The Palestinian conflict is one of Biblical proportions, a perpetual crisis that has for decades served as a political “football” for the world’s leading states. Its profoundly historic roots continue to further an environment of confrontation in what is arguably the most volatile and fought-over region on earth. The creation of Israel in 1948 and consequent splintering of the Palestinian territory was administered by the British Empire, which had emerged from World War II the victor in the Middle East. Great Britain’s characteristically imperialistic and exploitative motivations soon gave vent to widespread civil unrest and provided a backdrop for the beginnings of that phenomenon we know today as terrorism. Domestic political pressures in places like the United States and other international entanglements have frustrated efforts to find a lasting solution and conspired to make Palestine a socio-political tinderbox and a byword for intransigence.
Background
The political smokescreen of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 set the tone for a power play that would take shape the following year in the Balfour Declaration, which expressed the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The declaration, essentially a letter assuring Zionist interests in England of the Crown’s commitment to their cause, would become a credo in which British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour stated his intention to secure a Jewish homeland without sacrificing the interests and needs of the region’s Arab populations. However, the document quickly became a political tool on multiple levels, with Prime Minister David Lloyd George seeking to leverage the promise of Jewish territory for the help of a prominent and innovative Jewish/Zionist chemist named Chaim Weizmann in the nation’s development of armaments for World War I.
Palestinian Arabs were quick to voice their opposition to the imposition of a Jewish state in their midst. In 1918, Palestinian leaders made known their resolute opposition to the aims of European powers, protesting that the high-minded beneficence of the English was one thing; the logistical pressures and day-to-day impracticalities occasioned by an artificially and forcefully created Jewish homeland was quite another.2 Despite his protestations to the contrary, Lord Balfour later wrote that he considered that the needs and historic rights of the Jews superseded those of the Arabs in Palestine. Balfour also confessed that he believed encouraging Jew and Arab to co-exist peacefully would prove extremely difficult. Thus, the stage was set for what would become a continuously lethal and confrontational situation, one born of political expediency and which remains susceptible to the exigencies of international power politics nearly a century later.
Political pressures
The Arab states that surround Israel greeted the new Jewish state with an economic and political boycott, in spite of the fact that most other nations around the world recognized its right to exist. However, the Israelis enjoyed the ever-increasing support of the Jewish diaspora, a formidable economic and political force capable of levying pressure on governments around the globe.3 When one considers the horrors of the Holocaust and its psychological effect on Jews throughout the world, it is hardly surprising that the Jewish worldwide community should have adopted a “no-quarter” stance toward Arab aggression in the Middle East. The posture of activism adopted by Jewish-Americans toward the U.S. government offers a representative example of the attitude held by Jews, who consider Israel a spiritual and emotional touchstone. “For Jews after 1948, Israel not only realized their political and spiritual hopes, it continued to be a beacon of opportunity guiding those of them still living in Diaspora,” and placing Jews who flocked to their ancestral homeland in the vanguard of the Zionist movement.4
Groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee have long been potent organizers and lobbyists for a pro-Israeli foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. The political atmosphere in the United States, which has for the past two decades been the most important external actor in the Middle East, has been predominantly hostile to Arab-Palestinian viewpoints since before the 9/11 attacks, wrote Richard Becker in Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire. “While Arab American professors, especially Palestinians, are targeted on a regular basis, special efforts are made to drive Jewish critics out of academia or positions of political influence.”5 The political clout that pro-Israeli organizations wield within the U.S. has helped create a situation that has led to political suicide for American officials who even question the continuation of support for Israel.
Over the past decade, the U.S. has stepped up its efforts to secure a peaceful solution to the problem of a Palestinian homeland. Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell was appointed special envoy to the Middle East in 2009 by the Obama administration. Mitchell has worked closely with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in seeking to improve the Palestinians’ status in the United Nations from U.N. observer to non-member observer state, from which the Palestinians could try to parlay into full member status in various U.N. organizations, such as the World Health Organization and UNESCO. However, it appears that Mitchell’s recent resignation as envoy signals a setback in the process. Mitchell said there can be no lasting peace between an independent Palestinian state and Israel until the Israelis feel assured of a high degree of security. Unfortunately, Mitchell said, there can be no security until the Palestinians have their own government. Thus, the two parties remain locked in a vicious circle from which there seems no escape. As is often the case in such a volatile situation, multiple players struggling for power have complicated the Palestinian question.
Multiple voices, internal complications
The United States and its allies have supported the Palestinian Authority, hoping that the party of which Mahmoud Abbas is the head will come out on top. Hamas, which the U.S. State Department has designated a terrorist organization, took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. At that point, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations all threw their support behind the Palestinian Authority. Gains made by Hamas since 2009 have eroded Abbas’ political standing and heightened tensions with the Israelis. The stated policy of the U.S. concerning Hamas has made it difficult to positively impact the situation from outside and the collection of power brokers who have supported the Palestinian Authority find themselves legally constrained from doing much more than offering humanitarian aid.6
External support has been funneled through the Palestinian Authority, which is organized and functions as a sovereign government, even though it does not enjoy that status. The Authority is democratically oriented, with an executive, legislative and judicial branch, which accounts for its having found favor with the U.S. and other foreign powers.7 However, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) retains a high degree of prominence within the Palestinian territories and maintains responsibility for negotiating with Israel (the PLO has an unofficial embassy of sorts in Washington, D.C.). Unfortunately, the popularity of the PLO among Palestinians does not sit well with the U.S., or with European nations. The Palestine that the U.S. deals with is quite different from the one that functions according to the precepts of a tumultuous past.
The political rise of Abbas coincided with the growing unpopularity of Fatah, a powerful faction within the Palestinian Authority and one which is historically associated with Yasser Arafat. Fatah’s militancy once was representative of Palestinian nationalism, though the air of legitimacy conferred upon the Authority by those nations seeking to broker peace with Israel undermined much of its former strength.8 In recent years, Hamas, yet another prominent voice within the Palestinian power structure, has been Israel’s most implacable foe. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets at Israel from across the Gaza Strip and is internationally known for a campaign of suicide bomb attacks carried out against Israel citizens. Nevertheless, the Israelis and Hamas have made peaceful gestures, recognizing that there are mutual benefits to be derived from cooperation.
Peace factions on both sides appear to have made inroads. In October 2011, the Israelis announced the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.9 However, there is another motivating factor at work, one which Hamas and Israel both seek to leverage, and which has further complicated an already seriously muddled situation. According to Hani Masri, a Palestinian political analyst based in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Hamas and Israel have mounted a deliberate attempt to “undercut the recent boost of Palestinian popular support for Mahmoud Abbas after the Palestinian Authority president’s bid for statehood at the United Nations,” a move which both Israel and Hamas oppose.10 This tangle of motivations among the region’s key players has created confusion within the U.S. State Department, and conflict
over the means by which Palestine may seek U.N. certification has led to, among other things, the previously mentioned resignation of George Mitchell, a man who has played a key role in negotiations for years.
Conclusion
In a May 2011 New York Times article, Mahmoud Abbas declared that the Palestinian Authority had to take its case before the United Nations now, before more Jewish settlers pour into the West Bank.11 For Abbas, securing international recognition of the State of Palestine is the long-overdue fulfillment of a movement that began in 1948 when the United States announced its recognition of a Palestinian homeland.12 Additionally, Palestine has officially sanctioned embassies and missions in approximately 100 countries around the world. But by November 2011, the strange odyssey of the would-be Palestinian state had reached yet another frustrating and typically convoluted milestone: a threatened American veto had for all intents and purposes hamstrung Abbas’ quest for recognition at the U.N.
Despite its 1948 recognition of Palestine, the U.S. continues to find itself in the position of stymying efforts by the Palestinian Authority to secure statehood. With Hamas and other factions with which the U.S. remains at odds maintaining influential positions, the Americans fear the establishment of a Palestinian state that does not have the full support of its people. The concern is that such a situation would only reinvigorate violence within Palestine and between Israel and its traditional Palestinian enemies. Paradoxically, a historically toxic situation in which Palestine is denied international recognition through the United Nations has been reinforced by the United States and its allies, who seek nothing less than long-term stability in the region.
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Naylor, Hugh. “Hamas and Israel Realize Cooperation is Mutually Beneficial.” The National.
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