[OVERVIEW: This post looks at the question: What criteria would you use to determine the legitimacy of the Palestinian and Israel claims to Palestine? Then it uses information from the previous five posts, as well as additional information, on Israel and Gaza to show why this is not the black and white issue both sides claim it to be. Sounds pretty simple, but I started this back in early March and I've been trying to tease out the key points since. Not sure it will get any better so posting it now. Have fun.]
Parts I-IV of this series of posts briefly discussed a number of subjects to show how complicated the Israeli-Gaza war is and why ıt ıs hard to speak intelligently and knowledgeably about the topic.
Part V outlined a few observations I came to while researching and writing the first four posts.
In this post, I want to give an example of how those complexities make simple answers to any of this an easy, perhaps, but uninformed response. I'll refer to a number of the issues I identified in the earlier posts. I get that people grasp for some easy answer, especially in response to the unconscionable killing of Palestinians in Gaza. But as comforting as that might be, slogans based on ignorance lead to even more confusion and anger.
Let's look at the question of who has the best claim to the land between the river and the sea. This refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. On the map you can see that would cover all of modern day Israel as well as the Palestinian areas - Gaza and the West Bank.
I include the map here because it's been said that many people shouting the motto "From the river to the sea" supposedly didn't know which river and which sea were meant. [But are these claims true or just made to discredit demonstrators? The link talks about hiring a polling company to ask students - but it didn't say that they were specifically students demonstrating and shouting the phrase. There is so much spin going on over this topic we need to take everything with a grain of salt. We need to ask people what they mean before we attack them.]
While the Hamas declaration of 1988 (highlighted in Part IV) clearly says Hamas wants an Islamic state controlling all of historic Palestine (the British Mandate), this NPR article says many students chanting the slogan mean they want peace and freedom for all people living between the river and the sea.
Hamas originally claimed all the land (see the section on the Hamas declaration in Part IV) which would mean the elimination of Israel, on the grounds that Palestinians have lived there for generations. They claim that Israel is a colonial state taken from the local Palestinians by Europeans and Americans. Israelis claim that Jews have lived there for thousands of years.
That's very different from wanting peace and freedom for everyone living from the river to the sea.
"A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders."
"Over the years, Hamas has sometimes moderated its public position with respect to the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But its political program still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” — referring to the area reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now make up Israel."
Who has the most legitimate claims to the territory Israel occupies?
I would ask people to step back now and contemplate how one would evaluate those claims? How should an impartial judge answer that question? What criteria would such an objective observer use to determine who had the most legitimate claim to that land? Must it be all or nothing?
Even coming up with criteria is fraught with problems. Philosopher John Rawls has proposed a way to create rules for a just society - it would have to be done collectively, before anyone knows what role they will be assigned in that society. Otherwise you give your role favorable conditions.
",,,everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This "veil" is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their own advantage:
"[N]o one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."
The same problems are true about setting up the criteria for evaluating the claims to this land. People will favor those criteria that they know will lead to the outcome they prefer. But in the world we live in, that veil of ignorance is not possible.
So which criteria to use?
- Who's been there the longest?
- How would you measure this?
- Jews have lived in and around Jerusalem and other parts of Israel for about 3000 years.
- Christianity is 2000 years old, and
- Mohamed didn't found Islam until 610 AD.
- Whose traditions are connected to the land?
- Jerusalem holds major holy sites for all three religions. Plus others like Bahá'ì.
- What group's culture has no other homeland where the majority of the population share their language, religion, and customs other than in this disputed land?
- What group has the most people?
- Who will make the best use of the land?
- Flip a coin?
1. National borders change constantly over time. Hong Kong was under British rule from 1898- 1997. India was a British colony for nearly two hundred years. After India became independent, Pakistan split from India in 1947. Bangladesh split from Pakistan in 1971. Russia colonized parts of Alaska from the 1830s until they sold all of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Though they only had colonized relatively small portion of Alaska and the indigenous population had no say in any of this. Alaska became a US state in 1959. Hawaii became an internationally recognized kingdom in 1808 but then was conquered by the US in 1898.
Today's African nations' boundaries were dictated mostly by European colonial rulers, focused on exploiting natural resources, not which groups of people lived where.
The Ottoman empire controlled Palestine for 400 years until the British took over and eventually, through the Balfour Declaration created Israel. After the creation of Israel in 1948, the West Bank was basically controlled by Jordan and Gaza was controlled by Egypt until the 1967 war.
2. Colonization
The Hamas Charter talks about Israel as a colonial power. But let's look at that a little more carefully. Here's a generally common definition much like this one from dictionary.com
"-a country or territory claimed and forcibly taken control of by a foreign power which sends its own people to settle there:
-a group of people who leave their native country to form a settlement in a territory that their own government has claimed and forcibly taken control of:"
European nations set up colonies in the Western Hemisphere, South America, Asia, Australia. In all cases the colony was controlled by a mother country elsewhere.
Israel is a special case. There is no mother country. Instead we have a people scattered around in many other countries - always a small religious minority, often reviled and with fewer rights than other citizens. And then, of course, there was the Holocaust.
So Jews had no homeland where their religion and culture was protected and where they weren't a minority. From Wikipedia:
"According to the Hebrew Bible, the First Temple was built in the 10th century BCE, during the reign of Solomon over the United Kingdom of Israel. It stood until c. 587 BCE, when it was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem.[1] Almost a century later, the First Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, which was built after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. While the Second Temple stood for a longer period of time than the First Temple, it was likewise destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE."
My sense is that Hamas knows there is no Jewish mother country (in the US where Jews have their largest population, they make up less than 3% of the total population.) Hamas seems to be using 'colonial' to imply that Western nations, in some sense, are the 'White" mother nations of Israel. And Britain was the last European nation to have control over Palestine and agreed to the creation of Israel.
But if the State of Israel were to be dissolved, there really is no 'home' country for Jews to go to. Though Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, in their 2005 book New Jews argue that the idea of diaspora may be out of date, that there are vibrant Jewish communities around the world where Jews feel rooted and do not long to return Israel. They argue for exchanging fear - and Israel as the safe home for Jews - for hope based on all the new ways Jews are redefining themselves. But this is a tiny minority opinion.
On the other hand, Palestinian Muslims speak Arabic and follow Islam. There are many Islamic countries in the world, where Arabic is spoken. Yet their argument that being Palestinian makes them different from other Arab cultures is partially confirmed by the fact that neither Egypt nor Jordan - both close neighbors of Israel - do not want a large influx of Palestinians.
But the Islamic State that Hamas declares (in their declaration) is mandated for Palestine, would be radically different from the culture that Palestinians have developed in Palestine.
"The Islamic Resistance Movement [firmly] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection."
Such an Islamic state would be more different from current Palestinian culture than if Palestinians moved to most other Arab countries. Or even non Arab countries. And how does this accommodate the Christian Arabs who live in Palestine?
3. Countries where Indigenous Populations regained control have been former colonies
Most former colonies that are now independent countries are former European colonies. The borders imposed by the foreign conquerors often didn't match the local indigenous boundaries and led to countries that have different ethnic groups competing for power. Israel and Palestine is such an example.
So while it's accurate to say that England left behind the seeds of conflict in the former Palestine Mandate as it did in other former colonies, the Jews of Israel are different from the colonialists who exploited other European colonies. While many, if not most, came from Europe, they can trace their historical connection to the land back 3000 years. And others have come from Arabic countries in North Africa and the Middle East. These are people who spoke Arabic as well as ancient biblical languages into the 20th Century.
In other cases - say the US and much of South America - the European settlers simply attempted to Christianize the indigenous populations, move them, and if that didn't work, annihilate them.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, former member states, such as the Yugoslavia, broke up, not peacefully, into smaller states based on ethnicity. East Germany, more peacefully, joined West Germany.
Is there a solution both sides would agree to?
To the extent that Hamas and Netanyahu's government are negotiating, probably not.
The parties' demands are mutually exclusive
The Israeli government under Netanyahu says elimination of Hamas and Israeli control of Gaza is what they will accept. [But note, the wording changes regularly, but the basics seem to stay the same.] While Hamas has pulled back, at least on paper, from demanding that they will not be satisfied until the Jewish state no longer exists, they still believe that all of Palestine is rightfully an Islamic State whose laws should be based on the Koran.
Could other nations get Hamas and and the current Israeli government to come to an agreement?
The world leaders have been trying since the creation of Israel with no lasting success.
What leverage do outside players have on Israel and Palestinians?
Both parties get their weapons from foreign countries, though Israel itself has a formidable arms industry of its own.
The outside supporters could tell Israel and Hamas that they will cut off all weapons until there is a peace treaty. Let's look at the key countries involved.
Middle East Eye says that while the US is by far the biggest arms supplier to Israel, they also get weapons from Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada,
The American Friends Service Committee has put out a list of companies that profit from the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Go to the link to see the list. Besides major players like Boeing and Lockheed, there are many others.
This AP article identifies sources of Palestinian weapons:
“'The majority of their arms are of Russian, Chinese or Iranian origin, but North Korean weapons and those produced in former Warsaw Pact countries are also present in the arsenal,' said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services. "
There are Israeli Jews and Palestinians who would like a two state solution with peace and cooperation between the two
My conclusion is that both parties have legitimate claims to independent states in the land between the river and the sea. I don't see an easy path to that option. In fact the only paths I see now are in people's imaginations. Here are visions of peaceful coexistence, one Israeli, one Palestinian. :
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib https://twitter.com/afalkhatib/status/1782241783843553568
Haggai Matar https://www.972mag.com/lament-israelis-gaza-october-7/
