What is the Palestinian issue that bedevils international politics?
It boils down to the question of who shall inhabit and rule Palestine, a gnarly dispute largely resulting from attempts to reconcile the system of modern states with a territory of no precise borders, a long history, a surfeit of ethnicities, and unique religious importance.
The Land
Palestine traditionally defines a land that extends from the Eastern Mediterranean on the west to the Arabian Desert on the east; from the Leontes River on the north to Gaza on the south. The name derives from "Philistia" and was originally applied only to a small area of the Mediterranean coast controlled by the Philistines. The term was first applied to other areas in A.D. 135 when its Roman rulers, after a revolt by the Jewish inhabitants, to suppress any sense of Jewish statehood, began to call the inland areas Syria Palestine, including the biblical Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Israel.
The area presently called Palestine is somewhat smaller. In 1921-22, the East Bank of the Jordan River was created as Transjordan ("across the Jordan"), now known as Jordan. Palestine now generally coincides with territory under Israeli control, other than the Sinai Peninsula.
Palestine has ever been a land ripe for conquest and dispute for several reasons: 1) It connects both the great Mediterranean-Red Sea water routes and the Egypt-Southwest Asia land routes. 2) It usually has powerful neighbors who, questing for its lands, have surged into its plains and hills. 3) The three great monotheisms all have key shrines and relics located in Palestine, exciting desires to control and protect them.
History
Muslim rule of Palestine began in A.D. 637 and, other than two centuries of partial Crusader rule, 1099-1291, it lasted until 1917. Europeans took interest in the region starting in 1799, with Napoleon's abortive attempt to rule it. As Ottoman rule weakened through the nineteenth century, an influx of foreign settlements into Palestine took place, especially by French, Russian, and German settlers. The first Zionist immigration started in 1881, a tiny seed that led to the eventual founding of the Jewish state. By 1922, the population of Palestine came to about 750,000, including 590,000 Muslims, 70,000 Christians, and 84,000 Jews.
In the chaotic realignment of the region following World War I, Palestine was internationalized. Britain ruled Palestine under a mandate from the League of Nations; it gave support to the founding of a Jewish state in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, leading to Arab protests and riots. Various solutions for the enmity between Arabs and Jews led in 1947 to a partition of Palestine into three sections: a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an International Zone. Arabs refused this division and Palestine itself immediately saw Arab attacks on Jews.
When British forces withdrew from Palestine on May 15, 1948, the state of Israel was declared and internationally recognized. Arab attacks instantly followed but failed; the Israeli counterattack greatly expanded the original boundaries to include Galilee, the Negev desert to the south, and other regions. Only the Jewish state came into being, the rest of Mandatory Palestine falling under the control of Jordan and Egypt, with a sliver going to Syria.
During the Six-Day War, crushing Israeli victories led to the conquest of all of Mandatory Palestine as well as the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. In another round of war in 1973, Egypt and Syria won back small portions of the territories lost in 1967. Then, the 1979 Camp David negotiations led to an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and all of Sinai going back to Egyptian control by April 1982.
The People
Palestine has long been inhabited by a heterogeneous population. Its most notable early conquerors were the tribes of Israel, who established there Judaism, which in turn eventually gave rise to Christianity and Islam. At its peak, under the rule of David and Solomon, the realm encompassed all of traditional Palestine. Decline and dissension reduced the lands to two adjacent kingdoms, Judea and Israel. The Jews were dispersed by succeeding conquests, beginning in 586 B.C. with the victory of the Babylonians over Judea. Conquest by other powers, including the Greeks and Romans, then followed.
Those called Palestinians are Muslim and Christian Arabic-speakers who left Mandatory Palestine after the creation of Israel and trace their roots to it, whether they themselves or their families. Palestinians historically did not regard themselves as a nation but directed their primary loyalties to the family, the locality, or the umma (the Muslim nation).
But the idea of being a separate people since right after World War I is now deeply held. Palestinians not only regard themselves as an unassimilable but insist on returning to the territory that now constitutes Israel. This unusual persistence continues decades later due to two main reasons: 1) With the exception of Jordan, Arab states treat Palestinians as temporary residents lacking in rights. 2) Those Arab governments deliberately maintain refugees in their own camps, helping to keep anti-Zionism fervent.
Despite this emphatic nationalism, no unified Palestinian people exists. Ethnically, as Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister showed in the Encyclopædia Britannica's 11th edition (1910-11), vol. 20, under the entry Palestine, the region hosted 21 ethnicities: the native fellah (farmer), the Jewish, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Nawar, Turkic, Armenian, Greek, Italian, Turkoman, Motawila, Kurd, German, Bosnian, Circassian, Sudanese, Algerian, and Samaritan.
Currently, Palestinians divide into many groups. Those who live in:
- Israel, remaining when the Jewish state was established.
- The West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, areas conquered by Jordan in 1948-49 and conquered by Israel in 1967.
- Gaza, occupied by Egypt in 1948 and conquered by Israel in 1967.
- Jordan, where many have received citizenship.
- Other Arab countries, especially Lebanon and Kuwait.
- The rest of the world.
Politics
The Arab states created the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. After their devastating loss in 1967, the PLO inherited the main burden of eliminating the Jewish state. Various Arab governments have sponsored PLO factions, among them more radical groups, though they share in the central organs of the PLO and its military arm, the Palestine Liberation Army, and subscribe to the Palestine National Charter.
The PLO, then, has emerged as the strongest and most visible representative of the Palestinians, in spite of the fact that many Palestinians, especially those who remain in the homeland, disavow identification with it. Of late, however, many who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have come to feel that conditions there have grown so painful that they must embrace militant measures. While at first terrorism was regarded with disapproval, it is now a matter of course.
The PLO has consistently rejected the existence of Israel. Its aspiration, as expressed in its charter, is to form a secular, democratic Arab republic of Palestine, in which Palestinian Jews, meaning those families whose residence antedated 1881, may remain. If this republic actually came into existence, it would likely attempt to include the East Bank of the Jordan which, if successful, would liquidate Jordan as a country.
The PLO has received considerable respectability and recognition outside the Middle East. Support from oil-rich Arab states has made it the wealthiest revolutionary movement in history. There is no questioning its power and influence, but it is difficult to see it succeeding against a far more powerful Israel.
Resolution
Efforts to settle the Palestinian question flounder due to the PLO position, backed by all the Arab states except Egypt (formally) and Jordan (informally), that Israel has no right to exist. The Camp David accords of 1978 called for Egypt to recognize Israel and for Israel to grant autonomy to the West Bank. Because the PLO refuses to recognize Israel, that has not happened. Hostilities remain, with no discernible exit.
Until a solution is found that provides an acceptable home for the Palestinian diaspora, it presents another great problem. This can be achieved by their absorption in the Arab countries, the founding of a Palestinian entity willing to live at peace with Israel, or by the elimination of Israel. As long as these alternatives all remain remote, the Palestinian question will continue to plague Palestinians, Jews, Arabs, and the world.
Mr. Pipes, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow, is the author of Slave Soldiers and Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).
