The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict_A Very Short Introduction

by Martin Bunton

  ‘The Arab–Israeli conflict’

  The two decades following the 1947–9 fighting were dominated by the interstate conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbours. The tense situation was further complicated by bitter inter-Arab rivalries centred on the assertive role played by Gamal Abd al-Nasser. During this time, Nasser came to represent throughout the Arab world a dynamic route towards a more promising regional order shorn of imperial ties. Palestinians especially looked to him as the leader to unite the Arab world against Israel.

  The 1949 armistice agreements left unresolved two major sources of friction. One was the question of demarcating Israel’s borders: the ceasefire lines (also known as the Green Line), which had so greatly modified the 1947 UN partition plan, were fragile and contested: some villages were cut in half; others were separated from their agricultural lands. The second question was the future of Palestinian refugees, languishing in temporary camps: many attempted to make their way through the permeable ceasefire lines either to rejoin families, harvest crops, and reclaim property, or to sabotage attempts by new Israeli immigrants to develop the land for themselves. In the face of growing violence, Israel’s strategy of disproportionate retaliation targeted both the returning Palestinian refugees and the states from which they entered Israel. The mutual sense of insecurity that emerged from this unstable border situation led all sides to expect another round of fighting. And, indeed, Israeli cross-border retaliatory raids in 1953, killing sixty-nine villagers of the West Bank town of Qibya, and in 1955, killing thirty-eight Egyptian soldiers in Gaza, were followed in quick order by a series of sharp steps that would culminate in 1956 in another war.

  The Gaza raid in particular so exposed Egypt’s weakness that Nasser hurried to redress the evident military imbalance. Until then, the United States had been providing substantial economic aid to Egypt as part of its Cold War search for allies. The Americans hoped that Nasser would formally align with the West and join the regional anti-communist defence scheme known as the Baghdad Pact, which had been formed in 1955. Instead, long-standing regional rivalries and anti-British sentiment led Nasser to vilify Iraq’s membership. In this framework, it was proving very difficult for Nasser and the United States to build a solid relationship. When Western countries spurned Nasser’s request for arms, he turned to the Eastern bloc and signed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia. Shortly thereafter, he recognized Communist China. Much to the United States’ chagrin, Moscow appeared to be gaining a major foothold in the Arab world.

  The flashpoint that brought war about in 1956 was the Suez Canal. Feeling that Nasser needed to be taught a lesson, the US government announced in July that it would withdraw funding for a hydroelectric and irrigation project called the Aswan High Dam, a key part of Nasser’s development agenda. Nasser responded in July by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company, thus sparking an international crisis. Britain was deeply alarmed by Nasser’s efforts to undermine its position in the region and, working with France, conspired with Israel to topple Nasser in October. However, the agreed-upon Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, followed in early November by the landing of British and French forces in the Canal Zone, brought swift condemnation from the US government. President Eisenhower feared that such outdated imperial tactics on the part of US allies would only further benefit the Soviet Union’s position in the Middle East and indeed the wider Third World. America then strongly pressured Britain and France to withdraw their troops.

  For Israel, whose military victory was stunning, the political consequences of the 1956 Suez War were mixed. On the one hand, its collusion in an act resembling 19th-century gunboat diplomacy further deepened the resentment felt across the Arab world. On the other hand, the war resulted in a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) taking up strategic positions in the Sinai Peninsula. The UNEF was entrusted with both preventing Palestinian guerrillas from crossing into Israel and ensuring Israel’s right of maritime passage through the Straits of Tiran. Israel would view any future attempt to close the Straits of Tiran, its main achievement of the 1956 war, as a casus belli.

  For Nasser, the notorious failure of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion became a massive political victory. He had faced down the threat of renewed foreign domination. As Nasser’s popular support soared in Egypt, so too did his stock throughout the Arab world where his rhetorical promises to confront what he called ‘the Zionist entity’ resonated. Nasser’s dominant position did not, however, last for long. The heroic stature invested in Egypt’s president after 1956 became an impossible burden by 1967, when rhetoric turned dramatically to action, and Nasser led Arab countries into a humiliating defeat.

  Given that the problems over borders and refugees remained untenable, yet another violent round of fighting seemed inevitable in the wake of 1956. In the decade following the Suez War, Nasser became increasingly embroiled in an Arab cold war that pitched his leadership of a republican, reformist-minded bloc of Arab states against the more conservative and even reactionary monarchies. One conspicuous example of the instability of the situation was the fact that he committed 70,000 troops to a civil war in Yemen, and thereby got bogged down fighting a proxy war against Saudi Arabia. A second example was the engagement of all countries in an alarming multi-sided arms race, whereby Arab countries competed against each other, as well as against Israel, while Israel armed itself against all of them.

  Moreover, Nasser’s prominence unleashed new dynamics which he struggled with difficulty to control. When Soviet intelligence in May 1967 reported that Israel was preparing to launch an invasion of Syria, Nasser felt that his credibility demanded his support for fellow Arab progressives. He sought to deploy along the Sinai border enough Egyptian forces to deter Israel, but was in no position to go to war with Israel. Nonetheless, tensions escalated dramatically with the removal of the UNEF forces that had been acting as a shield between the two parties. When Nasser’s forces occupied the UNEF post at the Straits of Tiran, and closed the shipping lines to Israel, he crossed the red line: the Israeli government had made it clear that it would not tolerate such a blockade. The military balance at that time favoured Israel, and so on 5 June 1967 Israel’s air force launched a surprise attack on air bases throughout Egypt. It achieved air supremacy within hours, and over the next six days Israel found itself in occupation of the entire Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in south-western Syria.

  Conclusion

  In the two decades up to the 1967 war, Palestinians overwhelmingly invested their future in the promises made by external forces. Various Arab regimes and ideological movements offered their support, but the greatest amount of faith was placed in Gamal Abd al-Nasser. The defeat of 1967 fundamentally transformed Arab politics and the Palestinians’ position in it. But, as Roger Owen observes, the position of Palestinians in the Arab world was always a complex one, possessing the capacity both to unite Arabs and to divide them. The escalating tension between the new state of Israel and her Arab neighbours fed a powerful pan-Arab orientation in regional politics prior to 1967, but the driving force was always the struggle for political independence and economic development by the distinct Arab states. To be sure, the Palestinian cause offered useful opportunities for newly independent Arab regimes to bolster their own legitimacy. And yet, throughout the Arab world, the nation-building process itself necessitated the development of their own particular identities and the demarcation of a separate Palestinian one. As for the Palestinians’ own quest for a state, it would have to begin anew after the 1967 war.

  Israel’s post-independence leaders benefited greatly from their prior experience in the Yishuv building administrative and military structures. Much more complicated was the task of trying to sort out what exactly it meant for a state to be both democratic and Jewish. Important tensions remained. One challenge was determining what rights its Arab citizens ought to enjoy, and resolving the evident contradiction between the notion of a Jewish state and of a democracy granting equal rights to all. A se
cond important set of challenges was posed by the unresolved need to define the nature of its relationship to the land of Biblical Israel, the most significant parts of which did not come under its control until the 1967 war. For Israelis the 1967 war was both a defensive and an opportunistic conflict. Taking advantage of surprise and superior arms, Israel won a spectacular military victory that placed it in control of all of the land of mandate Palestine, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. In the eyes of some Israelis, the war represented a miraculous liberation of Eretz Israel, the lands of Biblical antiquity. But uppermost in the minds of others was the question of how to rule over a rapidly growing Arab population of 1.5 million people.

  Chapter 5

  Occupation 1967–87

  The armistice agreements that ended the fighting in 1949 in effect delineated the de facto partition of mandate Palestine. Known as the Green Line, the resultant boundary provided international recognition of the borders that separated Israel, the Jordanian-annexed West Bank, and the Egyptian-ruled Gaza Strip for twenty years, until the 1967 war again changed the shape of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Israel’s defeat of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the span of six days in June 1967 had far-reaching, if mixed, implications. On the one hand, by quadrupling the amount of territory held by Israel (including, as shown in Illustration 10, the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza), the 1967 war provided it with territorial assets that created new opportunities for bilateral negotiations and could potentially lead to a historic reconciliation with her Arab neighbours. On the other hand, the scale and speed of Israel’s military victory introduced complacency to the idea of accommodation and territorial compromise. Most problematically, the sudden conquest of territory steeped in Biblical history sparked within Israel expansionist aims that would make the conflict much more difficult to resolve.

  10. The 1967 war

  UN Resolution 242 and the Israeli–Egyptian peace treaty

  In the international arena, Israel’s conquests were viewed as a bargaining chip with which it could leverage an end to the hostilities. The framework for such a deal was embodied in United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 242. Resolution 242, with its formula of a land-for-peace resolution to the conflict, became the basis for every subsequent attempt at peacemaking.

  United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

  22 November 1967

  The Security Council,

  Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

  Emphasizing 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,

  Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

  1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

  (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

  (ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

  2. Affirms further the necessity

  (a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

  (b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

  (c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

  3. Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution …

  Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon accepted the resolution (Syria waited until 1973, the Palestinians until 1988). But they based their acceptance on divergent interpretations. Whereas the Arab states called for Israel to withdraw from all of the occupied land, Israel argued the case that the omission of the definite article—the territories—implied by omission that it could hold on to some occupied territory. Not surprisingly, such ambiguity engendered diplomatic deadlock. Meanwhile Arab leaders met in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. The conference, held at the end of August 1967, resulted in the famous ‘three noes’: no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel. The defiance expressed by the Arab summit certainly complicated the process of building on the framework put forth by Resolution 242. But the stance taken at Khartoum did leave open the prospect of a peaceful settlement, if not a peace treaty, if the superpowers would undertake to act as third-party mediators. Indeed, for both Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser and Jordan’s King Husayn, their acceptance of Resolution 242 signalled informal acceptance of Israel. With neither the Soviet Union nor the United States showing the capacity or will to enforce the UN resolution, the failure to implement 242 can be attributed also to the basic asymmetry in the negotiating positions of the various parties. Israel, with its by now overwhelming military superiority, was in no hurry to initiate talks. For their part, Arab countries were not prepared to negotiate from a position of weakness. Progress on the land-for-peace formula would have to wait for radical changes to the geopolitical situation.

  In the years following the 1967 war, relations between Egypt and Israel steadily deteriorated amidst a series of artillery exchanges. In March 1969 Egypt launched a low-intensity ‘war of attrition’ aimed at breaking the diplomatic impasse and preventing the 1967 ceasefire line along the Suez Canal from hardening into a de facto border. The aim of the Egyptian attacks was to wear down the Israeli fortifications and raise the economic costs of the Sinai occupation, but Egypt suffered more from Israeli reprisals. By the time Nasser agreed to a ceasefire in August 1970, shortly before his death, the region’s political impasse had brought about significant alignments with the superpowers. The Soviet Union resupplied the Egyptian military, while the United States saw Israel as a useful ally against perceived Soviet advances.

  What finally broke the diplomatic stalemate was a coordinated surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in October 1973. When Anwar Sadat succeeded Nasser as president of Egypt in 1970, he inherited a very difficult set of economic and diplomatic problems. Sadat had tried to encourage US participation in lessening the tensions, breaking his country’s military ties with the Soviet Union, but found he still had no leverage with which to bring it about. Reaching the conclusion that only a limited war could improve Egypt’s negotiating position, Sadat launched an attack on Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula. He hoped to create an international crisis that would force US engagement in a negotiating process. The Egyptian attack was secretly coordinated with a Syrian attack on the occupied Golan Heights. During the war, Saudi Arabia proclaimed an oil embargo directed at any nation (above all, the United States) that supported Israel’s military efforts. Israeli counter-attacks effectively reversed the early momentum of the Syrian and Egyptian armies, but tensions between the two superpowers were indeed raised to a level that demanded their diplomatic intervention.

  Accordingly, even though Egypt’s military results were mixed, the war successfully engineered the new bargaining environment sought by Sadat. The Egyptian army had performed admirably; the myth of Israeli invincibility had been broken, and for the first time a settlement to the Arab–Israeli conflict had become a top priority concern for the United States. The new diplomatic effort first took the form of negotiating small disengagement agreements between Israel and her neighbours. In the years following the 1973 war, US Secretary of St
ate and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger embarked upon several rounds of ‘shuttle diplomacy’ aimed at moving, step by step, towards a political settlement. In the short term at least, these agreements benefited both Israel and Egypt: Israel received further assurance of US diplomatic and financial support and Egypt saw the return of some territory, including restoration of the canal and important oilfields.

  However, Israel remained in control of most of the Sinai Peninsula. Disappointed with the hesitant progress of international efforts, Anwar Sadat visited Israel in November 1977. It was a dramatic initiative, aimed at dismantling the psychological barriers that had solidified since the Khartoum conference. Its main effect, though, was to prioritize Egypt’s own interests, as distinct from Arab interests or those of the Palestinians. The visit led in 1978 to a separate Israeli–Egyptian peace mediated by President Jimmy Carter at the presidential retreat at Camp David. At the outset, Carter envisaged using Resolution 242 as a framework for negotiating a general peace, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to secure and recognized boundaries. In fact, the Camp David accords stipulated transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza that would lead to ‘full autonomy’ for its inhabitants. But the accords, formally signed in March 1979, succeeded only in applying the land-for-peace formula to a normalization of diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel. Sadat was so desperate to get the Sinai back that he simply resigned himself to signing a separate peace. As for the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, his right-wing Likud Party refused outright to commit to any recognition of Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza, territory Begin referred to only by its Biblical name of Judea and Samaria. Under Begin’s leadership, the Palestinian territories were considered an inalienable part of the Jewish people’s Biblical inheritance. And with Egypt now alienated from the rest of the Arab world, Begin could try to impose his own circumscribed notion of what a settlement with the Palestinians would look like. In the meantime, he sped up the construction of Jewish settlements in their midst.