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The Palestine–Israel Confl ict A Basic Introduction Second Edition Gregory Harms with Todd M. Ferry Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere iiiiii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:410:50:41 Second edition published 2008 First published 2005 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Gregory Harms 2005, 2008 The right of Gregory Harms and Todd M. Ferry to be identifi ed as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2735 8 hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2734 1 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the United States of America HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere iivv 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:410:50:41 for my brother, Jason HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere v 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:410:50:41 Contents List of Maps ix Acknowledgments xi Preface to the Second Edition xiii Introduction xvii Part I: Background History 1 Ancient History: Canaan–Palestine From the First Foot Falls to Rome 3 (by Todd M. Ferry) 2 Muhammad, Islam, and the Arab Empire 23 3 The Crusades to the Ottoman Empire 35 Part II: Pre-confl ict 4 Jewish Persecution and Zionism 47 5 Palestine 57 6 World War I to World War II The Genesis of Confl ict 65 Part III: Confl ict 7 1947–1967 Confl ict: Partition, Israeli Statehood, and the Six-Day War 87 8 The 1970s to Lebanon 1982 The Continuation of the Arab–Israeli Confl ict 117 9 The Intifada and the Peace Process 141 10 Into the Twenty-First Century Camp David II and the Bush II Era 159 Conclusion: Current Developments 194 vii HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere vviiii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:410:50:41 viii Contents Appendices 1 Chronology 203 2 Israel’s Prime Ministers 206 3 General Data: Israel, Palestine 207 Notes 209 Suggested Reading 236 Select Bibliography 242 Index 246 HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere vviiiiii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:420:50:42 Maps 1 The Middle East and Southwest Asia xxiv 2 UNGA Partition Plan, 1947 (UN 181) and Armistice Lines, 1949 92 3 Post-June 1967 War: Territories occupied by Israel 114 4 Oslo II, 1995 157 5 Projection of West Bank Final Status Map presented by Israel, Camp David II, July 2000 167 6 Fragmentation of the West Bank (June 2007) 177 Maps 2–5 courtesy of PASSIA. Map 6 courtesy of UN-OCHA. ix HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere iixx 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:420:50:42 Acknowledgments I would like to offer profound thanks to: Scott Darley, Ben Nowicki, Shawn Mitchell, Annie Higgins, Jeffrey Ball (Dove Booksellers), Shany Shlomo, Lahan Sarid, Ali Abu Shawish, Naim Toubassi, Zaid Alayobi, Ryan Robinson, Jerilyn Tabor, Michael Pugh, Alfonso Flores V, Clement Cherian, Jan Larsen (the Herald News), and George David Miller. Many thanks are owed to Alex Lubertozzi and Jennifer Fusco at Prologue Publishing for much-needed direction and guidance. To Roger van Zwanenberg, Julie Stoll, David Castle, Robert Webb, Matthew Seal, and everyone at Pluto Press I am thankful for realizing this project. I am grateful to Professor Arthur Goldschmidt Jr and Professor Charles D. Smith for their availability, honesty, and advice. I am indebted to my mother, Martha Harms, and George Savich for their early and much-needed help. Grant and Genevieve Harms (both of whom passed during the writing of this book, and a second dedication would go to them), and my father, Joseph, and Diana Harms all provided me with humbling support and hospitality at the farm. I am grateful for immediate and unbending support of this project to Mark Eleveld, who upon my initial consideration of the idea fi rmly encouraged me to get started. Special thanks go to my friend and colleague, Todd Ferry, who thoughtfully came along at the right time and whose knowledge and expertise made a superb contribution to this book. Vikram Sura, who I met in Jerusalem, has been a tremendous source of support and counsel ever since. For innumerable reasons I am indebted to Michael Slager, countless conversations with whom have sharpened my thinking on all manner of subjects (thanks, Michael). I owe an impossible amount of gratitude to Tom Jasper for his selfl ess generosity and encouraging fi reside chats (and to Givon and Madison Jasper for helpin’ their Uncle G). xi HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere xxii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:420:50:42 xii Acknowledgments Lastly, I am grateful to the people in Israel and Palestine who, far too numerous to list here, showed me hospitality, friendship, and openness during my time spent researching there in June 2002. It is in these qualities and people that their leaders can – and must – fi nd an exemplar. All those noted above contributed to this project in a multitude of ways, the sum total of which made this possible. For the existence of this book they have an equal share in its arrival; for the contents and any errors therein, I alone am responsible. Gregory Harms HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere xxiiii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:420:50:42 Preface to the Second Edition “Who’s fighting and what for?” Mick Jagger, Altamont Raceway, 1969 One would be hard pressed to pick up a newspaper, or turn on the evening news, and not come across words and phrases like “West Bank,” “Hamas,” “Zionist” or “Arab–Israeli peace process.” The Palestine–Israel confl ict is a permanent fi xture in news media the world over. And though geographically tiny, the tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories send shockwaves around the globe. Oftentimes, in reaction to news or conversation about the confl ict, you might hear people make remarks such as, “Those people have been fi ghting for thousands of years!” Given the way the confl ict is presented in the media, as a perpetual tallying of deaths on each side with no historical context, it’s not surprising that many commonly make such judgments. But like most things, what actually lies beneath the surface bears little resemblance to what it’s presumed to be. So, where is someone to go and get a basic understanding of the most notorious confl ict of the twentieth and now twenty- fi rst centuries? As mentioned, the network and cable news outlets tell you almost nothing except for dutifully reported fatalities, the classrooms of American high schools are uncontaminated with discussion of it (though the September 11 attacks opened things up a bit), and though there are mountains of books on the subject, they tend to be 500 pages long, or focused on a particular aspect, or both. People with families and jobs typically don’t have the time to pore over cumbersome monographs on history and political science. For years I stared blankly at the shelves of the Middle East section in countless bookstores wondering to myself, xiii HHarms2arms2 0000 pprere xxiiiiii 119/12/079/12/07 110:50:420:50:42 xiv Preface to the Second Edition Why are there zero books on this confl ict that are around 150 pages long, start with the ancient history, and feature plenty of endnotes and suggested reading to guide the reader onward? The Dummies and Idiot’s Guide series have made a large contribution to offering people with basic introductions to everything from ballet to beekeeping, but even their titles on the Middle East are 400–500 pages long – a bit heavy for a primer. During a discussion of this problematic lack of primer-level titles a friend of mine pointed out something rather interesting: The scientifi c community publishes a whole host of magazines and books dedicated to a general readership. People who have three kids and work 40-plus hours a week can learn about the latest breakthroughs and theories in cosmology and quantum physics, and have an almost endless supply of articles written clearly and simply so he or she can understand the various concepts without a PhD or reading a book that weighs ten pounds. This trend would be most welcome, and is desperately needed, in the realms of foreign affairs and political science, especially in the present case of the Middle East. This book aims at contributing to the thin supply of basic and comprehensive literature on the Palestine–Israel confl ict. In producing the book I could never fi nd I merely had to look at what wasn’t being made available to readers, namely, an introduction to the entire history of Canaan–Palestine– Israel, from the Paleolithic period to last week. As a result, the fi rst half of this book has almost nothing to do with the confl ict directly, but a basic knowledge of the region’s deep history is critical, especially in light of what I have somewhat blandly labeled the Thousand Year Myth. The best way to dispel any myth, of course, is to present the facts that undermine it, and therefore the ancient history is covered in this book to demonstrate that “those people” have not been fi ghting “for thousands of years.” The book is broken up into three main sections.

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