into the borders of Israel proper. This won't do….
What I'm saying here has never been said by a leader of Israel. But the time has come to say these things….
Our goal should be, for the first time, to designate a final and exact borderline between us and the Palestinians so that the entire world, the United States, the U.N. and Europe can say, 'These are the borders of Israel, we recognize them, and we will anchor them with formal resolutions in the major international bodies.
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Israelis have formed settlements in lands designated Palestinian areas. In the West Bank about 280,000 Israelis live amidst 2.6 million Palestinians. While most settlers would willingly leave the West Bank if provided with homes in Israel, a mostly religious minority would not and would have to be forcibly removed--just as some Israelis had to be forcibly removed from Gaza. (cnn.com)
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Palestine claims East Jerusalem as its capital. Currently about 200,000 Israelis and 270,000 Palestinians live there. Israel has declared Jerusalem its "eternal capital" and over the years steadily expanded its boundaries, encouraging Israelis to move into East Jerusalem and forcing Palestinians out. Religious opposition to the Palestinian claim of at least East Jerusalem for its capital would be strong.
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Isabel Kershner explained that "Prominent mainstream Palestinians are increasingly warning that if they fail soon to achieve the kind of state they want--sovereign and independent, with East Jerusalem as its capital--they will opt instead for a one-state solution based on a long-term fight for equal rights within the state of Israel, a struggle they compare with what took place in South Africa….[because] granting equal voting rights to millions of Palestinians in the territories would ultimately spell the end of the Zionist project of Jewish self-determination and a Jewish state." (New York Times, 9/4/08)
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“I don’t believe in the Jews historical right to come back and take land from other people because we were here 2000 years ago. Instead, we have the right because of the Holocaust. “
~ 1975: Israeli TV Producer A.B. Yehoshua
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Pamphlet: Palestine National Liberation Movement, 1969
Student letter to parent in US:
“For 20 years our people have been waiting for a just solution of the Palestine problem. I refuse to remain a refugee. I have decided to become a freedom fighter and I ask for your blessing.”
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The war on terrorism, which the United States has now been compelled to undertake, will not greatly resemble traditional war. For while the ideology of radical Islamism is, of course, fundamentally religious, it also profits critically from socioeconomic discontent and the failure of existing Muslim states to achieve progress toward a prosperous democracy. Radical groups promise a revolution in this world based on the principles of justice embodied in the Koran and the Shariah. Radical groups also gain support and prestige through aid to the poor and dispossessed. As in the Cold War, therefore, one key element of U.S. strategy must be help in the social, economic, and political development, not just of allied states, but also of “nonaligned” states that are at risk of falling to the enemy.
Ideally, the link between Arab national- ism and radical Islamist terrorism should be weakened by a major change in U.S. policy toward Israel, leading to a complete Israeli withdrawal from the territory occupied beyond the frontiers of 1967 (in return, ofcourse, for guarantees of Israeli sovereignty and security within those borders). An Israeli withdrawal would certainly not end support for radical Islamism, which, as noted, also has wider roots. It would, however, cut into that support and make it much easier for Arab regimes to help the fight against it. Should such a change in U.S. and Israeli policies not happen, then a strong measure of Arab nationalist hostility to the United States and sympathy for anti-American terrorism will be inevitable for the foreseeable future.
Concerning the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and especially the Jewish settlements there, the views of European governments and public opinion are very far indeed from those of their American equivalents. This is even true to a considerable extent of Britain, America’s closest ally in Europe. Several key European governments are also very skeptical about increased military pressure on Iraq.
~Anatol Lieven Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace2001
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A contiguous Palestinian state. Israel's security.
Palestinians are split politically and territorially into two rival groups. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, governs the West Bank. It has represented Palestinians in negotiations with Israel, and is recognized diplomatically by the U.S. A group called Hamas governs Gaza. Hamas' charter declares its determination "to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean." Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. The organization's declaration that it is willing to agree to a "long-term truce" with Israel is unlikely to be acceptable to Israelis.
(Arab-Israeli Conflict SCHP 13-16)
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The current Palestinian intifada, or uprising, broke out at the end of September 2000.
This was a time of increasing Palestinian frustration. Their delegation had rejected a deal that arose from the peace process.
Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon (now Prime Minister) visited a site on the TempleMount in Jerusalem known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Correspondents say the visit was intended to underline the Israeli claim to the city.
The Palestinians viewed the visit as provocative as the compound lies on territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
Bloody clashes resulted at the mosque. These quickly spread through the occupied Palestinian territories.
Bbc.co.uk - 3/6/10 – Note – This event took place in 2000. Ariel Sharon is no longer in power, but has been in an coma for the past four years.
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- 3/10/10
Israel invaded the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 and has occupied it since. The occupation is illegal according to international law. It is also illegal, under international law, for Israel to build settlements and populate occupied territory with its own civilian population. (See below.)
Number of Settlements and “Outposts”
Since 1967, Israel has built 120 settlements in the West Bank, and 12 settlements in East Jerusalem. The Interior Ministry calls them “communities,”
At the end of 2006, the total Jewish population of the settlements in the West Bank, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, had stood at 261,879. An additional 182,460 lived in East Jerusalem.
Israel pledged to freeze settlement activity at various points in the peace process. Israel has never respected the pledge, however, as the following population figures of West Bank settlements since 1996 indicate. The figures are as of the last day of each year except for 2009:
- 1996: 139,974
- 1997: 152,277
- 1998: 164,800
- 1999: 177,327
- 2000: 190,206
- 2001: 200,297
- 2002: 211,416
- 2003: 223,954
- 2004: 235,263
- 2005: 247,514
- 2006: 261,879
- June 2009 estimate: 300,000
"According to the newly disclosed data," The Times reported in June 2009, "about 58,800 housing units have been built with government approval in the West Bank settlements over the past 40 years. An additional 46,500 have already obtained Defense Ministry approval within the existing master plans, awaiting nothing more than a government decision to build."
Breaking the Promise of Oslo
The Oslo Declaration Israel signed in 1993 was explicit. Article 31, Clause 7, stated: "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."
At the time, there were 32,750 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. By October 2001, units had increased by 62%, to 53,121, including a 48% growth spurt during the Labor governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Settlements and International Law
International law is clear on the matter of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank:
- Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states in the first paragraph: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
And in the sixth paragraph: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
- According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), this sub-article was intended “… to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.”
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 446, on March 22, 1979, determined “that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
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Israel PM calls for demilitarized Palestinian state
Story Highlights
NEW: President Obama calls Benjamin Netanyahu's speech "important step forward"
Palestinian legislator accuses Netanyahu of calling for creation of ghetto state
Demilitarized state could not have army or control its airspace, he says
Before Sunday, Netanyahu had not endorsed a two-state solution
(CNN) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel could accept a peace agreement with a "demilitarized Palestinian state" as its neighbor.
In his first speech accepting the concept of a two-state solution for the Middle East conflict, Netanyahu set rigid conditions for moving forward. Among them: unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish national state with Jerusalem as its capital, and full demilitarization for a Palestinian state -- no army, no rockets or missiles, no control of airspace. "I say this in a clear voice -- if we receive a guarantee of this demilitarized unit, we will be prepared to reach agreement to a demilitarized Palestine side by side with the Jewish state," Netanyahu said, according to a direct translation of his speech at Bar-IlanUniversity's Begin-SadatCenter for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel.
Initial Palestinian reaction was negative, with Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti saying Netanyahu was calling for creation of a ghetto state. "He is proving there is no partner for peace in Israel," Barghouti told CNN. Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erakat said Netanyahu "left us with nothing to negotiate as he systematically took nearly every permanent status issue off the table." "He announced a series of conditions and qualifications that render a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian state impossible," Erakat said. "This speech fell far short of every single one of the benchmarks required of Israel in line with international law and existing agreements," he said, including the 2003 Roadmap for Peace.
Netanyahu's speech, billed as a major statement on the peace process, follows President Obama's recent high-profile speech to the Muslim world and a visit to the region by Obama's Middle East envoy, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell.
Obama welcomed Netanyahu's speech as "an important step forward" and said the president remained committed to a two-state solution that would ensure Israel's security and provide the Palestinians "a viable state," according to a White House statement. Obama pledged to continue working with all parties "to see that they fulfill their obligations and responsibilities," the statement said.