Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to analyze the origins of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians and outline its future scenarios. This article is the result of more than 12 years of research into the origins of the conflict between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples and its future prospects. Reading the books The Original Story: God, Israel and the World (BARTON, John; BOWDEN, Julie. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), A History of Israel (BREGMAN, Ahron. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), A Palestina (COMISSÃO DE JUSTIÇA E PAZ. CNIR/ FNIRF, Portugal, 2002), To Rule Jerusalem (FRIEDLAND, Roger; HECHT, Richard. University of California Press, 2000), The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (GELVIN, James L. Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (CHOMSKY, Noam. Pluto Press, London, 1999), made it possible to identify the origins of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians, presented in the following paragraphs.
Origins of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians
To better understand the conflict between Jews and Palestinians, it is important to know its history from the 2nd millennium BC onwards. C. At this time, Palestine was organized into city-states under Egyptian hegemony for much of the 2nd millennium BC. In the last centuries of this millennium, successive waves of immigrants or invaders arrived in Palestine from the north and northwest, from the islands or from the other side of the Mediterranean, who were known as Philistines and settled, especially in the southwest (west coast of the Negev and Chefella), where they founded several small kingdoms (Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gat and Ekron). Parallel to the Philistine kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel was established in the north of Palestine and then the kingdom of Judah in the low mountainous area of the south. Among the ancient peoples of Palestine, the Philistines had the greatest influence until the last centuries of the pre-Christian era. It was not by chance that the name Palestine was given to the entire region, that is, the country of the Philistines.
The various Palestinian, Philistine and Israeli kingdoms coexisted for centuries. At times they fought against each other, at other times they allied themselves to combat the yoke of some great power of the time. The first victim of this process was Israel, conquered and annexed by Assyria in 722 BC. From then until 1948 there was no political entity called Israel in the region. Judaism always retained the hope that one day all the dispersed Jewish people would return to what it called “the Land of Israel”. In their history, Jews have faced several Diasporas that involve several forced expulsions around the world and the consequent formation of Jewish communities outside of what is known today as Israel. Generally speaking, the beginning of the first Jewish diaspora is attributed to the year 586 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar II, emperor of Babylon (located in ancient Mesopotamia, located about 85 km south of Baghdad in Iraq), invaded the Kingdom of Judah , destroying Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, in addition to deporting the Jews to Mesopotamia.
In the 1st century, the Romans invade Palestine and destroy the temple in Jerusalem. In the following century, they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, causing the second Jewish diaspora, sending Jews to other countries in Asia Minor, Africa and southern Europe. With the Roman Empire’s rule over Judea, most of the Jews who lived there emigrated to Babylon, which became the largest Jewish community center in the world until the 11th century. With the triumph of nationalist ideologies in Europe and the idea of creating a national state, a nationalist movement emerged in the 19th century among the Jews of central and eastern Europe whose objective was the creation of a Jewish state, which was considered the only means of ensuring the identity and survival of the Jewish nation, as well as ensuring its presence at the concert of nations. Jewish nationalism took the name Zionism, a word that derives from Zion, one of the names of Jerusalem in the Bible. Initially religious in nature, Zionism preached the return of the Jews to the “Land of Israel”.
Zionism, a Jewish nationalist movement that took hold in the 1890s, emerged in 1896 after the publication of a book by a Hungarian Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl. The book, called The Jewish State, suggested the creation of a National State to house the Jews of Europe. This movement is understood as a nationalist movement that established itself as a Jewish response to the growth of anti-Semitism that affected Jews from all parts of Europe, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. The Jewish response to this was to defend the creation of a Jewish State, and the chosen location was Palestine, a region that was inhabited by Jews in Antiquity, but which had been abandoned by them in the Diaspora because of the persecution they suffered from the Romans. The big issue is that the region had been inhabited by Palestinian Arabs for many centuries. To guarantee the formation of a Jewish State in that region, the World Zionist Organization was formed, which began to purchase land in Palestine to lease it to Jews.
The First World War had tragic consequences for Palestine with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), an ally of Germany defeated in the First World War (1914-1918), which exercised domination over Palestine. After the world conflict, the Mandates system was created by article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations on June 28, 1919, which was intended to determine the status of colonies and territories that were under the control of the defeated nations. The British Mandate that included Palestine was approved by the League of Nations Council on July 24, 1922 (Figure 1).
Figure 1- British Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan
Source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/when-churchill-severed-transjordan-from-palestine
The British Mandate for Palestine no longer considered its objective to bring the population that then inhabited it, that is, the Palestinian population, to full independence. Instead, he promoted the creation of a Jewish national home, that is, the creation of a Jewish state with people who, for the most part, were scattered around the world and therefore had to be brought in from outside. Great Britain, the hegemonic power at the time, promised the Zionist Federation that it would do everything possible to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine with the so-called Balfour Declaration. The territory that the Zionists intended to establish their state in was much larger than Palestine. It encompassed the entire western part of Transjordan, the Golan plateau and the part of Lebanon south of Sidon. The obstacle that impeded the process of Palestinian independence was, therefore, the privilege given to Jews to create the “Jewish national home for the Jewish people” in this region.
The Palestinians saw the sponsorship given, first by Great Britain and then by the League of Nations, to the Zionist project of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine as a denial of their right to independence. Palestinians felt victims of territorial usurpation. Naturally, the Palestinians opposed the project of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine from the first moment – as soon as they became aware of the Balfour Declaration and tried, by all means, to prevent its realization, as they feared that it would result in their submission, not only political, but also economic to the Jews, thus passing from the domination of the Ottoman Empire to the Jewish domination, with an interval of British domination. Palestinians lodged protests against the Balfour Declaration with the Paris Peace Conference and the British Government. The first popular demonstration against the Zionist project took place on November 2, 1918, the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. This demonstration was peaceful, but Palestinian resistance soon turned violent, expressing itself in attacks against Jews that degenerated into bloody clashes.
Generally speaking, outbreaks of violence were increasingly serious as the British Mandate prolonged and Jewish colonization in Palestine extended and strengthened. As the Jewish presence increased in Palestine, problems between Arabs and Jews also grew. Palestinians began to oppose the Jewish presence in Palestine, defending their right to possess that land autonomously. It was in this scenario that violence between Jews and Arabs gained strength. Jews formed paramilitary groups to defend themselves, such as the Haganah and the Stern Gang, acting through terrorist attacks. The Arabs, in turn, formed military forces to fight British rule in Palestine and end Jewish migration to the region. Over time, the Jewish presence increased, until the flow of Jews to Palestine gained enormous proportions during World War II. Events unfolded in a sequence that became customary.
Palestinian resistance also occurred in the 1936-1939 revolt. In April 1936, local disturbances between Arabs and Jews degenerated into a widespread Palestinian revolt. The revolt was no longer just opposed to Jewish colonization. It was directed, above all, against the British authorities, the foreign power, from which the Palestinians demanded the constitution of a national government. Having reached the conclusion that the Palestinians would not renounce their independence, in 1937 the British considered the possibility of dividing Palestine into two states, one Arab and the other Jewish. This solution was rejected by both parties. The Jews did not accept the idea of creating the Jewish state only in a part of Palestine, which would apparently mean renouncing their claim to the entire region. The Palestinians, in turn, did not renounce their territory. This divergence continues to this day.
The creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948 was the result of the context of persecution that Jews experienced in Europe due to the Nazis during World War II. Political conditions allowed the creation of the State of Israel. After World War II, the creation of the Jewish national home came to be seen by public opinion as a form of reparation for the Nazi Holocaust. In the session of 29 November 1947 of the UN General Assembly chaired by the Brazilian Oswaldo Aranha, when 56 of the 57 member countries were represented, 33 of them voted in favor of the Palestine Partition Plan, 13 voted against and 10 abstained. Arab countries openly opposed the proposal and did not recognize the new State of Israel. The Jewish Agency, the governing institution of the Jewish settlement, accepted the resolution. The Palestinian Arabs, as well as the Arab States, did not accept the Partition Plan, as they considered that the proposal contradicted the Charter of the United Nations, according to which each people has the right to decide their own destiny, and declared their opposition to any plan who proposed the separation, segregation or division of his country or who attributed special and preferential rights or status to a minority. A few hours before the British Mandate of Palestine was extinguished and in the midst of a civil war between Palestinians and Jews, the Independence of the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. The Arab States reacted immediately. The first Arab-Israeli war began there.
Without resolving the impasse between Jews and Palestinians, the State of Israel was created by imposition of the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom to the detriment of the Palestinians who were not also included with the creation of the State of Palestine. Palestine has not been recognized as a country by the United Nations, but as a “non-member observer state” since the end of 2012. The non-recognition of Palestine as a country is due to a number of factors, including a lack of international support, especially from superpowers like the United States. Since 1948, there has been much violence and controversy surrounding the creation of the State of Israel, as well as several peace negotiations during the 20th century. The State of Israel was founded in 1948, following the Partition Plan drawn up by the UN, which divided the region, then under British rule, into Arab (Palestinian) and Jewish states (Figure 2).
Figure 2- UN Sharing Plan
Source: https://ensinandodesiao.org.br/artigos-e-estudos/historia-e-significado-de-palestina-e-palestinos/
From UN Resolution 181 on the division of the territory of Palestine, 53.5% of the territory was designated as Israel and 45.4% of the land would be the domain of the Palestinians. The Jews would retain most of the territory, even though they only had 30% of the population. The city of Jerusalem would be under international control. Zionist Jews accepted the proposal, but Palestinian Arabs did not. In disobedience to this Resolution, because of this partition, the territories occupied by Israel at the end of the Second World War constituted around 78% of Palestine and not 53.5%. They became, in fact, the territory of the State of Israel. With the formation of the State of Israel, in May 1948, there was the occupation of Palestine by the Jews when many displaced people and Jewish refugees from the Second World War migrated to the new sovereign state. The chain of low mountains in central and southern Palestine, the so-called West Bank, as well as the Gaza Strip, remained outside Israel. Jerusalem was divided: the western part of the city outside the walls sided with Israel; the old city and the extramural neighborhood to the north were on the Palestinian side.
One fact is evident: Israel’s history has revolved around conflicts with Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations that have been shaken by wars and clashes between Jews and Arabs who do not agree with the territorial division of the former Palestinian lands, as established in the current moment. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the conflict opposing it to the Palestinians has been the epicenter of a conflict between Israel and all Arab countries, with strong global repercussions. There were wars with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, but without the tension in the region decreasing. From 1948 onwards, a series of conflicts took place in the region because of this dispute over territory between Jews and Arabs. The first conflict was the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948, in which different Arab nations united against the newly founded State of Israel. This conflict lasted from 1948 to 1949, ending with the Israeli victory and the expansion of its territory. Furthermore, this conflict became known as the “nakba”. This Arabic term is translated as “catastrophe”, summarizing what the conflict was like for the Palestinians.
Israeli conquests in the 1948 war caused around 700,000 Palestinians to flee their lands. The UN currently estimates that the number of Palestinian descendants of the “nakba” is around 5 million people. To this day, the State of Israel does not allow these people to return. Since this conflict between 1948 and 1949, other wars between Israelis and Palestinians have been fought. Conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians are ongoing, with short intervals of peace, although the proportionality of forces today is incomparable. While Israel has one of the most powerful military forces in the world, Palestine has no international recognition or even an established territory. In 1967, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon after the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan (Figure 3). The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt only in 1982, and the Golan Heights to this day have not been returned to Syria by the Israeli government. The Israeli occupation of the region after the Six-Day War is considered illegal by the international community and the United Nations.
It is important to note that, for Zionism, the State of Israel is not an end, but a means to achieve its objectives. Ben Gurion, a Polish Jew, Israel’s first head of government from 1948 to 1963, stated that “after we become a powerful force as a result of the creation of the state, we will abolish partition and expand throughout Palestine. (… ) The state will be only a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the basis for our expansion throughout Palestine”. To maintain their domination, the Zionists need a powerful system of military domination over the Muslim, Christian and secular Palestinian majority. The State of Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons and receives billions of dollars annually from the United States, in addition to military support and protection. Israel has armed its army with atomic weapons and has been massacring Palestinian civilians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with ultra-advanced weapons. Furthermore, Israel usurped, occupied and built buildings on land that did not belong to Israelis and had regular and legal Palestinian owners. This explains the behavior of Israel’s current rulers who do not accept the existence of a State of Palestine in the region.
Figure 3- Israeli achievements in the Six-Day War (1967)
Source: https://www.curso-objetivo.br/vestibular/roteiro_estudos/questao_palestina.aspx
Many international observers point out that Palestinians are kept in an apartheid regime by Israel. The living conditions imposed on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are increasingly worse, and Israeli bombings in the region have been common. This is in addition to the difficulty in accessing the basics in the region, such as food, medicine, electricity and drinking water. In the case of the West Bank, the progressive occupation of the territory by Israelis is being debated. In recent decades, Palestinian territory has been occupied by Israeli settlements that force the migration of the Palestinian population, becoming the target of violence committed by Israeli military forces. There are reports of pogroms against Palestinians, and many international reports indicate that they are treated as “second class” citizens, being openly discriminated against. Israeli prisons are full of Palestinians who react against the tyranny imposed by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people.
It is important to note that before the State of Israel existed, Zionists introduced terrorism to the Middle East. The State of Israel and its founders were pioneers in the practice of assassinating UN officials and Palestinian leaders since 1920. The carnage seen today in the Gaza Strip is nothing new, because it has already occurred countless times in the past throughout Palestine, although this time the horror of the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity reaches new and shameful records. A total of more than 28,700 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 69,000 others have been injured in the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Currently, around 1.9 million Palestinians are homeless because of the war that began on October 7, 2023. This number is equivalent to more than 80% of the total population of the Gaza Strip who have been displaced since the start of the war between the Israeli government and Hamas, according to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA ). With this mass murder of Palestinians, Israel is increasingly moving away from the possibility of being accepted as a regular, permanent state in this region because to integrate and survive, Israel depends on being accepted by the people who live in Palestine and the world Arabic.
Future scenarios of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians
Palestinians demand to establish a sovereign and independent Palestinian State. Most Palestinians accept the West Bank and Gaza Strip regions as territory for a future Palestinian state. Many Israelis also accept this solution. A discussion around this solution took place during the Oslo Accords, signed in September 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which allowed the formation of the ANP (Palestinian National Authority). Despite the return of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank to Palestinian control, a final agreement still needed to be reached. To do this, it would be necessary to resolve the main points of contention, which are the dispute over Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the end of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Despite several other agreements and peace plans, such as those at Camp David and the negotiations of the so-called Quartet for the Middle East (United States, European Union, Russia and UN), the situation is still at an impasse.
Under the argument of trying to annihilate Hamas in response to the terrorist action of October 7, 2023, Zionism, which is in power in Israel under the command of Benjamin Netanyahu, carries out an unspeakable war crime against the Palestinian people with the policy of continuous and cowardly bombing of its urban centers and isolation of this population in Gaza, which functions as a ghetto similar, for example, to the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland implemented by Nazi Germany against the Jews. Report published on 02/19/2024, on the website <https://aventurasnahistoria.uol.com.br/noticias/historia-hoje/medico-frances-compara-gaza-com-o-gueto-de-varsovia-situacao-esta-proxima.phtml>, informs that the French doctor Raphaël Pitti, professor and military anesthetist, compared the current situation in the Gaza Strip with the Warsaw Ghetto that Jews suffered from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The health professional’s testimony was reported by the French newspaper Le Figaro and broadcast by Rádio França Internacional. This report also includes the testimony of another doctor, who witnessed the daily care of countless people.
When describing the suffering of the Palestinian people, doctor Raphaël Pitti stated that, in Gaza, it is impossible for civilians to flee military fighting. The population has nowhere and how to protect themselves. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of people roam the streets in search of water and food. Due to these facts, he thinks that Gaza has turned into a ghetto similar to the Warsaw Ghetto in which 380,000 Jews were crammed by the Nazis since 1940, in inhumane living conditions, he explained. He highlights that the population of Gaza is not at the same level of malnutrition as the Jews of Warsaw, but the situation is close. Raphaël Pitti also highlighted how care for victims of the conflict currently works. He said people who were most seriously injured are automatically considered dead, especially if they were hit in the head. Most die within a few hours in hospital corridors, on stretchers, without monitoring or sedation, due to lack of medication and painkillers, he said. Diseases such as meningitis and hepatitis C are spreading and the number of people with intestinal and skin problems has doubled, which is causing health services to collapse. Education in Gaza is at a standstill. Schools in Gaza remain closed and most of them are home to displaced Palestinians, numbering more than 1.2 million in total.
It is unlikely that the conflict between Palestinians and Jews will be resolved today due to the Zionists who command the State of Israel and the various Palestinian extremist currents and, also, because existing international institutions are not capable of building a negotiated solution to the conflict between the State of Israel, the Palestinian people and the Arab countries. The United States has lost the ability to mediate any conflict, no other great power has the conditions to play this role and the UN is currently incapable of promoting peace on a local, regional or global scale. It is important to note that the Zionist practice of the State of Israel contributes decisively to not only making peace in the region unfeasible, but also increasing the anti-Semitism that is spreading among the Arab peoples and throughout the world.
It is worth noting that anti-Semitism began in 387 when the largest campaign of Christian instigation against the Jews known in Antiquity began, sponsored by John Chrysostom, from Antioch (Syria) when he stated at that time that the synagogue was a place of blasphemy, the devil’s asylum and Satan’s castle. There are several episodes of anti-Semitism throughout history, reaching its peak in Nazi Germany when, upon taking power, Hitler announced that the extermination of the Jews would be one of his priorities. In 1938, the so-called “Night of Broken Glass” took place in Germany, when 191 synagogues and numerous Jewish facilities were destroyed, 91 Jews were murdered and 30,000 were dragged to concentration camps. During World War II, there was the Jewish Holocaust when six million Jews were killed.
Anti-Semitic demonstrations are again being heard around the world, especially in the Arab world and Islamic nations. Anti-Semitism is growing in the world due, in large part, to the warmongering, racist and fascist stance taken by the government of the State of Israel towards the Palestinians since its creation in 1948. The explanation given by Israel’s leaders is that they have acted with violence throughout history in response to violence by Palestinians and Arab countries since the creation of the Jewish state. However, it is Zionist practice that contributes to the existence of extremist groups among Palestinians.
It is worth noting that, according to the German general Carl Von Clausewitz, author of the famous work Da Guerra- a arte da estratégia (On War – the art of strategy) (Tahyu, 2005), the objective of war is to annihilate the enemy. However, according to Sun Tzu, Chinese general, strategist and philosopher, author of the famous work Arte da Guerra (Art of War) (L&PM, 2000), the true objective of war is peace and the supreme art of war is to defeat the enemy without fighting. While Clausewitz advocates the use of military force to annihilate the enemy, Sun Tzu proposes building peace and defeating the enemy without fighting. Clausewitz’s thesis does not apply to the Israel – Palestine conflict because neither Israel can annihilate the Palestinians, nor vice versa. Neither Zionists nor Palestinian extremist groups will be able to impose their will by force of arms in Palestine. There is only one solution to the conflict in the region: the construction of peace, as advocated by Sun Tzu, whose initiative should come from Israel, which can only happen if the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world politically repel the Zionist, warmongering and fascist sectors, who exercise power in the country and establish a government that seeks conciliation with the Palestinian people.
The continuity of the Israel-Palestine conflict also tends to produce a regional war involving all countries in the region. The transition from a regional war to a global conflict can also happen with the involvement of the great military powers (United States, Russia and China) in defending their interests and those of their allies in the region. We need to prevent the Israel-Palestine conflict from becoming the epicenter of a new World War. Only peace between Palestinians and Jews will avoid the worst for humanity.
* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and of IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022), How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chișinău, 2023) and A revolução da educação necessária ao Brasil na era contemporânea (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2023).
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