A Catholic Narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The State of Israel encompasses 78% of historical Palestine…the remaining 22% was occupied by Israel in 1967, and this is all Palestinians want- a small part of what they had before 1947. They want that 22% to be free of occupation

If only this were really true.

“PRESIDENT CLINTON was preparing last night to cut short his visit to Japan and fly back to the United States after Israel conceded a key principle by publicly accepting that Palestinians could control part of Jerusalem.

Point of agreement: Ehud Barak, Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State and Yasser Arafat enjoy a lighter moment at Camp David

The Israeli move was viewed as an important breakthrough and US officials said that Mr Clinton would press Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to give up his demand for Palestinian sovereignty over the city.

Mr Clinton, who had already delayed his arrival in Okinawa for the G8 economic summit because of the Camp David talks, decided to return early after an Israeli cabinet minister revealed that Palestinians could be granted control over an autonomous East Jerusalem.

Michael Melchior, who had been part of Israeli premier Ehud Barak’s negotiating team, said that Israel was prepared to accept an American plan on the future of Jerusalem. The talks had continued under Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, since Thursday but officials said that another concerted push for an elusive deal was only possible with the president at the reins.

White House officials said that if Mrs Albright told Mr Clinton that the Palestinian and Israeli positions were moving closer then he could be back at Camp David, where Mr Barak and Mr Arafat had remained, as early as tomorrow.

But Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokesman, said that Mr Arafat believed that the US plan was unacceptable. He said: “What the Israelis are trying to do is find formulations whereby they would maintain an illegal Israeli sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem.”

Seems like there was some give by Israel over the Jerusalem question in 2000.

I think Flame’s assessment is about as balanced as Tim Shipe’s.

Israeli policy on settlements has been wrong, to be blunt. It’s a legitimate gripe of the Palestinians, as is the expropriation of land for security purposes. Moreover, there are influential personalities in Israeli politics (Avigdor Lieberman) who are repellent bigots, not to put too fine a point on it. People who are pro-Israel (I count myself among them) have to be vigilant to the problems Israel creates for itself through its own wrong-headed actions, and not wave them away or give blank checks for retaliatory actions.

Of course there’s a qualifier coming.

But we need to look at the wider picture here. Israel is perfectly capable of giving back land and establishing modus vivendi with neighbors who are rational actors. Egypt, Jordan, and even Syria (although the last is shaky, but still workable) are all nations with whom the Israelis have managed to establish functioning relationships despite multiple bitter shooting wars and Israeli occupation of portions of each of their land. All three have one thing in common–resolutely secular, if unpleasant governments.

What’s different with the Palestinians? Increasingly radically Islamicized leadership which will not agree to the existence of Israel. Less so in Fatah, obviously, but when you have an auxilliary called the “Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,” the writing’s on the wall.

Look, I think much of Soren’s analysis deserves thoughtful consideration, but shrugging off the religious element of the problem does it no credit.

soren,

no one who is attacking my positions here is calling Archbishop Elias Chacour or former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah liars or jihadist sympathizers

because there is no need for anybody to engage in ad hominem.

Wouldn’t these be the best sources of information for the worldwide Catholic community to draw upon

not necessarily. People embroiled in a situation do not always have the most accurate perspective.

Were you going to answer the question on where you would prefer to live if you were a Palestinian Christian, under Israeli control or Hamas/Fatah?

BY the way, do your sources in Gaza have an accurate count of the number of Christian Churches burned down by Hamas since they took over control? How many Israeli soldiers are currently occupying Gaza?

ps. the answer to the last question….exactly 1 he is held hostage and denied access to the Red Cross to see to his needs.

Well, this is certainly a Catholic perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I would hesitate very much to say that it is the Catholic perspective on it.

The big problem here (and the reason we’re unlikely to see peace there any time soon) is that the conflict is deeply rooted in nationalism, both Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and Palestinian nationalism.

While I’m hesitant to lay out “the Catholic position” on things, it seems to me that nationalism (in the sense of holding that a particular people have by virtue of their ethnic and historical background a God-given right to rule a particular region) is not a Catholic point of view. In this sense, it is not necessary from a Catholic point of view that Palestine be either an explicitly Jewish or a an explicitly Palestinian/Arab state. Whatever state is in that region should provide due representation and human dignity to all residents.

However, with the dissolution of Turkey and the brief colonial period in which the Brits ran things, the powers that be unhelpfully promised sovereignty to both Jewish and Palestinian leaders. And the borders that were originally set up by the UN in 1947 took two nationalist states and created such a patchwork of them as to make the situation naturally unstable.

The borders at the end of the 1949 war were arguably pretty reasonable, but this made the “occupied territories” part of Jordan (arguably the most stable solution) and for Palestinian nationalists this was not acceptable as they wanted to explicitly be Palestinians not Jordanians. (And the West Bank territories have been either occupied or semi-autonomous since Jordan, along with Israel’s other Arab neighbors, attacked Israel and lost in 1967.)

While, as Dale says, I certainly would not defend everything that Israeli leaders have said or done, I find myself sympathetic to Israel these days since they seem quite willing to be peaceful so long as they are not attacked. And I think it would be a mistake to endorse the actions and desires of Palestinian nationalists simply because they are Christians. The fact is, nationalism is always a false and dangerous ideology.

I recently had the chance to pick up A Peace to End All Peace by the always interesting David Fromkin, which I’m very much looking forward to reading. It centers on the origins of this whole mess: the breakup of the Ottoman empire, the British and French colonial period, and the various nationalistic groups that were played off each other in the process.

I ask you again, what is your problem? Accusing me of “spreading lies”, as if the Palestinian people don’t live in overcrowded ghettos that are blocked off on all sides by the Israeli military?

That’s not the lie you spread, while I disagree with this characterization as well, they are blocked on the west by the sea, and the south by Egypt (such as it is).

Let’s say I was wrong about that – why would you assume I was lying, and that perhaps I myself have not been lied to? You have a real attitude problem.

I said “Stop spreading lies”, there is no judgment as to whether you are aware they are lies… YOU have a real attitude problem.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/aidgaza.html
On December 29 alone, Israel sent 63 trucks (1,545 tons) of humanitarian aid goods into the Gaza Strip including rice, yeast, flour, sugar and 64 tons of medical supplies. On December 31, 98 trucks and 2,366 tons of food and supplies were delivered in Gaza. On January 5, 80 trucks delivered goods to the area. On January 6, 49 trucks were sent into Gaza by means of the humanitarian unit of the IDF. 100 trucks and 500,000 liters of diesel fuel were sent in through the Kerem Shalom crossing on January 7.

This data from the recent Israeli anti-terror action so it is obviously limited due to the logistical difficulty in bringing aid into a combat zone.

“Israel has been under almost constant terrorist attack since before 1967 from those “peace loving Palestinians”. Do you want them to just give in?”

The European Jews that settled in Israel committed dozens of acts of terrorism against the British to establish their power there. One good turn deserves another, doesn’t it? Israeli settlers have been violently expropriating native Palestinians since the beginning, and you wonder why they are reacting with terrorist violence?

No, one good turn does not deserve another. Those terrorist acts you’re referring to (from the 40’s) are condemnable (while generally designed to avoid civilian deaths), but they do not justify THOUSANDS of terrorist attacks SPECIFICALLY targeting civilians. Surely you recognize the difference?

Why do the Palestinian people get denied valid human emotions and reactions? Why does their history get entirely erased, wiped out of the books?

I don’t see anyone here suggesting that.

As if the European Jews just started showing up and declaring, “we wish to leave peacefully, side by side with you”, and the Palestinians said “no, never!” That’s the lie here.

Well the former is true mostly and the latter is false mostly, but the situation changed when the Palestinians allied with the Arab states in an invasion of Israel (the Israeli Arabs who did NOT ally with the Arab States are referred to not as Palestinians but as Israeli citizens).

And don’t talk to me about Christians living in the Holy Land. I still have family in in Northern Lebanon, Maronite Catholics who may well be targeted by jihadists for ethno-religious cleansing in the future.

Where not the Maronite’s supported and aided by Israel? I’d advise to not personalize this discussion.

But none of that excuses the obscene violations of human rights that the Palestinian people suffer at the hands of the US-backed Israeli war machine.

Where human rights have been violated it is condemnable, but that occurs wherever there is conflict, in this case one side uses human rights violation as it’s principle action, the other side does not.

And no amount of shrill accusations of “liar!” or whatever else from you is ever going to change my mind.

Didn’t make such accusations… you’re the one sounding a little shrill.

The facts are what they are. You can’t sanitize this or justify it. The European Zionists made their bed when they came to Israel and decided to expropriate the Palestinians by force.

That’s just not so, the “Zionists” took unoccupied underutilized land which they settled legally and made it prosper, they did not expropriate it by force.

In the same way I don’t blame Native Americans for fighting American troops, or for that matter, Polish and Russian partisans for fighting Nazi invaders, I’m not going to say that the Palestinian people have no right to be angry about the invasion of their homeland. To expect anything less is to expect these people not to be human. Its insane.

What’s insane is to call it human to strap dynamite to a teenage girl and sending her to blowup other children.

soren,

if you want to hate muslims and arabs that is your sin- not mine

If YOU want to hate Jews and Israelis that is your sin, not ours. What’s so ridiculous is that you acknowledge the same people which you accuse of “ethnic-cleansing religious beliefs” are supporters of Arabs and Muslims in many other countries who are not part of the death cult.

Bryan Caplan recently posed four hypothetical questions that he would like to ask Palestinians. I’ll leave out the first (which I suspect would only promote needless controversy), but I find the other three to be pretty apt:

2. The Israelis could easily have killed or exiled every Palestinian. Why didn’t they? What does that say about their objective function – and/or the objection functions of other Western countries that put pressure on Israel?

3. Suppose all the Jews left Israel tomorrow. What would greater Palestine’s GDP per capita be ten years from now? Want to bet on that?

4. Suppose all the Jews left Israel tomorrow. How many Palestinians would still die violent deaths during the next ten years? How many political prisoners will there be in ten years? Want to bet on that?

Man, I gotta stop, but a couple points for Joe:

The Muslims understand the meaning of “total war” and many would rather die than live under Israeli rule.

As I see it, though, this is precisely the problem. Being a member of a country which is predominantly of another ethnic or religious group should not result in total war. That’s nationalism of the worst sort.

Catholics only make up 20% of the US, should we fight to get out own country?

Hispanics used to dominate the South West and are demographically close to doing so again: should they fight a war to get their own country?

That way lies madness.

You can’t oppress people and expect them to smile about it. It’s never happened in history and it isn’t going to happen now. The European Zionist Jews did not want to be partners with the Palestinian people, but overlords. European nations went along with it because they wanted an outpost in the Middle East.

I think this is an overly simplistic and negative reading. The early Zionist leaders were actually very optimistic about how they would live with and work with the Palestinian Arabs, albeit in a somewhat patronizing fashion. If I may quote the post I linked to above:

Thus, while encouraging both piecemeal Jewish immigration into Palestine and diplomatic attempts to secure sponsorship of a Jewish homeland in Palestine from one of the great powers, the early Zionists mostly attempted to assure themselves that the sparse Arab population in the area would be glad to see them. Herzl published a speculative novel entitled The Old New Land in 1903 charting out the way in which the founding of a Jewish state might go, and in it presented a local Arab character who said of the new state, “The Jews have made us prosperous, why should we be angry with them? They live with us as brothers, why should we not love them?” In the novel, political rights of Jews and non-Jews were the same, and local Arabs gladly adopted the hybrid Jewish-European culture of the new country.

By the 1940s things were obviously on a much more violent footing, but even so a major part of the problem is that both Jews and Arabs had undergone a nationalist awakening, and so Arabs saw the mere existence of Israel as oppressive regardless of how it treated them.

Needless to say, so long as both groups consider it oppression for the other group to even exist, there will never be peace. (And the Jews in Palestine exist as surely as the Hispanics in California do.) At this vantage point in history, it seems to be the Israeli’s who are willing to play the liberal democracy game and give rights to everyone who isn’t intent of killing them. The Palestinians show no such promise at this time.

So Darwin,

Are books such as Ralph Schoenman’s “The Hidden History of Zionism” just totally wrong?

This is another one of those cases where we can cite historical texts to one another and still disagree. Were there European Jewish settlers who wanted to live in peace and solidarity with their Palestinian Arab neighbors? Undoubtedly. But was this the impetus behind the project as it was presented to the leading governments of Europe, particularly the British Empire? Certainly not!

Zionism was a colonialist, imperialist venture right from the beginning. To say that the Zionist leaders was “patronizing” is to say the least – of course they weren’t going to admit outright the violent nature of their endeavor. But you don’t move in and occupy a country without bloodshed. You don’t expropriate thousands of people from their homes, their farms, their orchards and villages without massive resistance.

Early in the Zionist project it may have been possible for the settler Jews and Palestinian natives to co-exist because the migration hadn’t occurred in great numbers. But after WWII there was an explosion of immigrants and once the British were driven out the Zionists turned against their Arab neighbors. Starting in 1948 hundreds of villages were razed to the ground as thousands fled before the Israeli military.

So I repeat – you can’t uproot a people and oppress them and expect them not to fight back. I hate the tone this debate takes, as if the Palestinians have zero justification for taking up arms against Israel and even resorting to terrorist methods, lacking as they do the “civilized” methods of massive aerial bombardment – as if some people can’t even fathom it. I’m not accusing you of this, Darwin, but there are some people who do go that far and its infuriating.

I mean, if quotes like this are accurate, who can blame the Palestinians?

“We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages do not exist.”

–Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense

By the way, are the collective punishments inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Israeli military – incidents documented by major human rights organizations in clear violation of international law – a “valid” response?

Zionism was a colonialist, imperialist venture right from the beginning. To say that the Zionist leaders was “patronizing” is to say the least – of course they weren’t going to admit outright the violent nature of their endeavor. But you don’t move in and occupy a country without bloodshed. You don’t expropriate thousands of people from their homes, their farms, their orchards and villages without massive resistance.

Well, come to that, we could probably have a pretty extensive argument about colonialism and imperialism too — but that’s for another day. (Say, not in Holy Week.)

I don’t have any interest in justifying the actions of the Stern Gang and other various Jewish militias back in the 30s and 40s. (Nor, I imagine, do you have any interest in doing so for the Arab militias.) Unquestionably things got very ugly and there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides.

However, I think it’s problematic to denounce the whole project of Jews having moved into Palestine in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century, or to denounce their wanting to stay there and maintain a stable government at this time. Going back to the late Ottoman period when all this got started, there were sizeable Jewish and Arab and Christian populations in the area, and it was honestly pretty sparsely settled. I don’t think we can say that the Jews had no right to move there seeking to create a better life for themselves anymore than we can say that Jews had no right to move to the US in the 30s and 40s, or that Hispanics have no right to move to the US now.

(As a half-Hispanic from California, this strikes me as particularly relevant. A lot of towns in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California are now almost entirely Hispanic, and major cities have very large Hispanic populations. However, thankfully, both nationalist Hispanics of the La Raza sort, who insist that the Southwest should become a Hispanic ethnic state, and anglo nationalists who insist that its a violation of their rights for so many Hispanics to move in, are distinct minorities in our country. Nationalism of this sort has never been much of an American phenomenon.)

So unless we’re to accept nationalist assumptions about particular ethnic groups having a divine right to a specific piece of land, I don’t think we can say that Jews immigrating to Palestine was any kind of a problem. What did create strife was the fact that both the Jewish and Arab populations in the region became caught up in ethnic nationalism such that by 1947 both wanted to have a specifically ethnic state in the same place.

What impresses me about Israel is that despite its occasional paranoia and excesses in self defense (and at a human level, who can blame them given their history over the last 60 years) it has moved beyond this ethnic nationalism to become a pluralistic democracy. And what I think would be by far the best thing for the Palestinians would be if they would do the same — either on their own or simply reconciling themselves to Israel and its existence.

The comparison is telling: nearly a million Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab states, and they forgot about what they’d lost and absorbed into the Israeli population — making up roughly 40% of the current Jewish population in Israel. The Arabs who were expelled (or left thinking that the Jewish state would soon be wiped out and they could return) from Jewish territory have not been absorbed by Jordan, Syria and Egypt — those countries have been quite happy to keep them on Israel’s doorstop, in poverty, as a political and military tool against Israel.

Hard as it may be to swallow, Israel is now a 60-year-old fact (as old as many countries in the world right now) and fighting against it now is not necessarily more reasonable from a just war perspective than if the descendants of the plains Indians were still fighting against the US in the 1930s and 40s.

With my Yaqui blood I have a choice of Northern Mexico or Arizona. I think I’d choose Arizona.

Anyway, why didn’t the Palestinians welcome all those Jewish immigrants to Palestine. It is required per Catholic Social Teaching. 😉