Trying to Make Sense of the Senseless

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still trying to make some kind of sense of the massacre of over 1,000 innocent people in Israel on October 7th.

I’ll plant my flag in the ground at the start. The more I learn about the history of the region and the (many) conflicts over the last 100 years, the more I sympathise with Israel.

Even if I adopt the position (and I don’t) that it was wrong to establish a Jewish homeland back in 1948, then what do we do about it, today, some 75 years later?

This, obviously, should not be taken as some kind of blanket agreement with, or support of, everything Israel has done in response to attacks over the years.

Might that view change as I learn more? Sure, it might. But the more I try to sort out the fact from fiction in the historical record, the less I can interpret past and current events in the typical way the “Free Palestine” (FP) movement would have me do.

The word that sticks in my mind about October 7th most of all is depravity.

It’s not a word I can readily level against the Israelis. It’s not a word I can level against the majority of the Palestinians. It’s certainly a word I can use to describe Hamas.

The standard FP response might be to suggest that the oppressive actions of Israel over the years have turned a sweet and good-natured people into ravening monsters. I don’t buy that.

Gaza is not Palestine, although some Palestinians live there. In other areas of Israel Jew and Arabs manage to co-exist with much more equanimity. The problem is not, therefore, as simple as “Palestinian vs Israeli”. There’s something more going on with Gaza that has upset the ability of Jews and Arabs to peacefully co-exist.

The whole issue centres around lines drawn on a map and who gets to determine the rules and regulations within those lines.

The only people to have ever claimed (and lived in) this particular region as their country are the Jews. “Ever” is perhaps too strong a claim, but the historical claim of the Jews stretches back thousands of years. Nobody else since then has claimed this particular plot as a separate country.

But the world being what it is, a mere claim, however “legitimate”, does not automatically confer rights - and nor should it.

If you look at the movement of Jews into the region in the 1920’s (who added to the Jews who were already living there) you’ll discover that the Jews bought the land (mostly on the West coast). They didn’t “occupy” it and it can be described as “colonization” in only the most pejorative sense. Some Arab families were displaced in the process - in the same way tenants might be displaced when house ownership changes, but compensation was given by the Jews and the number of displaced families numbered around 2,000.

Fast forward a bit to 1947 and the world, via the auspices of the UN, decided to implement a plan it had previously tried to implement back in the 1920’s, or thereabouts. It decided to draw some new lines on the map so that the Jews could have their own homeland.

The split (very roughly) correlated with who already owned the land. We’re talking about individual ownership here, not national ownership. It is my understanding that under this plan no Arab was going to lose ownership of a plot of land as a result of the creation of a new sovereignty over the region.

Under this plan nobody was going to be rendered homeless or kicked off their (privately owned) land - it was about who got to determine the rules and regulations within the lines; who got sovereignty over the land. There was no “country” to divide up in the sense there was no nation state that was being carved up in the process.

The British, who had the mandate for governance of the region (which was not, yet, a separate country or countries), were against the establishment of either a Jewish state or Arabic state there because they didn’t want to upset their other Arab allies or their economic interests in the region.

In 1948 the Jews announced their sovereignty over the region defined by the UN and the state of Israel was born. Peace lasted about 24 hours because the Arabs in the region (not, yet, having any identity as Palestinians) didn’t like this and started a war with Israel.

We can argue about the rights and wrongs of this carve up of territory and the creation of new countries in the region (Israel was not the only country to be created), but 75 years later what do we do about it?

But there’s a question I’ve been tussling with over the last few days. Suppose, in some hypothetical alternative history, the UN or the British had decided to carve up the land differently. Suppose they’d created a two-state solution but with two Arabic states. And let’s call these states, for the sake of argument, Malestine and Palestine.

Do you think that if the Malestinians had announced their sovereignty in 1948 over their bit of the carve up, the Palestinians would have gone to war with them?

I could be wrong, but I very much doubt it. If I’m right in this, then the problem isn’t just about the carving up of the land - it’s the carving up of the land in favour of a specific people.

Carve up the land so that it remains Arabic - more or less fine and dandy. But if you give sovereignty of any of this land to those Jews, then we’re going to fight.

This, then, isn’t just about an ill-considered carve up of land sovereignty - it’s also about ethnic animosity. At least if the speculation implied by my hypothetical question is right.

Having said that, I will contradict myself. There have also been considerable tensions (and wars), as result of national carve ups imposed by others (notably the British) between Arabs - so it’s not entirely beyond the realms of possibility that we could be, today, living with a Malestine vs Palestine conflict had history been different.

Much of the subsequent problems started with that 1948 war. Wars are horrific things - and they can be even more horrific if you end up on the losing side. After, against all the odds, winning the war in 1948, what should Israel have done with the new territories it gained as a result of winning a war it didn’t start? How should they have responded to the very clear and present threat they were under, despite having won?

It seems a bit naïve to suggest they should just have handed it all back with a sort of “naughty Arabs - we’ll just pretend it never happened” shrug of their national shoulders.

Similarly with the 1967 and 1973 wars - neither started by Israel - in which they were attacked by other Arab nations.

But Israel also started at least one war. In 1956 they, along with the British and French, invaded Egypt. This was not a response to any aggressive military act by Egypt.

I honestly don’t know how things move forward from here. There needs to be a response by Israel to the depravity of Hamas. What that response ought to be is not so easy to figure out. As far as I can see, pretty much every response of Israel will lead to more bloodshed and the loss of innocent life. It’s an absolute tragedy. If Hamas were to take over Israel, do you think we’d have a wonderful era of peace and harmony with no further bloodshed? If Israel was given to the Palestinians (as distinct from Hamas) we could ask the same question.

Fundamentally, I see the intractable nature of this conflict less as an argument about land, but more as an argument deeply embedded in ethnic animosity¹.

If this was solely about the politics of land ownership I think a solution would have been worked out decades ago.

I wish I had better sense to make of it all. There’s still a lot I don’t know and I’m still in the process of piecing bits together. I wish there were some way out of this that did not result in the loss of more innocent life. But the onus cannot, and should not, be entirely upon the Israelis here. They’re not the only ones who are responsible for figuring out a peaceful solution.

And there can be no peace with people who do not want peace.

1. And this ethnic animosity exists in some, but by no means all, of the people involved. Not every Palestinian is, for example, some kind of rabid Jew-hater - but certainly some are. The number of haters are, I believe, a minority, but it’s a large enough minority to have caused significant bloodshed to both Israelis and Palestinians over the years.