By Levi Zakye
On Oct 7th, 2023, the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas, a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), launched surprise attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip firing over 7,000 rockets within 7 hours and breaching the Gaza-Israel border into Israeli territory.
More than 1200 Israelis and foreign nationals including 35 U.S. citizens in Israel were massacred. Hundreds were taken hostage, numerous women subjected to rape, numerous homes burnt and Israelis incinerated alive in their homes with the perpetrators recording these heinous crimes on camera.
There has been a global obsession with Israel and the Palestine question for more than seven decades. The October 7th attack was a symptom of this puzzle that dates back so many centuries if not millennia. To understand it, we first need to look at the history of Israel – the most controversial piece of land in history.
Why has the World had such a disproportionate obsession with Israel and the land of Israel since its independence and formation on 14th May 1948?
A Piece of History
Jews have had an unbroken presence in the land of Israel for over 3000 years.
In 70 AD Roman General Titus under Emperor Vespasian besieged and captured Jerusalem and destroyed the City and second Jewish Temple to crush the Jewish rebellion.
In 135 AD Roman Emperor Hadrian again crushed Jewish revolts and exiled many Jews out of the Judean Province and City of Jerusalem. Emperor Hadrian also renamed the whole region ‘Palestina’ a Latin word) in place of the original name – Eretz Israel and Judea to erase the memory of Jews in the land. The Roman Empire was succeeded by the Byzantine Empire in 313 AD.
Arab Invaders from the Hijaz invaded the Byzantine Empire and conquered it between 636 and 640 AD after the death of their prophet Mohammed. Jews lived under Arab rule here as dhimmis (lower-class citizens subject to jizya tax or subject to forced conversion.
Jews not expelled into the diaspora continued to live through different conquests like the Crusaders, the Mamluks, and the Ottoman Empire (1516- 1918).
By mid-1800 Jews in the diaspora were beginning to flee different persecutions and pogroms in Europe and returning to Palestine under the Ottoman Empire. Particularly by 1881 Jews fled pogroms from Tsarist Russia.
Birth of the Zionist Movement
The Zionist Movement began to grow in Europe to find a solution to the Jewish problem and end their homelessness and the persecutions massacres and expulsions in Europe. The First Zionist Congress was then held in Basel Switzerland on August 29th, 1897 led by Theodor Herzl gathering hundreds of Jews from around the world. As the Zionist movement grew, the Arab Nationalist movement in the Ottoman Empire was also growing.
In 1903 at the 6th Zionist Congress British colonial secretary proposed Uganda for the Jews fleeing these persecutions in Europe as a homeland which was rejected as the Jews aspired to form their state again in their ancient homeland in the region now called Palestine.
By the end of WW1 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France were faced with the question of how to solve the aspirations of the Zionist movement and the Arab Nationalist movement in the former Ottoman Empire-ruled region.
As the Ottoman Empire neared its final fall on 31st Oct 1917 the British War Cabinet under new Prime Minister David Lloyd and Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour met to put final wording on what came to be known as the Balfour Declaration.
This was followed by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the San Remo Conference of 1920 all with Arab leaders and Zionist leaders represented with the Agreement that the British Mandate for Palestine was to be for the re-constitution of the Jewish National Home and the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the other British Mandate for Mesopotamia (later renamed Iraq).
However, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill following the Cairo Peace Conference of 1921 was under pressure from the Hashemite Emir Faisal and brother Abdallah and further partitioned Palestine creating another exclusively Arab state ( Jordan ) in 77% of Mandatory Palestine. This was adopted by the Council of the League of Nations in 1922.
The Council of the League of Nations met from July 19th – 24th 1922 and approved the British and French Mandates over these territories of the fallen Ottoman Empire.
Britain under the mandate was therefore to encourage further diaspora Jewish immigration into Palestine and to support the Jews till they were ready for self-determination and settlement over Palestine.
Thus the San Remo Conference and the Council of the League of Nations of 1922 with the power of disposition had therefore passed legal title to the Jews over Palestine and Arabs over what would become Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq (Mesopotamia).
However, with more economic success by the Jews in the land came further Arab migrations into the land from surrounding Arab states seeking jobs in the now flourishing Jewish agricultural economy.
The Arabs soon abandoned the agreements of the mandates and the appointment of radical Islamist Amin Al Husseini as grand Mufti of Jerusalem as appeasement for Arabs in 1921 to restore calm after Arab uprisings and the Jewish massacres of 1920. A pattern had been set that would haunt the rest of British rule over Palestine. The Hebron massacres of Jews followed in 1929.
About the Author and Researcher:
Levi Zakye is a public affairs commentator and Keen observer of the Israel- Palestine Middle East Conflict.
About The Author
