Discuss the course and consequences of the Arab Israeli Conflict

Authors Avatar

History Essay (2,664 words)

By the end of the 19th century, Zionism (the international movement aimed at the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland) was beginning to form into an organized body with Theodore Herzl providing an essential driving force. Theodore Herzl (a renowned Zionist leader) had acquired the goal of a Jewish State as the solution to a dilemma which had plagued his people – the Jewish victims of European Diaspora (in context: “the spreading of Jews”). The Jews had been displaced across Europe and had failed to find solace in countries which did not respect their culture, but mainly and especially later, their ethnicity. Palestine (a religiously promised homeland) had become a logical choice to the Zionists. However, with this choice, came a significant issue; in the late 19th century approximately 15,000 Jews were living in Palestine and some 400,000 Arabs. The fundamental question of “What to do with Arab population?” had to be answered. Due to the manner in which the Zionists achieved their goal, a desperate struggle for identity for both Arabs and Jews would occur in the next five decades, and with it, a ‘particular Palestinian Arab Nationalism’ would develop. However, only through the Zionist approach – a Jewish incursion into the Arab land and from there, settlement - would this Nationalism be given birth. The so called ‘native savages’ of Palestine would not sit idly by whilst the Zionists brought an “outpost of civilization…opposed to barbarism” (Herzl). Following 1897 and through the first half of the 20th century, there would be numerous conflicts, political movements and under a Mandate system, thousands upon thousands of Arabs and Jewish people would be killed as two groups of people compete for a land to which both seemingly have an ‘equal claim’. Furthermore, in the time up to, and during the Holocaust, the Jewish people would be scattered around Europe, many unable to leave and those who tried found themselves blocked at the border, unable to find sanctuary in Palestine. The Jewish people, would, by the end of the war, have suffered losses in great magnitude - over 6 million Jewish people due to the ‘Final Solution’ - mass-killings by the Nazis. The Jews would have lost many of their people and their peoples’ identity, but these events would set in motion the basis of a dramatic shift in the world’s support for the Jewish need of a ‘Homeland’ in Palestine. Eventually, in this conflict, one side, in response to all the pain and suffering of their people, would emerge victorious, and there would be the final declaration of the State of Israel by David Ben-Gurion on the 14th of May, 1948.

In the 1890s, the Zionists, after choosing Palestine as a possible homeland, had an initial problem to solve, for their goal to be achieved. Having the same religious claim to the land as the Arabs did, it became the question of “how should the Zionists deal with it?” (Peter Rodgers, “Herzl’s Nightmare”, 2004). Zionism’s greatest founded myth of ‘a land without people for a people without a land’ would be continued well through into the 20th century. It can then be established that, as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda declared, “We shall buy, buy, buy”, and “…the Arabs will (not) know what we are after…we shall act like silent spies”, that the Zionists had no intention of informing the Arabs’, or being aware of the Palestinian Arabs’ opinion on their intentions to establish a Jewish State. It is this very attitude that would in fact give birth to the Palestinian Arab Nationalism which the Zionists themselves will consider inferior, but will underestimate as being ‘savage culture’.

Join now!

In 1896, when Theodore Herzl wrote Das Judenstaat (the Jewish State), there was not one mention of ‘Arabs’ or ‘Palestinians’, giving further reinforcement to the fact that “the question” had indeed, been answered. Herzl absolutely denied the existence of an Arab population, for if there were ‘no populace’ living in Palestine, could the Jewish people not just simply move in? Herzl clearly obsessed with solving the ‘Jewish Question’, even going as far as to write a Utopian novel “Altneuland” (Old New Land), detailing a perfect world in Palestine (1923) where Zionism had “brought prosperity and progress, in cooperation with ...

This is a preview of the whole essay