Discussions of the most recent Arab-Jew or Muslim-Jew conflicts often end quickly with someone exclaiming: “Forget about it, those people have been fighting for centuries. It is hopeless!” Such uninformed comments are not limited to uneducated and uninformed individuals.
With rare exception educated and informed individuals are often ignorant in certain areas. Most people have some awareness that Arabs and Jews and Muslims and Jews have a long presence in the Middle East. Almost everyone knows that Jews inhabited the area during the time of both books of the Bible. They also know that Arabs and Muslims constitute the predominant population of the entire region.
For centuries there was no significant conflict among these modern rivals. Few Jews had lived in the Middle East for almost two thousand years. Arabs, who enjoyed a few centuries of prominence and strength, were of little significance in the region after the establishment of Ottoman Turkish domination in the sixteenth century. Most of the Ottoman subjects were Muslims, but the Arabs did not obtain significant influence even when they had something close to autonomy in large areas.
There was no significant number of Jews in the region after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and imposed the Diaspora upon them in 135 A.D. Pockets of Jews existed in the Ottoman Empire, especially in modern day Iraq and Morocco. Jews had some presence elsewhere in the huge expanse of the Ottoman Empire and in Yemen. The generally tolerant Ottomans allowed their Jewish subjects to practice their religion and way of life just as they permitted the many different forms of Christianity to exist and thrive.
But for centuries there were virtually no Jews in Palestine following the Roman expulsion in the second century. Old Jews often went to Palestine to die and be buried. Jewish migration into Palestine increased after 1880 with the beginning of Zionism and the support of wealthy European Jews, who provided them with financial assistance. Even so, the number of Jews in Palestine was around 85,000 when World War I began in 1914. Close to 20,000 of that number emigrated from Palestine as a result of the hardships of that war. The entire population of Palestine was quite sparse and economically marginal, but there were about 600,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs in Palestine by that time. There was no Ottoman acknowledgement of Palestine, as it was simply another hinterland region governed from Damascus and Beirut. There was neither an adequate population nor economic capacity in “Palestine” to merit more Ottoman concern.
The Arab-Jew conflict originated on November 2, 1917 when British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, issued a statement that “His Majesty’s government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The statement was part of an effort to induce the Jews in Russia to help keep Russia in the war and the Jews in the United States to persuade that nation to enter the war on the Allies side. This letter gave the Zionist movement its first quasi de facto recognition by a government as a legitimate international organization. The newly formed League of Nations included large portions of the Balfour Declaration in its Mandate for Palestine that instructed Great Britain to assist the Jews establish a “national home”, a phrase which had no precedent in the international diplomatic lexicon.
The British assiduously attempted to implement this international mandate, while protecting the “non-Jews” of Palestine. Outrage among Christian and Muslim Arabs in Palestine spread rapidly throughout the entire Arab region of the Middle East. In fact, opposition to British and Zionist policies in Palestine was the only issue the divisive Arabs could agree upon, because the insertion of an European enclave among them was not only an invasion but an embarrassment. It became the major component of Arab nationalism, which became the new religion of the Arab speaking world. Islam receded into the background as Arabs sought to obtain respect through a total emersion into secular international politics. Interestedly, Arabs of Christian upbringing were in the forefront of leading the Palestinian cause and advocating the creation of a single Arab nation among the widespread Arab speaking world.
Arab animosity toward Zionists, who wanted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, often spilled over to suspicion and even hatred of all Jews. Zionists and other Jews had little doubt that they were in danger from Arab acrimony.
By the eve of World War II the Zionist efforts and British assistance increased the Jewish population in Palestine to nearly 500,000. The Holocaust inspired even larger numbers of Jews to seek saFe haven in Palestine with widespread approval from the international community. Jews regarded British restrictions upon Jewish immigration into Palestine as too great and Arabs regarded them as too lenient. The British were in an untenable position and announced in November, 1947 that they would withdraw on May 15, 1948. Israel declared its nationhood on that date and faced an invasion from the armies of their Arab neighbors. Tiny, new Israel had developed a capable and sizable military capacity over the years and secured their existence when it defeated the poorly prepared Arab armies.
An account of the continuance of the Arab-Israeli conflict falls beyond the scope of this essay. It should be clear, however, that it is of recent origin and a struggle for pride on the part of the Arabs and survival on the part of the Israelis. Religion has a minor role in this conflict, which is little more than a century old, over a small piece of land and the self concept of two different people.
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