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· 1 · Arab-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian Interactions

A Historical Background

“The sad thing is the inhumanity on both sides. Too many people have been killed and wounded. It is heartbreaking.”—Raja Shehadeh (as quoted by Anthony Lewis in Shehadeh, 2002, p. x)

“A long war is degenerating—it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations. This bloody conflict has been going on for much too long. It is doing terrible things to Israelis, to Palestinians.”—Amos Oz (as quoted in Abé and Sandberg, 2017, para. 15)

The above quotations, the first by Raja Shehadeh—Palestinian lawyer and writer—and the second by Amos Oz—the late Israeli Jewish writer, novelist, and journalist—speak of the anguish and costs of war. Standing on either side of the Palestinian-Israeli divide, they obviously wish for a halt to what war is doing to their people and for peace. But why do Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews find themselves in this unfortunate predicament?

Arabs and Jews have lived in historic Palestine for centuries, if not millennia. In addition to being at home, they were attracted by the land’s historical and religious roots. Their shared experiences often written in blood and fire, saw successive regimes, with the Ottomans (1516–1917) and the British (1920–1948) being among recent examples. Israel’s creation in 1948, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the resultant Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) transformed historic Palestine forever. Arabs and Jews parted ways as most of ←15 | 16→what was designated to become the Arab State (of Palestine) was taken over by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. This state of affairs remained until June 1967 when Israel conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Today, Israel is still in possession of East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank where hundreds of thousands of Jews have settled, and it besieges Gaza. In June 1967, Israel also conquered the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. While it has returned the former, it still maintains control over the latter. In March 2019, President Donald Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, thus overturning a half-century of American policy in the Middle East.

This chapter is important as it provides the historical context within which most peacebuilders have grown and to which they respond frequently. There is no intention to blame or to give preference to any one side. There is enough blame to go all around; innocence is not the exclusive domain of one individual or community. There is no attempt to be comprehensive, for that would require volumes, but to highlight certain historical aspects that clarify the interconnectedness and progression of events. Two parts follow. The first gives a top-down narrative of Arab-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian relations, mainly through the historical record. The second presents a bottom-up narrative, basically explaining the impact of events on the lives of ordinary Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, and how they reacted to them. The reason for this contrast is to show the gap between the two narratives, thus voicing the urgent need for top-down political leaders to think more deeply about how their decisions do have consequences and to depoliticize the conflict in order to put a human face on the other, thus limiting violence, creating understanding, and enhancing the potential for building bridges of peace.

Top-Down Narrative

The Ottoman Empire ruled most of the area we know today as the Middle East, including historic Palestine, for four hundred years. This rule had a mixed record, intermittently tough as Palestine did not enjoy significant progress—administratively, economically, and educationally. It was initially insulated from external connections but in later years opened up to European influences in the form of consulates, educational institutions, missionary work, trade, and colonies—French, German, and Russian. Whatever common and relatively pleasant existence Arabs and Jews enjoyed began to change in the late 19th century. The chasm between both national communities developed ←16 | 17→after the budding and competing Palestinian nationalism and modern political, as opposed to classical religious, Zionism or Jewish nationalism began to lay claim to the same land and assert itself on the local populations to think of themselves as radically different and separate from each other.

Starting in 1882, indigenous Jews, living mostly in the four cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed, were joined by Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe who were escaping persecution and an undignified life. The increased Jewish population and the new Jewish agricultural settlements created concern among the Arabs. In 1891, a number of Palestinian A’ayan (Arabic for Notables) sent a telegram to the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul urging them to halt Russian immigration and Jewish acquisition of Arab land. This concern intensified as the Zionist program that was set in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 started to be felt. In March 1899, for example, Yusuf Diya’addin Pasha Al-Khalidi, the former Muslim mayor of Jerusalem, wrote a letter to Zadok Kahn, the Chief Rabbi of France, stating that a Jewish state is not possible in Palestine due to opposition from the Turks and the indigenous Arab population, and hence Jews would be better off elsewhere. “But in the name of God,” he stated, “let Palestine be left in peace” (as cited in Beška, 2007, p. 29). Theodor Herzl, who received the letter from Rabbi Kahn, responded to Al-Khalidi by assuring him about Jewish immigration into Palestine: “[T];he Jews have no belligerent Power behind them, neither are they themselves of a warlike nature. They are a completely peaceful element, and very content if they are left in peace. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing to fear from their immigration” (as cited in Khalidi, 1971, p. 92). Albert Antebi, a leading Jewish Ottoman citizen who appreciated more cultural and economic than ideological and political Zionism, feared that the Zionist insistence in hiring Jewish laborers only and the huge Jewish purchases of Arab lands by immigrant Zionists like Arthur Ruppin, mainly from absentee owners, would destabilize the balance in Arab-Jewish relations (Marcus, 2007, pp. 69–71, 82–83).

These apprehensions occurred when Palestine had a majority of Arabs and few Jews. In 1914, Palestine’s population numbered 798,389, with 657,377 [82.33%] being Muslim, 81,012 [10.14%] Christian, and 60,000 [7.51%] Jewish (McCarthy, 1990, p. 26). Around the same time period, the number of Zionist colonies, mostly subsidized by the French philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild and later by the World Zionist Congress, rose from 19 in 1900 to 47 in 1918 (Brice et al., 2019). Arab opposition to Zionism increased and was expressed in a variety of forums, such as Arabic newspapers ←17 | 18→and in statements by Palestinian representatives to the Ottoman Parliament (Farsoun & Aruri, 2006, pp. 51–52).

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 witnessed intense Western penetration of the Middle East. During 1915–1916, Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Cairo, corresponded with Sherif Hussein Ibn Ali of Mecca regarding Hussein’s assistance to the British war effort against the Ottoman Empire in exchange for British support of Hussein’s restoration of the Caliphate and Arab independence within set boundaries. Soon thereafter, the British and the French, as represented by the British Mark Sykes and the French Charles Georges-Picot, prepared a draft agreement on May 15–16, 1916, which divided parts of the Middle East into direct British control and influence (mainly in most of Iraq, the land of the Persian Gulf, and around the Jordan River), French control and influence (mainly Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Anatolia), and an international zone encompassing the area extending from Haifa to the south of Jerusalem in historic Palestine. Eighteen months later, specifically on November 2, 1917, Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the British banker, politician, scion of the Rothschild family, and a leading Zionist, which expressed British favor toward “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ….” (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d., Balfour Declaration, para. 2). The 130-word letter, consisting of only 67 words, was written at a time when the British neither had jurisdiction over Palestine nor consulted with the overwhelming Arab majority. The Palestinian Arabs were not even mentioned by name and their political rights were ignored and overridden.

The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War and the contradictory Allied promises led to an uneasy British Mandate over Palestine (1920–1948). This was formally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and entered into effect on September 29, 1923. In time, a “vicious” triangle evolved with the British at the top vertex and the Palestinian Arabs and Jews on either side of the base. The Palestinian Arabs blamed the British for being pro-Jewish; the Jews blamed the British for being unduly influenced by the Palestinian Arabs; the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews fought each other; and the British sometimes on the defensive but other times on the offensive, tried to keep law and order.

The Jews, led by the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, engaged in nation-building in order to implement the Zionist project. In addition to settling Jewish immigrants and purchasing more land, they built ←18 | 19→separate educational, political, religious, and social institution. They organized an underground defense force (the Haganah) in 1920, a national military organization (the Irgun) in 1931. Similarly, the Palestinian Arabs organized themselves during the 1920s into national, religious, and social groupings. Their goal was to withstand the Zionist onslaught and influence British mandatory policy in their favor. In the 1930s, the Palestine Arab Congress was replaced by the Arab Higher Committee and several organizations began to form, including the militant Istiqlal (Independence) Party and underground religious groups that fought the Zionists and the British. During this time, the Palestinian Arabs believed that they had a right to their state and it will naturally evolve.

In addition to force, the British often resorted to commissions to discover solutions to antagonism between the Palestinian Arabs and Jews. In September 1929, the British dispatched the (Sir Walter) Shaw Commission. Its report, issued in March 1930, cited Arab fears of persistent Jewish immigration and land purchases as the main cause. This was followed by the creation of the (Sir John) Hope Simpson Enquiry in May 1930, which focused on the issues of immigration, land settlement, and development. Its report, dated October 1, 1930, recommended limiting Jewish immigration based on the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine. The same day, the Passfield White Paper was also issued and recommended restricting Jewish immigration.

Incessant Jewish immigration, extremism, and local militia actions resulted in rivers of blood and tears in the 1930s, with the fully-fledged Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 being the most disastrous to Arab-Jewish relations and peacebuilding up until that time. The British established the (William) Peel Commission to examine the reasons for the strife, which it did in November 1936. In July 1937, the commission presented partition as the solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict. The Arab leadership, as represented by both the Arab Higher Committee and the National Defense Party, opposed the recommendation on the grounds that it violated the rights of the Arab population. The (Sir John) Woodhead Commission in 1938 gave further consideration to the Peel Commission proposal and found it to be impractical given the administrative, financial, and political obstacles in the way of partition. In 1939, the British issued a White Paper that rejected partition and the establishment of a Jewish state. The latter could only happen with Arab support. It opted instead for the creation of a Jewish national home in an independent Palestinian state within 10 years. It also restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and the Jewish ability to buy Arab land.

←19 | 20→

As the 1940s were nearing their end, the British, who had fulfilled their mission by enabling the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish people, could no longer manage the daily affairs of Palestine. They asked that what was entrusted to them by the League of Nations be turned over to its successor organization, the United Nations.

The UN acted with General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of November 29, 1947, which called for partitioning Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, for an economic union between them, and for Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum—a separate entity under a special international regime. It passed with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and ten abstentions. The Arabs rejected the resolution as the Palestinians among them constituted the great majority in Palestine (at least two-thirds of the population, with ownership of over 90% of the land) and did not want to witness their land and homes be taken away and given to the Jewish minority. Fighting erupted between Palestinian militias and Jewish forces.

As the British Mandate flag was lowered over Palestine, David Ben-Gurion—the Chair of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization— proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. This pushed Arab forces from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan (later Jordan), Lebanon, and Iraq to invade. The ensuing war gave Israel the opportunity to acquire 78% of historic Palestine, 22% more than what was allocated to it under the Partition Resolution. The remaining territory ended up under Jordanian and Egyptian jurisdictions, with the former keeping East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the latter retaining control of the Gaza Strip. During this time of conflict and war, more than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 726,000 Palestinians fled because of fear or were ejected from their homes by the Jewish or Israeli forces and became dispossessed, with many ending up living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, or elsewhere. In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed 194 (III), which resolved that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible” (UN General Assembly, 1948, para. 19).

The Arab states and Israel stood eyeball to eyeball. East Jerusalem and the West Bank ended up within Jordanian jurisdiction, and the Gaza Strip within Egyptian jurisdiction. Israel took the remainder of what was to become the ←20 | 21→Arab (Palestinian) state. Bombastic talk and misguided policies in adjacent Arab states and in Israel resulted in the June 1967 War. This war lasted only six days but it enabled Israel to quadruple its size by seizing East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Five months later, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242. It emphasized “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security” (UN Security Council, 1967, para. 2).

Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, specifically East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip intensified Palestinian resistance by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was established under Egypt’s auspices in 1964, and other Palestinian groupings, but a Jewish settlement program in the occupied areas as well. Extremism and injustice on both sides of the divide was not far behind. The First Intifada or popular uprising against the Israeli occupation (1987–1993) started in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli military truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. While the intifada saw Palestinians engage in resistance and civil disobedience, it neither brought the Palestinians independence and statehood nor gave the Israelis the security they sought. However, it opened the door to a series of diplomatic moves in the form of the Madrid Conference of 1991, the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994, the Oslo II Accords of 1995 between Israel and the PLO that gave the Palestinians control over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Wye River Memorandum of 1998 that facilitated the withdrawal of Israeli forces from portion of the West Bank, the Sharm a-Sheikh Agreement of 1999 that established a timetable for permanent peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, the historic Camp David II Summit of 2000 that almost resolved the conflict, and Taba negotiations of 2001 when Israelis and Palestinians discussed Palestinian refugees, borders, security, and the future of Jerusalem. The positive effects of these peace moves were brief as Israel continued to consolidate its control of Palestinian areas by building more settlements and hardening its security measures and as the Palestinian Authority was hesitant to face its internal challenges, including the radicalization of some Palestinian factions, e.g., Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the words of Guy Ben-Porat (2006),

Israel was concerned with the Palestinian Authority’s lack of commitment to combat fundamentalist terrorism and the continuation of inflammatory anti-Israeli propaganda in the Palestinian media and schools. Palestinians were frustrated by Israeli ←21 | 22→military checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza and perceived the continuation of building in the settlements as an Israeli attempt to determine unilaterally the borders of the final agreement. (pp. 192–193)

The Second Intifada, the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–2005), broke out, putting Palestinian communities under further Israeli siege. In 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved the construction of a physical barrier that would separate Israel from the West Bank. For Sharon, it was impossible for Israel to annex the entirety of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while simultaneously remaining a Jewish State. This security barrier, called the separation or apartheid wall by the Palestinians, divides their communities and blocks their travel routes. Around 95% of it is built from electronic fences, patrol roads, and observation towers. The other 5% of the wall is 8-meter-high concrete.

With international attention on the issue came proposed solutions. In June 2002, President George W. Bush called for an independent Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel. His speech became the basis of the Roadmap for Peace a year later, which consisted of ending the violence, halting settlement activity, reforming Palestinian institutions, accepting Israel’s right to exist, establishing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state, and reaching agreement on all contending issues by 2005 (U.S. Department of State, 2003). This was intended to be supervised by a joint committee that included the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the UN.

Talks of peace resumed but were soon halted by an increase in violence. There was a realization that Israel could not remain a Jewish state while continuing its occupation. In 2004, Sharon decided to evacuate the Gaza Strip. Although Israel claimed that its unilateral withdrawal made it unoccupied territory, the occupation still remains as Israel exercises effective control over the region. Disagreements within Israel about the unsuitability of the Likud Party to run the country and about the future of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank caused Sharon to leave Likud in 2005 and form the Kadima Party. Following a stroke in early January 2006, Sharon was replaced by Ehud Olmert. That same month, Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary election, thus beating the governing Fatah and causing a crisis that led Hamas to take over Gaza.

The Annapolis Peace Conference in 2007, which brought together Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, resulted in an agreement that followed the roadmap to a permanent two-state solution, but it was not long that both sides reached a dead end instead. ←22 | 23→As tensions increased between Hamas and Israel at the end of 2008, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” into Gaza and occupied parts of it for one year. Soon thereafter, an Israeli election brought back the right-leaning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power. He conditionally endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state but did little to nothing to advance it. For its part, the Palestinian Authority announced its intention to create a Palestinian state within two years. In 2011, Abbas petitioned the UN for the acceptance of Palestine as a member, but it was voted in as an observer state in 2012. This opened the doors for Palestine to have the opportunity to approach the International Criminal Court to take action against Israel for its illegal practices against Palestinians.

As in 2008, hostility between Israel and Hamas erupted again in 2012, with 60 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel and Israel responding by launching “Operation Pillar of Defense” against Hamas. The tragedy repeated itself again in 2014 when Palestinian militants launched a series of rocket attacks against Israel and Israel’s response was predictable with another penetration into Gaza called “Operation Protective Edge.”

On March 30, 2018, Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip began the “Great March of Return” along the border with Israel. Their demand is for Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza and to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historic Palestine.

Israel and Palestine need to come together to find a solution, but there has not been any real progress in this direction. The majority of Israeli Jews feels that peace is not possible with Palestine. Many believe that the problem should simply be managed instead. In Palestine, the political split between Fatah and Hamas stands in the way. The different views on how to go about the process toward a solution halts any potential progress.

Arab-Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian Relations: By the Numbers

Arab-Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian relations suffered badly for over a century as they underwent episodes of violence, including riots, wars, military campaigns, and terrorism. Between 1920 and 1948, there were 5,203 killed and 15,910 injured among the Arabs and 732 killed and 599 wounded among the Jews. The successive Arab-Israeli wars (of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, in addition to the War of Attrition in 1968–1970, the Lebanon War of 1982, and the Lebanon War of 2006) were heavy in casualties with 78,079 killed ←23 | 24→and 38,900 injured among the Arabs and 12,872 killed and 25,058 injured among the Israelis (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d., Vital Statistics).

During the First Intifada, in excess of 1,162 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and tens of thousands were wounded. In contrast, around 150 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, including approximately 100 civilians (B’Tselem). Al-Jazeera.com places the number of Palestinians casualties at more than 1,300 killed and more than 120,000 wounded (Shahin, n.d., para. 1). The toll of the Second Intifada was heavier, with more than 4,000 people killed: 3,223 Palestinians and 950 Israelis (BBC News, 2005). The injured numbered 8,611 Palestinians and 8,000 Israelis (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d., Vital Statistics). As for the three bloody confrontations between Israel and Gaza (i.e., 2008–2009, 2012, and 2014), Palestinians had 3,692 killed and 16,000 injured and Israelis had 93 killed and 2,176 injured (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d., Vital Statistics). As a result of the “Great March of Return” or Gaza’s mass protests of 2018–2019 along Israel’s border, Israeli forces killed 263 Palestinians (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2019) and wounded 25,477 Palestinians (Middle East Monitor, 2018). Last but not least, clashes between Gaza and Israel on May 3–5, 2019 resulted in the killing of 25 Palestinians in Gaza, both civilians and militants (Heller and Akram, 2019, para. 2), and the wounding of 154 (Chernick, 2019, para. 12). On the Israeli side, 4 civilians were killed and 234 civilians (Chernick, 2019, para. 1), while 1 soldier was killed and 2 others were wounded (BBC, 2019, para. 1, 4).

In all, both Arabs/Palestinians and Jews/Israelis suffered. For the Palestinians, the human tragedy is on top of the resultant refugees, ruining of livelihoods, psychosocial stressors, property destruction, military occupations, and negative financial costs. For the Israelis, the human tragedy is in addition to the fear, insecurity, psychosocial stressors, and negative financial costs.

In contrast, peace talks and processes have taken place over the decades, as is presented in Figure 1.1, but peace has yet to materialize. As Nathan Thrall aptly puts it: “Scattered over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace plans, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions and state-building program[me]s, most of them designed to partition this long-contested territory into two independent states, Israel and Palestine” (Thrall, 2017, para. 1) All kinds of excuses have been cited by the conflictual parties and their supporters, including Zionist machinations, Arab intransigence, Israel’s settlement policy and preference for the status quo, Palestinian maximal demands, and Israeli and ←24 | 25→Palestinian skepticism about peace. In addition to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands over more than five decades, Palestinians and Israelis have been challenged by “the almost scarring peace process that tried to end it …. It brought all the anxieties, terrors, and resistance of a real peace—without delivering the sides any closer to reconciliation and resolution” (Gur, 2017, p. 1). That is the general atmosphere that has surrounded the lives of ordinary citizens and under which peacemakers and peacebuilders have been engaging each other and their societies.

Figure 1.1: Much Talk of Peace, But No Real Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis, 1947–2018

←25 | 26→

Bottom-Up Narrative

Arabs and Jews made historic Palestine their home for centuries, with four hundred years (1516–1917) lived under Ottoman control. Both communities were deeply anchored, with the Arabs constituting the majority. Their interactions were constant and widespread. As Menachem Klein suggests, this went beyond coexistence and living side by side, and makes it possible to speak of an Arab-Jewish identity at that time. “Lifestyles, language, and culture created a common identity that centered on a sense of belonging to a place and to the people who live there” (Klein, 2015, p. 20). Arabs and Jews built neighborhoods, used the same bathhouses, entered into business ventures with each other, and shared celebrations and tragedies. Jews rented from Arabs and Arabs sold land to Jews. There were even some inter-marriages between Arabs and Jews, mostly Arab men marrying Jewish women (Klein, 2014, pp. 22–64). The way Arabs and Jews related to each other in relative harmony is also shown in 1913: Seeds of Conflict, a 2015 film directed by filmmaker Ben Loeterman. Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, and Jews, mostly Sephardic, interacted as Ottomans “with a cultural fluidity enjoyed by all” (Loeterman, 2015).

Belonging to a place and to the people who live there did not last past the start of the 20th century. Palestinianism and Zionism, emerging at the end of the 19th century, took hold of the minds and hearts of their respective national communities. Palestinianism advocated for self-rule or independence from the Ottoman Empire. Zionism, developing in the Jewish Diaspora, sought the settlement of Jews in the Land of Israel. These distinct national aspirations came into competition or conflict with each other and transformed the dynamics of life in Palestine. Palestinianism had a tough time, struggling against major challenges—Ottoman, Zionist, and British. In contrast, the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine evolved, historically, through the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, on August 29, 1897; the Cambon Declaration of June 4, 1917; the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917; and beyond.

The First World War made Palestine feel stranded, and was devastating to both Arabs and Jews. Western (e.g., Austrian, French, German, and Italian) presence diminished as the Ottoman Empire became more aggressive toward the inhabitants. Western banks and post offices closed their doors. Lines of communication with the outside world were cut off. A locust invasion denuded the land of its vegetation during March-October 1915 (Tamari and Turjman, 2011; Wichhart, 2014). The Allies imposed a blockade of the ←26 | 27→Mediterranean coast; wheat became unavailable, which caused food rationing. Water was also rationed. Malnutrition and hunger became part of daily existence. Sanitation was almost nonexistent. Medicine was scarce; despair, disease, and death afflicted many residents; and some, especially children, died from typhus and other plagues. “At every level of society there was a sense that the entire world had turned against Jerusalem and Palestine” (Marcus, 2007, p. 42).

Starting in the early 1920s, a British Mandate was imposed on Palestine by the League of Nations. If anything, this mandate made Palestinian Arab-Jewish relations worse. Increased Jewish immigration, especially from Russia and Eastern Europe; large land purchases by Jews, primarily from absentee Arab landlords; Jewish settlements and a separate Jewish labor, as facilitated by the British economic policy; and the perceived divide and rule policies of the British—all eventually led to riots and a few major violent episodes.

Outright aggression erupted in the 1920s, including the Nabi Samuel riots in March 1920 in Jerusalem; the Nabi Musa riots in April 1920; a cycle of violence between May 1 and November 2, 1921; the Palestinian Arab general strikes in November 1925 and in March 1926, respectively; and major violence between August 16 and September 2, 1929. These disturbances complicated matters for the inhabitants of Palestine and made all cautious as to whom they interacted with, where they worked, and where they shopped. These became the precursors of more difficult years and decades to come. The inhabitants, my family included, learned how to roll with the punches in order to survive. Their ordinary days were tough. Their sorrows were intense. Their happiness was never complete.

One tragic incident related to the Wailing or Western Wall. A disagreement over the site started in September 1928, “when Jewish worshippers brought items for prayer to the Wailing Wall that Muslims deemed to exceed the norm established during the Ottoman period. Upon Muslim complaint, the British police took action, and Jews responded strongly with protest, demonstration, strike, and mob action” (Katz, 2009, p. 5). Accusations and demonstrations spilled over to 1929, when they led to outright inter-communal aggression. As related by Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Palestinian Arab losses reached 300 dead and 1,500 wounded, and those of the Jews and the British armed forces 130 dead and 240 wounded (Tamari and Nassar, 2014, p. 202). Others have stated that those killed numbered 133 Jews and at least 116 Arabs (Katz, 2009, p. 5). Then, the Palestinian Arabs killed 59 Jews in Hebron. This episode poisoned the connections between Palestinian Arabs and Jews ←27 | 28→for years. It “generated a process of rapid social, geographical, and political separation between the two rival political communities whose relations came to assume an increasingly hostile nature” (Sela, 1995, p. 60). The British followed up by sending the first of several royal investigative commissions.

Tensions between Palestinian Arabs and Jews flared up again, resulting in the Palestinian Arab rebellion against the British and the Zionists during 1936–1939, and additional British commissions and reports. “The root causes of the revolt remained unchanged: the Arab Palestinians’ antipathy toward pro-Zionist British policies and their inability to advance toward self-rule” (Farsoun and Aruri, 2006, p. 89). Political protests and strikes led to attacks and retaliations. Palestinian Arabs boycotted Jewish businesses and stopped cooperating with the British. Lawlessness raged. Infighting between traditional Palestinian Arab notables and lower socioeconomic classes, or the grassroots, ensued. The insurgents among them “not only targeted British and Zionist interests, but also attacked the privileged classes of Palestinians, obliging wealthy Palestinians to ‘donate’ to the nationalist cause …. The Palestinian economy was devastated by the rebellion and especially by the anarchy and criminality that became so prominent in its last stages” (Gasper, 2016, p. 36).

With major reinforcements, the British Mandate authorities quelled the rebellion, brutally. It engaged in human rights abuses and devastated the Arab Palestinian leadership (Hughes, 2010). The cost was exceedingly high, and the record was long with imprisonment, exile, assassinations, atrocities, torture, and destruction of villages. Aside from hundreds of Jews and Britons killed or wounded, there were 5,000 Palestinians killed, 15,000 wounded, and 5,600 incarcerated (Kimmerling and Migdal, 1993, p. 123).

The British legitimized their counterinsurgency campaign through legal means. As Matthew Hughes argues, “The law was (re)constructed to provide a veneer of legal respectability to actions carried out by servicemen operating in the field against Arab rebels ….” (2009). The high cost of the Palestinian Arab Revolt did not end there. It became the ember that lit the next conflagration between Palestinian Arabs and Jews less than a decade later. “The Revolt was the prelude to what increasingly became an inevitable all-out war between Jews and Arabs for the exclusive ownership of Palestine” (Ben-Ami, 2006, p. 7).

The Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities became “disgruntled and antagonized, and each successively rose in rebellion against British rule, which was to terminate amid bloodshed, chaos, recrimination, and ignominy” (Wasserstein, 2002, p. 82). Their respective leaders played deadly zero-sum ←28 | 29→games, even though they were of unequal influence and strength at different junctures during the British Mandate. By the early 1940s, and as a direct result of how the British squashed the Arab Revolt, “Palestinian society was economically devastated, politically and militarily defeated, and psychologically crushed” (Farsoun and Aruri, 2006, p. 93; Wasserstein, 2002, p. 145; Tamari, 1999, p. 81). As explained by Issa J. Boullata, “the Palestinian leadership was in disarray” and did not put forward well-thought out policies with regard to the British and the UN. In contrast, “the Jewish political leadership was organized and had clear-cut goals. Its military activities had strategic aims, were well supplied with weapons … and used all possible tactics to achieve their goals” (2014, p. 74).

Eventually, on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 (II), calling mainly for partitioning Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, for an economic union between them, and for Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum—a separate entity under a special international regime—the resolution was rejected by the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs, but accepted by the Jews. The Arabs were angry and observed a three-day strike in Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine. The Jews were jubilant and celebrated.

Bloody engagements of both sides ensued in Palestine’s cities and towns. The violence made the lives of ordinary people “hell on earth.” They were hesitant to venture out unless it was essential. To control Jerusalem, for example, the British divided it into various security zones, with checkpoints and limited access between them. Acts of terror became common occurrences (Sarsar, 2018, p. 92–94). The list is long, and its cumulative effects propelled many to leave their homes for safer areas. In early 1948, some 100,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their homes. By April 1948, the fighting intensified and some Jewish militias resorted to terror, forced expulsions, and displacement of Palestinians. When the Zionist leadership declared Israel’s independence on May 14, the Jews in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and beyond were moved toward jubilation; the Palestinians were angered and mourned.

The 1948 war ensued between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Israel won. The result became imprinted in the psyche of all Israelis and Palestinians, but for different reasons. It is the decisive year when the proclamation of the State of Israel and Israel’s War of Independence occurred. It is when the majority of Palestinians who lived in what became Israel lost their homes and sources of revenue, in what they call Al-Nakba. Some 726,000 Palestinian Arabs had either been ejected or fled because of war. Some wound ←29 | 30→up in East Jerusalem and others in refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Practically none of them were allowed to return. What materialized then, and since, has set in motion successive wars between Israel and its neighbors, including the Palestinians, and brought about fear, bloodshed, insecurity, or destitution to millions.

My own family was internally displaced during 1948 (Sarsar, 2018, pp. 96–98). They left Jerusalem and took refuge in Jericho for a few months. Upon their arrival, the city was teaming with people and bundles from all over Palestine. People were lost, trying to figure out their next move and loaf of bread. They were angry at having to leave their homes, lives, and livelihoods behind. Wasif Jawhariyyeh, who also was in Jericho at that time, reflected on the tragedy that befell Palestinians: “[E];veryone seemed as though they were at a funeral, thinking about what they had become overnight, cursing the British, the Jewish settlers, the Arabs, the states, and the armies, and crying over the destiny and the future of their children who had lost their country and were without shelter” (Tamari and Nassar, 2014, p. 255). The Sabella family also experienced dislocation and dispossession, moving from violence in Qatamon in West Jerusalem to Lebanon, but eventually returning to Bethlehem and then East Jerusalem (Sabella, 2007, pp. 1–7). Reflecting on this tough period, Hussein Ibish explains how Jews and Palestinians are two peoples who have undergone serious traumas that color their perceptions. “The difference is that the Jewish and Israeli narratives continue to be an epiphany of redemption in the founding and flourishing of the state of Israel, while for Palestinians, permanently dispossessed and living in exile or under occupation, the trauma is enduring and still unfolding” (2018, para. 16).

The UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 (III), resolving that

refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.

Those Palestinian Arabs who remained in the newly created State of Israel constituted only 18% of the population. All were put under martial law for at least 18 years, thus relegating them to second-class citizenship. This was counter to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel of May 14, 1948 written by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which spelled out citizenship rights

←30 | 31→

The State of Israel … will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions … (para. 13)

Over the years, Israeli Arabs or the Palestinian citizens of Israel have had an uneasy relationship with their government and their Jewish counterparts. For example, Israeli Arabs are not required to serve in the Israeli military forces. This precludes them from certain benefits. Moreover, the government spends less on Israeli Arabs than Israeli Jews when it comes to education, housing, employment opportunities, and social services. Most Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs do not have real contact with each other, which sometimes results in tension. One Palestinian citizen of Israel attributes the above disparity to discrimination. “As Palestinians,” she writes, “… we spend every minute of our lives in the country paying for the fact that we are not Jewish” (Jiryis, 2017, p. 339).

The Six-Day War, while quadrupling Israel’s size, was a defeat and deep blow to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. The war and its aftermath left many with sad memories. As an 11-year old living in East Jerusalem in June 1967, I felt the sound and impact of explosions, and I only narrowly escaped death. I experienced the wretchedness of homelessness, albeit temporarily, and the meaning of human loss, the killing of two neighbors (Sarsar, 2018, pp. 10–15) Ibtisam Barakat, a Palestinian who grew up in Ramallah in the West Bank and was a little girl at the time, saw her world fall apart as she fled her home, became separated from her family, and lived in a refugee camp (Barakat, 2007). The Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands—with its military restrictions, appropriations of land, and increasing settlements—saw children and their parents face grave and hard living conditions. The young especially developed feelings of defenselessness and hopelessness, but also of boldness. The First Intifada was not totally unpredictable. Unsurprisingly, children marched at the head of demonstrations and were the first to riot against Israeli soldiers.

If Palestinian parents worry about their children, Israeli Jewish parents do so as well. They want the best for their children, but memories of the Holocaust and past Israeli-Arab wars, and the need for absolute security, make them both cautious and suspicious of the other. Many an Israeli faces a psychological quandary, balancing loyalty to Israel and its security with a concern ←31 | 32→of causing or being perceived as causing harm to others. Meron Benvenisti (1986), an Israeli political scientist, wrote of what it means to be living in close proximity to Palestinians.

We are simultaneously enemies and neighbors. One inevitable consequence of war is the depersonification of the enemy. If you do not depersonify your adversary, you cannot shoot him. One cannot depersonify one’s neighbor …. So, we are torn between our affinity to our respective communities and our kinship as human beings participating in the same life cycle. (p. 15)

Many Israelis abhor what Palestinians have to undergo under the grip of the Israeli occupation. Amos Elon (1997) discussed the plight of “refuseniks”—those reservists or recruits who prefer to go to prison rather than serve in the Occupied Territories (pp. 169–170). Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On (1997) stated that psychologists were accused of misusing their professional role when they claimed that soldiers were suffering emotionally by participating in suppressing the First Intifada (p. 95). Yoram Binur (1989), an Israeli lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces, even disguised himself as a Palestinian to understand the daily Palestinian experience. He wrote,

I am tired of having to witness the disastrous results of the occupation every day, as well as frightened of the possibility that many people, on both sides, may be doomed to suffer bloodshed and destruction. As an Israeli Jew, I believe that it is too high a price to pay for the messianic and imperialistic aspirations of a small but militant minority among us, all legitimate claims to an independent and secure Jewish state notwithstanding. (p. 215)

Following the Oslo Accords of 1993 and successive peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leadership, there was hope that agreeable terms could be reached around such issues like the status of Jerusalem and sovereignty in the West Bank. However, the talks broke down and after Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, the Al-Aqsa or Second Intifada took shape. As leaders at the top attempted to quell the violence, the situation on the ground was brutal. Many Palestinians were killed, beaten, or imprisoned. Many of those injured were children. The conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip only worsened. Israeli operations like Defensive Shield humiliated Palestinians and led to the occupation of important administrative cities like Ramallah. At the same time, the Second Intifada saw escalation from stone throwing and unarmed protests to the use of suicide bombings and rocket firings by militant Palestinian groups such as Hamas, terrifying Israeli citizens. The bombings ←32 | 33→were often in public restaurants and parks as well as scheduled on Jewish religious holidays like Passover.

Palestinian villagers located east of the “seam zone” or the space between the Green Line and the security or separation wall, have often protested the wall. They have demonstrated and even tied themselves to trees. The protesters were often joined by Israelis and members of the International Solidarity Movement. In 2003, a four-month “peace camp” took place in the Masha village that highlighted efforts to protest the wall. Other local villages imitated the efforts of the Masha village. These protests formed bonds between Palestinians and Israelis and generated increased levels of awareness to many Israelis about how the wall poses problems for Palestinians. Due to the resistance gaining international popularity, some villages actually regained their lands.

Israeli unemployment peaked at over 13% and unemployment in the West Bank rose to nearly 50% by 2003. Tourism in Israel dropped significantly and the country’s economy contracted over the course of the Second Intifada. All said, at the end of the conflict in 2005, the relationship between Israel and Palestine was arguably the worst it had ever been. Israeli public opinion seemed to take a shift from conflict resolution to conflict management, and the Palestinians were left battered and questioning whether the “shaking off” had been worth the trouble. The Palestinians found themselves without a state or any credible plan to create a state. Even the concession of the Gaza Strip pull out and “end of occupation” was not all it seemed. With Israel still in control of land access, waterways, and airspace in the Gaza Strip, a humanitarian crisis emerged from the overcrowded region that still lingers today, leaving it as a hotbed for Hamas operations and recruitment.

The years following the Second Intifada were marked by political shakeups and deteriorating conditions on the ground. Politically, the Palestinians appeared to take steps backward. Given the Hamas electoral victory in 2006 and the ousting of Fatah in the Gaza Strip (at the toll of 100 fellow Palestinians), the Palestinians were left even further divided along ideological lines. This made the prospects for peace and a unified state bleak.