Religion, ideology and ethnicity

Their influence in Israel and Palestine

conflict
Pham Vinh An

First , I had a presentation about Israel and Palestine conflict , so I'm quite interested in this
subject .There are conflicts in religion : Judaism and Islam , in ideology : Koran and Jewish Bible ,
and in ethnicity : Arabian and Jewish . Also , The conflict in Israel and Palestine is the longest war
in modern history .

To start , We have to answer an question : Who is Jewish ? Why they are choose Jerusalem is their
capital ?
Jewish are a nation and religious group , they are intelligent, laborious , but be under by persecute
all around the European and mid-Asia . The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly
interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.

" Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same
land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000
years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-
year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner
candy store."

Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998

After the Romans conquered Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago, Jewish people were expelled and
dispersed to the Diaspora, and the Land of Israel was ruled by Rome, by Islamic and Christian
crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire, and by the British Empire.
Throughout centuries Jews prayed to return from the Diaspora to Israel. During the first half of
the 20th century there were major waves of immigration of Jews back to Israel from the Arab
countries and from Europe. In 1948 Jews reestablished their sovereignty over their ancient
homeland with the establishment of the modern State of Israel. In this time , The most important
person is Theodor Herzl . He has written a book name “The Jewish State” believe that the Jews
must remove themselves from Europe and create their own state .
And Jerusalem ,"The Holy Sanctuary" in Zionist ,For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the
Jewish capital .In the Jewish Bible, Jerusalem is mentioned over 669 times and Zion (which usually
means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, or 823 times. The Christian Bible
mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times. Event an poet of England speak about this :
Quote in Lord Byron Poems :

“What is the happiness of earth to them ?

A congress forms their “New Jerusalem””
It was a long journey of an national .wherever they goes , there were racial discrimination .At Iran
in 19 century , The Jewish is nothing like grassroots , everything they touched became dirty to
Arabian . A life of Jewish only equal by 140 Kraus . At Yemen before 1948 , Jewish can't trade a
same thing with Islam , they can't speak loud , can't wear clothes with light colour . In World of War
II , 5 millions Jewish were be killed .
 So you can see the influence of religion and judaism nationalism to the Jewish .They are wish to
return Jerusalem but this is the beginning of conflict between Arab and Israeli and consequence is
million people died and become the longest war in history.

For over 60 years since its establishment in 1948, Israel has been constantly under both military
and political attack by Arab nations as being a usurper of Palestinian land and a foreign intruder into
dar Islam - the domain of Islam - (a more geographical and physical term than “the world of Islam”
which is conceptual.) From a secular and political perspective, even as early as the1920’s, the Arabs
developed an expressed opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine, particularly where such
settlement might have brought about a Jewish majority and political ascendancy over the
indigenous Arab population. Perhaps the best expression of this opposition was given in the 1947
Anglo-American Committee's Report commissioned by the British and American governments
following the conclusion of World War II when the full extent of the Holocaust was beginning to be
realised.

The fundamental structural elements of the Arab case encompass the following assertions:
• Palestine was and is a country which the Arabs have occupied for more than a thousand
years, and any Jewish historical claims to the land are rejected.
• The British Government, in issuing the Balfour Declaration was disposing of something
that did not belong to it.
• The Mandate was in conflict with the Covenant of the League of Nations from which it
derived its authority .
• The part played by the British in freeing the Arabs from Turkish rule did not empower Great
Britain, France or the other Allied Powers to dispose of “their” country.
• Turkish rule was preferable to that of the British rule, if the latter involved their eventual
subjection to the Jews.
• The Mandate was and is a violation of the Arab right of self-determination since it forced
upon the Arab population within its own territory an immigrant non-Islamic and foreign
people whom they did not desire and would not tolerate. In short they regarded the Mandate
it as a Jewish invasion of Palestine.
In particular, the Palestinians asserted that the promises made to the Arabs by Great Britain in
1915 in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, and the later assurances given to Arab leaders by
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman concerning Palestine, had been understood as recognition of the
principle that Palestinian Arabs should enjoy the same rights as those enjoyed by the populations of
the neighbouring Arab states. Thus the emergent opposition to the idea of a Jewish National Home
predated the issue of the Mandate in 1922 and again before the 1942 Biltmore Program expressed
its support for a Jewish State.

After 1948, but before 1967, the Palestinians added one further claim in addition to those
mentioned above. Those Palestinians who had fled, been driven out, or otherwise dispossessed of
their lands located in what subsequently became the State of Israel as a result of the War of
Independence (Israeli nomenclature) or "al-Nakba", the "catastrophe" (Palestinian Arab
nomenclature) have the "right of return" to their original homes.

Following the Six Day War in 1967, the Palestinians assert further that the following Israeli acts
are illegal and contrary to international law:
• the military occupation by the Israel Defence Forces of the previously held Palestinian -
Jordanian land;
• the taking of that land by Jewish settlers; and
• the annexation of East Jerusalem (and the Golan Heights) by the State of Israel.
 In response to Palestinian claims, Israel argues that the Jewish people, whom she represents in
part, has had an unbroken connection with the land from before the rise of Christianity and Islam,
notwithstanding their exile by the Romans in the first century. Until the eighteenth century, the
Jewish people in the Diaspora were seen both as a religion and as a nation.

“ As a religious group, they were compared to Christians and Muslims and as a nation, they
could be compared to Turks or Frenchmen. „

However, civic unity in Christianity and in Islam especially, was based on uniformity of belief,
within neither of which could Jewish destiny be fulfilled. This made it absolutely impossible for a
Jewish group to be anything other than second-class subjects.
It needed the sixteenth century reformation in Christianity and the rise of the nation state in the
eighteenth, for Jewish religious imperatives to be redirected and asserted towards the possibility of
reviving the notion of a Jewish State in Palestine. However, religious motivation from within was
insufficient to meet the challenge. It required the addition of European anti-Semitism later in the
nineteenth century to motivate secular and emancipated Jews to organise politically - in a
decentralised movement, meeting centrally at its annual congresses - to advance their political
objective for matters.

Israel’s contemporary claim to legitimacy is premised on:

• an uninterrupted physical, spiritual and cultural connection between the Jewish people
and the Land of Israel since before the second century;
• involuntary dislocation and dispersion of the majority the Jewish people from the land since
the second century;
• the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I which gave the impetus to the
rise of both Jewish and Arab nationalism;
• the victory of the Allies over the Central powers and the disposition of the conquered
territory in accordance with a new regime introduced into international law – mandate or
trustee territory;
• The Treaty of Sevres 1920, under which Turkey ceded its sovereignty over Palestine and
accepted the Balfour declaration with its incorporation into the Mandate as an international
agreement. This formed a constituent part of the Middle East post war settlement between
the Allied and Central Powers in which Turkey, Britain and the United States participated
and in which both Jews and Arab expressed their interests.
Not with standing attempts by the British mandatory power to frustrate the clear objectives of the
Mandate, and despite the fomentation of Islamic religious opposition against the establishment of a
Jewish homeland, the Jewish people succeeded in creating a viable political and economic entity.
British financial investment and a colonial style of government coupled with an infusion of
Jewish capital, migration and labour brought a higher standard of living to the Palestinian
population – both Arab and Jewish - than that enjoyed in the neighbouring states.

However, the economic advances in Palestine attracted Arab immigration from outside of its
borders. Rather that regulating such Arab migration, the British Administration, contrary to the
terms of the Mandate, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine which prevented the
creation of a Jewish majority in cis-Jordan – Palestine;
 • Arab violence fomented by anti-Zionist elements in the British Administration, and the
continued demographic Jewish imbalance made more favourable to the Arabs by British
immigration policy ultimately led to violence between Arab and Jew.
• The Mandatory found its solution in a proposal to partition the territory lying to the west of
the Jordan River between Arab and Jew while retaining certain strategic locations to itself.
• The Jews accepted the Mandatory’s partition proposal but the Arabs rejected it.
World War II intervened, creating the Holocaust.
Although this tragedy gave a big impetus towards partition, British policy remained steadfastly
against any change in its Palestinian immigration policy, with the result that Jews became actively
obstructive to continued British rule, both civilly and militarily:
• Britain, unable to control the violence directed against her Administration, referred the
matter to the United Nations
• The General Assembly recommended in Resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947, the
partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.
• Again the Jews accepted the proposal, but the Arabs rejected it.
Britain decided to surrender its mandate and military conflict broke out between Jews and Arabs
with the British Administration publicly taking a more or less neutral stand while surreptitiously
assisting the Arabs.
On the day following the final British withdrawal on May 14, 1948:
• The Jewish population of Palestine declared themselves as the self governing state of Israel
in accordance with the UNGA Resolution and the major powers (excluding Britain)
accorded her international recognition.
• The Arab Palestine failed to follow the same course.
Instead,
• contrary to international law, five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State but failed to
eliminate her;
• Jordan became an occupying power of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria including
Jerusalem) and Egypt took control of the Gaza strip.
In the process,
• between 600 and 800 thousand Arab Palestinians left or abandoned their homes on the
advice of the Arab leadership, or for fear of Jewish brutality, while a number Palestinians
were driven out in the military confrontation between Jewish forces and the Arab armies
• the Jewish population living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank (Etzion Block) and Gaza were
killed or evicted; and the surrounding Arab states, in consequence of the establishment of
the Jewish state, began to evict their Jewish population which numbered over 800 thousand.

A humanitarian problem was thus created:

• the majority of Palestinian Arab refugees found themselves languishing in camps located in
the Jordanian controlled West Bank and Egyptian controlled Gaza or in camps located in
Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
• Apart from Jordan, Palestinian Arab refugees were not absorbed by their host states or
offered citizenship.
• The new State of Israel absorbed all the Jewish refugees driven out from the Jerusalem, West
Bank and Gaza, and those Jews evicted from the Arab states.
The United Nations ultimately arranged a cease fire between the belligerents:
• Israel organised itself as a civic society within the cease fire-lines as determined in Armistice
Agreements made between herself and the invading states- Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and
Egypt respectively, while reserving her claims over the territory held by Jordan and Egypt.
However:
• the Armistice Agreements were constantly breached by Arab terrorist infiltration emanating
out of Jordan and Egypt; and
• Egypt breached international law and its Armistice Agreement with Israel by blockading the
Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping intermittently from 1948 until 1956, thereby prevented
free access to the Israeli southern port of Eilat, as well as closing the Suez Canal to all
shipping bound for other Israeli ports.
• The blockade was broken by a joint British, French and Israeli attack on the Suez Canal in
1956 in response to Egypt’s nationalisation of the international waterway. As part of the
withdrawal arrangements, UN peace-keeping troops were stationed along the Egyptian
border with Israel while the maritime nations gave their undertaking to support Israel should
Egypt seek to re-impose its blockade.
In 1967,
• Egypt re-imposed its maritime blockade in the Straits of Tiran and closed the Canal to Israel
shipping;
• the maritime nations failed to implement their guarantee,
• the UN removed its peace-keeping force; and
• the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were poised in offensive mode against Israel which
was threatened with annihilation.
Israel’s appeals to the Security Council were in vain and on June 5, 1967 she executed pre-
emptive self defensive strikes against Egypt, and Syria and retaliated against Jordanian attack, in
what later became known as the “Six Day War.”
• Israel overcame the immediate threats facing her and gained control and occupation of o the
previously held Jordanian positions on the West side of the Jordan River including
Jerusalem; o Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip and Egyptian sovereign territory in Sinai; o
Syrian sovereign territory in the Golan Heights
• The Arabs rejected Israeli offers of peace at the Khartoum: “no negotiation; no recognition
and no peace.”
• The United Nations Security Council passed UNSC Resolution 242 which was accepted by
both Jews and Arabs. Unfortunately the terms of the Resolution have been interpreted
differently by the parties.
With intensive American support, extended peace negotiations took place between Israel and her
adversaries in the 1980’s and a cold peace reigns between Israel and Egypt which regained all of the
territory it lost in 1967.
A slightly warmer peace pertains with Jordan which relinquished in favour of the Palestinians all
its claims to the territory lying to the west of the Jordan River.
 In taking military control of the West Bank and Gaza, over which no state has exercised
legitimate sovereignty since the Ottoman defeat in 1920, Israel has the best claim to title based on
the Treaty of Sevres 1920, Article 95; Palestine Mandate 1922, Article 8 and on the UN Charter,
Article 80.
• Based on the above international agreements and also consistent with the laws of belligerent
occupation Israel, has also erected a number of military outposts in the West Bank territory
to maintain the peace as well as establishing a number of civilian settlement blocks in the
West Bank. Some of these have been erected on land owned by Jews prior to 1948 and
others on undeveloped and unoccupied public or waste land owned by the Ottoman
government in 1918.
• While not illegal, a significant number of settlements have created a political obstacle to
peace.
Following secret direct negotiations between Israel, led by Yitzhak Rabin, and the PLO, headed by
Yassir Arafat, the parties succeeded - with Norwegian and American assistance – to agree the Oslo
Accords in 1993 which included:
• mutual recognition of the opposing party;
• an undertaking by Israel for a transfer of civilian powers to a Palestinian Authority, the
members of which were to be chosen by Palestinians within the West Bank (including East
Jerusalem) and Gaza in free and democratic elections;
• an interim arrangement on Palestinian self government by the Palestinian Authority for a
period of five years; and
• an undertaking to commence negotiations on a number of “Final Status” issues within three
years of the commencement of the interim agreement- from which such issues had
specifically been excluded.
The Accords resulted in:
• a recognition by Israel of Palestinian aspirations and of the PLO as representing the
Palestinian population in negotiations;
• the PLO recognition of Israel as having a legitimate existence;
• a declaration by the PLO to cease violence and to resolve its conflict with Israel by
negotiation;
• the admission into Gaza and the West Bank from their exile in Tunis, of the PLO political
leadership and military of elements of its organisation in the form of a “strong police force”
to maintain the peace and suppress terrorism in Palestinian self governing territory;
• a withdrawal and redeployment of Israeli forces from a large proportion of the Palestinian
urban territory it captured in 1967; and
• Palestinian self rule exercised over approximately 95% of the Palestinian population;
Unfortunately the parties have been able to resolve the political issues which appear to remain
outstanding between them- sovereignty over Jerusalem, the extent of territorial; adjustments secure
borders and the “Right of Return” of Palestinians refugees. Neither has there been a cessation of
Palestinian violence. In 2000, final status negotiations between Israel and the PLO broke down and
the Palestinians resorted to armed attack on Israel’s civilian population waged by suicide bombers
recruited, trained, armed and operationally directed by Hamas, an organisation linked to the Muslim
Brotherhood and Fatah, one of the militant wings of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
To counteract these attacks Israel has:
• initiated targeted killings against the Palestinian terrorist leadership;
• temporarily re-entered a number of Palestinian cities in 2002 to eliminate terrorist nests and
destroy bomb building factories;
• attempted to prevent the smuggling of weapons and armaments through subterranean tunnels
between the Gaza Strip with Egypt; and
• commenced the erection of a terrorist security barrier situated mainly on previously held
Arab land on the West Bank beyond the 1948 Israeli-Jordanian cease fire lines, the route of
which has been adjusted many times to minimise the personal and economic hardship to
Palestinians.
The barrier has dramatically reduced Israeli civilian casualties but its erection has brought
international condemnation and an adverse advisory non-binding opinion issued by the international
Court of Justice (ICJ). The opinion has, however, been subjected to serious professional criticism as
being politically motivated and based on incorrect factual information. The ICJ opinion is
inconsistent with a number of rulings made by the Israel Supreme Court based on detailed and
actual facts on the ground.
International intervention in the search for a resolution to the conflict has been renewed as part
of a global concern over continuing instability in the Middle East generally which has given rise to
fears of an interruption or even a cessation in oil supplies to the West and the bringing into question
by certain Middle Eastern powers of Israel’s very legitimacy.
The United States, under its own auspices and those of the United Nations, the European Union
and Russia initiated a new peace proposal – “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-
State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Road Map) in 2003. Thus far, the initiative has
failed to produce any concrete results towards a rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians.
In order to reduce continuing military confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants,
Israel took unilateral action and withdrew her military occupation and civilian settlements
completely from the Gaza Strip in 2005, leaving the physical infrastructure and economic assets in
the form of extensive greenhouses available for Palestinian use.
Palestinian elections held in 2005 brought victory to the Hamas party, whose declared political
and military objectives are the elimination of Israel as an independent Jewish State. Since then an
internecine conflict has been carried on between Hamas and Fatah for control over the Palestinian
Authority, its assets and political largesse funded from abroad.
The Gaza Strip, now completely controlled by Hamas, is currently (2008) being employed both
for smuggling weapons and ammunition from Egypt contrary to the Oslo Accords and as a staging
area for the launching of short and medium ranged rockets directed against Israel civilian targets
located inside Israel ‘proper’ . well within the ‘green’ 1948 cease fire line.
What is make the confict more and more harder to solve is the Anti-Zionist in Palestinian .
Begin of Conflict is “The Return” of Jewish is affected by religion and the end is humanitarian of
thousand lifes living in Israel and Palestine .

What could we do to solve it ? Should be something in religons belief ? I don't know

PHAM VINH AN .

Reference:
- Wikipedia.org (religons muslim and judaism )
- Israeli-Jordanian Conflict Timeline
- Zionismontheweb.org