History, Contest, and the violence

At the core of the world’s most intransigent contestations and disputes lie differing notions of historical rights and wrongs, of injustices. The events and processes that led or contributed to these ideas may have occurred centuries ago but their memories continue, passed on from generation to generation. In other cases, the causes of the disputes are closer in time—decades for instance—and may have directly impacted the lives of the living. In some instances, the remote and recent past get intertwined. The common thread running through them is memory. In contemporary times one such intransigent issue concerns Israel and the Palestinians. It smouldered for the past two decades and was overtaken by other regional and global crises but Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on Saturday October 7 has, once again, brought it to the forefront of international attention.

It is essential to delve, even cursorily, into history to comprehend the approaches and positions in Israel and among the Palestinians but before doing so one fact has to be forthrightly stated. Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians, killing men, women and children in their homes and public places and taking many of them hostages and removing them to Gaza were acts of unspeakable horror. Nothing can justify them. Besides, they were also counterproductive for the overwhelming majority of those people in the world who may have great sympathy for the Palestinian cause and are also greatly critical of the way Israel has treated the Palestinian people over the decades have been driven on the backfoot by Hamas’s actions. This section of international opinion may voice its criticism on the actions that Israel has been and is now taking which is causing injury and death of hundreds of civilians in Gaza but their concerns are brushed aside by the savage images which have emerged of the manner in which some Israeli hostages have been treated in Gaza. Thus, what the Hamas did was not only morally wrong it was strategically so too.

That stated, we return to the differing versions of injustices, in which lie the roots of the conflict. Jewish tribes lived in the area of what constitutes Israel. Jerusalem became the seat of the Jewish Kingdom since around 1000 BCE. The Jewish people and Jerusalem suffered ups and downs through the centuries. The area was captured by the Romans in 63 BCE and was named Palestine. However, the Jews were allowed a degree of autonomy and the centre of their faith was a grand temple in Jerusalem. In Jewish history this is referred to as the Second Temple. It was destroyed in 70 AD. That is considered a catastrophic event in Jewish history. With it the dispersal of the Jewish people from Palestine began to different parts of the world.

What is significant is that the Jews never forgot Jerusalem. Indeed, the psalms “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning” and “If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy” continue to be recited on religious occasions. In time, Jerusalem became a most important centre for Christianity and also Islam. The third holiest mosque of Islam is in Jerusalem.

As the Jews dispersed from Palestine they went to many parts of the world, including Europe. Throughout the middle-ages and even in the 19^th century the Jewish people in Europe suffered discrimination and violent pogroms were launched against them. They were also the object of envy because of their business and intellectual acumen. As a consequence of their suffering in Europe some Jews began to think of returning to Palestine. Indeed, a section among them thought that this was the land given to them by God and hence, they had an inherent right to it.

The problem was that Palestine had through the centuries become inhabited by Muslims and Jerusalem had, after Salahuddin conquered it from the Christian crusaders become a Muslim dominated city. It later became part of the Ottoman empire and it was only in 1917 that the British ousted the Turks from it and took control of Jerusalem. In the same year the British also, through the Balfour Declaration, stated that they were in favour of the establishment of a “national home” of the Jewish people. Clearly, the British did not consider the rights of the Palestinians who had lived there for centuries. Gradually, groups of Jews began to go to Palestine to set up communities.

The holocaust suffered by the Jews at the hands of the Nazis convinced them that their safety lay only in Palestine. The Western world struck by guilt agreed to the creation of Israel through the United Nations in 1947. This was on based on the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem governed by an international authority. The Palestinian people and the Arab states rejected the proposal because it involved the ejection of Palestinians living in what was to become Israel from their homes. A war ensued but the Jews announced the formation of Israel.

Thus, both the Jews and the Palestinians nurse a great grievance rooted in history. For the former, Palestine is their God given home but for the Palestinians the very creation of Israel was an injustice because it drove them from their home for centuries. For decades since Israel’s creation the Palestinians strongly felt it had no right to exist. Later, its main groups agreed to a two-state solution but groups like Hamas still do not accept the reality of Israel. Pragmatic resolutions become very difficult in disputes involving historical memories of injustices, especially of forced migrations.