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Home , Gaza War (2008–2009), Refugee crisis, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, Zionist entity

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict A Lecture/Discussion Series Don Gall, Facilitator First Congregational Church, UCC, Eugene, Oregon Summer, 2021

Session III The Arab-Israeli : From 1947 to the Present

The first between and began nearly seventy-five years ago as a conflict between and Zionists. It was a conflict over who was to have sovereignty over the land. Then, after the Zionists succeeded in establishing the State of in 1948, what had begun as a conflict between two groups competing for statehood developed into a conflict between the State of Israel and the state-less Palestinians. This quickly boiled over into a broader interstate conflict between Israel and the Arab states of the . The latter began immediately after Israel’s founding in 1948 and for three decades it overshadowed the more localized Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The broader Arab-Israeli conflict began in 1949 and led to the Arab states categorically rejecting Israel’s and to their calling for the eradication of what they called the “” from their midst. Over time, , in its bid to lead the Sunni , proposed its own peace initiative with Israel, which in 2002 was endorsed by the , promising to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and establish full diplomatic relations with Israel if it withdrew from all the territory it occupied, accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state, and reached a “just solution to the Palestinian problem.” Even though the Israeli government rejected the proposal, it still remains on the table--alongside the bloody record of successive wars. Following is a listing of the ten Arab-Israeli Wars and the two Intifadas (popular uprisings) that have been fought during the last 74 years: 1. Israel’s war of independence and the Palestinian’s Nakba, or “catastrophe”: 1947-1949. (Israel vs. , , , , and . Casualties: 6,300 ; est. 13,000- 16,000 Palestinians, and est. 2,000-2,500 other Arabs.) The U.N.’s partitioning of in 1947 kicked off a between Jewish Zionists and Palestinian and ended with Israel emerging as a state and the Palestinians remaining state-less with 700,000 of them forced into refugee camps where many survivors and their descendants remain to this day. At the end of the fighting, Israel had taken control of 78 percent of the land (up from the 56 percent the U.N. plan had designated, including the western part of which originally had been placed under international control by the U.N. 2. The Sinai War: 1956. (Israel vs. Egypt. Casualties: 231 Israelis and est. 3,000 .) Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt to forestall an anticipated Egyptian invasion, end the frequent cross-border attacks by Palestinians from the Egyptian- controlled , and restore the ability of Israeli shipping to pass through the Straits of Tiran which Egypt had closed off to Israel. The war achieved Israel’s goals, but it also gave Egypt’s Abdel Nasser increased prominence and political power among the Arab states, thereby sowing the seeds for the third Arab-Israeli war which erupted in 1967.

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3. The Six-Day War: 1967. (Israel vs. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Casualties: 796 Israelis, est. 11,500 Egyptians, 1,000 Syrians, and 6,100 Jordanians. Egypt’s Nasser engaged in a form of that went over the brink. Drawing Israel into a risky game of chicken, the Israelis, instead of backing down, attacked Egypt’s army which Nassar had ordered back into the Sinai from which it had been routed during the Sinai war in 1956. Although the war was brief, it established Israel as the dominant military power in the region. Its “blitzkrieg” strategy and systematic destruction of Arab airpower even before it got off the ground made Israel an attractive military partner for the . By the end of the war, Israel had occupied and was in control of the , the Gaza strip, the (in trans-Jordan) and West Jerusalem. 4. “”: 1969-1970. Israel vs. Egypt. Casualties: 1,424 Israelis, 5,000 Egyptians. Between March of 1969 and August of 1970, Egypt and Israel regularly exchanged fire along the Canal and engaged in aerial battles above the Sinai Desert. Although this war had no clear military victor, it had a moderating effect because it helped to convince Arab leaders that Israel was too strong to be destroyed militarily and that they had to learn how to live with it. Before the Six-Day War, Arab leaders had little incentive to make peace with Israel; after the war, they began to see that negotiating with Israel was a possible way to regain their lost territory through peaceful means. 5. “Yom War”: 1973. Israel vs. Egypt and Syria. Casualties: 2,688 Israelis plus an est. 15,000 Egyptians and 3,500 Syrians. The “” war was the brainchild of Egyptian leader, Anwar . Israel still occupied the Sinai (1956) and the Golan Heights (1967). Egypt wanted the Sinai back and Syria wanted the Golan Heights back. So, in of 1973, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched simultaneous attacks on Israel when most Israelis were and praying. A crucial supply of weapons from the U. S. helped turn the tide, and successful counterattacks drove the invading armies back. After three weeks of intense combat, the war ended with Israel the victor, but not before losing 2,688 soldiers, proportionately twice America’s losses in . The Israeli public was outraged, leading to the forced resignation of Israel’s moderate leadership and paving the way for the emergence of the right-wing party of Netanyahu. 6. First Lebanon War: 1982-1985. Israel vs. the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Syria. Casualties: 1,216 Israelis and an est. 21,000 Arabs, mostly civilians. Lebanon had begrudgingly accommodated roughly 200,000 Palestinians from the 1947-1949 war. It also reluctantly became home to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which employed terrorist tactics in cross-border incursions into Israel. So Israel unilaterally invaded Lebanon in an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian problem once and for all, ensuring a “Greater Israel,” a secure northern border, and regional dominance. It was a “war of choice” which created wide-spread public protest back home, leading some Israelis to refuse to fight. The worst atrocity occurred at the end of the war, when Israel allowed the Lebanese Christian to systematically move from house to house to root out any remaining PLO fighters and kill as many as 2,750 Palestinians, mostly civilians. 7. The Intifada (Uprising or Rebellion): 1987-1993. Israel vs. Palestinians. Casualties: 277 Israelis killed; est. 1,162 to 1,204 Palestinians killed, of which 53 were under the age of 17. The Intifada consisted of strikes, , refusal to pay taxes, refusal to work in Israeli settlements or drive cars with Israeli license plates, the barricading of streets with

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burning tires and throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at Israeli forces who responded by firing live ammunition and then using rubber bullets that crippled or maimed the protestors. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that 23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for injuries in the first two years of the Intifada, one third of whom were under the age of ten years. 8. A : 2000 -2005: Israel vs. Palestinian , occurred for similar reasons and with similar results. There were heavy Palestinian civilian casualties resulting in massive destruction of homes and the social/ economic infrastructure throughout Gaza. 9. 2006 Second Lebanon War: Israel vs. Palestinian Hezbollah. Casualties: 165 Israelis and an est. 1,100 Lebanese, mostly civilians. An Israeli effort to stop the continued bombardment of northern Israel by Hezbollah. In the thirty-four days of the war, Hezbollah fired some four thousand into Israel, forcing hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens into bomb shelters and paralyzing life in the region. The war ended inconclusively through an UN-brokered cease-fire, with Hezbollah weakened, but not destroyed. 10. 2008-2009 First : Israel vs. . Casualties: 13 Israelis and around 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Massive exchange of rockets from Gaza into Israel and returning bombardment of Gaza by Israeli artillery, air strikes and invading ground forces. The main difference between Israeli and Palestinian casualties was due in large part to the “” rocket defense system which the U. S. provided and helped Israel to deploy. 11. 2014 Second Gaza War: Israel vs. Hamas. Casualties: 72 Israelis and 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Sparked by heavy-handedness on the part of Israeli troops, increased incursions of Jewish settlers into the West Bank, demolition of Palestinian homes, and ongoing Israeli of entry/exit checkpoints in and out of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, making it difficult if not impossible for Palestinians to travel to and from work in Israel or to their own fields. Education and health facilities, including most of its supportive infrastructure, were destroyed or severely damaged. Israel insists that if Hamas stopped using residential and commercial areas from which to launch its rockets, residential and commercial areas would not be targeted in response. 12. 2021 Third Gaza War: Israel vs. Hamas. Casualties: 12 Israelis (including 2 children) and 248 Palestinians (64 children); 58,000 Palestinians displaced, and hundreds of buildings and homes destroyed. Fighting began when Israeli troops forcibly removed families from their homes in East Jerusalem and disrupted Muslim prayers on the final night of by cutting the loudspeaker cables to the . After 11 days of fighting, with numerous rockets being fired by Hamas into Israel and sustained bombardments of Gaza by the , a cease-fire took effect on May 24, 2021. Twelve Israelis, including 2 children, were killed by Palestinian rockets. In Gaza, 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women, and 17 elderly people, were killed by Israeli “smart” bombs, and 1,948 other people were injured. A total of 16,800 housing units were damaged, 1,800 left unfit to live in, with 1,000 being completely destroyed. Following the May 24th cease-fire, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council moved to establish an ongoing commission of inquiry on human rights violations in Israel, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Next Week The Palestinian Refugee Crisis

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