The Israeli Palestinian Conflict

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The Palestinian Israeli Conflict

Does responsibility lie outside the region?

The Palestinian Israeli conflict is a very debateable subject, and the discourse around it, on many occasions is pre-determined by cultural backgrounds. When examining the Palestinian Israeli conflict one cannot overlook its direct relation to the conflict in the Middle East in general. To understand whether the responsibility for the conflict lies outside the region or not, one needs to examine the origins of the conflict. In this essay I will present and analyse those origins that date back to the end of the nineteenth century and show that the perpetuated situation in the middle east is resolvable only if those responsible are willing to fulfil their duties.

I will analyze the historical facts according to Kenneth Waltz’s three levels of analysis. The first level is the international system which focuses on the effects of global developments on the behaviour of the state. The second is the state level, which looks at the domestic changes of a state in context with its interior factors. And the third is the individual level which looks at history as determined by the actions of individuals. None of these levels is sufficient to an explanation by itself, yet on the other hand they are combined together in a way that it is difficult to separate them to determine the causes of the conflict (Shlaim 1996:221).

I will present my argument in three sections; the first will discuss the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the context of European anti-Semitism and the British mandate. The second will discuss the elevation of the conflict in the context of the two World Wars. And the third will discuss the historical war of independence/Nakba and how it elevated the conflict to the point of inevitability.

In my conclusion I will show how events and developments from 1948 onwards point back and relate to the origins of the conflict, making clear that those responsible are the ones with the ability to resolve it. Well, partially anyway.

The Sentiment of Nationalism

On the state level, the collision of Zionism, Arab nationalism, and later on Palestinian nationalism are main and initial factors in the conflict, and they even construct its essence.

Zionism is a nationalist idea that considers Jews a nation that should have its own separate state. It sprung among Jewish Europeans who were inspired by Enlightenment philosophy and the French Revolution in the late nineteenth century, but mainly because of increasing European anti-Semitism that was best exposed later on in the Dreyfus Affair, the slaughter of the Jews in Poland, and not to mention the Holocaust during World War II. The early vision of Zionism which was best portrayed in the secular and even socialist writings of Theodor Herzl, did not consider the “land of Israel” a characteristic for the essence of the envisioned state. In spite of that, the Polish slaughter of the Jews resulted in the Aliyah (immigration wave) of Jewish Europeans to Palestine and the United States between the years 1882-1903 (Best et al 2008:108,109). In his work, Herzl constituted an institutional Zionist state-building system and has helped establishing the World Zionist Organisation. Yet, in the second Aliyah of 1904-1914, when the ideology started to transform into the establishment of institutions, it also transformed into an idea that excluded the indigenous Arab population from the project (Best et al 2008:110).

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In parallel, there were similar developments in the Middle East as well. At the midst of the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, Arab Nationalism, which sought to unite Arabic speakers under a nation, started to emerge among intellectuals in different centres in the Arab world (Best et al 2008:92). But it was not until the fall of the Empire and the League of Nations’ authorization of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 that Arab nationalism intensified. This agreement was made between Britain and France to split the territories of the former Empire in order to achieve their strategic ...

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