Palestine, Israel and Pan-Arabic identiy

Again, this is taken from an essay, I don't really expect many people to read these posts, however, I want to put them here as an effort to show that my research is entirely performed 'in good faith' with full disclosure - these are the my interpretations of the facts the research I've done so far.

The Roots of Pan-Arabism

The decade of the 1940s was a period of profound change in the Middle East. The creation of Israel, the flight and homelessness of several hundred thousand Palestinians, the formation of the Arab league, the achievement of independence by the core Arab states, and the decline of Britain and France and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as world powers clearly represented new and significant developments for the region. 1

In order to give the most informative exegesis of the history of pan-Arabism the following discussion adopts a segmented approach. The object of the narratives is to present as much factual information as is relevant and allow for appropriate analysis in the following sections. Subsection one, uses the Israeli-Palestinian issue as an exemplar of the inconstancy of a purely pan-Arabic doctrine. This subsection tracks the plight of Palestinian Arabs in particular, over the chronological period from rise of Zionism and the first waves of major Jewish immigration (c.1890s-1920s) prior to Israel’s inception, to September of 1970. It is followed by a brief theoretical account that exposes the thematic currents flowing through it. Subsection two covers and compares the formation of the failed United Arab Republic with other, more successful, intra-regional partnerships. Each of these subsections mark instances of the rise to prominence of modern pan-Arabism and its causes for its decline.

Arab Nationalism in relation to Zionism, c.1900s-1948.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century waves of Jewish immigration into mandated Palestine had become a serious issue. From the beginning “the Arabs of Palestine recognised that the goals of Zionism represented a threat to their existence.2 When their negotiations with the British governing body failed to lead to the instigation of immigration restrictions, the situation descended into violent rebellion. Between 1933 and 1936 a mass influx of refugees from Europe doubled the size of the Jewish population and adding to the anxiety of the Arab community.3

On the 14^th May 1948 Israel became independent of the British Empire and a new legal state recognised by the United Nations and the greater international community. The following day Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan and Iraq invaded that territory under the auspices of the Arab League. The war lasted until December and ended in a devastating defeat for the combined Arabic armies.4 The war followed the failure of a United Nation’s proposed compromise on the future of mandated Palestinian territory and directly led to a more-than doubling of the size of the Palestinian refugee population existing in neighbouring states. Israel’s response was to consolidate territory outside the original borders and to build a defensive military force that could secure the nation’s existence against any further threats. The Arab invasion was characterised by two major factors. The force was vastly outnumbered, under-prepared, and disorganised in comparison to their enemy, and importantly, the combined command structure was “hampered by inter-Arab political rivalries. 5 Defeat was also an acute embarrassment for those in power, particularly in the ‘core Arabic states’ of Egypt, Syria and Iraq who had promised that they “stood ready to defend them [the Palestinians] militarily.6

In 1948, the recession of Europe’s imperial influence followed by the Arabic military failure meant a radically new political landscape for the region was instantiated. Israel as an established state, posed a different challenge to Arabic states than had the European empires. Where, primarily the British, had been concerned with governing as a means to extraction of wealth, it had been in their interest to maintain stability. Consequently colonialists had no interest in undermining the existing regimes where they remained acquiescent to their aims. The new country was however a potential direct threat to the territory, culture and especially the newly found political freedom and aspirations of the ruling Arab elites. To the populations with Israel’s bordering nations, the 700,000 displaced Palestinians, demonstrated the ruthlessness of the annexation. The vast refugee camps provided a vivid exhibition of what could possibly be their own fate should Israel seek expansion. 7

Structuralism – a thematic analysis

According to the structuralist approach to conflict theory the Arab-Israeli war would have occurred against the backdrop of “cultural violence.8 For Galtung and other structural theorists, violent conflict becomes manifest due to the presence of structural inequalities between the two sides, which is ‘justified’ to the antagonists themselves, and to outside interest parties, by the instigation of ‘cultural violence’. In essence ‘cultural violence’ is the aspect of conflict where identity is at issue rather than any physical material issues. Galtung’s concept of cultural violence is cyclical in nature. Due to the instigation of direct and structural violence, cultural identity becomes more prominent in the mindset of those under oppression. As cultural identity increases in prominence it develops as the justification for retaliation for the underdog, and for continued alienation of the two parties per se. 9

C.R. Mitchell’s The Structure of International Conflict continues the discussion of the psychology of conflict, explaining that at an individual’s identification with a group dynamic or cultural identity is a necessary means by which the individual may alleviate potentially harmful levels of mental stress. “There is considerable evidence that images, attitudes, prejudices, emotions and beliefs can be relatively homogenous across a great number of individuals”.10 The inception of Israel as a potential threat to the newly found freedom of the Arab world fits into this theoretical approach. Israel had penetrated the regional order and acceded to a position of structural domination with the assistance of the United Nations and the retreating British Empire. Israel then dominated its opponents via direct violence in the 1948, and subjugated the existing Arabic population. The resultant peak in pan-Arabic hegemony was therefore, in structural terms, only to be expected.11

Collapse of anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, hegemony: June 1967 – September 1970.

The Palestinian issue continued to be a major cause for the propagation of homogeneous Arab identity until tension developed into conflict again in 1967. The joint military endeavour of the ‘June war’ again ended in disaster for the coalition of Arab states. The Palestinian refugee crisis was compounded and further territory, including Jerusalem, was lost, as show in the following maps. 12

Israel’s military success was followed by another attempt by the United Nations to find peace and territorial compromise. While the resolution emphasized the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war".13& 14 The resolution made did make a major and if not immediate impact on the context of the region. After a failed attempt in, 1973 by Egypt and Syria to take back the Sinai, and the Golan Heights, Egypt signed UNSCR 338, which re-iterated 242. It was a separate peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and thus the Palestinians lost their most powerful ally. and called for an Israeli withdrawal, it provided for no material means of enforcement for such requests. It failed to recognise potential Palestinian sovereignty and referred only to “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem”. Jordan also accepted an uneasy peace, leaving Syria as the only belligerent government. “The June war was a turning point, and although the notion of an Arab nation retained a grip on the Arab imagination …secular nationalism as a culture and model of modernization was …a failure in the Middle East".15

For the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) the irrelevance of the United Nations (UN) as a proponent of a fair solution was palpably confirmed by UNSCR 242. Egypt and Jordan’s acceptance of the resolution was, however, a much more serious blow to the Palestinian cause. It demonstrated the scale of the cleavage within pan-Arabism that had been on the rise since the 1950’s. The Palestinian response was to move to a more radical and nationalist approach. In 1969 Yasir Arafat, the leader of al Fatah movement, was elected to the chairmanship of the PLO. This signalled a major change in the nature of the organisation which had been formed in 1964 under the behest of the Arab League. It had been lead thus far by predominantly intellectual elite, and framed within various political ideologies such as Marxism, Baathism and pan-Arabism.16 Al Fatah offered an alternative, they endorsed Palestinian resistance to Israel, including by violent means, as a primary political goal, free from qualification from broader political philosophies. 17 It was “an appealing and readily comprehensible message to a broad cross-section of Palestinian". 18

Where al Fatah led on the political front, other factions within the PLO followed militarily. In 1970 acting virtually autonomously, but in the name of the PLO, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) launched a guerrilla war from within Jordanian territory. By September of that year the PFLP had effectively formed a “state-within-a-state”19&20 From the 15^th-25^{th. 21}Civilians and paramilitaries alike were killed, not by the hand of Zionists, but by Arabic soldiers, under the orders of an Arabic king. ‘Black September’ fundamentally undermined the primacy of pan-Arabic unity. The PLO was forced to re-locate to Lebanon, and the guerrilla war became terrorism, indeed a threat to individual Israelis, but no longer a danger to the future of the state. and thus formed a serious threat the authority of King Husayn. of September the Jordanian Army ruthlessly, and indiscriminately, re-imposed the King’s power over the area’s controlled by the PFLP. At the end of the ten days, 3,000 Palestinians lay dead.

Intra-Arab politics and Pan-Arabism (with reference to applicable extra-regional factors).

In the previous subsection we discussed the rise and descent of pan-Arabism in relation to an opposing, and threatening, form of identity. In this subsection we will unearth the instances that demonstrate the complexities of pan-Arabic identity from within. The best way to begin this analysis is to briefly note the phenomena of Arabic supra-state institutions. Of the 11 major supranational institutions/treaty organisations that have existed since 1945, 22 only the Arab League is both entirely and exclusively Arabic, and still survives.23 Out of the others that have developed over that period of time, and have remained in existence, we can see a common respect for the sovereignty which contradicts the most ambitions elements of the political ideology of pan-Arabic integration. For an explanation of this apparent paradox we must no longer limit our perspective to looking at the states through the prism of ideological discourse, but also appreciate the ideology itself from the perspective of national governments.

Theoretical conclusions

As the example demonstrates, identity in the Middle Eastern states is a constant and yet fluid concept. It is not powerful enough on its own to create lasting homogeny in absence of core material interdependencies. However, in times of crisis, the appeal of unification can develop into a cycle of self-referential justifications. Group identity of any form, is fundamentally a practically necessary proxy of personal identity. The existence of a threat to one’s group is a threat to one’s own existence. It causes an increase in an individual’s focus on what is apparently familiar, and thus self-preserving, in contrast to what is unfamiliar. Such a focus extenuates the perceived differences and makes the disparity more pronounced, and thus increases the perceived danger of the threat. Living with such a cycle is, however, an extremely stressful and exhausting condition, and as a result one cannot maintain it as a primary thought process indefinitely.24

When attention diverges from the threat, one’s concern will be other aspects of life critical to existence. The state of the economy, living conditions and political access for example are all material issues that will also be high priorities. It is my argument that, the individual, whether a member of the ruling elite, or a member of the populace, will react to any given perceived threat against existence by seeking solidarity with those they are most familiar with. However, when that threat has passed or, become less pressing, the reality of issues such as poverty or political irrelevance, return to their positions of high priority issues. As we have seen through the concept of omnibalancing, above, this analysis is as applicable to the mindset of national governments as much as it is to the individual person, and it is particularly applicable to Middle Eastern states due to the problematic of post-colonial legitimacy.

The central pursuit of most MENA [Middle East and North African] regimes remains that of domestic survival – and the search for legitimacy, acquiescence and control to assure this, in turn supported by a sear for recourses to deploy in this domestic quest. The root of these dynamics remains in the inadequate ‘stateness’ of many of the countries in question, combined with a failure to ‘perform’ either politically or economically. 25

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W.Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Westview Press, 2004), p. 270.

Ibid.: p.254.

Ibid.: p.254.

J. Bill and R. Springborg, Politics in the Middle East (Harlow: Longman, 2000), p. 243.

W. Cleveland, op. cit., p.267.

Ibid.: p.266.

Cf. W.Cleveland, op. cit., pp. 243-266.: Also N.B. J. Bill and R. Springborg, op. cit., p. 231.:The massacre of 250 civilians at Dayr Yassin.

J. Galtung. “Cultural Violence” Journal of Peace Research (Vol. 27, No. 3. aug., 1990), pp. 291-305.

J. Galtung. Peace by Peaceful means: Peace and Conflict Development and Civilization (London: SAGE Publications, 1996).

C. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict, (London, Macmillan Press, 1981). p. 71.

J. Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means, op. cit.

Source of images is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/six_day_war.stm (last accessed: 03/01/2007 14:59:15)

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR.pdf?OpenElement, last accessed 14/01/:46:30)

UNSCR 242, op. cit.,

S. Murden, Islam, the Middle East, and the new Global Hegemony (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002). p.463.

W.Cleveland, op. cit., p. 358.: More detail on the nature and growth of the PLO where relevant to the argument is included below. However, a fuller description of the organisations beginnings can be found: Cf. W.Cleveland, op. cit. pp 345-373.: A. Mosely Lesch “The Palestinians” in D. Long and B. Reich (eds.), The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford: Westveiw Press, 1980), pp. 285-301.

Al-Fatah Constitution: http://www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm (last accessed: 08/01/:50:50).

W.Cleveland, op. cit., p. 359.

Lesch, op. cit., p. 286.

The English spellings of translated proper nouns vary according to which source one refers too. For the sake of consistency, aside from in direct quotations, I have chosen to adopt the spellings in W.Cleveland, op. cit.

W.Cleveland, op. cit. p.363.

L. Fawcett, “Aliancess, Cooperation and Regionalism in the Middle East” in Fawcett (ed.) International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 173-194.,at p. 185. Also Cf. Appendix.

The Arab League”, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2006.: The Arab League was formed in 1945 based on three major premises: one, the prevention of a Jewish state. The second was independence of all Arab peoples. Third, closer co-operation and yet respect for national sovereignty. Although the league has been involved in various major regional peacekeeping and military actions (Lebanese civil wars of 1958 and , along with the combined assaults on Israel detailed above) its role in recent years has been largely focused on economic, cultural and developmental policies.

C. Mitchell, op. cit.

G. Nonneman, “The Three Environments of Middle East Foreign Policy Making and Relations with Europe” in G. Nonneman (ed.) Analyzing Middle East Forign Policies: and The Relationship with Europe (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 19-42 at p.19:

Another map...

This is just a really amazing map from le Monde showing the 'Palestinian Diaspora'

English Translation:

(1) Exceptions are Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

The circles are proportional to the number of Palestinian expatriates.

Canada: 20,000

Denmark: 15,000 – 20,000

Egypt: 50,000-80,000 (according to the lowest estimates)

Iraq: 50,000

Kuwait: 38,000

Libya: 24,000

Other Arab Countries: 5,500

Other Gulf States: 106,000

Saudi Arabia: 275,000

South America: 1,000 +

Sweden: 15,000 – 18,000

United Kingdom: 1,000 +

USA: 150,000 – 200,000

A bit of history and a few maps...

So! as ridiculous as may seem after my previous post's endless ramblings about the inherent flawed nature of narrative... here is a narrative! (and maps too - using maps is just about the deepest sin I could commit after basically committing myself to a fancy-pants holier-than-thou post-structuralist perspective in the previous post... what the hell tho, if you don't know where I'm going, you arn't going to read much more of this blog eh?)

So the 'narrative' is mostly a copy and paste job from one of my essays (there is also a BBC overview here):

Israel and Palestine

The formation of a cohesive Zionist Identity.

In its modern form the Arab-Israeli conflict was rooted in the Zionist movement at the beginning of the 1880s. Anti-Semitism was prevalent across Europe, particularly in East and Russia where Jews faced pogroms along with oppressive social and economic policies. The Zionist discourse led by Theodor Herzl,¹ and Leo Pinkster² argued that the Jewish community would never find acceptance in Europe and therefore the best option for a successful Jewish community would be the formation of a new, separate state. Although various different locations were discussed, reference to the biblical ‘Holy Land’³ provided an extra incentive for Jewish interest. Herzl’s objectives were incorporated into the philosophy of the organisation “Hibbat Tziyyon” (“Lovers of Zion”)⁴who planned and promoted the settlement of Jews in Palestine. Immigration occurred in waves, or ‘aliyahs’,⁵ and by the time of the Balfour Declaration⁶ the number of settled Jews combined with the geo-political significance of Zionism,⁷ led the British to consider the prospect of forming an Israeli state. The rise of Fascism in Europe was cause for an upsurge in Jewish immigration, and despite restrictions levied by the British authority, by 1946 Jews accounted for 31% of the total population of the mandate.⁸ Jews had also begun to dominate the economy in both the professional and agricultural spheres.

2 Extra-regional agents: Balfour to UNSCR 338.

The Balfour Declaration was the British plan for their governance of the Middle East once the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War. The partition plan for Mandate Palestine was extremely ambiguous.⁹ 1922 saw the issue of a British Government White Paper as an attempt to clarify their policy, and placate both sides. Its effect, however, was the opposite of this.¹⁰

The British era of Governance was characterized by poor communications between themselves and the local populace. The only political organization that claimed to represent the concerns of the Arabic population, the Arab Executive, was for the most part ignored by the British. Consequently, at the same time as Jewish settlers were rapidly growing in power on all of fronts of civil society, the Palestinian Arabs were left without a legitimate means of access to the political authority. This disparity provided the backdrop for violent clashes that occurred within the mandate between the two ethnic groups.¹¹

Another British commission under Lord Peel proposed a new plan for partition that was rejected by both parties.¹² When, following the end of the Second World War, Zionist acts of terrorism began to seriously damage the British infrastructure, Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Minister, deferred the issue to the United Nations (UN). The UN plan again proposed a partition, and international administration of Jerusalem (see map¹³). Although the plan was accepted by the Yishuv (Jewish settlers) it was rejected on behalf of the Arabic communities by the governments of neighbouring Arab states, who promised to defend them militarily.

3 Pan-Arabism : from cohesion to disarray.

The British withdrawal from the mandate was finalised on May 14^th 1948. The next day Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi forces mounted an invasion of the former mandate. They were beaten back by the Israeli Haganah (the Zionist paramilitary organisation that was responsible for most of the violence against the British). By mid-June this same year. Armistice and ceasefire agreements were agreed between Israel and each of the aggressor states.¹⁴ The material outcome of the war and the agreements was an increase in the size of Israel’s territory, and the effective irredinta partition of the Gaza Strip to Eqypt, and the West Bank to Transjordan.¹⁵ The war also stimulated an exodus of over 710,000 Palestinians to various Arab states.¹⁶

The recession of the British Empire and the 1948 war transformed Zionism from an activist political force to an actual Jewish state. It also meant that the status of Palestinian Arabs had changed from a majority within the mandate to a divided community, spread across various territories and without a central political authority. The international Arabic community also proved unable to organise themselves into an effective force behind the cause of Palestinian liberation.

In 1967, Israel, again, prevailed in the face of an Arabic military assault. The proposed UN resolution (242) failed to satisfy either side. It implied Israeli withdrawal only from the Syrian and Egyptian territory and did not specify withdrawal from the occupied territories.

The 1973 war was Egypt and Syria’s attempt to win back the lost territory of 1967 (Cf. map above ¹⁷). As a military exercise it failed, although it brought about UN Resolution 338 and peace negotiations in which Anwar Sadat agreed a separate peace deal between Egypt and Israel in 1979 known as the Camp David agreements.

4.4 Palestinian Liberation Movement: From the Mandate, to Cairo, …eventually to Oslo.

In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed by the Arab League. For the first time since 1948 Palestinian Arabs were provided with a political mechanism and the means to interact with each other, and allied governments.¹⁸

The 1967 war added 200,000-300,000 refugees¹⁹ to the Palestinian Diaspora,²⁰ but it had a profound effect on the nature of the PLO. With the rise to prominence of Yasser Arafat and al-Fatah,²¹ PLO transformed its central philosophy. Rather than relying on pan-Arabic unity as a means to emancipation, the PLO was to now promulgate Palestinian nationalism. A second transformation for the PLO came after Black September (1970) and their ejection from Jordan. The PLO was forced to operate as an international terrorist organisation, relocating their base from Jordan to Beirut.²²

“Legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”²³ were noted in the agreement. This, however, was interpreted very differently by each side. Israel maintained its claim to the West Bank and Gaza and with the security of a non-aggressor in the south they focused their attention on the destruction of the PLO. Israeli involvement in the Lebanese civil war, and invasions in 1978 and 1982, drove the PLO out and forced them to find a new base in distant Tunis.²⁴

There followed another period of profound change for the PLO. Various organisations operating under the PLO umbrella instigated “al-intifada” (“the opening”)²⁵ lasting from “The intensity of the Palestinian protests and the brutality of Israeli response forced international attention in the nature of Israel’s role as occupiers of these lands and called into question the future of the territories”.²⁶ In 1988 the PLO also accepted UN resolution 242, a pragmatic step that allowed the US government to engage with them as a negotiation partner at the Madrid Conference²⁷ (October 1991). Out of the Madrid conference developed the second track of negotiations that became the secretive Oslo Peace process.

5. Oslo

The Oslo agreement was born out of the Madrid Conference (September 1991), which, for the first time allowed Palestinians, who were included in the Jordanian delegation, to converse with the Israeli government directly. Secret talks convened, by Norwegian academics, were to begin in 1993. There were several factors that contributed to a similar ‘softening’ of the conflict. The ideological Likud had been defeated and replace in Israel’s Government, by the far more pragmatic Labour party. The Intifada had reached stalemate; Israel had not managed to destroy the militant groups, and the PLO leadership, based in Tunis, without direct involvement in the fighting were in danger of becoming irrelevant to the Palestinian cause. Israel was also being put under pressure by the Bush administration to sue for peace as a requirement for continued financial support.²⁸

The Oslo agreements made some apparently fast progress, however, when the joint “Declaration of Principles” (Oslo I) was announced in 1993 it was in the form of a phased plan not a peace treaty. Many of the issues of major contention were not resolved²⁹ and both sides agreed that the plan would lead to further talks, and eventually, agreement in 1998. Oslo II, declared in Washington D.C. in 1995, was the outcome of the next round of talks. It demonstrates the vast structural inequality that the two sides still faced. In terms of territory alone, of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority would only be permitted to claim 3%, and share 24%, Israel would claim the rest (see map³⁰)³¹

The discourse was polarized across the ethnic divide, but also within both sides. Secret talks had not been able to overcome the zero-sum dilemma,³² and the 1998 talks collapsed into the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Oslo had failed to provide a rational centre where reciprocal material concession could be matched with emotive empathy.³³ Perhaps if more of the key issues had been tackled in secret then the structural basis for peace would have undermined the material basis each side’s discourse of hostility. However, as it was, the two antagonists began the process so far apart from each other, and the sacrifices required by each of them to get to a structural centre ground would have cost more than was possible, while at the same time maintaining discursive unity across their own parities.

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¹Author of The Jewish State (1896)

²Author of Auto-emancipation (1892)

³. Appendix A

⁴, W., A History of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Westview Press, 2004), p.241.

⁵, W., op. cit. p.241.

⁶“The Balfour Declaration”, Cited in W. Laqueur and B.Rubin (eds.) The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, (6^th ed.), (New York: Penguin, 2001), p.16.

⁷Cleveland, W., op cit. 243 “Until the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, the British cabinet was worried that Germany might make a declaration in support of Zionist aims and thus attract a sympathetic response from US Jewry. A similar consideration arose with regard to Russia, which was on the verge of a military collapse and a social revolution.”

⁸. Cleveland, W., op. cit. p. 255.: Table 13.1 “Population of Palestine by Ethnic Group, ”.

⁹“The Balfour Declaration”, op. cit.: It spoke of “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” but lacked a clear plan.

¹⁰ Cleveland, W., op cit., pp 239-248.

¹¹Cleveland W., op. cit., pp. 256 - 257: e.g. Including the Wailing wall 1929 incident.

¹² Ibid.: pp. 258-261.

¹³From the University of Dartmouth (Available online: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gov46/unscop-maj-prop-1947.gif): The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was actually divided on what the best plan for the future of Palestine would be. The minority proposition was a federated state.

¹⁴It is significant that there was no formal peace treaty as this made it possible for the Arab governments to avoid recognising Israel’s right to exist.

¹⁵ Cf. Appendix B

¹⁶“General Progress Report and Supplementary Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Covering the Period from 11 December 1949 to 23 October 1950”, From the United Nations Conciliation Commission, October 23, 1950, (U.N. General Assembly Official Records, 5th Session, Supplement No. 18, Document A/1367/Rev. 1).

¹⁷Israel: Map” Microsoft® Encarta® 2007 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2006.

¹⁸, W., op. cit., p. 258.: it was an attempt “by the Arab States to restrict Palestinian resistance activity and prevent the Palestinian movement from operating independently”.

¹⁹Bill, J. and Springborg, R., op. cit.., at p. 243.

²⁰Cf. Appendix D for the International Diaspora

²¹ Ibid.: 267-8.: “Although dominated by Arafat and Fatah, the PLO since 1969 has in fact been an umbrella organization into and out of which the competitors of Fatah have drifted as the relations have waxed and waned”.: Cleveland, W., op. cit., p. 359.: “al-Fatah founders avoided tying the cause to communism, Baathism, or pan-Arabism”.

²²Smith, C. “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” in Fawcett, L., (ed.) International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 217-241, at p. 227.: “PLO actions against Israel engaged Lebanon more directly in the Arab-Israeli conflict and become a major factor in instigating a Lebanese civil war in the mid-1970s [sic].”

²³Qaundt, W., Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993) p.256 cited in Smith, C., op. cit., p. 230.

²⁴Smith, C., op cit., p. 232.

²⁵Cleveland, W., op. cit., p. 377.

²⁶Smith, C., op. cit., p. 232.

²⁷Cf. Cleveland, W., op. cit., pp. 500-502, and Smith, C., op. cit., pp. 233-234.: The Madrid Conference was convened in the aftermath of the US led war to remove Iraqi forces from their occupation of the Emirate of Kuwait ). The conference’s aim was to find an acceptable resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

²⁸Miall, H., Ramsbotham, O., and Woodhouse, T., Contemporary Conflict Resolution, (Cambrige, UK: Polity Press, 1999).

²⁹Shlaim, A., “The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process” in Fawcett, L., op. cit., pp.241-263.: No mention of a Palestinian state, 5 year plan for Palestinian autonomy, no resolution to competing claims to Jerusalem, no commitment to withdraw settlers.

³⁰Source of Map: Foundation for Middle East Peace (available online at: http://www.fmep.org/maps/map_data/redeployment/oslo_map_1995.html last accessed 12/01/:48:49)

³¹Cleveland, W., op. cit., at p. 507

³²“Israeli troops, Palestinians clash after Sharon visits Jerusalem sacred site” CNN (available online at: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/09/28/jerusalem.violence.02/ last accessed: 12/01/:46:42): as demonstrated by the ability Likud to exploit 1998 agreements and, hostility to the peace process as a whole to their own electoral ends, and of Hamas and various organizations within the umbrella of the PLO, to launch a second intifadia.

³³Horowitz, D., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (California: University of California Press, 1985).

A bit of theory...

So, why am I going?


Two main reasons, to learn Arabic and to do some research for my dissertation. I plan on using this blog to make a record of my experience of Birzeit and of the West Bank and Israel.


So, what's my perspective?


The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most emotive topics in contemporary affairs. I think therefore its best to outline my own perspective on the conflict right now in order to make it clear where I'll be coming from politically when I post on this blog.

1. I don't know enough about this issue to assume the right to be an authority. I'm a British student who, until I arrive, will have learned everything I know about Palestine and Israel via the media, text books, teaching or through conversations with people with more experience than me. I'm only going for two months and even if I was to live in the West Bank for the rest of my life I doubt I could ever truly understand what it is like to be a Palestinian or an Israeli. The first thing I want to say at all in the form of a substantive blog is a qualification for all my later posts. Whatever I say here, and however declarative I appear to be, it is my honest hope that I will maintain a critical outlook, that begins with skepticism toward what I appear to know most definitely.

2. With this in mind, I should also explain that my research isn't a balanced analysis of the conflict. In fact, my question doesn't really begin in politics. I hope that it is more a philosophical inquiry, albeit administered fairly practically. My interest is in identifying the motivations for why Palestinian Children get involved in the conflict.

3. Almost as I wrote that I could feel myself leaping to a number of immediate conclusions, perhaps you did too? Did the any of the following terms spring to mind?: 'suicide bombers', 'martyrs', 'religious extremism', 'terrorism' etc. etc. -- well, of course they did! This is the image thats painted of Palestine in the media all the time, particularly in recent years. While I'm not arguing that these are not factors (they must be or else we wouldn't hear of them through the media at all) I want to make the point that these are not the whole story. The prevalence of such extreme measures as suicide bombings are relatively rare in contrast to the less high profile violence that occurs daily and is, by all accounts, an intrinsic part of the Palestinian identity. So, I should make it clear then that this isn't a tabloid expose of blah blah... I'm not really interested in looking at 'extreme measures' as a phenomenon in that respect. What interests me is the less specific more generalized acts of violence by young people in the population at large.

Who's side am I on?

Well - there is no way of getting round this question... even if I go to great pains to assert my impartiality frankly its not going to wash. So what I will say is this: I've been pondering the idea for some time now that human comprehension of the external world is always somewhat flawed. In a sence it has to be, we could not appreciate the sheer data we are exposed to without some element of simplification (perhaps Kantesc 'categorization') what this tends to mean in terms of conflict, however, is that we often make unfair assumptions regarding the nature of what we are looking at. I know I do this. I think what I do is look for the key elements and relationships that I understand the meaning of and apply them to the complex data in front of us. This creates a narrative, or a story, that a) conforms to basic structure we are familiar with, b) defines the protagonists and antagonists as the particular roles we can understand, and c) helps us fill in gaps in our knowledge with further assumptions.

The effect of this is the narrative, or the story, of the conflict. With this structure as means we can take the complex data of any given situation and 'understand' what we see much more simply. There are antagonists and protagonists and there is usually a beginning, middle and in the future some 'end' that we all look towards. This narrative, of course, changes in all these respects according to whomever is telling it, and according to whomever is perceiving it.

The Israeli-Palestinian narrative is often simplified in the respect of we comprehend it as two sides: Israel vs. Palestinians, or if we have a slightly more complex understanding of the conflict, we will understand it maybe in terms of a combination of the following Likud/Kadimir/Labor vs. Hamas/Al-Fatah/Islamic Jihad etc.etc. but even here we run into problems. Even if i was to try and express a preference for any one of these factions, as a 'side' (I might declare: Al-Fatah or The Labor party have the right attitude) my preference would only be fully comprehensible within my own narrative.

So what is the solution to this? Well, there isn't one. I have to provide a context or else my research will make no sence. However, as soon as I do, I will portray the data inaccurately. I can help matters tho. The context I am hoping to provide is for a question that is basically non-political.
I'm not at all interested in arguing that any action is 'Just', what I am interested in is 'how is it justified?' in a sence I'm shrugging off Kant at this point. I don't want to discuss these issues in the shadow of an objective right and wrong, I want to talk about them in terms of cause and effect. Even if we understand that humans have the capacity for free will (although I'm not a big fan of this idea, but thats another story) we know from experience that when we act we can often point to why it is we acted in that particular way, not discounting that in any case our actions maybe based on flawed reasoning, they always seem to be based on some kind of reasoning. My project is simply to identify that reasoning and write it down.