Thursday, March 23, 2017
Africa Mapping Lab
Friday, March 3, 2017
Palestinian/ Israeli Conflict Primary Source Readings
STUDENT WORKSHEET 1:
ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN CLAIMS TO LAND
Directions: The searing conflict between
Israelis and Palestinians has made almost impossible any statement about which
both groups can agree. Read the following descriptions about the claim each has
to the land Israelis call Israel and Palestinians Palestine. Then, based on
what you have read, answer questions A-D below.
1. The history of the Jewish
people and of its roots in the land of Israel spans some 35 centuries. In this
land, its cultural, national, and religious identity was formed; here, its
physical presence has been maintained unbroken throughout the centuries, even
after the majority was forced into exile. With the establishment of the state
of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence, lost 2000 years earlier, was renewed. —American
Jewish Committee
2. The Palestinians' claim is
predicated on the right of ownership evidenced by uninterrupted possession and
occupation since the dawn of recorded history. They lived in the country when
the Hebrews (of whom the Jews claim descent) came and lived there for a
comparatively short period. The continued to live there during the Hebrew (and
Jewish) occupation. They remained there after the last Hebrew or Jew left the
country nearly two thousand years ago....The people today called
Palestinians...are largely the descendants of the Canaanites, the Edomites, and
the Philistines who lived in Palestine when it was invaded by the Hebrews in
ancient times. But the Hebrews finally left or were driven out two thousand
years ago. —Frank S. Sakran, Palestine Still a Dilemma
3. There was no such thing as
Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a
Palestinian state?... It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in
Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them
out and took their country from them. They did not exist. —Golda Meir,
Israeli prime minister, New York Times
4. According to Genesis, this was
the land that God gave to Abraham and his seed....Those Jews who rely on the
biblical deed to the land take their history from the ancient period of 4,000
years or so ago, skipping easily over the centuries of Muslim rule that
followed; those Arabs who regard history as their ally tend to begin with the
Muslim conquests in the seventh century A.D., blithely ignoring the Jewish
kingdoms that existed here 2,000 years before Muhammad made his appearance. —David
K. Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
Questions:
Please respond ON YOUR OWN
PAPERto the questions below by marking either J (Jews), P (Palestinians) or I
(Impossible to determine).
1. Which people have lived in the land longer?
2. Which people have ruled over the land longer?
3. Whose historical claim to the land is stronger?
4. Which people have been present in the land as far
back as records go?
STUDENT WORKSHEET 2:
Directions: Write an outline summary of this history.
Directions: Write an outline summary of this history.
A CAPSULE HISTORY OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
At the end of the 19th century, an international
movement of Jews who called themselves Zionists declared Palestine, the
biblical land of the Jews, to be an appropriate homeland. Spurred by pervasive
anti-Semitism in Europe, pogroms in Eastern Europe and a growing Zionist
movement, Jews began to emigrate to this area, which was then under the control
of the Ottoman Turks and populated mainly by Arabs.
During World War I, Great Britain sought the help of
Arabs to fight the Turks and made promises that Arabs understood would include
an Arab-ruled state in Palestine. At about the same time, in the Balfour
Declaration, Britain also stated its support for a Jewish homeland in
Palestine.
Increasing Jewish immigration and purchase of land led
to serious Arab-Jewish violence in the 1920s and 1930s. The British ordered
restrictive measures. Then German persecution, the murder of 6,000,000 European
Jews, and the anti-Semitism in Western countries such as Great Britain and the
US that kept Jews from emigrating, led to further Jewish immigration to
Palestine, much of it illegal. International sympathy for Jewish suffering
during the war contributed to support for a Jewish state in Palestine.
In 1947 the United Nations voted 33-13 to partition
Palestine into two states, one for Jews, the other for Palestinians (the US
voted for partition). Jerusalem was to be an international zone. At the time
Palestine's population was about 30% Jewish and 70% Arab. Jews owned about 6%
of the land surface; Arabs owned the rest. The Jews agreed to partition, but
the Arabs did not.
Fighting began between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
Jewish leaders declared the independence of Israel on May 14, 1948. Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia then invaded in support of the
Palestinians. Fighting lasted until the end of that year and resulted in a
victory for Israel and a 50% increase in Israeli territory in what Palestinians
still call al-Nakba (the catastrophe). Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
became refugees. Some were expelled by force; others fled the fighting in fear.
Other wars between Israel and Arab countries followed
in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. Israel's victory in 1967 resulted in its control
of the entire territory of the former Palestine mandate under Britain,
including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem. The population
in the former two areas was, and still is, mostly Arab.
Beginning in the 1970s Israel's government encouraged
Israeli citizens to create settlements in the West Bank, especially, but also
in the Gaza Strip. Always a source of anger and resentment to Palestinians,
settlements have gradually increased in population (they now number about 200,000,
half of whom live in East Jerusalem) and new ones have been created. They are
scattered through territories where about 3 million Palestinians live. Having
gained control of all of Jerusalem in 1967, the Israelis made it their capital.
For years they have expanded its boundaries and increased its Jewish
population. But some 200,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem. The
international community (including the US) has not recognized the annexation of
Jerusalem or its expanded boundaries, which have incorporated part of the West
Bank. Most countries still maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv.
The 1960s and 1970s also saw the rise of Fatah, a
Palestinian guerilla organization led by Yasir Arafat, which took over the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and a peace agreement between Israel
and Egypt. A peace agreement between Israel and Jordan followed in 1994.
A sustained Palestinian revolt against Israeli rule
called an intifada ("shaking off") began in 1987 led by youths
throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. The intifada also included arson,
sabotage, riots, and killings. Israeli forces responded forcibly; over 1,000
mostly unarmed Palestinians, many of them children, were killed. Hopes for a
settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict followed secret meetings between
Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Oslo, Norway, that led in 1993 to an
agreement giving limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to a new
Palestinian Authority.
Further years of negotiation aimed at a final settlement
of the major issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians: (1) the status of
Palestinian refugees who Palestinians claim should have the right of return to
their homes and properties in Israel (there are now about 4,000,000 of these
refugees and their descendants); (2) the status of Jerusalem, which is claimed
by both sides; (3) an end to the occupation and the settlements; and (4)
security for Israel and recognition of a Palestinian state.
President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together
for negotiations at Camp David, but these efforts broke down in the summer of
2000. By the fall a new and more violent intifada had begun that included
Palestinian suicide and other attacks in Israeli cities as well as against
Israeli slider and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel responded
with reprisals by armed forces, tanks and planes, targeted assassinations of
Palestinian militants, and destruction of houses and crops. By the beginning of
2002 many hundreds had been killed, the great majority of them Palestinian.
The cycle of violence has brought about increasing
despair and radicalization on both sides. However, many Palestinians and
Israelis still hope that a two-state solution is possible and are searching for
ways to resume negotiations.
During the most recent intifada Israeli actions and
restrictions have disrupted Palestinian travel between villages and towns in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip by a network of checkpoints and physical barriers.
Palestinians are now often unable to get to work or take their fruits,
vegetables, and other farm produce to market, go to school or receive medical
care. A recent United Nations report found that Palestinians lost between $2.4
billion and $3.2 billion in income during the first year of the intifada.
Unemployment more than doubled to 25%; and nearly half the population is living
below the poverty line.
STUDENT WORKSHEET 3:
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
The 1947-1948 Israeli-Arab war resulted in the
creation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Many ended up in
camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as in Jordan and elsewhere. These
camps still exist. Though many of the original refugees have died, a good
number are still alive. Children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are
now part of the refugee population.
To Palestinians, a just settlement of the refugee
issue is a key element in any peace agreement with Israel. Israelis, however,
view it as one the Arab nations and the Palestinians created when they rejected
the 1947 United Nations partition plan. For both sides the refugee issue
continues to be a very emotional one.
Directions: You are a historian. Read the following excerpts from varying points
of view about the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem. Then imagine you
are writing a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Your sources are
what appear in these excerpts. You have just one well-developed paragraph to
explain why there is a Palestinian refugee problem.
1. The Arab refugee problem was
caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in
1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake. If there had been no war against
Israel, with its consequent harvest of bloodshed, misery, panic and flight,
there would be no problem of Arab refugees today. Once you determine the
responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the
refugee problem....The historic origins of that conflict are clearly defined by
the confessions of the Arab governments themselves: "This will be a war of
extermination," declared the Secretary General of the Arab League,
speaking for the governments of six Arab States: "It will be a momentous
massacre to be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades."
—Abba
Eban, Chief Israeli representative to the United Nations
2. Immediately after the UN
General Assembly passed the partition resolution on November 29, 1947, serious
clashes broke out between the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine....some
30,000 upper- and middle-class Arabs left Palestine for safer areas....As the
fighting spread and intensified, many more thousands of frightened Arabs fled
their homes to escape areas of combat....After April 1, 1948, the Arab exodus
accelerated as a result of several successful Jewish military offensives into
Arab-inhabited territories and terroristic attacks by the Irgun and the Stern
Gang (two Jewish guerilla groups) against Arab civilians, like the massacre of
250 men, women, and children in the village of Deir Yaseen, to spread panic
among the Arabs and to cause them to flee whenever Jewish forces approached....
After May 15, many Arabs in combat areas fled their villages. Israelis claimed
that their leaders had ordered them to leave until they could return with the
victorious Arab armies. The Arabs denied this.
(Later) the Israeli authorities
used both military force and psychological warfare to compel as many Arabs as
possible to leave their homes because this would: (l) lessen the danger of Arab
espionage and threats to Israeli lines of communication; (2) provide
desperately needed land and buildings for the Jewish immigrants pouring in; (3)
weaken the neighboring Arab states and interfere with their military efforts by
forcing them to cope with a vast and unexpected refugee problem....and (4) give
Israel a "trump card" which could be used in future political
bargaining.
—Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma
3. The official myth, widely
believed in by Israeli Jews, has it that the 700,000 Arabs who fled their farms
and villages and cities, most of them then barred by Israel from returning, did
so only for two reasons: They left willingly, not wishing to live in a Jewish
state, and they were ordered out by the commanders of the Arab Legion, who
anticipated a decisive military campaign that would return the Arab residents
over the ruins to a defeated Israel. In short, the Jews had no responsibility
whatever for the flight of the Arabs. The truth of this is only partial....Arab
residents of the new state of Israel ran for a mixture of reasons. Some were
simply running from the fighting, as in any war. Others have told me that they
heard the Arab Legion's broadcasts telling them to leave and took heed....Some
who were wealthy enough to afford a trip to Beirut or Amman went for what they
believed would be only a few weeks....But others were deliberately and forcibly
expelled by the Jews. And others fled because they were convinced that if the
Jews got into their villages, they would massacre men, women, and children as
they had done in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April l948.... —David K.
Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
4. It was the Arab states, not
Israel, that rejected the United Nations partition of Palestine into two
states, one Arab, one Jewish. It was five Arab countries that invaded Israel
upon its independence. Thousands of Palestinians fled the fighting-some left
simply because of the ravages of war; others hoped to avoid the conflict and
return once the Arab states defeated and occupied the new Jewish state; still
others were expelled in some locations. While it is a legitimate historical
task to identify these cases, it is clear that had the Arabs not gone to war
with Israel there would be no refugee problem. The basic facts of Israel's
creation are such that every Israeli and others have every reason to be proud. —Abraham
Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League
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