The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Contested Histories

Neil Caplan

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444357868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories provides non-specialist readers with an introduction and historical overview of the issues that have characterized and defined 130 years of the still unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Provides a fresh attempt to break away from polemical approaches that have undermined academic discussion and political debates
• Focuses on a series of core arguments that the author considers essentially unwinnable
• Introduces readers to the major historiographical debates sparked by the dispute
• Encourages readers to consider more useful ways of explaining and understanding the conflict, and to go beyond trying to prove who is 'right' and 'wrong'

"This volume suggests a fresh and original interpretation to the history of the Arab Israeli conflict. Caplan juggles skillfully and even-handedly between the two narratives, reflecting the parties' own views without embracing the cause of any party."
– Joseph Nevo, University of Haifa

"An impressive and very valuable work. One could not ask for a better short history of the conflict. Caplan offers readers a study that is extremely well-informed, resolutely fair-minded, and filled with thoughtful insights."
– Mark Tessler, University of Michigan

Part I
Introduction

1
Problems in Defining the Conflict

“Palestine, for its size, is probably the most investigated country in the world.”¹

“No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded.”²

If ever there was a contemporary conflict that deserved to be included in a series of historical works entitled “Contesting the Past,” it is surely the Arab–Israeli or Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Although open to dispute, one scholar considers it “the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today.”³ Any attempt to simply recount its main events in chronological order is bound to be contested by someone—even if that account is deliberately neutral in intent, purged of any overt editorializing, and without passing judgment on motives, causes, or effects. Of course, such bare chronologizing is of very limited use to anyone, and the study of history is a much more complicated affair.

One telling indication of just how contested the study of this conflict can be is the vast disparity in the provenance and dates of those two quoted sentences. The first was written by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, in a letter to US president Harry S. Truman in December 1945, while the second one was penned in August 2007 by French intellectual and one-time associate of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Régis Debray. Juxtapositions and contrasts such as these occur frequently and provide ironic relief to those engaged in researching this enduring and perplexing dispute.

Not surprisingly, there exists a wide variety of ways of understanding and representing the Israeli–Arab or Palestinian–Israeli conflict. These efforts at explanation, whether in the realm of politics, lobbying, media, academe, or the general public, are often reflections of the highly contentious conflict itself, including its bitterness and complexity. A familiar pattern is the presentation of one side’s “true” account as against the other party’s “lies,” “myths,” or “propaganda.” Less simplistic are the scholars, journalists, and analysts who acknowledge and discuss the parties’ competing “narratives” of the conflict.

In Part II of this book we shall outline the history of almost 130 years of Israeli–Palestinian and Arab–Israeli conflict from its early local origins to one of regional and global dimensions. Along the way we shall highlight a number of “core arguments” that emerged and that contribute to the unhappy fact that the conflict is still today unresolved and is very resistant to a solution. My intentions are modest, yet challenging enough: to explore this conflict with all its paradoxes and complexities, if possible to demystify some of its features, and to offer some understanding about why the histories of Palestine and Israel are so contested.

What’s in a Name?

A number of problems stem from the complexities that flow from the very act of naming the conflict and its main protagonists. In naming the conflict and defining what it is about, one is immediately, if unwillingly, taking a position that will surely be disputed by someone holding a different view. The conflict analyzed in these pages has been described variously as the “Jewish–Arab” conflict, the “Zionist–Arab” conflict, the “Arab–Israeli” conflict, and the “Israeli–Palestinian” conflict.

If we choose to call it the “Jewish–Arab” conflict, we are pitting the Jewish people as a whole against the Arab people as a whole. Is this an appropriate or accurate definition? As we will see below (Chapter 2), the designations of Jews and Arabs refer to wide groups extending beyond those directly contesting the land of Palestine/Israel. Although some writers do refer to the “Arab–Jewish conflict,” in these pages we avoid this designation because it is inappropriately broad and may lend itself to confusion and misleading interpretations.

What we miss from such a wide definition are the specifically political, national, and territorial aspects of the conflict that exists today. By using the term “Zionist” rather than “Jewish,” we supply these missing components for one of the protagonists. Zionists believe in and support the quest by Jews to “return to Zion” (i.e., Jerusalem and the Holy Land); in the modern period, this implied also support for the creation of a Jewish state in the area. Applying this definition, it would be accurate to say that, prior to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, we were dealing largely with a “Zionist–Arab” and a “Zionist–Palestinian” conflict.

Who, then, are the Arabs? Not really a symmetrical designation to Jews, Arabs may be defined as an ethno-national group sharing a common history, the Arabic language, and cultural roots emanating from ancient tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. The “Arab–Israeli” conflict—perhaps the most commonly used of all these various titles—is in many ways an apt name for the territorial and political dispute since 1948 between the state of Israel, on the one hand, and the twenty or so states that consider themselves to be Arab, on the other.

Still, even this preferred designation carries with it a number of drawbacks. As we have noted, it may lead to the erroneous notion that the conflict began in 1948 with the creation of Israel, ignoring at least half a century of a pre-existing Zionist–Arab and Zionist–Palestinian dispute. Also misleading is the notion that the Arab world is a single entity that displays uniform attitudes and policies vis-à-vis Jews, Zionism, and/or Israel. In effect, historical experiences, policies, and attitudes vary among individual Arab peoples and states, with the result that it is misleading to suggest that the Arabs, as a single unit, constitute one of the two antagonists in the Arab–Israeli conflict.⁴

A further potential drawback of this definition of the conflict is that the broad term “Arab” can sometimes overlook or understate the existence of the specific struggle between Zionists (pre-1948) and Israelis (since 1948), on the one hand, and the Arabs of Palestine (or Palestinians), on the other. Thus, for example, while most discussions from 1948 to 1973 accurately speak of a wider Arab–Israeli conflict, in the period since 1973, and more so since 1993, many people came to see the conflict as being at its core a narrower Israeli–Palestinian conflict for sovereignty and self-determination on the same territory—albeit one with broader Arab dimensions.

In this book we retain the latter two ways of naming the conflict, using the common and convenient Arab–Israeli conflict to denote and include its wider regional dimensions, while referring to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict when focusing on its core and its two main protagonists. This way of defining the conflict and its protagonists, it should be pointed out, is hotly challenged by some, especially right-wing Israelis and Zionists.⁵

Loaded Terminology

As with discussions of other conflicts, terminology can deliberately or unintentionally favor one side over the other, and betray the biased perspective or partisan support of the writer or speaker. These dangers can be amply illustrated for the Arab–Israeli conflict with regard to general descriptors, the naming of the protagonists, the naming of events, and the labeling of maps.

As in all accounts of conflict and war, terminology is enlisted to help separate the heroes from the villains. The commitments and feelings of the writer or observer are reflected in the choice to be made between terms with pejorative connotations (e.g., “terrorist”) and those that put the actor in a more favorable light (e.g., “freedom-fighter”). With both sides claiming virtue and nobility, observers end up taking sides by choosing when to speak of acts of “aggression” and when to refer to acts of “resistance” against that aggression.

In the naming of the main protagonists, there are, for some people, automatic connotations to be adopted, or avoided. The word “Zionist,” for example, can be associated with the antisemitic pamphlet The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery that purports to provide evidence that Jews are members of a treacherous cabal plotting to take over the world. In the eyes of Palestinian-Arabs who struggled against Zionism for control over Palestine/Eretz-Israel (Hebrew: “land of Israel”), the term “Zionists” will understandably be viewed negatively as signifying...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of Maps
• Preface
• Note on Sources
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Histories in Contention
• Part III: Towards a More Useful Discussion of the Arab–Israeli Conflict
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement