3. Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Readings: Tolan, ch. 1–2; class lecture.

Question

3. Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Readings: Tolan, ch. 1–2; class lecture.

a. The Balfour Declaration; what did it try to do? (9)

b. What was the recommendation in 1947 of the UN Special Committee on Palestine? What were the Arab and Zionist reactions? (49-50)

c. The Zionist movement and its goals; who was Theodore Herzle? What is aliyah? (71-74)

d. What were Zionist alternative views (for example, Martin Buber or the Party Mapam) on coexistence with Arabs? (83-84)

e. Arab refugees after the founding of Israel. What is Israel’s policy about the return of Palestinian refugees? (89, 92-94)

f. How did the second Arab-Israeli war start and end in 1956? (115-116)

g. Who are the Mizrahim or the “Oriental Jews?” How were they treated after the founding of Israel? (116-120)

h. UN Resolution 242; why is Israel opposed to the return of Palestinian refugees? (153-154, 199-200,

Explanation / Answer

a) It tried to establishment Palestine as the national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

b) The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created on 15 May 1947 in response to a United Kingdom government request that the General Assembly make recommendations under article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine. The British government had also recommended the establishment of a special committee to prepare a report for the General Assembly. The General Assembly adopted the recommendation to set up the UNSCOP to investigate the cause of the conflict in Palestine, and, if possible, devise a solution. UNSCOP was made up of representatives of 11 nations.

The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the Commission, explaining that the Palestinian Arabs' natural rights were self-evident and could not continue to be subject to investigation, but rather deserved to be recognized on the basis of the principles of the United Nations Charter

c) Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. Before the Holocaust, the movement's central aims were the creation of a Jewish national home and cultural centre in Palestine by facilitating Jewish migration. After the Holocaust, the movement focused on creation of a Jewish state attaining its goal in 1948 with the creation of Israel.

In the late 1870s, Jewish philanthropists such as the Montefiores and the Rothschilds responded to the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe by sponsoring agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine. The Jews who migrated in this period are known as the First Aliyah.Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning "ascent", referring to the act of spiritually "ascending" to the Holy Land and a basic tenet of Zionism.

d) The Labour Zionists, however, did seek an alternative approach at the Biltmore hotel, although most knew it was far from perfect. In the 1930s, when they were trying to secure only some Jewish “homeland,” they promoted any number of binationalist ideas all of them stubbornly opposed by Palestinian Arabs. Even at the Biltmore conference, convened a few months after the tragic sinkings of the Patria and Struma (ships laden with Jewish refugees which the British turned away from Palestine), Mapai, Ben-Gurion’s own party, first abstained on his motion for a state, while Chaim Weizmann, on his right, and the Mapam party on his left, opposed it on the grounds that some binational solution must still be found.

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