Palestine & Israel - A century of Conflict

“History rarely begins where we think it does. To understand today’s war, we must first understand yesterday’s world.” Imagine standing on the ancient walls of Jerusalem. The call to prayer echoes across the city. Church bells ring in the distance. Jewish worshippers gather at the Western Wall. For thousands of years, this remarkable city has been sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It has been conquered by empires, revered by pilgrims and fought over by kings. Yet for much of its history, ordinary people simply called it home. To understand today’s conflict, we must travel back more than five hundred years. From 1516 until 1917, the land we know today as Israel and the Palestinian territories formed part of the vast Ottoman Empire. Governed from Constantinople, it was one small corner of an empire stretching across much of the Middle East, North Africa and southeastern Europe. There was no independent sovereign state called Palestine during this period. Instead, the region was administered through several Ottoman provinces. At the same time, the name “Palestine” continued to be used in geographical, historical and cultural contexts by travellers, scholars and many local inhabitants. The population was predominantly Arabic-speaking Muslims, alongside long-established Christian communities and Jewish communities that had lived continuously in cities such as Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias for centuries. Life under Ottoman rule was not without hardship or occasional tensions, but the modern national conflict between Israelis and Palestinians had not yet emerged. Communities identified themselves largely by religion, family, village and city rather than the competing national identities that would later dominate the twentieth century. For four centuries, life continued much as it always had. Then came the First World War. Everything changed. In December 1917, British General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem after Ottoman forces withdrew, ending more than four hundred years of Ottoman rule. Britain inherited not only a strategically important territory but also two sets of wartime commitments that would prove extraordinarily difficult to reconcile. During the war, Britain had encouraged Arab leaders to revolt against Ottoman rule with indications that Arab independence would follow. At almost the same time, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” while also stating that the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities should not be prejudiced. Two aspirations. One land. Britain would spend the next three decades trying to reconcile them. It never truly succeeded. In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine. During the 1920s and 1930s, Jewish immigration increased, driven by the growth of Zionism and, increasingly, by persecution in Europe. Many immigrants legally purchased land and established new towns and agricultural communities. Many Palestinian Arabs feared that these demographic changes would eventually leave them politically marginalised in the country they regarded as their homeland. Trust slowly gave way to suspicion. Riots, reprisals and political violence became more frequent. Britain struggled to satisfy two national movements whose aspirations increasingly collided. Then came one of humanity’s darkest chapters. The Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany murdered approximately six million Jews. For Jewish survivors, the need for a secure homeland became a matter of survival. For many around the world, support for the creation of a Jewish state grew stronger. For Palestinian Arabs, however, the question remained painfully simple: why should they lose their homeland because of crimes committed in Europe? History had trapped two peoples in the same tragedy. Unable to resolve the conflict, Britain handed the issue to the United Nations. In 1947, the UN prop

Palestine & Israel: One Land, Two Peoples, A Century of Conflict