Reactie Astrid Essed op Quora/Reactie op zionistische post over de Israelische ”Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog”

Great question. It never will.

First we need to define war in this case as definition 2 of Webster’s dictionary; a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism.

Without getting into any long drawn out academic analysis, in a nutshell, the roots of the conflict go back to Mandate Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, where the British who took control of the Levant from the defeated Ottoman Empire after WW1 pledged to “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

This for obvious reasons do not sit too well with many Muslim Arabs already living there.

In 1947, to try and molify the Arabs as well as find a home for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews of Europe who survived the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to Partition Palestine into two states; one Jewish and one Palestinian.

The Muslim Palestinian Arabs flat out rejected the plan and as soon as the British authority left, the Jews declared independence, accepting the Partition Plan, and the Arab League of Nations attacked.

This war of Israeli Independance and what the Palestianin Muslim Arabs refer to as Al Naqba (The Tragedy) created what is now called the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Before I get into to that let’s take a step back and examine what a Democratic, Sovereign Jewish State in the ancestrial home of the Jewish People actually means. In order to be defined as a Jewish State yet at the same time be a democracy, the demographic majority of the population must identify as and be Jewish (I will get into what defines one as being Jewish another time).

During the 1948 War of Indepednace, many Palestinian Arabs fled their homes as people often due during conflict. When the cease fire was established and the final demarcation lines set, many of these Arabs could not return home as their villages were now within the Jewish State of Israel.

So?, one might ask, let them come home and just become Citizens of the newly formed State of Israel. Ah ha! Can’t do that! If you do that then demographics change. Remember what I said above. If the county no longer is majority Jewish and still democratic, it can no longer be called a Jewish State.

Fast forward to 1967. Israel under immenant threat from Egypt, launches a preemptive strike and in the ensuing conflict now referred to as the Six Day War, Israel concurs the West Bamk, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

I doing so, also acquired Egyptian, Jordanian (former Palestinian) and Syrian Citizens along with Palestinian Refugees from the 1948 conflict.

What to do. At least Israel now had some territorial strategic depth to defend against their hostile Arab neighbors as well as some chips to negotiate with, which they would ultimately use to make a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 by returning them the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt refused to take back the Gaza Strip comprised mostly of Palestinian Refugees and in 1988 Jordan ceded all claims to the West Bank stripping their former citizens there under Israeli Occupation, of their Jordanian Citizenship).

Well we know Israel just walked away from Gaza in 2005, they annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 and generously offered Israeli citizenship to the mostly Druze (non-Muslim Arabs) that still remained (the majority of Syrian Arabs fled into Syria during the Six Day war) but what to do with the now millions of Palestenians in the West Bank? Can’t annex that and offer citizenship, bye bye Jewish State if they did that.

So that is the current state of affairs. In spite of technically being occupied, the 1993 Oslo Accords afford the Palestinians in the West Bank their own Civilian autonomy and they do fare much better than their Arab counterparts in Jordan, Egypt and certainly Syria.

Barring the occasional terrorist attack and the inevitable Israeli crackdowns in response, things seem to be pretty quite right now. That could all change in the blink of an eye with another Intifada or what have you, so ultimately a more permanent solution and disengagement needs to happen.

Problem is, unlike Gaza, where there was essentially just one big settlement to disband, the West Bank is loaded with them, some as large as small cities.

I believe the ultimate plan, which was no doubt always part of Israel’s long term strategic negotiating chip, is to annex certain parts of the West Bank comprised of large blocks of Jewish Settlements and just give the Palestianes the rest with maybe some land swaps and money and then build a big wall.

Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Israel proper (1948 boundaries) they will probably offer some form of monetary settlement. All this will likely have to be done unilaterally.

So you can see, since Israël will never allow itself to not have a Jewish majortiy, there could never be peace from the perspective of the Palestinians.

One final note to leave on.

If the Arabs laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down theirs, there would be genocide.

Thanks for reading.