Land in the Middle East (Views on the Area, Pt 1)

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Views of the Area will be a series of essays on specific regions of the world, and the various political, economic, social, military, and historic forces that shape these regions, along with my own opinions on all of these.

The first part of this essay in Views of the Area will look at what is quite possibly the basis for most of the problems in the Middle East, the issue of land, and who owns which part of it.

In 1947, the United Nations took up the matter of the creation of both a Jewish and Palestinian state. David Ben-Gurion announced the independence of Israel in the next year, and the new state was immediately attacked by its neighbors.

Since that time, many arguments have been made about who owns what land in Israel and the surrounding region...in fact, the possession of certain parts of land have become the main sticking points in talks between Israel and the Palestinians...all other issues not withstanding, of course...

The Palestinians claim they own the land that Israel sits on, simply because they were there before the Jewish state was created. It must be stated however that as far as modern history is concerned, Jews have been living in the area since at least 1891, when local Arabs protested the settling of Jews in Palestine. Prior to this, the story of the region was largely one of some variety of Arab or some other dominance...with a few breaks provided by the Crusades.

The Palestinians of today say that they have been forced from their homes and livelihoods by an Israeli state that is hostile to them, and as a part of their talks with Israel, they demand a "right of return," which is to say, these displaced Palestinians want to be able to return to what was their homes.

This sounds like a great idea. Certainly, no one would be opposed to people returning to their homes. However, historically, no such right exists. Jews were uprooted from their homes in Germany before and during WWII, Germans were uprooted from their homes in Poland after WWII, all sorts of "population transfer" happened in the Balkans during the 1990s...basically, anywhere there is a refugee problem, there is the possibility of a permanent displacement. Even a natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the southern coast of the United States caused a wave of population displacement, and it is certain that not all of the people who lived in those areas will be returning to their homes.

Israel opposes the Palestinian right of return for two reasons. The first is that by leaving, the Palestinians forfeited any ownership of the lands...whether this is justified or not is not the point, this is one view held by the Israelis. Are they supposed to let houses sit abandoned? Are they supposed to let farms sit idle? The other reason Israel does not like the Palestinian right of return is because if such a thing were granted, there would then be the possibility that a flood of Palestinians returning home would tip the demographics in Israel, and suddenly, the Jweish state would lose its Jewish character. This is why Israel left the Gaza Strip last year...they have no intention of absorbing a large number of Palestinians into the Jewish state.

This can be taken too far. There is the story of a Palestinian hotel in Jerusalem which was to be closed because local Jews had managed to buy the land underneath the hotel. Some people might see the border wall that Israel is constructing to be another example of Israel going too far, but in this case, it is something that has worked so far in Gaza, for the most part...which is why people are complaining...anything that ensures the security of Israel is bad for the Palestinian whackos who are only interested in killing innocent people in shopping malls or streetside cafes.

On the other hand, you have the radical Arab view that Israel should not exist at all. The Iranian maniac-President calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, and in fact, Palestinian maps of the area show it as being completely owned by the Palestinians. By listening to this kind of rhetoric, it is easy to see their view of who owns what. It doesn't bode well for Israel, and it would seem to make negotiating with the Palestinians to be an excercise in futility, after all, if the group you are talking to is out for your annihilation, is anything they agree to really worth the paper it is written upon?

However, Israel can play the game too. After all, this is all a matter of who was inhabiting the area first, and if you go back to the Bible, Israel should own everything it has now, plus most of Syria, and good chunks of both Lebanon and Iraq, because under King David, and then King Solomon, the biblical state of Israel dominated the Middle East. If you go back further, you have Canaanites, Jebusites, and such, but those peoples don't exist anymore.

So, perhaps it;s time that the Palestinians quit playing the little games with who owns what parcel of land, and get to some of the real issues in the argument between them and Israel.

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John B.
Blogger Guy

* Information taken from "The Palestine-Israeli Conflict", by Dan COhn-Sherbok and Dawoud El-Alami (Copyright 2001-2003).

The term "population transfer" was used by the British to describe the forced dislocation of Germans from what became western Poland in the aftermath of WWII.