The Arab-Israeli Conflict 1948-1996

Origins of tensionThe war of Independence (Israeli) or The Catastrophe (Palestinian) 1948• Causes: Partition resolution in Nov 1947- assured a Jewish state of some

form in Palestine. The Palestinians were equally determined to prevent the emergence of the Jewish state.

• Nature of the war: Both sides used terrorist tactics, car bombs and am-bushes. Many civilians killed on both sides. Following British withdrawal -the surrounding five Arab states attacked along the borders of the newly de-clared Jewish state. After early setbacks the Israelis drove the Arab armies out of the north, regained the Negev from the Egyptians and secured a cor-ridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They were unable to gain control of East Jerusalem. UN secured a truce in Jan 1949, followed by separate armistice agreements with each Arab state by July 1949.

• Results: Israel occupied 20% more of Palestine than the UN had agreed on. Israel refused to return to partition plan borders. Israel would not permit Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Arab states and the Palestini-ans refused diplomatic recognition to Israel and would not acknowledge the Jewish state’s right to exist. 150,000 Palestinian Arabs remained resident of Israel. 725,000 Palestinians had become refugees.

• The key issues that were still remain unresolved was partition, because the border between the Jewish state and Palestinian state needed to be fixed, Jerusalem was still being claimed by both sides and they both wanted it be-cause it was an important place for them to practice their religions, and refugees had been in camps for over 65 years.

• Israel was able to win a war that seemed so weighed against them because they had greater spirit and determination, they had more men and supplies, and even though there were five Arab countries fighting against them, the Arabs were all divided because they wanted their own things and mad sep-arate attacks on the Israelis.

Consequences of the war for Israel and the Palestinians to 1967• No Palestinian Arab State- the Arabs claim that through Britain’s hostility to

the Arabs and support of the Zionists, they had destroyed Arab leadership, thereby making it possible for the Zionists to expel them from their own country. Israeli historians assert that an Arab nation did emerge in the area allocated by the UN. It was an expanded Jordan.

• While Palestinians were not expelled, approx 726,000 became refugees and their communities destroyed

• Israelis occupied more than 385 former Arab Palestinian towns and vil-lages. More than a quarter of all building in Israel were formerly Arab.

• Refugee camps set up by UN near Arab capital cities or former British or French army camps. Conditions appalling- no sewage/sanitation. Only ba-sic medical facilities. Overcrowded.

• Palestinians in Jordan were allowed to become citizens of Jordan. Many joined the army, civil service, others entered business or professions. In Syria Palestinians could join the army or civil service. In Lebanon they faired the best. In Beirut Palestinians were successful in banking and the freedom of speech they enjoyed made the city the intellectual capital of the region

Political and social issues in Arab-Israeli relations in 1967• The Arab states refused to recognise, negotiate or discuss peace with Is-

rael• There were now 700,000 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and

400,000 in the Gaza Strip• The Palestinians started taking liberation into their own hands which cre-

ated a problem for Israel

War and peaceCauses, course and consequences of the 1967 (Six Day) WarCauses• On 5 June 1967, Israeli planes took off with orders to bomb Egypt’s air-

fields. They destroyed all of Egypt’s aircraft while they were still on the ground and their airfields.

• Later that day the Israelis launched similar attacks against the other Arab air forces. By nightfall, almost the whole of the Syrian and Jordanian air forces had been destroyed.

• The days after Israeli troops moved with amazing speed against the Egyp-tians, driving them out of the Gaza Strip and Sinai, all the way back to the Suez Canal.

• Israel defeated Jordan within two days, capturing Jerusalem and occupying all the West Bank.

• Finally, the Israelis attacked the Syrian army in the heavily fortified Golan Heights, seizing the whole area by 10 June.

• On that day the United Nations ordered a ceasefire. The Arabs had no choice but to accept it, for they no longer had the means to fight.

Results• Jews everywhere gained self-confidence, pride and assertiveness.

• Israel was overjoyed that they were able to achieve a victory against such odds by themselves

• Israel was provided with strategic depth, more defensible borders from the conquered territory

• Israel controlled all of Jerusalem by taking over• Palestinian nationalism grew which became a problem for Israel• PLO now under leadership of Yasser Arafat• Arab and US relations deteriorated. Israel and US became allies• Israel had a new image of strength and power

Creation, aims, methods and effectiveness of the Palestinian Liber-ation Organisation (PLO) 1964-1974Creation• The PLO was created by President Nasser of Egypt.• It had its headquarters in Jerusalem

Aims• It was to be an umbrella organisation to take control of fedayeen groups

that had formed after the 1948 war.• It was formed to liberate Palestine from Zionist colonial oppressors and cre-

ate a Palestinian state by using the method of ‘armed struggle’• It was funded by donations from sympathetic nations and a tax on the

salaries of Palestinian workers• Aimed to promote a distinctive Palestinian ideology

Methods• From the late 1960s , the PLO launched terrorist attacks against Israel from

Jordan.

Effectiveness• The PLO was very ineffective at first as it was dominated by Egypt, Syria

and Saudi Arabia and seemed disinterested in conditions of the refugee camps

• The PLO became increasingly effective join 1967 when Yasser Arafat took over leadership.

Causes, course and consequences of the 1973 (Yom Kippur) War, including the Camp David Treaty• The course of the war was short.• Egyptian infantry crossed the canal on 6 October 1973 and, support by So-

viet missiles, advanced across the Sinai before being stopped by a counter-attack.

• On 11 October the Soviets began a massive airlift, worth around $3.5 bil-lion, to rearm Egypt and Syria. On 14 October the United States did the same for Israel. Israel advanced within 40km of Damascus on 15 October on Israeli army unit led by Ariel Sharon re-crossed the Suez Canal and de-stroyed Soviet surface-to-air missiles. A Soviet-American brokered cease-fire was finally accepted by both parties on 24 October, with Israel the obvi-ous victor.

Results:• Dayan and Meir lost their reputations • Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was discredited• The Labour govt was weakened, and in 1977 a Likud coalition govt was

elected • Israelis realised their ‘defensible borders’ were not as defensible as previ-

ously thought• Israel became more dependent on the US• The US and Soviet Union play a pivotal role in rearming their ‘respective

clients’• Israel secured more territorial gains in the Golan Heights, but the cost was

high• Massive casualties. Israel- 2,800 dead, 8,500 wounded. Arabs- 11,000

Egyptians and Syrians dead, 19,500 dead. • The Arabs started using oil as a weapon, by choosing who would have ac-

cess to it. If nations supported Israel, they would not be granted access to the Arab’s oil.

Camp David Accords/Treaty• These were agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on September

1978• The first accord—> “a framework for peace in the Middle East”—> Called for negotiations between Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Palestinian representatives. Addressed the question of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Included the establishment of a self-governing Arab authority, replacing Is-raeli military forces for 5 years during negotiations

• The second accord—> “a framework for the conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Is-rael”—> This was the draft of a proposal for a peace agreement, planned to be negotiated and signed within three months. Was to account for Israeli retreat from the Sinai and its return to Egyptian ownership. The Suez Canal was to grant free passage to Israeli ships. The UN would oversee provisions in order to leave both sides content.

Effects and Reactions:• Arabs: Deemed Sadat a traitor. Radical states immediately rejected the ac-

cords and denounced Sadat. Moderates did the same. Pan Arabism was destroyed. “They felt threatened by internal instability and external threats”.

• Reacted to the Israel/Egypt peace treaty in a “harsh and swift” manner. Economic and diplomatic relations were broken, including expulsion from the Islamic Conference and suspension from the twenty-two member Arab League. There were suspicious of US and Israel.

• Palestinians: PLO rejected accords as they didn’t even touch the issue of a Palestinian state.

• Israel: Resentment hardened towards Arabs in response to their refusal to participate and cooperate

Significance: • The accords and final treaty of 1979 have been monumental in the conflict• First of all, the Arabic reaction led to “hardened attitudes” from Israelis. This

intensifying of attitudes is critical to the ongoing conflict • There is significance in the fact that Israeli and Egyptian representatives/

leaders were able to cooperate for at least a while• The reaction of the Arab world and the subsequent changes in their rela-

tionship to Egypt also came from the accords, as well as the end of Pan Arabism. The accords were of no proper benefit to most Arabic nations and Palestinians, if not actually harmful.

Role and objectives of the superpowers in relation to events in the Middle East

The Occupied Territories and LebanonAttitudes and policies of the Israeli Labour and Likud parties to-wards the Occupied Territories• The Likud opposed returning any territory to Egypt• The Labour party pursued a policy of Jewish military settlements outside

Arab population centres in the Gaza Strip, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights in 1967

• National elections were held in Israel in 1977 and Israelis voted out the Labour party, which had ruled the country ever since its creation. The right wing Likud coalition led by Menachem Begin won. Begin and his support-ers, including Yitzhak Shamir, a former member of the Stern Gang, had no intention of relinquishing the territory Israel had acquired in 1967, especially Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and East Jerusalem.

• When Begin’s Likud came to power they embarked on a policy of support-ing settlement by Jews in the Occupied Territories- the West Bank, Gaza strip, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The rationale was that the pres-ence of settlements would make it harder to cede the territories in the eyes of the people, since this would involve removing Jews from what was now their home.

• On 15 may 1948, Egyptian forces entered Gaza town, then went on to take control of the Gaza Strip, an area 40 kilometres long and 6-8 kilometres wide. Despite the fact the area held many Palestinian refugees, the Egyp-tian authorities refused to allow them to become citizens or to migrate into Egypt proper.

• Conditions in the Gaza Strip under Israeli rule after 1967 were harsh, with unemployment forcing many Palestinians to travel long distances daily into Israel seeking work. Palestinians were denied Israeli citizenship.

• East Jerusalem became a target of Israel’s in 1967 in its bid to reunite the city, with bloody fighting resulting in Israel seizing control

• In the aftermath of 1973 and during the Camp David discussions, succes-sive Israeli govt refused to consider redividing the city, although they did guarantee access of people from all religions to their respective holy sites

• Labour- In the Occupied Territories, Labour has been prepared to trade land for peace. This would remove Israel as a source of Arab hostility. To this end, it has opposed settlement in these areas, as this makes ceding the land more difficult

• Likud- Strong Zionists favoured keeping all land conquered by Israel in the 1967 war. Likud opposed the negotiations between the Labour govt of Ra-bin and the PLO, leading to the peace agreement of 1993. Likud sees the West Bank as part of a historical Israel. It advocates retaining the occupied land, and establishing settlements to alter the ‘reality on the ground’.

Rise and Significance of the Israeli settler movement in the Occu-pied Territories• Many Begin supporters opposed trading land for peace because they did

not trust the Palestinians. These attitudes gave new ideological impetus to the settlement movement. Begin approved 21 more settlements between 1980 and 1981. This brought the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories to about 1110,000.

• Jews controlled more than one-third of the land and 90% of the water in the region. Settlements were also established in the Gaza Strip, where about 3000 settlers were located in heavily guarded enclaves among the 500,000 Palestinians. A third of the area was confiscated for this purpose. Jewish settlers had, on average, one hectare on average while the Palestinians had 0.1 hectare.

• Israeli courts decided on the fairness of these decisions, allocating land not cultivated or privately owned (from 30-70%) to settlers

• The settlements were necessarily well defended- and sometimes quasi-mili-tary- in the face of resistance by native Palestinians.

• The individuals who settled tended to be extreme Zionists, with no sympa-thy for the Palestinian problem. Some migrated to Israel from the US specif-ically to settle in these areas. This obviously led to tension when they started to mix with their unfriendly neighbours.

• The Camp David Agreement actually contained a clause freezing the num-ber of settlements, but this was ignored by Begin who sanctioned a huge in-crease in the number of settlements and settlers. Maintaining security for these settlements increased Israeli military spending, contributing to the ris-ing inflation experienced by Israel in the 1980s.

Reasons for the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 19821982• The initial aim was to drive the PLO north so that Israel was out of range of

their rockets• To install a puppet govt comprising Israel, Lebanese Christians in Beirut,

thus pre-empting Syria doing the same• To eliminate PLO bases and leadership, weakening their resolve on the

West Bank• To gain land in South Lebanon- historically, Israel could be considered as

extending to the Litani River, and zealots wished to claim this area, making it available for settlement, acquiring a source of water and a buffer zone

• To silence right-wing critics at home, unhappy with the withdrawal from Sinai and inaction against PLO raids.

The significance of the war for Israel and the Palestinians

The Peace Process The Intifada 1987-1994: Palestinian resistance and Israeli response• The revolt was triggered by rising unemployment among Palestinian Arabs,

which was set against a background of resentment towards continued Is-raeli settlement in the Occupied Territories.

• The Intifada took a number of different forms, including:—> boycotts of Israeli businesses and goods—> attacks against Israeli settlers and civilians—> demonstrations of public support for the creation of a Palestinian nation—> rock-throwing by youths against Israeli soldiers

• Israel imposed a curfew- which was widely broken- and increased military patrols in the areas affected. Participants were arrested and schools and universities closed.

• The Palestinians, foreign observers and many Israelis themselves con-demned the behaviour of the Israeli military.

• By September 1989, over 700 Palestinians and 40 Israelis had been killed.• Opinion in Israel was divided, and elections in 1988 produced a stalemate

that was eventually solved with the formation of another Labour-Likud coali-tion.

• With Yitzhak Shamir remaining Israeli Prime Minister, concessions on the Palestinian issue looked unlikely. The Labour and Likud parties agreed that the Intifada must be suppressed before changes in the status of the Occu-pied Territories could be considered or effected

Successes and setbacks in the peace process 1987-1996The Madrid Peace Conference and Oslo Accords• The US role in later peace agreements was to put pressure on Israel. This

was signalled by the passing of a UN Resolution condemning the violence of Israeli reaction to the Intifada in 1987

• Israel continued to refuse to talk with the PLO, and preferred to deal with its Arab neighbours piecemeal. US pressure forced them into multi-party talks

• Negotiations began in Madrid in Nov 1991, involving the USA, Israel, Pales-tine (represented by a PLO- Jordanian delegation), Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Talks later moved to Washington, but Israeli Prime Minister Shamir was adamant that Israel would not ‘trade land for peace’.

• Israeli attitudes changed as the US threatened to withdraw loan guaran-tees, and the growing support for Hamas showed that the PLO was a rela-tively moderate group of Palestinians to deal with

The 1993 Accord• Direct Israeli-PLO talks took place during 1993 in Oslo, leading to the Is-

rael-Palestinian Peace Accords, signed on 13 September 1993 in Washing-ton. These established a new order for the Gaza Strip and West bank around Jericho, namely that:

—> Israeli forces would withdraw—> Israel would be responsible for external security and protection of her set-tlers—> Palestinians would take over administration and domestic policing —> A self-governing Palestinian Authority would be elected after nine months—> After a two-year period, negotiations would begin on the next phase• Results—> Reactions were mixed. The Likud group, under Netanyahu, condemned the deal, and Israel’s 115,000 settlers naturally resented it. But a narrow ma-jority of the country as a whole was in favour—> Many Palestinians welcomed the accord as a first step to independence, but the PFLP felt Arafat had ‘sold out’ in view of the fact that Israeli occupa-tion still continued.—> Consensus was hard to reach on the details of the agreement, with dis-putes over the size of the West bank area granted to the Palestinians, guar-antees for Israeli settlers and border issues

The 1994 Accord• On 4 May 1994, a further agreement was signed in Cairo, determining:—> the right of Palestinians to raise taxes and make laws—> Israeli border controls —> proposals to extend the West bank area under Palestinian control• Israeli troop withdrawals started soon after

The 1995 Accord• Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres

signed a further deal in Washington on 28 September 1995. This accord:—> Extended the area of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank—> Legislated for the election of a chairman and assembly of the Palestinian Authority —> Granted the Authority control over six West Bank towns (Janin, Nabulus, Tulkarm, Qalqiyah, Ram Allah and Bethlehem) and most of Hebron—> Agreed on Israeli relocation from 440 villages, which would come under Palestinian rule

The Israel-Jordan peace agreement 1994

• The cancellation of debts owed by Jordan to the USA was a component of the Israel-Jordan treaty of 1994. On 26 October a treaty was signed, sig-nalling the end of disputes between Israel and Jordan. In the treaty:

—> Jordan recognised Israel—> Israel ceded some disputed territories to Jordan—> Agreements were reached on economic cooperation to develop the desert region of both countries—> Israel recognised Jordan as the guardian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem• The latter item angered Palestinians who saw themselves as the natural

guardians of these sites. Israel saw this clause as a way of appeasing the Arab world in general without inflaming domestic unhappiness with peace

• Other Arab states did become more conciliatory towards Israel. The Gulf Staes softened their unofficial economic boycott of Israel, while Morocco and Tunisia made diplomatic contact

Support and opposition for the peace process among Israelis and Palestinians Israel• Israel was divided by the peace process, illustrated by the assassination of

Rabin. Following Rabin’s death a series of actions further turned the coun-try against the process

—> Israeli operatives killed a Hamas terrorist, Yahiya Ayash, known as ‘the engineer’—> Arafat’s sending of condolences to the bomber’s family enraged Israelis—> A series of Hamas suicide bombs caused further anger in Israel—> The Palestinian Authority failed to condemn the bombings• Likud won the election held soon after, campaigning under the slogan,

‘peace with security’. Netanyahu’s govt slowed down the peace process

Palestine• As new chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat faced many

problems.—> The area under his control was poor- the Gaza Strip was one the most densely populated pieces of land in the world, with few resources—> The people were divided, with many thinking the PLO should not have comprised with Israel—> Hamas continued its campaign in Israel and the Palestinian areas. this caused Israel to slow down the transfer of powers to the Palestinian Authority and gave Arafat policing and security problems in his own jurisdiction

Significance of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Netanyahu in 1996

• Many Israelis opposed the peace treaties. The new, young leader of the op-position Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, campaigned against them approach-ing the election of 1995

• On 4 November 1995, Rabin spoke at an election rally in Jerusalem. As he left the rally, Yigal Amir, a Jewish religious student, shot him. Israel was shocked and saddened by his death, but still fundamentally divided over the issue of peace with the Palestinians

• Rabin’s murderer was implacably opposed to Palestinian self-rule and claimed to have acted on God’s orders, stating that he had no regrets. Ra-bin’s successor, Shimon Peres, had once been a bitter political rival, but they had later become partners in the search for a negotiated peace with Arafat and the PLO cause.

• Peres was determined to honour Rabin’s agreements and continue along the path of reconciliation. On 12 November 1995, Israeli forces withdrew from the West Bank city of Jenin which came under the rule of the Pales-tinian Authority. Arafat declared the city ‘free’, announcing that violent ex-tremists had failed. On 3 December 1995, the Israelis began withdrawing from Bethlehem.