The state of action and reaction between Israelis and Palestinians has continued for decades with several wars in addition to local level intersecting conflicts
It is perhaps for the first time since the Sadat-Begin accord presided over by Jimmy Carter 40 years ago that the US last month announced a very laudable and a concrete proposal for the development and mainstreaming of Palestinians. Worth over $7 billion, the plan was unveiled at a recent conference in Bahrain by Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. Though the Palestinians did not attend, some Israeli private entrepreneurs were present. For the present, without an official Israeli approval, it is difficult to visualise any forward movement towards the implementation of such a proposal, which made virtually no contribution towards ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
To the current generation of youth, Islamic terrorism is synonymous with images of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden and ISIS. To their parents, it would be the Munich Olympics massacre, a violent Beirut and numerous hijackings. Research papers and books have been written to theorise that Islam is a manifestation of a violent civilisation and its interface with other religious communities bristles with faultlines. While this may be only true in certain specific instances and not as a generality, at the same time it would be important for us to understand the genesis of violence involving Islamic groups in the contemporary scene. For this we have to go back in history by about a hundred years.
When Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, a series of events was set in motion leading to the World War I and the subsequent collapse of the Ottoman and other empires. After the war, this resulted in uncertainty for Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Algeria, countries which had been conquered 400 years ago for the Ottomans by Selim I. Later, under the aegis of the League of Nations, a permanent Mandate Commission was constituted, which allowed certain countries to be administered by those who had won or occupied such territories. Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, all parts of former Turkish Empire, were classified as category A mandates, which were entitled to eventual independence. The administration of Iraq, Palestine and Egypt was handed over to Britain while Syria and Lebanon were awarded to France. Keeping in line with the spirit of the mandates, Iraq became independent in 1937.
At this stage it is important to recall that while the war was still raging, in November 1917, then foreign secretary of Britain, Arthur James Balfour wrote to Baron Rothschild, head of an English Jewish banking family, pledging British support to Zionist efforts for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. This was a war-time communication known as the Balfour declaration, conveying an intent on future policy in order to win over the Russians, who were at that time under the influence of Jews, for their greater involvement in the war effort as at that time Kerensky was playing a very dominant role in the government. Later, however, with the success of the Russian revolution, also in November 1917, the ground situation changed drastically as Lenin declared an armistice with Germany unilaterally. Nevertheless, the British promise remained intact.
Even though the administration under the mandate was in the hands of Britain, Jews from all over the world began to make serious plans and efforts to start administering the Palestinian territory sometime in future. This led to heavy influx of Jews into this area. Despite the fact that some of these areas were in an active theatre of World War II, the hardliners wanted the mandate to be circumvented as quickly as possible. The obvious aim was that when Palestine would be ripe for independence and the British left after the completion of the mandate, it should become a Jewish territory. In due course, such hardliners began a campaign to harass the British so that they were compelled to vacate Palestine sooner than later. In this context, the activities of the Irgun and the Stern gangs, both Jewish terrorist outfits, are worth recalling.
Their campaign began in November 1944 when the Stern Gang assassinated the British Minister for the Middle East, Lord Moyne, in Cairo. This was followed by an escalation of violence in Palestine, with several incidents against the British. In the absence of any clear directions on policy, the British chose not to respond. But when Irgun launched a wave of attacks, bombing trains and bridges connecting Palestine to neighbouring states, a response came swiftly. Mass arrests were made across Palestine and over 2,000 Zionists were arrested. However, none of the ring leaders of Irgun or Stern Gang was caught. This resulted in escalation of violence with Irgun inflicting a devastating blow to the British rule in Palestine when it bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. As is well known, this bombing was planned by the leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, later to be the sixth Prime Minister of Israel and a joint winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for the 1978 Arab-Israel accord.
Begin, in his book The Revolt, has explained “history and experience taught us that if we are able to destroy the prestige of British in Palestine, the regime will break. Since we found the enslaving government’s weak point, we did not let it go.” After the success of this bombing, the Irgun and the Stern Gang extended their activities outside Palestine. An Irgun cell bombed the British Embassy in Rome and followed this with a series of attacks on British targets in Germany. Later, Irgun bombed a club in London, injuring several servicemen. Prominent British public figures connected with Palestine also received death threats. In June 1947, the Stern Gang launched a letter-bomb campaign in Britain, which targetted prominent member of the Cabinet. Sir Stafford Cripps barely escaped becoming a victim. Similarly, Sir Anthony Eden was lucky to have escaped. There was no counter from the British, much less from the Palestinians, as the British by then, had almost made up their mind to quit the mandate.
Ultimately the strength of the Jewish activists, with support of influential Jews from all over the world and amply demonstrated by its armed struggle in Palestine, persuaded the United Nations in November 1947 to partition Palestine into separate, independent Jewish and Arab states. This led to a virtual free for all and a war-like situation between various competing factions from which Israel emerged as a viable State, while Palestine ceased to exist. The Palestinian population, largely leaderless and ill-prepared for war, was driven out of what became Israeli territory by a combination of deliberate attacks. When the war ended, Palestinians had been reduced to a refugee status and kept in camps. Not surprisingly, this gave birth to a new generation of insurgents, who later turned to the same methods that Jews had used to drive out the British. This was the birth of the PLO.
The seeds of terrorism had been sown with the tree growing rapidly with several branches of varied shades. Some were taken over by the Left wing revolutionaries nurtured by the Cold War politics. On the other hand, we had a nation state fighting for its existence, security and sovereignty. This state of action and reaction between Israelis and Palestinians has continued for decades with several wars in addition to local level intersecting conflicts. In the mean time, the politics of Islamic dominance, Gulf and Middle East oil, besides the super power rivalries and their attempts to ensure through surrogates that their sphere of influence remains strong and intact, has kept the pot boiling. This has had consequences for the world which have been serious and long-lasting. The fallout from this insurgency of eight decades ago is still playing out on the local, regional and world stages in different forms by different players.
(The writer is a retired Delhi Police Commissioner and former Uttarakhand Governor)
