Although I provided credit in the final section of this website, I would like to give advance
credit to historians Amos Elon and Mordechai Naor. Their insight into the history of
Israel is a fundamental part of the way this author views the region.
The State of Israel was officially born on May 6, 1948. It might seem that such a new nation
would have a short and easily understood history. However, there were ongoing and complex events
that preceded statehood. Probably the most significant factors that contributed to
the creation of the State of Israel was a political movement called 'Zionism'.
Zionism is an adjective which describes Jewish nationalism. This 'nationalism'
was born in the late 1800's in Europe out of the writings of several Jewish thinkers.
The most prominent among these thinkers was an Austrian man by the name of Theodore Herzl.
Herzl felt that the different Jewish communities could potentially form a nation or state based
on the idea of the Jewish nation which existed in the Biblical times (ie:Old testament).
The Jews who inhabited Europe could be found in concentration in the Eastern portion. Today these places are nations like
the Ukraine, Belarus, Hungary, The Czech Republic and eastern Poland. Life for Jews in Eastern
Europe was tenuous at best. They often lived in communities by themselves called ghettoes or Shtetl's.
Russian and Austro-Hungarian rulers often enforced this pattern of existence. It was here where
there was fertile ground for a nationalist movement to develop.
As industrialism and different strains of liberalism spread through Europe, the status quo of
the past came into question. Czars and Kings lost legitimacy as people began to have a sense of self-determination and empowerment that came out of the French and Socialist Revolutions.
In Russia and Eastern Europe this manifested itself in the Socialist movements.
Their popularity were grounded in the ideas of rule by the many and the emancipation of the
the working classes. Many Jewish people identified with these ideals and became involved,
often at the ground level.
During this period of change thinkers like Herzl felt that Jews could found a nation-state of their own based on similar socialist principles that were changing Europe.
In 1897 the first Zionist World Congress Convened in Basele Switzerland. Such meetings were an ideologigal sounding board for various Jewish-Zionist organizations
to discuss their ideology and plans.
By the 1880's some inspired romantics with an agrarian/
squatter type sense of self-determination packed their belongings and moved to then Ottoman
governed Palestine, the same region of the world where the Kingdom of Israel ruled by David and Solomon once flourished. These new immigrants were attempting to establish a modern version of the Israelite
kingdom but in a socialist-modernist milieu. They did this with their own funds as well as funding from
philanthropists like Baron de Rothschild of France. The first of such settlers arrived in
Palestine between 1881-82. At that point there were probably one million Arabs, mostly Palestinian (the descendantts of the ancient Philistines) and Bedouin(nomadic herders and tradesmen).
Most of the existing Arabs, particularly those not in cities paid tithes to the Ottoman rulers that administered the area and
to the Sheiks and Amirs who actually owned the lands. Some figures estimate that the Jewish population
in the area was 20-25,000 by the end of this period. It is important to note that Jews had never really been absent from the region entirely.
Until the 1880's there were about 10,000 Jews in the region, most of these were, rabinnnical scholars
and piligrims living in the Jerusalem area or Kabbalist scholars in the northern town of Zefat. This immigration was considered the first of many waves of immigration to the area.
The second was occured in 1905 with the addition of one or two thousand more.
By 1914 settlers had purchased about 419,000 dunams of land. For the first three decades of Jewish immigration there was very little Arab-Jew interaction. Settlers more or less thought that they were operating in a vacuum. Jewish settlers that did interact with the Arabs of the area did so for purposes of out-sourcing labor for their own settlements.
With respect to Arab nationalism, it too had started at the turn of the century. In 1905 Naguib Azuri a Christian Arab and former Ottoman Bureaucrat formed the Ligue de la partie Arab. Arab nationalism was slower to develop and less organized than the Jewish equivalents. The rise of a nationalist movement for Arabs by no means meant that Jews were to be excluded in their eyes. As early as 1899 Youssef Ziah al-Khaled spoke of "the right of Jews to Palestine" in a historical sense but discouraged Jewish immigration to the region.
The key turning point over Palestine really emerged after 1917, when a letter written from lord Balfour to lord Rothschild openly stated "a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist Aspirations." This was literally the first tacit mention and support for the creation or idea thereto of a Jewish home. The declaration also makes clear that "nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." That statement was issued in November of 1917. By September 1918 the Ottoman rule of the region was officially over. For the first time in over 400 years this region was to come under the mandate of the British who were in turn given permission to do so by the League of Nations. In 1922 the Colonial Office in London issued a document known as a White Paper. This document was prepared to clarify and ratify the very foggy Balfour Declaration. The paper stated several things: (1) Palestine as a whole should not be converted into a Jewish Nation. (2) Transjordan (known today as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) was to be a separate state under the leadership of King Abdullah. (3) The white paper also proposed the creation of a Palestinian State.
Arabs of the area while pleased that they were getting recognition and clarification of the Balfour document still felt that this did not go far enough. During this time, while by no means a flood, Jewish immigration to Palestine continued. Riots broke out in 1929 from Arab opposition t the influx of more Zionists. In 1930 a commission known as the Shaw commission was tasked with investigating the cause of the riots and to make recommendations. The report emphasized that Britain had an obligation to both Arabs and Jewish settlers.
The commission also determined that there was insufficient land for further immigration And finally a legislative council should be set up with representatives from both sides.
The report was not received well by Zionists, and it drove what was once open immigration movements underground. The Arabs resisted the Jew and the Jews the British in a game of colonial chess.
In November of 1936 The Peel Commission was established to find concrete solutions out the mounting tension. They optioned to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews. The Arabs were to get the center and southern are and Jews would get the north. The Arabs flatly rejected the proposal and resumed their opposition. From 1936-39 widespread rioting and sabotage known as The Arab Revolt was underway.
By 1939, fed up with policing these disparate parties, the British Government released the White Paper of 1939. In it the British absolved themselves of the Balfour Declaration. The document also called for "an independent Palestine State in which the interests of the Arabs and the Jews are safeguarded. Immigration to this state would be restricted to 75,000 for a five-year period. Any further immigration would require the consent of the Arabs and the population of Jews could never be greater than 1/3 of the total population. The Zionist's flatly rejected this and various militant factions began to put pressure on the British. At the end of the Second World War the trickle of Jewish immigrants turned into a refugee situation of epic proportions. Thousands of Jews who had managed to survive the war were looking for a place to go. One can imagine their thought process at the time. Most had lost their homes and significant portions of their families and the idea of returning to lands where the people had persecuted them probably repulsed them. Some went to live in Allied countries like the U.S.A., others actually mustered the inner fortitude to return to their homes, still others were heatwarmed by this new Jewish nation that was emerging. Having absolutely nothing to lose but the shirts on their backs they went to Palestine.
The local Arab population was extremely agitated by this. In their eyes, although tragic, the Holocaust was not their doing. The laws of immigration should be as the White Paper of 1939 stipulated.
Buy 1947 Britain had given up trying to contain the refugee situation. In 1947 they decided to let the newly created United Nations deal with the situation. The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) was formed with 11 different countries. They went as follows: Sweden, Holland, Yugoslavia, Canada, Australia, India, Iran, Uruguay, Guatemala and Peru. They were sent to Palestine to inform the UN of the situation and make recommendations. Seven out of the eleven nations recommended partition with areas set out very similar to the Peel Commission's recommendations of 1937. India, Iran and Yugoslavia recommended a bi-national federal state and a dismayed Australia abstained. Jerusalem was to be under international control. In November of 1947 a special session of the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the Partition of Palestine. The Arabs found the territories unacceptable in 1947 just as they did in 1937 and riots broke out.
By May 15,1948 the British mandate ended and Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria declared
war on Israel. By July of 1949 the Arab armies had been routed and in several places the battle
had been transferred to their territory. As a result the Arabs lost land in what Israel calls the
War of Independence and Arabs collectively call al-Naqba (The Great Disaster). The Jews who were once refugees in th emid 1940's were now making refugees out of the Arab
population. By November of 1949 the Jewish population of Israel was 1 million, with one third
of these coming since the State had been declared.
In it's fifty years of statehood, Israel has fought five wars. It was born under imperfect and
intense circumstances not unlike most national histories. What makes Israel so unique though is that
it was born in modern times when television, satellites and radio allowed us to see every part of the
world. In a strange way Israel is a living example of the histories of most nations. Groups of
people who often have different views of what is rightfully theirs fighting for supremacy, each
side with compelling arguments as to why they are right. Israel is like a mirror in which we
can view our history as a civilization. We realize that nationalism can be very ugly and that in
conflicts, people, often innocent people, die. The differrence is in the modern world we believe conflict is resolvable.
Israel has managed to resolve certain aspects of it's history. Peace is now currency with
Jordan and
Egypt. Yet it remains to be seen what will happen with Lebannon and Syria. Palestinian
statehood is now a growing reality, it's just a matter of when. In addition, it has recieved wave upon
wave of immigrants since statehood. Jews from as far away as India, South America and Africa now
consider Israel home. This has further antagonized people who that feel Israel's right to exist is a
debateable issue. With this historical synopsis let's further delve into how Israel works and
functions.
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