The roots of the Palestinian question: historical truth against Islamist propaganda (second part)
The period of the British mandate sees a continuous tension that vents in revolts of the Arab communities against the Jewish ones starting from the riots of the 1920s. Particularly bloody was the Hebron massacre of 1929, a symbolic place for the centuries-old presence of the settlement, and of sacred importance for Judaism, which identifies the presence of Abraham's tomb in this place of the West Bank. Many Jews found safety with Arab families who hid them in their homes, and many others died because they trusted the wrong Arabs. Finally, 68 Jews were killed with several dozen others injured and various episodes of violence and rape suffered by women of the Jewish community. The surviving Jews had to flee Hebron to find refuge in Jerusalem and made an attempt to repopulate the settlements in 1931, only to abandon them again due to the great Arab revolt that took place between 1936 and 1939.
The situation was now getting out of hand and the British ruled Palestine in those years with increasing difficulty, trying in extremis to regulate the influx of new Jewish settlers through a series of white papers and proposing a first draft of a possible subdivision of Palestine. in two states (Peel Commission). David Ben Gurion, the first person to hold the role of Prime Minister of the State of Israel, was open to the idea and open to the idea, also prompted by the project to encourage controlled ethnic migration and concentrate all Jews in the northern part of Palestine. In turn, the Arabs (who immediately rejected the project) present in the north would have had to move to the center-south while Jerusalem would still remain under the mandate control. The Jewish communities were very well organized and began to react in the face of continuous Arab attacks by forming a series of organized militias that will later become an integral part of the current IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Thus there are more military structures such as the Haganah and the Palmach and paramilitaries such as the Irgun and the Stern Band (named after its first commander Avraham Stern). The latter will be considered as a real terrorist organization by the United Kingdom. It was the British police themselves who killed Stern in 1942 under unclear circumstances.
The ambiguity of the British in dealing with the Palestinian question during the Arab uprisings caused a strong stiffening on the part of the Jewish communities themselves who, as in the case of the Stern Gang , began to see the British more as a problem than a solution. This was particularly the case after the failure of the Peel Commission's proposal, when the 1939 White Paper was drafted which planned the establishment of a mixed Arab-Israeli state. This hypothesis was immediately rejected by the Arabs who reacted even more in a totally disillusioned manner regarding the consequences of the First World War, while the Jews considered this proposal a real betrayal. The civil war during the great Arab revolt overwhelmingly established the superiority of the Jewish military organization, which manifested itself in the face of 400 dead Jews against 5,000 Arabs who died during the various battle scenarios. Among the British, 200 soldiers died. Jewish military superiority will be a constant in all conflicts to come against other Arab states.
During the Second World War, the direct and indirect role of the Nazi regime on the Palestinian question was inevitable. The Arabs hoped for a superiority of the Axis forces with which they allied, hoping to get rid of the Jews and the British at the same time as soon as possible, thanks to the infamous "final solution" pursued by Hitler, who personally met the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, in 1941. The latter devoted himself to recruiting Muslims to swell the ranks of the Reich's Waffen-SS . However, the Jewish community alongside the Allies felt partly oppressed by the British, who partly came to obstruct the immigration of German, Polish and Austrian Jews who were trying to escape from Nazi persecution.
The important role of the Jewish community alongside the Allies was recognized and the Palestinian question was no longer just a British affair after World War II. The newly formed United Nations Organization set up a “Special Commission for Palestine” (UNSCOP) and proposed some changes in the plan for dividing the two states (fig. 2) using the conclusions of the Peel Commission as a basis (fig. 1).
At the beginning of 1947 the ratio between Arabs and Jews was 2: 1 with about 1,200,000 of each and 600,000 of the other with a continuous migratory flow that at the end of that year would have led to a total of over 900,000. The partition proposal regarding the southern area of Palestine was based on a pragmatic consideration: the Jewish community would continue immigration to Palestine and the southern desert area was large enough and extended not only to accommodate the new settlers, but also to allow an agricultural development otherwise impossible by the Arabs, a development which would have benefited everyone. The Arabs rejected the proposal not considering it right, while the Jews accepted despite the scarce territorial continuity. At this point it was a priority to give birth to the two states in a definitive and decisive way to close the season of conflicts. The UN resolution also established the end of the British mandate no later than August 1, 1948. The National Zionist Council on the basis of the UN resolution proclaimed the official birth of the State of Israel on May 14 of that year with headed by Ben Gurion, Israel's "founding father" in the role of prime minister.
The response to the UN resolution will lead to the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 which officially began even before the British withdrawal from Palestine. Considered as the true "war of independence" of the State of Israel, it can be characterized by different phases of the conflict separated by short truces. The Arab faction was made up not only of Palestinian fighters but also of regular armies from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. On the other hand there were only the fledgling IDFs who absorbed the forces of the Haganah , Palmach and Irgun . Only on one occasion there was the intervention of the British RAF which reacted to the Arab raids on the British air bases near Haifa, shooting down some Egyptian planes. From an initial defensive position, the Israeli armed forces managed to repel all attacks in the first months of the conflict showing a clear superiority in military management despite the numerous losses in the early stages of the war.
The strong immigration of Jews to Palestine led in a few months the IDF to deploy a force that from 30,000 soldiers came to recruit over 100,000, with an important component of veterans coming from various contexts already lived during the Second World War. Air superiority was reached only after a few months when the newly formed IAF ( "Israeli Air Force" ) acquired 25 fighters purchased from Czechoslovakia. The Israeli reaction led not only to regaining the initially lost parts of the territory but to controlling new areas beyond the borders of the UN mandate. During 1949 Israel signed a series of armistices separately with all the parties involved, obtaining about 50 percent more of the territory initially envisaged by the UN partition plan (fig. 3) and the so-called "green lines" of ceasefires that corresponded to the current Egypt-controlled Gaza Strip and the entire West Bank controlled by Jordanian King Abd Allāh. Many were Palestinian war refugees who fled or were forced to flee. Jews in other Arab states preferred to leave their respective countries as anti-Jewish sentiment increased. Several hundred thousand reached Israel itself and many others emigrated to Europe.
Historical events indisputably reveal how the Arab population was short-sighted in not accepting from the beginning at least a partial control of Palestine by the Israelis, who attacked by 5 Arab countries were able to defend themselves and fight back by winning the war.
Between 1949 and 1955 tensions grew between Israel and Egypt which began a series of acts of retaliation, espionage and sabotage. The "manpower" used also included Palestinian refugees whose infiltration was favored by applying pressure from the Gaza Strip. Also following the ideology of "pan-Arabism" strenuously pushed forward by the Egyptian president Nasser, the crisis of the Suez Canal began, with a war in 1956. The company at the head of the canal was in fact Anglo-French property and the Egyptian nationalization it happened triggering the military reaction of France and the United Kingdom which was joined by Israel, since Egypt decided to forbid the use of the Suez canal by the Jewish state. In an unprecedented alliance, the US and Russia threatened to intervene against the two European states which thus had to withdraw. It was later understood that the United States feared a dangerous escalation due to the declared threat from the then Soviet Union to use "all kinds of modern weapons of destruction" (nuclear warheads?) On London and Paris. The Israeli army, on the other hand, was not intimidated and renewed the demonstration of a clear military superiority, thus conquering the entire Sinai peninsula thanks to the action of General Moshe Dayan (on the left in the photo with Sharon, 1973) , considered a true national hero. , especially for the great tactical acumen that he would shortly thereafter unleash during the 1967 "Six Day War". Israeli forces withdrew from the Sinai in early 1957 when it was promoted for the first time in the history of UN a military peacekeeping mission.
Mutual retaliation between Israel and Egypt resumed starting in 1962, laying the foundations for the Six Day War (June 5-10, 1967). Under Egyptian pressure the last remaining UN forces were withdrawn from Gaza. On May 23, 1967, Egypt closed navigation to the Israelis at the Straits of Tiran south of the Sinai. For Israel it was considered an act of war like that of 1956.
This time the military action began with preemptive and surprise attacks: the IAF attacked the Egyptian air force posts in the early morning of June 5, destroying it almost completely. The same fate befell the Syrian aviation albeit equipped with better aircraft. The ground intervention began almost immediately afterwards and with the clear superiority in deploying its armored forces Israel had an easy life in conquering Gaza and the entire Sinai peninsula, replicating the successes of the Suez crisis. The novelty this time consisted in control operations of both the West Bank and the Golan Heights, facing almost simultaneously the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi armies. The Israelis in reality did not expect the attack of the Jordanian king Hussein of whom they hoped an attitude of neutrality, but only a few days earlier Jordan signed a mutual defense pact with Egypt, literally attacking Jerusalem "from behind". On June 10, hostilities officially ceased after Jordan and Egypt were forced to negotiate a "ceasefire" and Syrian forces withdrew after losing the Golan Heights (fig. 4). The overwhelming military superiority demonstrated by Israel will have profound repercussions in the years to come in the Middle East.
In 1964 the PLO ( Organization for the Liberation of Palestine ) was founded, which at first was placed under the direct control of the "Arab League", after which it will face a more autonomous path, being recognized as the only political interlocutor representing the Arab-Palestinians. Several pan-Arab Palestinian nationalist groups arose in the context of the PLO, among which al-Fatah took a certain lead through the actions of its leader Yasser Arafat . From al-Fatah will arise the terrorist group, Black September , responsible for the massacre of the 1972 Munich Olympics which will lead to the death of 11 athletes of the Israeli Olympic team. The periodic guerrilla actions of the PLO and the war of friction between Israel and Egypt will set the stage for the latest conflict with the direct involvement of the Arab states, also known as the Yom Kippur War , in 1973.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/le-radici-della-questione-palestinese-verita-storica-contro-propaganda-islamista-seconda-parte/ on Mon, 21 Jun 2021 03:46:00 +0000.