A look at the Israel-Palestine Conflict

A brief account of the history of the region may help in understanding the issues. That part of the Middle East is often called the “Fertile Crescent” at it was here that historically the domestication of animals and agriculture is said to have begun, It was at one time taken over by the Babylonian Empire. Later it came under the Persian and the Roman Empires. At that time, till the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the local population was mostly Jews and Christians of different denominations. By the 15th century the region had come under the Ottoman Empire of Constantinople and thus the Islamic Caliphate. For at least six centuries there were only very few Jews living in Palestine and they lived largely in amity with the local Palestinians. It was only in the last decade of the 19th century that an idea of a homeland for Jews was mooted. A visit to Jordan in 2011 brought home the antiquity of the land. The Amman Museum houses relics of the ancient “Ain-Ghazal” (or, “Spring of the Gazelle”) civilization, which goes back to the 10th millennium BCE and is characterized by fairly large human figurines made of some chalky clay with clothes, hair, ornaments, tattoos painted on them and with cowrie-shells for eyes. One can also see the famous site of Petra, which marks, like many other places in the Middle East, the ebb and flow of peoples and conquerors over the millennia. It is said to have been once the centre for the Edomites, who lived around the Dead Sea in the 8th century BCE, more or less contemporary to the Assyrian kings like Sennacherib (705 BCE). It later became the capital of the Nabataean people sometime in the fourth century BCE that was able to fend off Greek incursions in the following century, and finally came under Roman occupation by the first century BCE.

A picture of Nabatean rock dwellings of 4th century BCE at Petra

A picture at Medinat Habu in Luxor (Egypt), the funerary memorial to the pharaoh, Rameses II, who in the 16th century BCE conquered Sinai and adjoining areas Jewish history takes note of the “diaspora” or the dispersal of large sections Jews following the repeated invasions and take-over by empires, to distant lands of Iraq, Iran, Poland and East and Central Europe, as well as into Russia. There was no Jewish state in the modern sense since the days of King David in the Biblical times more than 2000 years ago. By the end of the 19th century, the repeated anti-Jewish “pogroms” in Russia, Poland and elsewhere, led some Jewish leaders to revert to their old land in and around Jerusalem. Thus it is found that in 1918 the British Foreign Secretary, David Balfour, making a statement recommending the provision of land in Palestine for Jews, while also urging accommodating the non-Jews living for many centuries in the land. It was about 50 years later, when the world learnt more about the Jewish “holocaust” in World War II that a move was made to accommodate the Jews in a part of Palestine. This was followed in 1947 by an UN resolution that suggested a partition of the land with the creation of two independent and sovereign Arab and Jewish states, giving about 54% of the land to the Jews and stipulating that the city and surroundings of Jerusalem (claimed by both the Jews and Arabs) would remain under international supervision. The Arabs were of the view that the UN lacked any jurisdiction and mandate to partition the land and did not accept the resolution in 1947. This led to the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948 and again in 1967, when Israel acquired further territory in Golan Heights and West Bank of Jordan River.

Picture of Jerash, a Roman settlement in Jordan, dating to 1st century CE. The proximate causes of the frequent Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine owes itself to the progressive extension of Jewish settlements in the occupied lands and the imminent take-over of Jerusalem by the Jews. This throws up two important issues: (1) the jurisdiction and legality or conformity with international precedence and practice of the UN resolution of 1947 partitioning Palestine, and (2) the legality in international law and the UN Charter (besides any moral basis to it) of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands acquired as fruits of war.