Thread by @maze_awara

A #thread on #israelpalestine issue.

If you want to know and appreciate the history of the ongoing conflict, this thread should serve the purpose.
The dispute is neither very old, nor religious (between Judaism and Islam), but it is about land and competing nationalism.

In the late 19th Century, the current Palestine was ruled over by Turks (Ottoman Empire) consisting of Muslims (87%), Christians (10%) and Jews (3%). In Jerusalem, the proportion was roughly equal. The religious groups lived in harmony with each other till then.

Wasif Jawhariyyeh, the Arab Christian musician & historian grew up in Jerusalem learning Quran & celebrated both Passover & Eid.
However, this was the period of hyper nationalism in Europe, & people from different nations in Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted their own state

A nationalist Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl became convinced that Jews cannot be assimilated in Europe (specially after Dreyfus affair in France from 1894 onwards), and they needed their own state outside of Europe. Thus came into being Zionism (Jewish Nationalism).

But most zionists were secular. In 1917, hoping for the support of the Jews in WWI, the British government declared that Palestine would be set up as a Jewish state (Balfour Declaration). However Palestine was still under the control of the Ottomon Empire, who hadn’t yet lost WWI

After WWI, the British established a colony in Palestine to govern it till Palestinians were “ready to govern themselves.” They established separate institutions for Muslims, Christians and Jews, making it difficult to cooperate for them (divide & rule).

The British tried to honour the declaration, and between 1920 and 1939 facilitated immigration of 320,000 Jews to Palestine, raising their population to 30% of total Palestinians. The Jews soon started controlling land and labour, leading to increasing tensions between the two.

The natives rose against the British in the 1930s, who suppressed them with the help of Jewish Militia. Consequently, the British stopped further immigration of Jews into Palestine and declared a joint Arab-Jewish state to be set up within 10 years, leaving both groups unhappy.

Israel was earlier opposed by other Arab states, in Arab-Israeli war (1948) & the Six day war (1967). However, later the war became a specific Palestine-Israeli conflict. After the 1948 war, around 7 lakh Palestinians fled to neighbouring Arab countries, becoming stateless.

This was ‘nakba’(catastrophe) for them. Palestinian Libration Organisation (PLO) was formed in 1964 by Yasser Arafat for the cause. Big Jewish settlements started coming up in East Jerusalem (200,000) and West Bank (350,000), both of which were illegal by international laws.

By 1980s, Palestinians launched the first intifada (shaking off) against Israel in terms of non payment of taxes, boycott of goods, but this led to violent come back from Israeli forces. This lead to the creation of Hamas, which did the 1st suicide bombing against Israel in 1993.

Hamas gained support because of its militancy and because of its social welfare projects (built schools, mosques, clinics in Gaza). Hamas was also initially supported by Israel as a counterweight to the secular PLO.

After the first intifada, peace talks started between Israel and Palestine (Oslo Accords), but there were a lot of sticky issues like right of Palestinians to return to their homeland, the Jewish settlements, water rights etc. Hence there was no success.

The second Intifada broke out due to heightened tensions around Al-Asqa Mosque (third holiest place in Islam and holiest place in Jerusalem).

In 2002, Israel started building a wall around its settlements in the West Bank to protect its settlements. However, they included many Israeli settlements which were on Palestinian side of the 1967 map. Hamas has increasingly become more powerful in Palestine.+

specially after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004. He was the chairman of PLO from 1969 to 2004 and joint winner of Nobel peace prize for his efforts to create peace in the Middle East. Hamas won elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, held in 2006 with 44% votes

Holocaust survivor physician & author Dr. Gabor Maté, (currently living in Canada), calls Israel-Palestine “conflict” as the longest going ethnic cleansing operation in 20th and 21st century. He says that if you take the worst action of Hamas, +

multiply by a thousand times, it will still not meet the Israeli killing and dispossession of Palestinian civilians. And there is a term for this long term strategy of Israel-“Mowing the grass.”

He visited Israel during the first intifada & cried every day for 2 weeks seeing the oppression & brutality on the Palestinians like cutting off their olive groves in West Bank et al and denying them water rights. Olive trees are a major agricultural crop in Palestine & are +

mostly grown for olive oil production. Olive production accounts for 57% of cultivated land in the Palestinian territories with 7.8 million fruit-bearing olive trees (as in 2011). Olive groves are an emblem or symbol of their steadfast agricultural connection to the land.

So, to conclude-
1.This is not a religious or a centuries old issue but of competing nationalism.
2.Europe, specially Britain is the reason for the origination of this dispute.
3.The combatants are NOT AT ALL equally matched, so sitting on the fence is not really an option.

Pl see @Schandillia, @taru_uniyal & @namitaj68.

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