Middle East - Anthony Ham [35]
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The freshest look at the early waves of Zionist immigration is in The Founding Myths of Israel, by political scientist Zeev Sternhell.
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In 1997, Israeli agents poisoned Hamas activist Khaled Meshaal in Amman. Jordan‘s King Hussein insisted Israel hand over the antidote. Meshaal, who lives in Syria, later became leader of Hamas.
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The Palestinian View
For many Palestinians in 1948, the founding of the state of Israel was ‘Al-Naqba’ – the Catastrophe. Through no fault of their own, and thanks to decisions made in Europe and elsewhere on which they were never consulted, the Palestinians were driven from their land. While the British were promising Palestine to the Jews in 1917, the Palestinians were fighting alongside the British to oust the Ottomans. Later, subject to British occupation, Palestinians suffered at the hands of Jewish extremist groups and found themselves confronted by an influx of Jews who had never before set foot in Palestine but who claimed equal rights over the land. Many Palestinians who had lived on the land for generations could do nothing without international assistance. No-one came to their aid. In short, when they were offered half of their ancestral homelands by the UN, they had ample reason to reject the plan out of hand.
As with the Israelis, it is difficult to overestimate the significance of this land for Palestinians, many of whose traditions and sacred places lay in Palestine. Jerusalem (Al-Quds) is the third-holiest city for Palestinian Muslims after Mecca and Medina (the Prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended to heaven from the Al-Aqsa Mosque), and the holiest city on earth for Palestinian Christians. But this was never really about religion. Had they not lived alongside the Jews for centuries, many Palestinians asked, considered them equals and given them the respect that their religion deserved? For the Palestinians forced to flee, it was about the right to the homes in which people had lived and to the fields that they had farmed. As they fled into their own exile, they longed for a Palestinian homeland taking its rightful place among the modern company of nations.
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In 1922, there were around 486,000 Palestinian Arabs and 84,000 Jews. By 1946, the Palestinian population had doubled to 1.1 million, whereas Jews had increased 550% to around 610,000.
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ARAB (DIS)UNITY
The Arab countries that waged war against Israel were in disarray, even before they went to war. Newly independent themselves, they were governed for the most part by hereditary rulers whose legitimacy was tenuous at best. They ruled over countries whose boundaries had only recently been established and they did so thanks to centuries of foreign rule, ill prepared to tackle the most pressing problems of poverty, illiteracy and the lack of a clear national vision for the future. Although united in the common cause of opposing Israel, they were divided over just about everything else.
The disastrous performance of the combined Arab armies in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War had far-reaching consequences for the region. People across the region blamed their leaders for the defeat, a mood fuelled by the mass arrival of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and, most of all, Jordan, whose population doubled almost overnight. Recriminations over the humiliating defeat and the refugee problem it created laid the groundwork for the 1951 assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan. Syria, which had gained its independence from France in 1946, became the field for a seemingly endless series of military coups in which disputes over how to handle the Palestine problem often played a large part.
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The history of Palestine during the British occupation is told through the stories of contemporary residents in the excellent One Palestine, Complete by Israel’s best popular historian, Tom Segev.
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