Miscellanea Agnostica

I can think of no more obvious, or compelling, example of how religiosity kills, than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As I type this, there is fighting going in the Gaza strip, a territory in the Levant which lies between Israel and Egypt, along the Mediterranean coast. Technically it’s Israeli territory, however, for a number of years it’s been under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and specifically of the group Hamas (the other major Palestinian Authority region, the West Bank, is under the control of Fatah, another Palestinian faction).

The proximate cause of this particular outbreak of fighting is that Israel, having had enough of Hamas rockets being lobbed out of the Gaza strip and into its territory over the last couple of years, decided to destroy Hamas. But there are reasons that Hamas has been doing so, and therein lies the heart of the persistent problem of conflict in the Middle East. In fact, neither party currently has “clean hands,” and this only makes concessions harder to achieve (both sides are filled with acrimony over past atrocities and sanctimony over their own plight).

What makes this conflict so tragic, is that it was completely preventable, and even though it is now considered all but unsolvable, this is not actually the case. There are a number of myths lying behind the perception that this is an unsolvable problem, and unfortunately, both sides appear to be perpetuating them … to the world’s detriment. I will go over them one by one.

Note that in my discussion, I use the term “Palestinian” to mean “Palestinian Arab”; there is some question as to whether there is a distinct “Palestinian” ethnic group (some even include Jews as that because they were from there). I realize this is controversial, but having to type out “Palestinian Arab” all the time is just too cumbersome. This is why I refer to the overall region in question — Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, etc. — by the more neutral term “the Levant.”

Myth #1 — The conflict is thousands of years old: This is patently untrue. The Levant has some bits of very nice land, particularly parts of the coast and some inland valleys and oases, but most of the region has historically been hostile to human settlement. Potable water was particularly hard to get, but arable land is rare as well. Intensive settlement is possible only when there is a significant infrastructure in place, and determined measures to maintain it. This existed in the past, in e.g. the Canaanite city-states, was especially the case during Hellenistic and Greco-Roman times, and during parts of the Middle Ages. But for many centuries at a time, especially after the fall of Rome and the expulsion of the Byzantines, this infrastructure was not maintained. With the exception of a number of coastal towns and a few interior locations, much of the region has been depopulated at several points over the last 1,200 years or so. This was particularly true in the latter few centuries of the region’s administration by the Ottoman Empire, which was weak and crumbling in many places (not only in the Levant). By “depopulated” I mean exactly that — thousands of square miles in the Levant had no one living in them. No one! Where there were some people, they generally kept in separate enclaves, grouped by ethnicity and/or religion, and there was little or no conflict among them (aside from the Crusades, which were outside invasions by western Christendom). It is literally not possible for a millennia-old conflict to have been maintained during this entire time, because at times there was no one there to maintain it! As it turns out, the current era of conflict actually began in the 19th century, when a confluence of two efforts — an effort by the Ottoman regime to repopulate the Levant with Arabs, hoping to beef up trade along the coast, and the Zionism movement of European Jews back to the Levant in the face of anti-Semitism — collided. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the first decades of the 20th century only made it worse.

Myth #2 — The land belongs to <group of your choice>: Historically, land is obtained or lost via two means, war or migration. There has been a lot of migration into and out of the Levant over the last 2,000 years and more than a little warfare along with it. To say the land “belongs” to any group is simply not valid. There is no way to assign ownership! Even though Jews of Hellenistic and earlier times “owned” the Levant, that land had “owners” before them (the Canaanites, if tradition and the Bible are to be believed). And their ancestors, in turn, had migrated in at some time in the past. Discerning “ownership” thus becomes a game of which historical time-window one arbitrarily chooses. This means it’s a game that cannot be won — since one can always shift that time-window to anything anyone wishes.

Myth #3 — The conflict started because Arab states invaded Israel shortly after it was founded in 1948: This is incorrect only insofar as it’s an incomplete statement and significantly clouds the matter. The roots of the conflict are older than the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. One of the major contributors was the Great Arab Revolt which took place in the late 1930s, between the Palestinians and the British, who then controlled the region under an international mandate in the wake of the Ottoman collapse. In turn this revolt was a response to heightened immigration of Jews in the area, mainly because of the expansion of the Third Reich. For the most part the violence of this period was between Palestinians and the forces of the British mandate, although Jews were involved (some on Britain’s side, some targeted by Palestinians). There was also some infighting between Palestinian factions and some backroom haggling among British politicians over how to respond. But Jews were the subject of the revolt, and after it ended, this was not forgotten by either side; moreover, by the end of the revolt, the British had funded and trained a Jewish Agency for the self-defense of the Jews. The neighboring Arab states were alarmed that the British had essentially set up a Jewish quasi-government including a militia of sorts, believing it part of an imperialistic British campaign against them. They were never fond of this development.

Another aspect of the Great Arab Revolt is that the most pre-eminent Palestinian leader, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni, fled the fighting and took refuge in — of all places — Nazi Germany. There he learned the fine art of anti-Semitic propaganda, from masters of the subject. After World War II was over he returned to Egypt; from there he launched a second campaign of anti-Semitism, and rallied Egypt and Syria (the two countries had close ties then) against the U.N. Partition of 1947, which would have created a Palestinian state and a Jewish one, claiming a Jewish state would be a prelude to the decimation of Palestinians. (Ostensibly the opposition to that specific plan was that the land division had not been a fair one, but prior to that, Palestinian leaders had not welcomed the presence of any Jewish state, so this was merely a pretense.)

Facing a potential loss of face in front of their own people, along with concerns about British imperialism lying behind the creation of Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt attacked the new state in 1948.

Myth #4 — The current conflict began during the Crusades: This is untrue. As I mentioned earlier, the Crusades were a medieval western European military and social expedition, whose origins were more or less independent of any conflict between Jews and Muslims. If anything, at the time of the Crusades, these two groups lived amicably together in Spain and elsewhere (I’ll explain this below). The only relation that the current conflict has with the Crusades, is in the mouths of modern Muslim propagandists, who continually cast the state of Israel as a western effort to destroy Arabs or Islam overall — and thus (they claim) it carries a whiff of Crusade fever. Not only does the current conflict have nothing to do with the Crusades, however, having no historical relation to it, the Crusades were not even an effort to destroy Arabs or Islam. Quite honestly, the Crusaders were in no position even to begin doing either of these things, and as it turns out, their expedition was ill-advised from the very start — as seen in the fact that they failed spectacularly. No, the Crusades began as an effort to bolster Byzantine defenses, only growing later into an effort to bring the “Holy Land” back under Christian control. The Crusaders are, in fact, long gone, and their descendants (if any are left) vanished deep within subsequent Middle Eastern history; after their defeat and dispersal, the region was conquered successively by others, the Mamelukes of Egypt, then the Ottomans, and so on.

Myth #5 — The conflict in the Middle East was unavoidable, and is intractable: If you’ve read the above, you’ll have noticed any number of points of escalation which presented themselves, at which time any or all parties could have backed down or found some accommodation. The British could have dealt better with the revolt in the late ’30s; the Palestinians could have created their own state under the 1947 partition; the three Arab states need not have invaded; and on and on it goes. The number of times this conflict could have been avoided is very lengthy, and the entire world — Christian, Jewish and Muslim alike — ought to hang its head in shame over it. That it was avoidable is also exactly the means by which it can be ended — by all sides conceding the needlessness of the conflict and trying to rectify what went wrong.

It is, however, largely the refugee crisis and the question of a “right of return” which has prevented this from happening. The populations of both the Gaza strip and the West Bank are mostly descendants of Palestinian refugees, who fled the Levant beginning during the Great Arab Revolt and the creation of Israel, as well as the aftermath of the 1948 war. In addition there are many more descendants of Palestinian refugees in other Arab states, particularly Jordan. The position of Israel has, since that war, been that Israel is now a Jewish state and that Palestinians have no right to go back. The Arab position, generally, is the opposite of Israel’s — that the Palestinian refugees and their descendants ought to be able to live in Israel once more.

One can argue whether or not Israel is right in holding the line against the “right of return,” but the cold hard fact of the Levant’s inhospitability renders the issue moot; even if every Israeli Jew were to vanish, leaving the entire region solely to the Palestinians, there are simply far too many of them to be able to live there. In other words, the issue of “right of return” has gone beyond “the point of no return.” Reality simply no longer allows it.

This reality has been the focus of various efforts to end the conflict — the Oslo Accords and so on — however, this discussion has taken place at the highest levels only. Among the general Palestinian and Israeli populations, this reality has not yet taken hold; there are enough people on either side agitating against such a concession, that the leaders of both sides have not been able to do so and make it stick.

Over the course of the conflict, many have lost their lives, at the hands of either side. While groups like Hamas are known for using terrorist tactics — and make no mistake, they are terrorists! — both sides have used terror, even against third parties. A prime example of this is the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel — then the British-mandate commandery — by Jewish insurgents who wanted Britain out of the picture.

Religion comes into play in the form of religious sentiments which have become entwined in this. The Arab and Iranian Muslim worlds have become largely anti-Semitic at nearly all levels. Jews worldwide have, in the same way, become pro-Israel. This is, however, a relatively recent development: Historically Jews and Muslims had gotten along quite well. They did so, for example, in Moorish Spain, from the 8th to the 15th centuries … many academies there had both Jewish and Muslim scholars, and a marvelous educational system; although Muslims and Jews lived in separate enclaves, they got along well. Spanish Jewry prospered under Islamic rule, compared to the aftermath of the Christian kingdom of Spain taking over. Jews living in Christian Spain, during the course of the Reconquista, had far fewer rights than Christians; and when the last Muslim enclave surrendered in 1492, all Jews in Spain were summarily expelled.

In response to this, I’d like to note, Ottoman Emperor Bayezid II sent a large portion of his fleet to pick up fleeing Jews, and he relocated them — at his own expense — to Constantinople. So even after this, Jews and Muslims still enjoyed good relations.

As I said near the start, the current Arab–Israeli conflict really is not a modern incarnation of a millennia-old religious rivalry; it is, instead, a modern development, no more than about 150 years old (if that), and until 70 years ago or so it was not especially violent (aside from conflicts late during World War I).

At any rate, religion is now decidedly involved … even Christianity, in the form of Christian Zionism and other Christian fundamentalists who are trying to get Israel to intensify the conflict, so as to ignite Armageddon and the end of the world. Yeah, sounds freaky … but they exist, especially among the Religious Right, which until the last few years, ran the U.S.! So they are not insignificant players. Until religious sentiment is extricated from the Arab–Israeli conflict, it will not end. However, once it is, an end is in sight, since the poor decisions of the past can, in fact, be rectified. The world simply has to want it to happen enough.