Most American reaction to the Israeli-Gaza war is based on knowing almost nothing about the region's history.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-honest-question-how-much-of-history.html

If I put myself on the sidewalk outside a busy intersection in any of America's large cities, and asked passersby to answer this one question, I doubt there would be one in 50 who would be able to answer the question accurately.

"What is the root cause behind the conflict between Israel and the Arab world that has led to multiple wars, multiple acts of terrorism and to the development of specific terrorist organizations with the goal of Israel's destruction?"

I've asked a similar question, by the way, of high school students and of adults in a Sunday School class. Some of the students, who were studying or had recently studied World History, were able to point to the post World War 1 chaos that led to a couple of treaties and a military occupation of the Middle East by Great Britain, which eventually opened up Palestine to a flood of Jewish immigration, as the catalyst for the conflict. That's an A minus answer.

The Sunday School class, on the other hand, based their answers on the Biblical text, written before the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The conflict, according to that version, has its roots in the ancient hatreds of the people who lived around Palestine who are the ancestors of the modern Arabic population, not an accurate historical fact, and one that leaves out the complete destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the expulsion of the Jewish population from Jerusalem. The Old Testament prophets don't cover this later conquest and destruction, though many Christian Bible teachers incorrectly make inferences to the restoration of Jerusalem after the Babylonian conquest in 585 B.C. as pertaining to the Roman destruction and exile.

It should not surprise us, as Americans, that we have little influence and have not earned the trust of the Arabic Palestinians. Our involvement in the situation has basically led to an outcome not unlike the fate to which we condemned the native population of North America, during our westward expansion. We have very little understanding of the politics and culture of the region. We've done nothing to earn the trust of the people. A two state solution requires two states being made equal and that starts by treating the people who are involved as equals. It requires Israel being made secure. And it requires the Arabic Palestinians, in their own sovereign state, to be secure.

The best perspective any American has ever brought to the table with regard to Middle Eastern issues, including what is necessary for a two-state solution, fair and equitable to everyone involved, to work and to result in real peace, came from President Jimmy Carter. He was obviously viewed as a peacemaker, and he was close enough to getting everyone to agree to sit down and talk that the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, in Iran, felt the need to sabotage his re-election.

[BrianTheEVGuy]

1. The problem, of course...

… is that groups like Hamas/Hizbollah/Iran want a one-state solution that results in the mass liquidation of those in the other state.

[lees1975]

2. Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist reactions to the situation in the middle east as it developed.

Frankly, when the Zionists and the existing Arabic leadership were negotiating Jewish emigration to Palestine, both before and after the British took over as a protectorate, there were Jewish people who felt more secure moving to Palestine and living among the Arabic population, some of whom were even welcoming, than they did living among the Anti-Semites in Eastern Europe. It wasn't until the British took over control of the region, dividing it up into Protectorates and setting things up in their own economic interests that the more radical elements of Islam became involved, seeing themselves as being in a struggle against an outside imperialist power. Over time, the radicalized groups have gathered support, and are now the primary threat to Israel, backed by Iran.

It's hard to say for sure how things would have developed, but Israel is seen by the more radical political and religious elements of Islam as a foreign intrusion and a foreign imperial outpost aimed at their economic and political subjugation, because of its backing by Britain and the US in particular. I wonder, if it had been allowed to develop naturally, as it was in the decade or so before World War 1, when Jews were emigrating to Palestine and building settlements under Ottoman rule. Even though their religion was seen as impure and wrong, Islamic tradition accepted their presence in the land and acknowledges their prophets. If Israel were not seen as an imperialist, foreign invasion, I wonder if that would have made a difference. Islam is not a monolithic political unit, the various groups of Muslims also fight against each other.

[BrianTheEVGuy]

3. Two things

1: There we no “Arab leaders” in the region at the time. It was the Ottomans who ruled and owned all the land; Jews indigenous and returning purchased land from the Ottomans.

2: Islam is an imperialist religion (as is Christianity). Neither accepts that people who came before them have rights, nor can they abide those who reject their religion. Hizbollah and Hamas are excellent examples of the depravity that totalitarian perspectives lead to, especially when integrated with ecumenical religious beliefs.

[lees1975]

4. Duly noted.

It was actually under the rule of Mehmed V, that Jews were able to negotiate the ability to move to Palestine, the Ottoman sultan. Most of the Jews relocating directly into the region around Jerusalem at that time were Mizrahi, who were part of the diaspora in the immediate Middle Eastern region, primarily Syria, Iraq, Egypt, North Africa. Mizrahi are considered "indigenous," because they lived in the Middle East, as opposed to Sephardim, who lived in Southern Europe, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ashkenazi, the Eastern European Hassidic dynasties. Few Jews actually lived in Jerusalem or the area once known as Judea and Galilee, under Byzantine or Islamic empire rule.

[Mosby]

5. Pretty poor analysis and understanding of history

Look at this section:

It wasn't the "two state solution" that had been originally envisioned. The choice for the Arabic population of Palestine, whose ancestors had lived there for centuries, was to live under control of the Jewish state, or leave a homeland their ancestors had lived on for 16 centuries and become refugees in one of the neighboring countries.

There hasn't been a peaceful resolution to this problem. Displacing several million people from the only homes and lands they had ever known as their own, and where their ancestors had lived for 13 centuries, isn't an easy problem to resolve. Since its establishment, Israel hasn't permitted autonomous areas to exist within its borders for the Palestinian population, which would be the way a "two state solution" would work out, and they have conquered and taken the land that was initially proposed for this purpose. And while some Arabic Palestinians did choose to remain, and become citizens of the Jewish state, the majority became refugees in neighboring countries, including Jordan, which controlled the West Bank, and what was known as the United Arab Republic, made up of Syria and Egypt, which controlled Gaza. The Gaza strip was established in a treaty in 1950, which is why there are some two million Arabic Palestinians living there now.

No mention of the genocidal war the Arabs started in 1947 which is the real cause of the nakba. The author insinuates that Israel is the cause of the refugee problem because they didn't want to "live under control of the Jewish state". Pretty sure Arab Israelis are quite happy livingb in Israel, with the kinds of rights found in a liberal democracy and not seen anywhere else in the ME and Gulf.

There is no archeological or anthropological evidence that Palestinian Arabs have been living in the Levant for 16 centuries as claimed.

The author seems unaware of the Oslo Accords and the role it plays in resolving 242 and 338.

The person also ignores the thousands of years that Jews have been living in Israel, Judea and Samaria.

How do you write an essay about the underlying causes of the conflict and fail to mention the war of independence, 6 day war and the Yom Kippur war?

[lees1975]

6. RE:

The intention was to give background up to the establishment of the state of Israel and the political circumstances, including British and American influence, that brought the formation of the political state into existence. Every conflict since then relates to the existence of the state of Israel.

There is no claim that the Palestinian Arabs have been living in the Levant for 16 centuries. The Palestinian Arabs are the descendants of several groups of people who occupied Palestine beginning with Sassanid rule in the 600's, and including those who resided there during the rule of the Caliphates under the Islamic empire. Jews were dispersed following the Roman expulsion on 70 A.D. and how many actually remained or were residing in the area now known as Israel is disputable. Until Ottoman rule, there were very few.

Yes, there are about 2.2 million Arabic Palestinians living under Israeli rule, many of them make up the majority of the Christian population of Israel, and many of them are Islamic. However, to claim that "they are quite happy living in Israel with the kind of rights found in a liberal democracy and not seen anywhere else in the ME and gulf" is incorrect. There is a lot of racial discrimination in Israel, religious liberty is limited and Arab citizens are not treated equally. One of my best college buddies grew up in Nazareth, his family Christian for centuries, Baptist by affiliation, and being Christian and Arabic in Israel was roughly the equivalent of being black in the South in the US following reconstruction. An "A" student, who got a scholarship at the university we attended, he had been turned down for college in Israel because the allocation for Arab, Christian students had been filled.

And while being offered Israeli citizenship is a choice, for those who prefer to live under the established rule of their own religious leadership, regardless of how "good" it might be for them, that's not our choice to make. Through no fault of their own, the place where their home had been located had been taken over by a foreign power. They have the right to refuse to be part of that, for religious reasons, and not to face persecution or be forcibly moved as a result. They are just as entitled to the land and to their communities.