Palestine is a sovereign territory located in the Fertile Crescent, along the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Egypt to the South, Jordan to the East, Syria to the Northeast, and Lebanon to the North. The region of Palestine is divided into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The State of Israel maintains an occupation of the remaining area, which is contested by the Palestinian people and their government to varying degrees.
Infrared's combination of historical analysis and principles of self-determination reveals that, while the Palestinian struggle is imperative from a moral perspective, it furthermore represents the global conflict between unipolarity and multipolarity, based on the objective fact that Israel is a creation of the hegemonic world order centered in Wall Street and the City of London.
History and Origins
We begin the history of Palestine with the ancient times, as a means of providing religious, geographical, and historical context to current events.
Ancient (Stone, Copper, Iron Ages)
The Levant, in a general sense, is the coastal area roughly between Egypt and Greece now known as Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, the State of Israel, and Jordan. It was home to many early humans, and was part of the Fertile Crescent, where the earliest civilizations were born.
The Southern Levant is amongst the oldest inhabited parts of all Eurasia, on one of three plausible routes by which early hominins could have dispersed out of Africa (along with the Bab al Mandab and the Strait of Gibraltar). Homo erectus left Africa and became the first hominin species to colonize Europe and Asia approximately two million years ago, probably via the Southern Levant. During this phase of the Pleistocene epoch the region was wetter and greener, allowing H. erectus to find places with fresh water as it followed other African animals that were dispersing out of Africa at the same time. One such location was 'Ubeidiya, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, where some of the oldest hominin remains in Eurasia have been discovered, dating to between 1.2 million and 1.5 million years ago.
Several Stone Ages, when stone tools prevailed and made up the bulk of artifacts, were followed by periods when other technologies came into use. They lent their names to the different periods. The basic framework for the southern Levant is as follows: the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age is often divided up into three successive phases: Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic. An Epipaleolithic (latest Paleolithic) period, also known as Mesolithic (transition to Neolithic) follows and is, in turn, succeeded by a Neolithic (New Stone Age).
The following Chalcolithic period includes the first evidence of metallurgy with copper making its appearance. However, as stone technology remains prevalent, the name, Chalcolithic (Copper/Stone) age combines the two.
Bronze is used for the following periods, but is actually a misnomer for a good part of that time. An Early Bronze Age is divided into three major phases: Early Bronze I, II and III; but copper, not bronze, was the most common metal in use, while stone technology continued to contribute the bulk of tools. Early Bronze III is followed by another period, alternatively named Early Bronze IV, Middle Bronze I, Intermediate Bronze or Early Bronze-Middle Bronze. In this period the name is apt; true bronze (a tin alloy of copper) makes its appearance in this time span.
The next period is generally known as Middle Bronze II and is generally broken down into two sub-periods, Middle Bronze IIa and Middle Bronze IIb. Some scholars acknowledge a Middle Bronze III. The next period is known as Late Bronze and is often sub-divided into Late Bronze I and II.
Through the Bronze and early Iron Ages, the Southern Levant (now Palestine, the State of Israel, and Jordan) was inhabited by many different Semitic-speaking peoples and kingdoms. The Canaanites erected many city-states which were influenced by surrounding powers such as Egypt during this time.
The Biblical narrative concerning the land of Canaan and the Israelites begins with Abraham-- this will be explained insofar as its relevancy to Zionist myths about Biblical history and its relation to the land and people of Palestine today.
Biblical Narrative
In the Bible, the Israelites' greatest enemy was the Philistines. The Philistines, who lived also in the land of Canaan (which is roughly the same land today in what is called the "Palestine region") have no direct relation to modern Palestinians. However, after thousands of years, modern Palestinians still have a genetic makeup comprised of Levantine, Eastern Mediterranean, Iranian, Arabian, and North African-- showing that they have deep ancestral roots in the region dating back as far as ~3700 years ago to groups like the Canaanites (descendants of Canaan, son of Ham and grandson of Noah).
In Genesis, Abraham was called to journey to the promised land from his native Mesopotamia, likely some 4000 years ago. God promised to Abraham and his descendants the lands of Canaan. God tested Abraham's faith, and in offering his son Isaac, he passed the test. God then reassured Abraham, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." (Genesis 22:17-18)
God didn't say "Some nations will be blessed" through Abraham, He said "all". Thus, it was not just the Hebrews, not just the Jews who were blessed through Abraham, nor even was this blessing limited to His religious followers.
If, in this verse, He meant that Abraham's descendants were blessed forever, then Abraham's descendants include all nations. If He meant only Abraham's immediate ancestors were blessed, then they procreated so many times as to render his descendants one with the rest of humanity as a whole, thus blessing all nations. In either possible interpretation, all of humanity has an equal or universal Biblical claim to the land of Caanan (modern-day Israel and Palestine).
The Quran refers to Abraham (Ibrahim) as a prophet of Allah. The Tanakh calls him Avram. Thus, we can see that three of the major religions of the world today (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) regard the land as sacred through Abraham their prophet, and the blessing bestowed upon him by God/Allah/Yahweh. They are united in their faith in God and the prophets as the "Abrahamic" religions.
Akin to the Philistines and their non-relation to modern Palestinians, the Bible narrates the history of the "nation" of Israel, the Hebrews, who left Egyptian slavery in the book of Exodus 505 years after the story of Abraham. The twelve tribes descended from Abraham eventually formed the Kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judah in the south. United for some hundred years as the "United Kingdom of Israel" before a revolt around the 10th century BC split the rule, these kingdoms were founded in the Iron Age in the southern Levant. Samaria and Jerusalem, the capitals of the two kingdoms, fell to the Assyrians in 722/721 BC. Sargon II of Assyria exiled almost 30,000 Jews-- a fifth of the population-- from these lands. After the land fell under control of Babylon (the Chaldean empire), the Jews of Judah revolted, leading to the destruction of Judah entirely. The Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple, which stood on the sacred Temple Mount (where Al-Aqsa Mosque today stands). The Hebrews were taken captive by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II for their revolt, and exiled from the land of Judea. The key difference between the deportation by the Assyrians and that executed by the Chaldeans was this: the former scattered the population about its empire in small groups, whereas the latter gathered them all into a single place so they could retain their national identity and religion. Soon enough, the Hebrew population integrated with the Assyrians, assimilating culture and customs and giving up their worship of their God (Yahweh). These Hebrews are referred to as the "ten lost tribes of Israel". The southern Hebrews who were enslaved by Babylon (the Chaldeans) were freed and returned to the Land of Judah after the Persians (Achaemenids) conquered Babylon. Cyrus the Great, leader of the Persians, issued the Edict of Cyrus in 539 BC, which allowed Jews to return to the Land of Judah as an autonomous Jewish province under the Persian empire. (It's worth noting here that modern Iranians are descended from the Persians, and many Jews assimilated and gained protected ((dhimmi)) status under the Persian Empire because of Cyrus' benevolence, with their treatment varying from ruler to ruler.) This is called the "return to Zion", the namesake of the future Zionist ideology. The ten tribes of the North which were assimilated into the Assyrian empire never returned, hence their being "lost".
Fifty-thousand Jews returned to the province, called Yehud, while the rest stayed behind in Babylon. More exiles returned alongside Ezra later. During this period, the three main leaders of the Jews returned: "Zerubbabel reconstructed the temple (Ezra 3:8), Nehemiah rebuilt the walls (Nehemiah chapters 1 and 2), and Ezra restored the worship." Ezra was financially supported by the Persian king Artaxerxes, who later helped Nehemiah "restore respectability" to Jerusalem. The Second Temple was reconstructed between 516 BC and 70 AD by Cyrus' edict, completed during the reign of Persian king Darius I, and later refurbished and expanded by Herod the Great under the Romans.
Thus, after so much time, intermarrying, and tribulation, the ancient Israelites closely descended from Abraham bare little direct relation to modern Israeli Jews (most of whom are Ashkenazim who emigrated from their motherlands to the State of Israel). (This is returned to in the section on Islamic Rule.)
In the Bible, New Jerusalem is mentioned numerous times. New Jerusalem is not a land or physical place; it is a metaphorical city in Heaven in the Yahweh religion. Thus, when the modern State of Israel attempts to steal land from others in their attempt to "realize" New Jerusalem, they reduce New Jerusalem to a geographical place and simultaneously break the covenant. "After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, 'The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.' No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 9:4-5) In the end, New Jerusalem is wherever the faithful and righteous are, and signifies to multiple prophets the heavenly paradise that awaits the faithful and righteous followers of God to rule.
In the Torah, the descendants of Abraham were commanded to destroy the seven nations which lived in the holy lands. These were the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the Perizzites. They were slain for pagan religious practices at the command of God, echoing His words that the Israelites gained the land not out of their righteousness, but out of the pagans' wickedness.
Middle Ages (Alexander the Great - Roman Palestine)
Alexander the Great
The Macedonian Empire began heading towards the Mediterranean Sea, conquering under the leadership of Alexander the Great in much the same manner as Alexander's father, Philip II. Philip II planned to siege the Persian Empire, but Alexander carried the attack out after his father's death.
Here we quote extensively from Saylor Academy on Alexander's conquest of the Levant:
"In November 333 [BCE], the Macedonians had defeated the large army of the Persian king Darius III Codomannus, and Alexander was now faced with a difficult choice. He could pursue the defeated Darius to the east and march on Persepolis, the Persian capital. He had promised the Macedonians and Greeks at home to punish the Persians for Xerxes' expedition in 480 BCE; the looting of Persepolis could mean the end of the war.
"The alternative was not to pursue Darius. There were many arguments for this policy, the most important being that the Persian fleet, commanded by Pharnabazus, was still in control of the Aegean sea and the Hellespont. Alexander's line of supplies was threatened, and the best thing he could do was to take the Phoenician towns (Aradus, Tripolis, Byblus, Beirut, Sidon and Tyre), where the crews of Pharnabazus' ships came from. The conquest of the Levant was a strategic necessity.
"There were additional advantages. Alexander could continue to the south and conquer Egypt. On several occasions, the pharaohs of the ancient country along the Nile had sent wheat to Athens; since food crises were common in Antiquity, Alexander could count on the eternal gratitude of the Macedonians and Greeks if he could open a trade route between Egypt and the homeland.
"Besides, we must not ignore the motive given in our sources: Alexander wanted to go to Egypt because Perseus and Heracles -ancestors of Alexander- had done so. To Alexander, who took his legendary ancestry very serious, this was a more valid reason than it is to us. A final reason for paying a visit to Egypt, was that the Greeks and Macedonians were fascinated by this country. Business could be combined with pleasure.
"The Phoenician towns surrendered as soon as Alexander approached: Aradus, Tripolis, Byblus, Beirut and Sidon. (Here, Abdalonymus was appointed as king.) These were very, very ancient cities, which had had urban life at least millennium and a half before the Greek towns originated.
"The only Phoenician city that refused to come to terms was Tyre (Sur in the language of its inhabitants, "rock"), and Alexander knew that the siege was going to last for months. The situation was more or less comparable to Halicarnassus: he was besieging a harbor town, the enemy had excellent ships and could come and go as they liked. The difference was that the fortifications of Halicarnassus had been protected by a ditch of only fifteen meters wide and that the walls of Tyre were protected by the sea: the old city was built on an island.
"Another difference was that the capture of Tyre was strategically unnecessary. Tyre had offered surrender, but had refused Alexander the right to sacrifice in the temple of Melqart during the great festival in February, because only a native king could perform the necessary religious ceremonies. Alexander had felt insulted and had insisted, and this was the sole cause of the siege. No Persian king had ever made such an outrageous demand.
"In January 332, the siege began. The consequences were clear at once: the Tyrians were forced to recall the ships that had been fighting in the Aegean sea. Since the other Phoenician towns had already recalled their ships after the towns had surrendered to the Macedonians, the Persian naval offensive in the Aegean sea came to an end.
"To reach the Tyrian walls, the Macedonians built a mole. But the Tyrians still commanded the sea and made the construction extremely difficult. Alexander needed ships to protect the construction, and he was lucky, because Aradus, Tripolis, Byblus, Beirut and Sidon had just recalled their navies. In July, the town was attacked from three sides: the Phoenician fleet destroyed the Tyrian fleet in the "Egyptian port"; Macedonian ships attacked the walls with siege engines; and marines from Cyprus landed in the 'Sidonian port' and forced their way into the city. The siege mole had, after all, been useless.
"According to our sources, 6,000 Tyrians were killed during the fighting in the streets (many of which were so narrow that it was easy to step from roof to roof across the street). 4,000 Macedonians were wounded, perhaps 500 were killed. Alexander's indulged in his anger: he ordered 2,000 Tyrians to be crucified on the beach.
"From now on, Macedonia ruled the waves, and it was easy to bring the siege engines to Gaza, the next town that refused to surrender. The strong walls crowned a steep hill and Alexander's engineers were afraid that they could never take the town. Nonetheless, they constructed a mound. The siege engines, however, were unable to destroy the fortifications. Not to be outdone, the engineers built mines and made the wall collapse. After a siege of four months, Gaza fell in October 332. The male population was pulverized down to a man."
Interestingly, we interject, during the Macedonian siege of Gaza, Alexander complained about "loose subsoil" of Gaza-- tunnels-- which the Persians used to hold Alexander's army off for 100 days. Continuing on:
"The Persian governor of Gaza, Batis, had done an excellent job: he presented his king with extra time to gather a new army. Alexander was furious, ordered the man to be tied to his chariot, and dragged him around the city. This behavior was inspired by Alexander's legendary ancestor Achilles, who, according to Homer, had dishonored the corpse of the Trojan warrior Hector in a similar way (text).
"There is one source, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in which we read about a visit Alexander paid to Jerusalem. There are many elements in Josephus' narrative that suggest that the story belongs to Jewish legend, not history. On closer inspection, however, the story -stripped of some implausible details- is consistent and may well be true [...] It is certainly possible that the Jews supported Alexander during his campaign against Gaza, and helped him in Egypt, a country which the Jews knew well (the Persians had used them to garrison the southern border at Elephantine). Alexander certainly used Jewish mercenaries to guard the city he was to build in Egypt, Alexandria."
In the aftermath of his death, Alexander's Empire split into four, with two powers flanking the region of Palestine: In Syria, the Seleucid Empire, founded by Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator in 312 BC; In Egypt, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, founded by Ptolemy I Soter, an ally of Alexander, in 305 BC.
Roman Palestine (Syria Palestina)
The Maccabeans were a group of Jewish rebels who wrested control of Judea from the Seleucid Empire. The Maccabeans took over in 167 BC until 37 BC under the Hasmonean Dynasty, retaining full independence from 106 BC to 63 BC. They were, in the proper sense, Judas Maccabeus and his four brothers; the later Maccabees were not their direct descendants.
The land of Judea was at first Ptolemy's before falling to the Seleucids around 200 BC. Alexander had already begun Hellenizing the area, and some upper-class Jews (such as the Tobiads) elected to renounce Jewish law and embrace Hellenistic lifestyles. Hellenistic Jews built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, competed in public sport, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant". (I Maccabees 1:15) Eventually, the traditional (Orthodox) and Hellenistic Jews struggled with each other, and so the term "Judaism" was created in opposition to "Hellenism" by the author of the second book of Maccabees. According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus banned many traditional Jewish and Samaritan religious practices: he made possession of the Torah a capital offense and burned the copies he could find; sabbaths and feasts were banned; circumcision was outlawed, and mothers who circumcised their babies were killed along with their families; traditional Jewish ritual sacrifice was forbidden too. It was said that an idol of Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple and that Israelites set up altars to Greek gods and sacrificed "unclean" animals on them.
After Matthais the Hasmodean refused to worship the Greek gods, he killed a Hellenistic Jew who attempted to offer a sacrifice in his place. He fled with his five sons to Judea. After his death, Matthais' son Judah lead the revolt, which took the form of guerilla warfare. This revolt was first directed against Hellenized Jews, who numbered many, but eventually widened in scope against the Seleucids and their pagan gods. A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV. Its commander, Lysias, preoccupied with internal Seleucid affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom.
In the aftermath of this war, which involved many battles, the triumphant Maccabeans cleansed the Temple. They could only find a single small jug of untainted oil with which to light the Temple menorah, and it would be eight days before they could procure any more. The oil, which was only a single day's worth, miraculously lasted all eight days, which from then on was celebrated by Jews as Hannukah. The Temple was rededicated to Yahweh and the Hasmonean Dynasty was founded.
Rome, which rose at the same time the Grecian empire fell, sent General Pompey to Jerusalem to help negotiate between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II (the two Hasmonean brothers vying for power following the death of their mother, Alexandra Salome). This turned into a civil war between the brothers in 63 BC. Angered by what he viewed as Aristobulus' lack of respect, the Roman general sieged and sacked Jerusalem, taking the Kingdom of Judea under Rome's control. According to The Collector, "It took three months to breach the walls and overrun the Temple precinct, and the protracted siege resulted in the death of some 12,000 Jews. Pompey himself entered the Temple’s Holy of Holies (hitherto the exclusive privilege of the high priest). Although this desecrated the Temple, Pompey otherwise showed considerable respect: no treasures were looted to be included within his Triumph [over the Mithradic empire, including Jews, Albanias, and other critics/enemies of Rome], for instance, and he was quick to allow rituals to be resumed within the Temple."
Antipater was the first Roman procurator, or finance minister/administrator of Judea, appointed by Julius Caesar. Hyrcanus Hasmonean became the high priest. The Romans allowed the Hasmoneans to rule under their control until 40 BC, with Herod the Great, Antipater's son, to rule as king under Rome's direction.
Rome ended the Hasmonean dynasty with Herod's appointment. Herod, who helped rebuild and expand the Second Temple of Jerusalem, was the Biblical figure who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents during Jesus' time, in the Gospel of Matthew.
Beginning in the first century AD, the land of Judea became a province of the Roman Empire, with Syria to its north and Arabia Petrafa to its south, bordering the Sinai desert. Augustus, the first emperor, removed Herod's incompetent grandson Archelaus in 6 AD, after his own people plead to Rome for his removal. Starting this year, Rome began sending governors to Judea, including Pontius Pilate. Locals became tax collectors for Rome and profited by adding their own fees, fanning flames of disdain for the empire in the region. Kingdom of Judea offered Roman Egypt the land and sea routes in the region, and for a short time Jews enjoyed a degree of freedom in administering their own laws.
Jesus was born in Bethelem, in modern-day Palestine. Galilee, the land north of Judea (in today's northern Palestine/Israel and southern Lebanon), was the childhood home of Jesus, and was the setting of most of the Biblical miracles performed by him. In the two centuries following the birth of Jesus, the early Christians (who were Communists according to descriptions by the 4th-century author Lucien of Samasota, 19th-century French revolutionary Communists, and Friedrich Engels himself) were surpressed equally to if not moreso than the Jews.
Notorious Emperor Caligula intended to leave his own mark on the region when he ordered a statue of himself to be built in Temple of Jerusalem. Jews were furious, and the Syrian administrators delayed the order in 37 AD, until the emperor rescinded. The next time Caligula ordered the statue to be built, he was assassinated, closing the matter entirely.
The first Jewish-Roman war erupted when tensions sharpened in 66 AD. The Jews and Romans had violent religious disputes, including protests of taxation and attacks on Roman citizens. Rome sacked the Second Temple and executed thousands of Jews, at which point a full-fledged rebellion broke out. About 6,000 Jews were killed during the Battle of Beth Haron, and the Roman-allied king (Herod Agrippa II) was forced to flee. The Romans called the highly experienced general Vespasian to put down the rebellion.
Vespasian invaded Judea in 67 AD with his son Titus his second-in-command. With the support of Herod Agrippa's troops and four legions of his own, Vespasian elected to target clusters of rebels at a time rather than launch a total assault on Jerusalem; however, Vespasian had to leave the battlefield in 68/9 AD, when emperor Nero committed suicide and various factions tried to take power in the absence of the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors. Vespasian came out on top as emperor, and his son Titus tried to end the war in Judea swiftly to return to Rome. After much difficulty and a seven-month siege, Titus and his army sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD and finished off the remaining Jewish resistance, ending the first Jewish-Roman war. Unbeknownst until emperor Hadrian's visit to Judea (129-130 AD), Titus had destroyed the Second Temple and built a temple dedicated to Jupiter on the Temple Mount.
From The Collector:
"The Roman victory over the Jews had a profound impact, felt keenly both in Judaea as well as in Rome. For the Jewish population, the war had been devastating. Thousands had perished in the fighting, while countless others were enslaved, sold, and shipped around the empire. The most significant Jewish city, Jerusalem, was annihilated. Vespasian also settled veterans of the conflict in Judaea at Colonia Amosa, as well as garrisoning a legion (Legio X Fretensis) in Jerusalem on a permanent basis, providing a clear statement of Rome’s commitment to keeping the Jews firmly under control.
"Just as significant was how Vespasian used the riches plundered from Judaea. His predecessor Nero had lost favour with the Senate and people of Rome due to his megalomaniac tendencies. Perhaps the most notorious of these was the construction of his Domus Aurea, or Golden House, in central Rome. This palatial residence ate up huge swathes of public land and included the construction of a vast man-made lake. During his reign, Vespasian made a conscious effort to “return” this land to the Roman people: on the site of Nero’s lake, he built the empire’s largest amphitheater. Named the Flavian Amphitheatre, you probably know it by its other name: the Colosseum. The Colosseum was adorned with a dedicatory inscription that made clear that this vast public monument was paid for with the spoils of Vespasian’s war in Judaea."
The Second Jewish-Roman War began in 115 AD under emperor Trajan, with Rome attempting to broaden the empire eastward. During this time, Trajan was leading a campaign against the Parthians. Uprisings in Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Mesopotamia saw Roman garrisons and citizens killed by the rebels. The figures for death are still unknown, but likely in the tens of thousands. Eventually, thanks to Lusius Quietus and the Romans he led, the city of Lydda (today Lod) was sacked. Still, Jews of Judea were growing in resentment for the empire as Rome continued enhancing and fortifying their occupation of Judea.
In 132 AD, emperor Hadrian joined Judea and Galilee to form Syria Palaestina, combining the name of ancient Philistia with that of the neighboring province of Syria. This was in spite of the Jews, as Rome had thoroughly suppressed Judaism (as we will have outlined) between the end of the Hasmonean dynasty up through Hadrian's rule. However, again, there is no ancestral link between the ancient Philistines and modern Palestinians.
The Third Jewish-Roman war was another rebellion, coordinated in 132 AD and led by Simon Bar Kokhba. At first, the Jews were highly effective against the Roman legions. The Romans even fled in some areas. The Jews were able to found an independent, sovereign autonomous region, which lasted until Roman forces surrounded and entrenched themselves in Judea. Sextus Julius Severus, summoned by Hadrian from Britannia (Roman Britain) to take charge of the legions in Judea in 133/4 AD and backed by his own experienced army, slowly whittled the Jewish rebels down until they retreated to the Betar fortress in 135 AD. Eventually, his forces broke through the walls and the rebels were massacred.
As in the Second Jewish-Roman War, many Jews were either killed in battle or enslaved. In the latter case they were shipped to various locations and separated from their land, their families, and their communities. Many rebel bases and villages were razed, destroyed by the victors. The land was then repopulated by the empire with a "cosmopolitan mix" of different peoples from Roman-controlled lands. Hadrian issued edicts restricting the practice of Judaism, and Jewish literature was burned. He not only left the statue of Jupiter standing on the Temple Mount-- Hadrian had a statue of himself erected beside it. Jerusalem became the settlement or "colony" of Aelia Capitolina in the new Roman province of Syria Palaestina.
During the 4th century AD, Christianity began its rise in the area, with early Christians building some of the oldest temples and churches in the world-- they were definitely the oldest in the region. Orthodox Christians had already built temples dating to this time in Egypt, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, such as the Monastery of Saint Anthony and the Monastery of Saint Mary Deipara. In Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the rest of the Levant Christianity awoke, spawning temples such as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; Mor Gabriel Monastery in modern Midyat, Turkey; and Mar Mattai Monastery on Mount Alfaf in Iraq. Even today in the 2020s some of the oldest distinct Christian communities are still operating in these churches, still alive through much hardship we've yet to unpack here. Of course, by this time Christianity had become the official religion of Rome, so these practitioners were not treated as harshly as the earlier Christians, but for their denominations.
Following the merger and baptized in cosmopolitanism, the area of Syria Palaestina (today, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and western Jordan) became heavily Christian after the Jews were decimated in the prior two centuries, and the northern area encompassing Galilee, the Valley of Megiddo, the Samarian hills, and Golan Heights was ruled by the Byzantine empire beginning in the decade before 400 AD. This province was known as Palaestina Secunda, relative to the southern region of Palaestina Prima, also taken under the rule of Byzantium. The Galilean region was a stronghold for Judaism in spite of the fact that the Romans occupied it and enforced Christianity, or at least anti-Judaism, to a certain extent.
The Romans continued to suppress the history of the Jewish-Roman wars and Roman brutality against the inhabitants of the Palestine region. The late Roman empire lasted (albeit in a decadent state) until 476 AD, when it was invaded from the north and collapsed. The Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, continued on, lasting until the end of the middle ages and falling in 1453 AD.
Islamic Rule (Islamic Middle Ages - 1918)
The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was born around 570 AD in Mecca, forging ties with other religious people and preaching Islam from Medina in modern-day Saudi Arabia to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. In fact, he sent the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (Hercules) an invitation to join Islam, which was rebuffed. The Caliphate waged extensive war on the Byzantines and other empires of the Levant and Fertile Crescent regions, such as the Sassanians (who laid the soil for Iranian civilization).
Though some say Muhammad was a major figure in what Norman Finkelstein dubs "the dogma of eternal Gentile hatred", he honored Judaism and the Torah, and so did the Quran. Negative and violent references to the Jews in the Quran were not eternal nor genocidal-- they arose from wartime situations. Muhammad revered the Torah as bursting with "light and truth", the wisdom of the previous Prophets which guided the Jewish people. Ultimately, such divisive claims about non-Jews amount to ignorance in the face of the continuity and unity of the Abrahamic religions.
Later, after the Prophet's death, his greatest comrade and father-in-law, Abu Bakr (RA), took over as the first Caliph of the Rashidun (Rightly Guided) Caliphate. The first four caliphs were "Rightly Guided" due to their being taught by and directly witnessing the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. As Caliph, however, Abu Bakr and subsequent monarchs did not proclaim to be prophets themselves.
Abu Bakr was the first to embrace Islam and, as caliph, he spread Islam beyond the bounds of the Arabian Peninsula into modern Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. He ruled for two years before his death in 634 AD, during which he spent large sums of money setting free Muslim slaves.
Islamic history in the Holy Land was marked by the conquest of Jerusalem in 635/8 by Caliph Umar (RA). Umar was a close associate and father-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and served as his second successor, or khalifa, after Abu Bakr (RA). He began to take from Byzantium and integrate the cities of Syria and Egypt, picking them off one by one. Jerusalem, still referred to as Aelia by the Romans and nascent Islamic rulers, was conquered after a protracted siege, surrendering and thereby peacefully transitioning power to the Caliphate. According to Boston University, "Muslim rule over the city left the Orthodox Christian community and their buildings intact. Jews and heterodox Christians are subsequently readmitted to the city. [...] There is no evidence that, at this early point in Muslim history, the city was already identified as the "distant sanctuary" (al masjid al-aqsa) referred to in the story of the Prophet Muhammad's ascent (al miraj)." Byzantine Christians remained the major population in the Holy City, regulated by the Pact of Umar.
The Muslim state was keen on its religious administration. One demonstrative example of this was the treaty signed by the leader Khalid ibn al-Walid in Damascus:
"This is what Khalid ibn al-Walid would grant to the inhabitants of Damascus if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their lives, property and churches. Their city wall shall not be demolished, neither shall any Muslim be quartered in their houses. Thereunto we give them the pact of Allah and the protection of His Prophet, the caliphs and the believers. So long as they pay the poll tax, nothing but good shall befall them."
The tax imposed upon non-Muslims by a Muslim state is called the Jizya. It is required to be paid not for the sake of humiliation or economic gain, but in exchange for the administrative protection of those to whom Islam refers as "People of the Book", non-Muslims, or dhimmi. In the Palestine region during this time, the dhimmi were made up largely of Byzantine and heterodox Christians as well as Jews. In many other areas, the dhimmi included Zoroastrians. non-Muslims were guaranteed their right to practice their religions, which was greeted with thunderous applause by the dhimmi across Egypt and modern-day Syria and Palestine. This, combined with the later expansion across the East, cemented the foundations of a shared Arab civilizational history and the notion of an Arab civilization-state.
According to islamichistory.org, "This policy was to prove successful everywhere. In Syria, for example, many Christians who had been involved in bitter theological disputes with Byzantine authorities- and persecuted for it- welcomed the coming of Islam as an end to tyranny. And in Egypt, which ‘Amr ibn al-‘As took from the Byzantines after a daring march across the Sinai Peninsula, the Coptic Christians not only welcomed the Arabs, but enthusiastically assisted them.
"This pattern was repeated throughout the Byzantine Empire. Conflict among Greek Orthodox, Syrian Monophysites, Copts, and Nestorian Christians contributed to the failure of the Byzantines – always regarded as intruders – to develop popular support, while the tolerance which Muslims showed toward Christians and Jews removed the primary cause for opposing them."
Assassinated in 644 AD, Hazrat Umar Farooq (RA) is remembered for bringing peace and stability to the caliphate, both religiously and economically. He built infrastructure and created an office for the administration of funds, as well as introducing the Islamic calendar during his ten-year reign.
Hazrat Umar set up a panel of the Prophet's ten most trusted companions prior to his death to choose his successor as caliph. It was thus decided that Hazrat Uthman (RA) would succeed him. He married two of the Prophet's daughters and spent his riches in the service of the ummah. Before his untimely death at the hands of insurgents in 656 AD, Hazrat Uthman headed the reprinting of the Quran, which was spoken differently due to differing dialects. This was his greatest contribution to Islam, and the text produced is that which is accepted throughout the Muslim world today. His murder sparked a civil war between the Caliphate and Muiawiyah, governor of Syria, which lasted five years.
Hazrat Ali (RA), the fourth and final Rightly Guided caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet, controversially took over after Hazrat Uthman was murdered. He tried to unify Muslims and bring peace and security to the world, but met significant resistance from non-Muslims. He battled them, defeating most of the insurgents, conquering the Umayyad at the Battle of Nahrawan, and reforming the tax system. He reigned as caliph until 661 AD (40 AH), when he was killed by an insurgent with a poisoned sword while praying on the 20th of Ramadan. He was the last of the Rightly Guided caliphs.
This line of succession is the topic of distinction between Sunni and Shia Muslims, but this page is not focused on Islam so much as its contextualization of Palestinian resistance with regard to the modern State of Israel. Suffice it to say, Shiites were partisans of Ali (RA) who insisted upon blood lineage from the Prophet (PBUH), while Sunnis accepted the non-blood lineage and the first three caliphs.
Umayyads, Abbasids, Crusades, Mamluks, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Rum Seljuks, and Ottomans
Muiawiyah was governor of Syria (under the third caliph), the first caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty. This was the first Muslim dynasty, ruling from Damascus after Hazrat Ali's (RA) death in 661 AD.
The move to Damascus signaled a shift in the Caliphate. The first four caliphs were humble, simple men; they were direct companions of the Prophet. The new dynasty was not at all related to Muhammad, and was thus seen as utterly illegitimate to the Shiites. Jerusalem, still called "Aelia" at this point, was waning in importance to Muslims, leaving Christians and Jews to attempt to attract people there. Muiawiyah wasn't able to resolve the tensions the Sunni caliphs had with the Shiites, and died in 680 AD.
The Umayyads commissioned multiple religious and secular buildings on the Temple Mount, including the Dome of the Rock (commissioned by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik and completed construction in 691 AD). The Dome still stands today in Jerusalem. According to Boston University, "Inscriptions indicate the purpose of this first monumental structure in a distinguished history of Muslim architecture. Abd al Malik had understood that, to compete with Byzantine Christendom, one had to speak its language:: the language of the triumphant (though "rightly guided") eschatological ruler who, by the will of God, presided over the last empire that was to end all empires. To be sure, Islam's attitude toward the People of the Book (ahl al-kitab) remained one of rebuke rather than displacement."
'Abd al-Malik minted a new currency which replaced the Byzantine and Sassanid coins in circulation. His organization of government served as a model for the later Abbasidian bureaucracy and that of its successors. The Caliphate under 'Abd al-Malik expanded from North Africa to the borders of China. Meanwhile, the death of Muhammad's (PBUH) grandson Husayn began another civil war, which ended in 692 AD. During this civil war, in the province of Palestine and others, the rebel Zubayr (grandson of the first caliph Abu Bakr) proclaimed himself caliph and took over. With the collapse of the Sufyanid house of the Umayyad dynasty, the Marwanid house, founded by caliph Marwan I, reigned until the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty in 750 AD.
Al-Walid I was the son of 'Abd al-Malik and his successor. Al-Walid continued his father's policies of expansion and centralization, taking modern-day Iran and land in the Caucasus, as well as the Iberian Peninsula. This was the greatest extent of the Caliphate. Al-Walid is well known for using the wealth plundered during expansion to finance the construction of grand public spaces such as the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Following the death of al-Walid, his brother Sulayman became caliph for four years until his death in 718 AD. Sulayman began his career as the governor of Palestine, where he studied until he rose to power. There he later founded the city of Ramla, which overtook Lydda (Lod) as the district capital of Palestine, and built the White Mosque. Today, Ramla is in the Central District of Israel, of northeast of the Gaza Strip and southeast of Tel Aviv.
Under Sulayman, the Caliphate ceased expansion; he fired his late brother's generals and officials on account of their appointment by the governor of Iraq, who had significant hegemony over and under al-Walid. Eastern resistance and breakdown of military organization blocked expansion to the east into deep Indo-China, while the campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula were plenty successful and halted. Sulayman's forces attempted to take Constantinople, capital of the previous Western Roman and current Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empires, between 717 and 718 AD, but were defeated. Following his death in 718 AD, Sulayman's successor Umar II pulled these soldiers back to the Caliphate. Umar II also disassembled the military and political bureaucracies of the Caliphate, streamlining the Islamic Army and administration; he furthered the campaigns in Iberia and witnessed the conversion of many Egyptians and Persians to Islam, and practiced diplomacy with Chinese and Tibetan rulers, inviting them to embrace Islam. Umar II died in 720 and was succeeded by Marwan II.
Marwan II, grandson of the fourth caliph Marwan I, was the fourteen and final caliph of the Umayyads. He governed Armenia and elsewhere for twelve years before rising to caliph. Marwan II focused especially on the revitalization of the Islamic Army, creating professionally-organized paid military units in place of loose, disorganized tribal units. He reconquered Syria in 746 and reinstated the Caliphate's rule in other regions, including Palestine. His reign began in 744 AD, ending with the third and final civil war against the Marwanid house, 747-750 AD. This rebellion was decisive; "[A] combined force of ʿAbbāsids, Persians, Iraqis, and Shīʿites decisively defeated the Umayyad army at the Battle of the Great Zab River in 750."
From the Jewish Virtual Library: "For the most part, the Islamic impetus to the Abbasid revolution lay in the secularism of the Umayyad caliphs. The Umayyads had always been outsiders—as a wealthy clan in Mecca, they had opposed Muhammad—and the secularism and sometime degeneracy that accompanied their caliphate delegitimized their rule for many devout Muslims."
With Marwan II's death in 750 AD, the Umayyad caliphate was dead and the Abbasid caliphate was founded. The Abbasids were the family and descendants of the Prophet's uncle, al-Abbas (RA). The Abbasids gained the support of the Shiites and Persians against the Umayyad caliphate beginning in the 710s AD. Meanwhile, after the ascent of the Abbasids, one of the last remaining Umayyads, Abd al-Rahman I, ruled the Iberian peninsula 756-788 and founded the Umayyad Emirate there, which was not Islamic. It wasn't until the 10th century AD that the Umayyads formed a rival caliphate.
The Abbasidian dynasty moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad in 762. Samarra, another city, was founded north of Baghdad and briefly became the caliphate's capital. According to Suzan Yalman of the Met Museum, "The first three centuries of Abbasid rule were a golden age in which Baghdad and Samarra functioned as the cultural and commercial capitals of the Islamic world." They were not focused on the reconquest of Spain and the newly-formed Umayyad Emirate due to its distance, but the Berber Kharjites in North Africa began their own Islamic states in 801.
The Abbasids rose with the help of Shiites, but the breadth of Shiism was not kind after they abandoned the Shiites following their ascent. Negotiations regarding Sunni-Shia relations broke down between the caliphate and moderate Shia Muslims. After an uprising in Mecca in 786 saw the massacre of the Shiite 'Alids, the survivors fled west to the Maghreb (Northern Africa) and founded the Idrisid kingdom. These were to be the circumstances into which al-Ma'mun was born.
Here we quote extensively from the Jewish Virtual Library:
"Abd Allah, or al-Ma'mun, had not been named as a successor to the caliphate—this instead fell to his brother, Muhammad, called al-Amin. The brothers soon fell out, however, and al-Mamun seized the caliphate in 813. As with his predecessors, he tried to incorporate Shi'ites into the Islamic government, but his entire reign was spent in quelling disturbances among Shi'ites and anit-Shi'ites. He seems to have just held the line in the disintegration of the 'Abbasid caliphate. There are, however, two great innovations that irrevocably changed the course of Islamic history.
"The first was a military revolution begun by his brother, al-Mu'tasim. The constant revolutions and the deep division in Islamic society convinced al-Ma'mun that he needed a military force whose only loyalty was to him. So his brother, who would later become caliph (833-842 / 218-27), assembled a military force of slaves, called Mamluks. Many of the Mamluks were Turkish, who were famous for the horsemanship. But the Mamluk military also consisted of Slavs and some Berbers. By the middle of al-Wathiq's reign, the Mamluk army had completely displaced the Arabian and Persian army under the caliph. This army, and al-Mu'tasim's abandonment of Baghdad for Samarra, caused bitter resentment among Muslims and would irreperably sever the protective bond between the Islamic sovereign and the Islamic people. It also introduced a new ethnic group in the Islamic world, the Mamluks, who would eventually play a powerful role in the drama of power and decline in medieval Islam.
"More importantly, al-Ma'mun energetically patronized Greek, Sanskrit and Arabic learning and so altered the cultural and intellectual face of Islam. He adopted a radical theological position, called Mu'tazilism, which was regarded as somewhat heretical by more orthodox Muslims. Nevertheless, Mu'tazilism had as one of its fundamental beliefs the idea that Muslims should obey a single ruler. In order to facilitate the spread of Mu'tazilite teaching, al-Ma'mun established a university, the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma).
"It was here that Hellenistic and Indian works made their way into Islamic culture through a series of translations. Islam incorporated into its culture and belief the philosophical method of inquiry of the Hellenist world—it is for this reason that philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were passed on to succeeding generations. This incorporation led to a new Islamic intellectual practice, faylasafa, or philosophy, based on principles of rational inquiry and to some extent empiricism."
Thus, this was an era of massive philosophical, artistic, and scientific growth for the Arab world and the Abbasid caliphate specifically. However, as it developed into the 10th and 11th centuries, the caliphate stagnated. Around the middle of the 10th century, Abbasidian territory near Iraq was taken by the Buyid dynasty, and by the early 11th century the caliphate's centralized dynastic power was crippled to the point of appearances. The Abbasidians adopted Iranian culture and tried to distance themselves from their Semitic ancestry, especially with the major integration of Mamluks into the military. With this decentralization of power and culture across the nascent Arab world came the Islamic medieval period, in which polities formed along culturally and ethnically-based regional lines.
With the caliphate stretched thin, Syria and Palestine were under the control of Egypt, which emerged powerful and independent after 868. After two dynasties in Egypt fell, a third rose: the Fatimids. The Fatimid dynasty, a branch of Shiites, lasted 969-1161 AD, controlling Egypt and the Levant during the First Crusade in 1099. Egypt became a center of learning and agricultural wealth once more, reopening trade routes with Europe and India.
According to Boston University, "Jerusalem [attracted] Sufi mystics, Islamic law scholars, and Karaite and rabbanite Jews, while retaining its character as Christianity's holiest city. Nevertheless, monumental buildings [fell] into disrepair and the city, as described by Muqqdasi, himself a Jerusalemite, seems sidelined and neglected."
In the lead-up to the First Crusade, the Great Schism occurred between Western European and Eastern European Christianity. Between the former Roman Empire and the standing Byzantine empire, there were religious tensions which built to a crescendo when the Pope excommunicated the bishop of Constantinople, who retorted by excommunicating the Pope. This disunification of Christianity spawned the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. No longer did the two empires support each other without calculating the benefits of doing so, and hostilities grew under the skin.
The Rum Seljuks, a tribal branch of the Iranian Great Seljuks, were growing in might, quickly rising. In the late 11th century, they contested both Fatimid rule over Bilad al-Sham (the Bedouin Muslim name for Syria and the southern Levantine region) and struck fear into the Byzantines by coming very close to Constantinople. They took Jerusalem from the Egyptians in 1071, and soon the Pope declared this empire an issue for both Europe and Christians as a whole.
The Council of Clermont was held on November 8th, 1095. Pope Urban II called for a Holy War to reclaim control of Jerusalem and the holy lands from the 'infidel' Muslims. The shabby, disorganized "People's Crusade" was a disaster. Made up of mostly laymen and peasants, these initial "Crusaders" were slaughtered in August 1096. In the Battle of Civelot in October 1096, a Turkish force of 5,000 destroyed a peasant army of 20,000. 17,000 Crusaders were killed compared to 50 Turks. The remaining 3,000-- elderly, women, and children-- returned to Constantinople.
On their ways to Jerusalem from Europe, both the Peasant Crusade and the First ("Princes'") Crusade, both campaigns looted and pillaged the villages they passed through. This was mostly out of necessity for crops and animals, as well as some money and belongings. In the Rhineland, in the city of Nicaea, Jews were slaughtered according to Albert of Aix, a church canon and historian of the First Crusade. Later, when men and horses were dying and food and water supply was low, the Crusaders pillaged and looted what they needed, sometimes receiving donations of money from sympathetic Christians.
In response, Byzantine Emperor Alexius I gathered the top European generals in Constantinople and initiated the first "armed pilgrimage". According to researcher Noah Hutto, "This pilgrimage was not only successful, but provided the undertone of romanticism for further exploits." Around the start of the year 1097 AD this well-armed assault began, triumphing in Nicaea in June 1097 and Antioch in June 1098. After a month of fighting between Antioch and Jerusalem, on July 7th, 1099 the Crusaders took Jerusalem by massacre. The Seljuks, divided internally, were overrun. When Muslims attempted to recapture the city at the Battle of Ascalon in 1099, they were again defeated. They mercilessly slaughtered both Muslim and Jew: as Ibn al-Qalanisi wrote, "A number of the townsfolk [of Jerusalem] fled to the sanctuary and a great host were killed. The Jews assembled in the synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads... they destroyed the shrines and the tomb of Abraham."
Islamic historiography contradicts said rosy image projected by the Christian world in Europe, claiming that the Crusade was simply another minor imperial pursuit or skirmish attempting to curb the "inevitable" spread of Islam. The subsequent Crusades, unceasing until 1291, went much the same. By the final major Crusade, many Europeans saw the Pope as a king rather than a "guardian of souls who stand before heaven's gate." They continuously came and killed the pagans and non-Catholics of Jerusalem. The Crusaders, finally, restored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (destroyed by al-Hakim, sixth caliph of the Fatimids, in 1009) with the help of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachos.
The Fatimids were driven out of Egypt by the Ayyubids of Saladin, to whom the Franks (franj) surrendered in Jerusalem. Saladin combined Egypt and Syria, dramatically changing the power dynamic in the region in favor of Muslims. The Ayyubids then ruled Jerusalem from Cairo from 1187 to 1250.
The second-to-last Ayyubid Sultan, As-Salih Ayyub, brought a slave woman to Cairo from the same areas his sultanate procured mamluks from. She was to become his wife, Shajar Al-Durr. When he died in 1249, during the seventh crusade, there was an army of Crusaders approaching Egypt with the intent of gaining Syria through Cairo's downfall. Shajar Al-Durr was left to assume power and she lead servants to believe the sultan was still alive until she announced his death. As-Salih Ayyub's son, Turanshah, came to power, but Shajar Al-Durr had an alliance with the mamluks, whom she had more in common with ethnically and culturally. The mamluks assassinated Turanshah in 1250 and made Shajar Al-Durr their monarch; she received letters from the Ayyubids in Syria doubting her ability to reign. Shajar Al-Durr married a mamluk who served her late husband named Aybak, who becomes the first sultan of the Mamluk Sultanate. Aybak and Shajar ruled side by side for seven years, but were distrustful of each other. When Aybak found out that his wife ordered her loyal servants to kill him in the bath, he promptly had her arrested (after which she was publicly humiliated and killed).
Further east, in Asia, Ghengis Khan was leading his Mongol warriors into north China. It took four years from the inception of the campaign against the Chin dynasty, but the capital was destroyed in 1215. Ogodei Khan continued on, conquering all of northern China by 1234, and ruling it from 1229 to 1241. Ghengis' grandson Kublai Khan later defeated the Song dynasty of the south in 1279, leading China to be ruled from the outside for the first time in history. The Islamic caliphate no longer controlled world trade via the Silk Road; rather, the Mongols controlled nearly the whole of Eurasia and founded the modern universal state, welcoming Russians, Jews, Arabs, and others into the empire. The Mongol empire moved west, taking Kiev and other major cities along the way. Planning to sweep through the Levant and take as much as possible on the way to Egypt, the horde conquered and slaughtered thousands in Baghdad and Aleppo in 1258, arriving to battle the Mamluks in Palestine at Ayn Jalut in July 1260. When they sent terms of surrender to the Mamluks the year prior, Aybak's successor Qutuz ordered the messenger to be executed, inviting the war instead. The Mamluks, first appearing as slaves of the Abbasid caliphate, defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ayn Jalut.
As an important side-note, the Mongols were the founders of what Infrared has dubbed "Mongol Modernity". This simply means that they were the first modern universal state: all religions and peoples were equal under the law, the nomadic-sedentary contradiction was abolished, the Mongols laid claim to the entirety of the world, and developed a modern political metaphysics.
The slave soldiers revolted against their masters, the Ayyubids, and overthrew the sultanate, gaining control of Egypt and the holy land in 1250. The Mamluks were not the only slave soldiers-- this was a larger phenomenon across the Islamic world, including the Abassids, Fatimids, and Ayyubids, as well as others.
The Mamluks were not a free people, nor a monocultural one; they were at first a population of slave soldiers during the Abbasid empire, but their sons were not allowed to join the army, meaning only outsiders could join the ranks. Often Turkic boys with proficiencies in horseback riding and/or bowmanship were taken from their homelands, traded by the Mongols in some cases or the Geneoese in others to the Mamluks, and trained to be horseback archers in Mamluk barracks in Egypt and the southern Levant. By the 13th century, the Mamluks were largely southern Russian (Bahri) and Circassian Caucasian (Burgi). The former produced the dynasty of Sultans 1250-1381, and the latter dynasty was dominant 1382-1517. As the historian Abu Shama put it, referencing the Battle of Ayn Jalut, "the people of the steppe had been destroyed by the people of the steppe."
The Mamluks also repelled attacks by the Crusaders around the same time. Baybars I seized power after assassinating Qutuz, and it was he who properly founded the Mamluks and ravaged the Crusader states. The Crusaders had created the Catholic feudal Crusader states following the first Crusade: the County of Edessa in the north; the Principality of Antioch along the Mediterranean south of that; the County of Tripoli, also along the coast; and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Antioch and Tripoli covered the coastline in modern-day southeastern Turkey, northwestern Syria, and northern Lebanon, while the Kingdom of Jerusalem covered what is today the State of Israel, Palestine, southern Lebanon and western Jordan. Edessa was taken by the Zengid Turks (sparking the Second Crusade) in 1144, and the Mamluks took Antioch in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289, leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem alone and weak following the Ayyubid-backed siege of Jerusalem in 1244. When the Mamluks captured Acre in 1291, the Crusader states fell as well. The surviving Crusaders fled to the French Kingdom of Cyprus, established after the Third Crusade.
Baybars I ruled until 1277, and was succeeded by al-Malik al-Nasir, who concluded a truce with the Mongols in 1323 after major battles caused famine, Bedouin uprisings, and religious strife. Between the Timur victory in 1400 in Syria, the Portuguese wresting control of Indian trade, and the sultan's inability to quell the Mamluk military corps, Egypt's domination by the Mamluks was gradually growing weaker and weaker. By the time their Syrian provinces were attacked by Turkic Anatolian and Azerbaijani states, there was little hope of victory against the Ottoman empire.
The Mamluks fell in 1517, when the Ottomans hung the last Mamluk sultan. Their contribution to Islamic art and literature as well as architecture stands out as a landmark of Egyptian and Levantine history, and their military-driven lifestyle of the early years ceded somewhat to intellectual, spiritual, and artistic endeavors of the middle-to-late period. Egypt became a political, economic, and artistic leader in the Muslim world under their rule. Though always a precarious state with rampant factionalism and competing interests, it was mighty and powerful, which justified the reign of the slave soldier Sultanate.
Khazarian Ashkenazi Theory
Ashkenazi Jews have been the subject of a theory which, if true, would completely delegitimize the modern State of Israel in concept and in practice. We must address this claim briefly here.
In waves, the Jews were exiled or captured: first during the Jewish-Roman wars and later during the Crusades. Due to this, European Jews formed new communities, and were split into two groups: the first are known as "Sephardim" or Spanish rite Jews who settled in the Iberian peninsula and Northern Africa; the second are called "Ashkenazim" or German rite Jews (the latter of which make up more than 80% of Jews worldwide today). There are two theories as to the origins of Ashkenazim: either they were originally from the land of Canaan like Sephardic Jews, but settled in the Rhineland and France; or they settled in the region after large numbers of Jewish converts in the multi-ethnic, semi-nomadic Khazarian Khaganate (Khazar empire) migrated there following the fall of the Khazars. Witnesses from the 9th and 10th centuries say the Khazars adopted Judaism in the 8th century.
The Khazarian theory, while plausible, shows little evidence, especially considering the deep-rooted cultural and traditional connections between Ashkenazim and the Rhineland such as their staunchly Germanic language of Yiddish. However, the theory goes as follows: A small number of Khazars converted to Rabbinic Judiasm in the 8th-9th centuries (according to the Khazar Correspondence). When the empire fell, they fled to Europe and settled there. The main weakness of the Israeli origin story, however, is that there is no determinative counterargument to refute the Khazar theory. It's also perfectly likely, however, that Ashkenazim are the descendants of early-medieval Levantines rather than Turkic-Caucasians.
There is no conclusive evidence to support either theory, yet both are wielded politically today, most notably by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas respectively. The theory first gained prominence in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, and later was supported and criticized by both receptionists and rejectionists-- both Zionists and non-Zionists.
With most of the world's Jews today being Ashkenazim, Israeli claim to the land they currently occupy is thrust into jeopardy, and such a lack of evidence for either claim means a necessary rejection of confirmation for or against the Khazarian Ashkenazi theory.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman I in 1299. He was the son of Ertugrul Gazi, who assisted the Rum Seljuks in their fight against the Byzantine empire. Some of the Turks who fled Mongol invasion settled in Anatolia and embraced Islam. Osman united the Turkic Anatolians into the Ottoman confederation, which had conquered much of modern-day Greece and Turkey and encroached upon Constantinople by the latter half of the 14th century. Between 1326 and 1453, the Ottomans besieged Constantinople once, fought against Timur and the Mongols, attempted (and failed) to destroy Constantinople a second time, and finally, via mobilization through Greece and Albania, cut off Constantinople from its allies. On May 29th, 1453, "The Conqueror" Mehmed II's forces breached the walls of Byzantium, destroying the Byzantine empire. The city would eventually become Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman empire.
During the 16th century (until the mid-17th century), the Ottomans and Safavids warred over both religion and land in Mesopotamia. The Ottomans were staunchly Sunni and the Safavids staunchly Shia. After a handful of wars spanning 1514 to 1639, the Treaty of Zuhab was signed. This treaty was notable for its agreement on the modern borders of Turkey and Iran, on the one hand, and Iran and Iraq on the other. Later treaties between the Ottoman and Persian empires make extensive reference to the Treaty of Zuhab.
Between 1633 and 1634, the Ottomans were at war with the Poles (supported by Lithuania) as well in modern Ukraine. Ultimately the war ended in stalemate in 1634. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled the territory for three centuries, and their battles utilizing the Cossacks against the Ottoman Turks and Tatars eventually led to the overthrow of Polish rule in the region.
What later turned into a bureaucratic disaster was at first a model empire, combining strong leadership with efficient administration. One could argue the Ottoman empire, like the Mongols', was a civilization state-- under it were 30 million Turkic, Persian, Levantine, Caucasian, Egyptian, and southeastern European peoples previously under the yoke of Byzantines and other imperialist nations. Also similar to the Mongols, the state was adaptive to the needs and wants of its multiethnic, multicultural population, treating all as equals under its religious and administrative systems throughout its vast territory. It could also thus be described as a modern universal state of sorts.
Emergence of Zionism
The political extremist and nationalist movement of Zionist, which calls itself Jewish yet betrays the teachings of the Torah inherently, was founded in the 19th century. The return to Zion of the Achaemenid era was the namesake of the ideology. Its founding was a response to the Jewish Question: the question of what the answer was regarding Jewish "emancipation", which led to massive debate about how to end religious persecution for Jews and subsequently other religious minorities. Across Europe, many intellectuals, rabbis, Jews and non-Jews were engaged in this question. Karl Marx wrote about the Jewish Question in the mid-19th century, arriving at the conclusion that, in order for Jews to assimilate successfully, the state must become secular and Jews must not act in the fashion of their stereotypes (which by this point were widespread and more accurately described the Christian states of Europe than the Jewish laborer), but return to the spiritual and pious ways of Orthodoxy from the decadency of Revisionist Judaism.
Moses Mendelssohn founded Revisionist Judaism in Germany during the 18th century, when the Jewish Question was first gaining significance in European intellectual circles. This subversion of Judaism completely rejected core tenants of the Torah, such as keeping of the Sabbath, keeping kosher, and the spiritualization of the Jewish nation. The lattermost pillar of Judaism refers to the exile of Jews after the destruction of Solomon's temple; God thereafter forbade Jews from asserting political or military sovereignty in the form of a state, especially in the holy land. Orthodox Judaism rejects violent aggression, and this was the reason the Persian and other Arab nations took the Jews in-- they didn't see Jews as a threat, having read and studied the Torah as Muhammad did-- and gave them protections on such bases.
According to Orthodox and other anti-Zionist Jews, the Jewish State's later foundation was a rejection of their covenant to God, viz. a rejection of the spiritualization of the Jewish nation (read: people) by those who became Revisionist Jews like Mendelssohn. These Revisionist Jews reject the notion that their people can assimilate with others, that they must wait as their God commanded them to wait for the Messiah before they can (peacefully) return to the holy lands. Such rejection of traditional Jewish thought and the fundamentals of the religion cause Orthodox Jews to both protest against Israel (both its actions and its existence as a state), as well as to uphold the Jewish values of peace and piety in their support of Palestinian resistance since the British occupation.
British Occupation (1918-1948)
Mouin Rabbani stated: "In the Palestinian case, their opposition to Jewish immigration was to prevent the transformation of their homeland into a Jewish state that would dispossess them, and I think that’s an important distinction to make."
Palestinian opposition to displacement and dispossession is the basis of anti-Zionism and the assertion of the organic sovereignty of Palestine against the Zionists, the British, and others-- and what population in history does not struggle against invading forces?
Sykes-Picot Agreement
Throughout WW1 (1914-1918), Jews averaged 11% of the total population of the Palestinian region of the Ottoman province ("Vilayet") of Syria. The British had guaranteed a Jewish state in the holy land as early as 1914, while at the same time telling the Ottoman Syrians that they would have a free nation. Of course, this was before the Ottomans allies with Germany and the Central Powers.
The French assured Faisal I of this and his father (Sharif Husseini) agreed to help the British fight the Ottomans on the premise of freeing the Arab world from invasion and subjugation by foreign powers after the war. Faisal played a leadership role in the Arab Revolution against the Ottomans, along with T.E. Lawrence. After the war, however, the French and British told Faisal they'd lied to him, and that the Sykes-Picot plan was already in place to be ratified by the time Jerusalem fell. Faisal I fled west into Syria, where he was chosen to rule Syria as king by the Syrian National Congress. He ruled from March to July 1920, when the French sent troops to expel him. Instead, Faisal came again under the wing of Britain, who arranged for him to rule as King of Iraq under British administration at the Cairo Conference in March 1921. Faisal's brother Abdullah was given the Kingdom of Jordan. Following Faisal's expulsion, the French claimed Syria and governed it as a French Mandate. Faisal believed in a Syrian state which would take on a universal and civilizational character, but it never came to pass. However, he tried to realize a universal civilization state in Iraq.
"There is no meaning for words like Jews, Muslims, and Christians within the concept of nationalism. This is simply a country called Iraq and all are Iraqis." - King Faisal of Iraq
In the first world war, the Ottomans were not equipped to fight the British and French. They were poorly trained and their weaponry was not as advanced. As British forces planned to take Istanbul via the Gallipoli peninsula, they were defeated in a rare Ottoman victory in 1915. However, by 1920, the British and French had fought their way into the Ottoman capital and occupied it. Jerusalem surrendered earlier, on December 9th, 1917, and was taken by the British by the end of the month.
The British and French secretly agreed in the middle of the war on how they were going to carve up Ottoman territory following the fall of the empire. France was poised to gain control over northern territory in modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq, and northern Israel-Palestine, while the British were to control most of Jordan, Iraq, southern Israel-Palestine (the Negev), Kuwait, and down the coast of the Persian gulf to Bahrain and Qatar. The northern half of the Palestinian region was to be governed by the allies jointly, including Jerusalem, Gaza, and everything north, with Britain controlling ports in Haifa and Acre. Though the Russian Tsardom was in on the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Soviets were excluded following the revolution in 1917. Today, this is the general shape of the Middle Eastern borders, originally carved up by the allies of WW1.
The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was implemented by the Treaty of Sévres in 1920, which formally dissolved the Ottoman empire; internationalized Istanbul and its Bosphorus strait; gave pieces of Anatolian territory to the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, French, British, and Italians; and put the former Ottoman-Syrian territory of Palestine under joint Western control. When Ottoman rebels resisted the foreign powers ferociously, a new agreement was drawn up: the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which set the modern borders of Turkey.
Instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration, advising Sykes of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and negotiating with Britain on financing European Jewish immigration to Palestine was Chaim Weizmann, successor to Theodor Hertzl as leader of the WZC and first President of Israel. Weizmann was in the ears of Lord Balfour, the Rothschild family, Mark Sykes, and others; he was bent on gaining British support for the Jewish state in Palestine, and in 1914 advised the British to wage war against the Ottomans. He was a contemporary of fellow Zionists David Ben-Gurion and Vladimir Jabotinsky.
The League of Nations was formed in 1920 to enforce peace of a unipolar and cosmopolitan nature across the world. The League ratified the Treaty of Sévres in 1922, formally granting Britain internationally-recognized control over what was henceforth the British Mandate of Palestine. This division of the Middle East was a major disaster for Arab-Western relations as it not only subjugated the peoples, but arbitrarily drew borders through communities and lands with deep historical, cultural, religious, and ethnic interconnection. The Treaty of Sévres sparked the beginning of Arab nationalism.
This and future agreements underscore the transition into the imperialist system from the old imperialist (colonial) system in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. The land which was already conquered was being divided up by the European imperialist powers. The old imperialism of colonies, pillaging, and enslavement via direct military domination was waning in the era of finance capital; the new imperialism of monopolism and economic domination was emerging.
This was the true essence of both World Wars-- they were inter-imperialist wars, fought by powerful countries to carve up "spheres of influence", to monopolize the resources, including land and labor, on Earth. With the unipolar world emerging out of the chaotic non-polarized pre-Mongolian world (i.e. with monopolist states laying claim to the entire world), they warred over which nation was to become the "unipole", or the single pole of power in the world. This sometimes meant "allying" with their competitor nations to wipe out non-competitors.
We have thus seen since the Crusades a joint operation by the Western powers, with their center moved from Constantinople to London and later to Washington D.C., to carve up the Middle East and subjugate the population.
With regards to Arab nationalism, its origins lay in the Other. Arab nationalism was a reaction to the Turkish nationalism of the Young Turks, which was a reaction to Armenian and Slavic nationalism supported by the Romanovs, themselves inspired by Europe. Ultimately this all shows that the larger problem is rooted in nationalism.
In addition to Arab nationalism came a resurgence in struggle for Islamic theocracy, except this time it was in the context of unipolar modernity.
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was a Sunni organization in the Arab world, which was founded in 1928 by the scholar and teacher Hassan al-Banna. He believed a universal pan-Islamic authority spanning the Arab world could be attained by promoting Islamic ways of life through civil society and social services; some might say much in the vein of Karl Kautsky, the cosmopolitan bourgeois socialist of the inter-war 2nd International. The MB is reformist first and foremost, idealist in its universalist vision-- this mode of politics amounts to political activism and charity, as well as diplomatic political ends. The MB spread to Palestine in the 1940s in the West Bank. Having a large presence in countries across Northern Africa and Middle East, they only worked with the local militaries. This move was successful in Egypt helping the Free Officers rise to power, but less so in other countries where the Brotherhood was either suppressed or couped.
Prior to their presence in the West Bank, Palestinians politically expressed themselves in secular terms, even as a people of deep faith. After the MB arrived in the West Bank, Islam figured much more prominently in Palestinian politics. The MB was soon discredited in the eyes of Palestinians by its support for King Hussein of Jordan in opposition to Prime Minister Nablus in the mid-1950s. During Jordanian rule the MB was watched closely by Jordanian intelligence and didn't gain widespread popularity until the mid- to late-1970s, especially in the northern West Bank. They were always a highly decentralized organization, which led to some members violently attacking British soldiers and others.
According to CIA documents, ""Only in Syria, Sudan, and Jordan, however, did the Brotherhood gain political significance. The basic goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is the creation of a modern political community based on Islamic precepts. Like the movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini that deposed the Shah of Iran in February 1979, the Brotherhood calls for the elimination of corrupting, Western influences in society."
Balfour Declaration
The other agreement which spurred on Arab nationalism and Islamic resistance during and after the British Mandate was the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was written in 1917 by British foreign secretary Lord Balfour and addressed to the Zionist leader, banker, and politician Lord Rothschild, member of the Rothschild family. It expressed the Lloyd George cabinet's support for a Jewish state in the Mandated territory of Palestine.
The text reads:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Why did Britain support Zionism? Mouin Rabbani said of Britain's reasoning:
"...Zionism, I think, would have emerged and disappeared as yet one more utopian political project had it not been for the British, what the preeminent Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, has termed the British Shield, because I think without the British sponsorship, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today [on the Israel-Palestine conflict]."
"The British sponsored Zionism for a very simple reason, which is that during World War I, the Ottoman armies attempted to march on the Suez Canal. Suez Canal was the jugular vein of the British Empire between Europe and India, and the British came to the conclusion that they needed to secure the Suez Canal from any threat. And as the British have done so often in so many places, how do you deal with this? Well, you bring in a foreign minority, implant them amongst a hostile population, and establish a protectorate over them. I don’t think a Jewish state in Palestine had been part of British intentions, and the Balfour Declaration very specifically speaks about a Jewish national home in Palestine, in other words, a British protectorate. Things ended up taking a different course, and I think the most important development was World War II, and I think this had maybe less to do with the Holocaust and more to do with the effective bankruptcy of the United Kingdom during that war, and its inability to sustain its global empire.
"It [The United Kingdom] ended up giving up India, ended up giving up Palestine, and it’s in that context, I think, that we need to see the emergence of a Jewish state in Palestine-- and again, a Jewish state means a state in which the Jewish community enjoys not only a demographic majority, but an uncontestable demographic majority, an uncontestable territorial hegemony, and uncontestable political supremacy. And that is also why after 1948, the nascent Israeli state confiscated, I believe, up to 90% of lands that had been previously owned by Palestinians who became citizens of Israel."
The main interest of the British was securing their shipping routes through the Suez Canal during the Empire's decline and the transition to an American unipole, completed after World War II. After a meeting with Chaim Weizmann, former Prime Minister Lloyd George said that the Jews would serve Britain better than Arabs as protectors of the Suez canal. The interest of the Zionists was formal recognition and material support for their future artificial sovereignty, or support in their endeavors to build a Jewish nation-state. Thus, Zionism is, at root, a form of enthonationalism which became imperialist, expansionist, as an extension of the imperialist system. The Nazis called this Lebensraum, or "living room" when they annexed Czechoslovakia for Germans to settle in.
This connection is made evident by the olive branch extended by the Lehi to the Nazis during World War II; as well as the Haganah's armed defense of Israeli settlers in the lead up to the 1947 UN Partition Plan and subsequent expulsion of the pre-existing population (called "transfer" by some Zionists and their supporters; called "Nakba" or "catastrophe" by the refugees who were expelled and anti-Zionists). However, the direct connections between Zionism and Nazism, between the Zionists in Palestine and Nazi Germany, are not only ideological, but economic and political as well.
The Jewish Agency for Palestine's (JA) Anglo-Palestine Bank negotiated with the Zionist Federation of Germany and Nazi Germany, signing an agreement for the migration ("transfer") of German Jews to the British Mandate on August 25th, 1933. About 60,000 Jews emigrated due to the Haavara agreement between 1933 and 1941; it was a win for the Zionists as well as the Nazis.
Zionist organizations, however, didn't care about German Jews as they claimed: they were the first to normalize trade and relations with Nazi Germany, pocketed most of the money from the agreement, and turned away German Jews who were denied entry to Cuba and the US in May 1939. They distributed Nazi goods across the Middle East and North Africa, disallowed Zionist projects anywhere outside the British Mandate, continued Haavara even after Kristallnacht pogroms and the Nuremberg Race Laws, hosted Adolf Eichmann (SS officer and co-organizer of the Holocaust) in 1937, and lobbied against offers by the UK and Dominican Republic. Zionists denounced all emigration of Jews to anywhere besides the British Mandate, endorsed Nazi bans on mixed-marriages and the creation of Jewish ghettos in Germany. Israeli PM Ben-Gurion even banned anti-Nazi protest when he was in power, and discouraged organized boycotts against Germany.
Thus, with the explicit formal and informal support for a Jewish state from the League of Nations and Britain respectively, we find the British Mandate of Palestine to be a creation of the unipolar imperialist world order, led by Britain-- that is, until another inter-imperialist war broke out in 1938 due to British actions meant to subvert and destroy the Soviet Union, the emerging second pole of a nascent dipolar world. Britain became its own gravedigger, and the United States took the reigns of the Western unipole.
Albert Einstein said on April 18th, 1938, speaking against the partition of British Palestine in New York, "We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabean period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word [(viz. as a nation-state)] would be the equivalent of turning away from the spiritualization of our community, which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should, after all, compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it in the knowledge that it will be in contrast to our nature." (ital. S.J.)
The Nakba truly began with the import of European Jews between 1882 and 1948, and Mizrahi (Arab) Jews roughly between 1920 and 1950, the "New Yishuv". In addition to import was its opposite-- export of Palestinian Arabs. The Nakba in a strict sense refers to the violence and dispossession of land by Israel in 1948 and 1967, but in a general sense it was the whole systematic expulsion of the native population as well as displacement borne by the children and grandchildren of these refugees. The incomplete "official" number of Palestinian refugees in 1950 was only 750,000, according to the UN. Since neighboring countries took in the displaced population after 1948 and again after the 1967 war, there are now 6 million Palestinian refugees: 2.4 million in Jordan, almost 600,000 in Syria, another half-million in Lebanon, and an estimated ~80,000 in Egypt. This figure includes the 2.5 million refugees (in 2024) still living in Palestinian occupied territory, most of whom are in the Gaza Strip.
Zionist and Arab collaboration with Nazi Germany
Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, was a leader in the Zionist militant group Lehi (AKA "Stern Gang") during the British Mandate era. He and the other leaders of the Lehi (1940-48) proposed an alliance between Zionism and Nazism-- between themselves and Hitler. They were declined by the Nazis due to Germany's former support for the Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
Hajj Amin al-Husseini was the leader of Palestine beginning in 1923, when he was installed by Britain to leadership of the British Mandate of Palestine. At this time, and until Palestinian public opinion shifted around 1936 to a majority anti-Britain sentiment, al-Husseini lauded Britain and was staunchly on their side.
Hitler eventually supported the Mufti because they shared an anti-British sentiment-- Hitler, who rose to power surfing a tidal wave of British finance capital, was initially an ally of the City of London, as well as a political ally of Churchill and MI6. Their motive for bolstering Hitler was simple-- Germany could be used as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, which for 30 years prior to the second World War the combined ruling class of Anglo-Saxon Europe (Britain, Germany, France) and America tried to prevent and then destroy. This is much like how Ukraine is being used today as a bulwark against modern Russia, and, generally speaking, for the same reason-- the prevention of a multipolar world.
However, the Nazis also then turned on their financiers; they severed the Anglo-Nazi alliance (although Churchill praised the Nazis as late as 1938), and with this Hitler found support in Arab states who had been subjected to British imperialism for centuries.
The basic, organic anti-British position of the Arab people as a civilization was founded on the fear of dispossession of their land, which evidentially did happen in the aftermath of World War II. They were willing to go to war to defend their sovereignty and self-determination (i.e. the right to rule over themselves rather than a foreign power ruling them, to choose their own path of development). This popular sentiment led to the Arab revolts against British political-economic rule over Palestine and other Arab territories starting in 1936 and lasting until 1939. However, the inorganic resistance channeled this sentiment of the average Arab of Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and so forth into dead-end scenarios and destructive activity.
Zachary Lockman wrote on the matter regarding the violent side of the Arab Revolt:
"On April 15, 1936, members of the guerrilla band founded by Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam held up cars and buses near Nablus, killing two Jewish passengers. Two days later a right-wing Jewish paramilitary group retaliated by killing two Arabs. Arab protests soon erupted throughout the country, gradually taking on the character of a broad-based anticolonial and anti-Zionist popular uprising. To contain the violence and channel the upsurge from below, Arab nationalist activists quickly called for a countrywide general strike. The strike spread rapidly, as did new “national committees” which sprang up to lead the struggle in all the major towns. Taken by surprise, the elite politicians tried to catch up with and ride the wave of popular energy by endorsing the strike call and forming a new Arab Higher Committee (AHC) on which all the major parties were represented, with Amin al-Husayni as its president."
The Mufti, who first was appointed to power and thereby funded by British intelligence, rejected British rule in the wake of the 1936 Palestinian-Arab revolts in order to harness the energy of the mass movement. He hoped to become a Western agent embedded in Arab leadership most likely. What began as peaceful protests against British rule were harnessed by al-Husseini and his forces, turned into violent action against the British and Jews in Palestine and Iraq.
However, the revolt was not entirely violent. In fact, it was mostly peaceful.
In 1922, in response to Zionists calling for a boycott of Arab produce and labor, as well as the exclusion of Arabs from Jewish communities and forbidding of Arabs purchasing land from Jews, the fifth Arab Congress called for a boycott of Jewish goods. From the time of the British Mandate until today, the Palestinians have called upon international organizations such as the UN for diplomatic intervention. Palestinians held a general strike in 1936 against Zionism and British rule. Urban workers and rural workers shut down transportation, harbors, and other sectors for six months-- the longest general strike in history.
These actions not only demonstrate Palestinian peaceful resistance at the time, but continue to undermine the narrative painting Arabs (Palestinians particularly) as always choosing violent resistance first.
From Lockman:
"The general strike would continue for six months, until October 1936, making it one of the longest general strikes in history. It constituted the first stage of a countrywide Arab nationalist revolt against both British rule and Zionism which would end only in the summer of 1939. The strike was accompanied by numerous attacks on Jews and Jewish property as well as on British installations, transport, communications, and personnel, carried out mainly by the numerous village-based guerrilla bands that sprang up in the countryside during the spring and summer of 1936 and gave the revolt an increasingly violent and openly insurrectional character."
Having no benefactor to guarantee his stay in power, Amin al-Husseini turned to Hitler. In this turn, the Mufti allied with Abdel-Karim Qasim, an Iraqi general who took power during the Iraqi Revolution of 1941. Qasim carried out the Farhoud: the Iraqi branch of the Holocaust. He later ousted the Nasserist Free Officers following the 1958 revolutionary coup, installed Iraqi Nazis back into top government positions, and funded the Mufti's SS network.
With the support of Hitler and Qasim, Hajj Amin al-Husseini gained access to an SS network and subsequently headed the SS branch of Palestine. Qasim, the Iraqi Hitlerite, used his position to diplomatically and financially support the Mufti, nominally with 100,000 Iraqi Dinars. In a document quoted in Sovinform's article on Qasim, the CIA admits that the Mufti detested Communists and described the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as either "Communists or saboteurs" of his regime. al-Husseini is also stated in this document to have delayed orders for the assassination of the PLO's head, Shafiq al-Hut, until the 100,000 Iraqi Dinars from Qasim were replaced. He publicly angled this stance against "Palestinian infighting".
According to the Sovinform article:
"...[T]he Mufti had been the head of the ‘Jaysh Al-Jihad Al-Moqaddas’, translated to English as the ‘Sacred Struggle Army’ or the ‘Holy Jihad Army’, an army of terror created by the direct order of Hitler in 1944, furnished with arms by the SS, parachuted from Germany into Palestine by Sheikh Hasan Salameh (father to the commander of the Fatah’s commando forces, the infamous CIA spy Ali Hasan Salameh), directed by a nucleus of 60 Nazi Palestinian jihadists trained in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the Great Patriotic War [(World War II)], and operationally commanded by the SS-trained commando Abdel-Qader Al-Husseini. [...] The Mufti cannot in the least be regarded as 'only one Nazi.' Rather, he led a powerful army of SS operatives, whose goal during the 1948 War was not to fight the Haganah and Irgun but to wage war on the Palmach and the kibbutzim."
The Haganah (1920-1948), later the Mossad/IDF (Israeli intelligence), served as a de facto military force which defended the (largely non-preexisting) Jewish population. According to Israeli Prime Minister and historian Yitzhak Ben-Ami, as well as multiple Israeli outlets, the Bitzur branch of the Zionist paramilitary organization Haganah worked to encourage Jews to emigrate to Israel including from Arab states. This was another tactic employed to create an disproportionate and artificial Jewish population in Palestine.
Meanwhile, the Irgun (1931-1948) was another Zionist military organization headed by Vladimir Jabotinsky which attacked Arabs wantonly, unlike the Haganah which cooperated openly with the British military and security forces and acted deliberately.
Also from the Sovinform article:
"The CIA reported that the Mufti’s 'followers' – read: jihadist commandos directed by the SS – were integrating into the Palestine 'Liberation' Army [(PLA)] set up by Qasim:
'Former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Husayni has sent instructions to his followers in the West Bank of Jordan to go to Iraq to join the Palestine Army being formed by Iraqi Prime Minister Abd-al-Karim Qasim for the alleged purpose of liberating Palestine. Many villagers in the Nablus District of the West Bank of Jordan have wanted to go to Iraq for this purpose, but they have had difficulty securing exit permits from the Government of Jordan (GOJ).
'In November 1960 some Jordanian followers of Haj Amin Husayni departed for Baghdad by way of Beirut and Damascus. Among those who wanted to go but had not yet secured permits to go to Iraq were Farid Fakhir-al-Din and his two sons who are in the Jordan Arab Army. Farid Fakhir-al-Din intended to use the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad route if the GOJ persisted in not issuing permits to villagers of the West Bank of Jordan to travel to Iraq. (‘SUBJECT: Recruits from West Bank of Jordan for Palestine Army in Iraq’, CIA, CIA Sources: A Jordanian (B) with good West Bank contacts; from a former follower (F) of the ex-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Husayni. Date of Report: 5 December 1960, Date of Information: November 1960, p. 1)'"
Continuing on:
"By force, the Palestinians living in Iraq were to join the Mufti’s Nazi army of terror. The Iraqi Major-General Dr. Akram Al-Mashhadani wrote:
'The late Al-Husseini had a close relationship with Abdel-Karim Qasim, and he constantly visited Iraq. He was the one who convinced Qasim to establish the Palestine Liberation Army in 1961, which was trained in the Al-Mahawil ‘Al-Musayyib’ camp during the early 1960s. Service in this Army was made compulsory for Palestinians.' (The Mufti Haajj Amin Al-Husseini and his relations with Adolf Hitler and Abdel-Karim Qasim, Al-Gardenia, Major-General Dr. Akram Al-Mashhadani, November 2015)"
Therefore, in the midst of turmoil in British Palestine, with the organic Arab revolts, the artificially whipped-up Nazi-Arab collaborators, and the Zionist paramilitary violence, Hajj Amin al-Husseini was in fact not in support of Arab self-determination, but of using Palestine and Iraq as a Nazi "launching pad" from which to stage another front against the Soviet Union during the second World War. With this, we turn to the massacres committed by these Zionist paramilitary organizations, the diplomatic and military situation unfolding into the events of Arab-Israeli war of 1948, and the subsequent founding of the State of Israel.
More on the Irgun, Haganah, Lehi, and Nili
The British hired a Jewish network to gather intelligence in the Levant during the first World War, called the Nili. Agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn and his siblings and friends composed the group, and actively supported the alliance of Britain and the Zionists against the Ottomans.
In 1921, amidst the revelation that Britain promised both the Arabs and Jews the land of Palestine, with the Arabs also supposed to gain an independent Syria in their offer, violence erupted. This lasted until 1923, after which a period of relative peace ensued. Later, in 1929, due to mutual suspicion between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, violence flared up again, leading to the deaths of 133 Jews and 116 Arabs. The British took their time in responding, but eventually restored calm among the people. The Zionists continued forging ahead under the British, taking over major infrastructure and establishing their own institutions and elected assembly.
As the Anglo-Nazi alliance was being forged, the Zionists saw opportunity in Hitler's destruction of Jews. They called all European Jews to take refuge on land their ancestors might have never touched. This also played out well for the British, who needed a large enough population to move ahead with a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.
By May 1936, Arab violence broke out; not against Jews out of hatred, but against the British and Jews (especially immigrants) out of anger that Britain was at every turn refusing Palestinian Arabs self-determination while importing all the Jews they could find into the region to deform the organic population demographics. This reasoning was the reasoning behind the majority of the violence on the Arab side, with the aforementioned plot of al-Husseini and Qasim fanning the flames and discrediting the real (violent) expression of the Arab population. The British resorted to brutal methods to put down the revolt: public hangings, house demolition, and the use of civilians as human shields. By 1939, the insurrection was decimated, and the Palestinian leadership was crippled.
That same year, Neville Chamberlain's government wrote the 1939 White Paper, which claimed that Britain would support a single, jointly-governed state, including limitations on Jewish immigration and land purchases. Although the streets were filled with Jews protesting the decision (made for Britain's fear of war with the Arabs), Britain upheld the limits on immigration. This caused Jewish settlers to turn against Britain.
The Lehi insurgent group, lead by the seventh Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, sought to make an anti-British pact with Nazi Germany. They and other Zionist insurgent groups (Haganah, which later was absorbed by the Israeli state in 1948, and the Irgun, led by Jabotinsky and Begin among others) attacked military and civilian targets.
In October of 1945, they coordinated an attack on colonial oil refineries, railways, and police boats in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Palestine. This began a two-year long struggle by underground extremist groups against both Palestinian Arabs and the British. In July of 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British Mandate's headquarters, killing 92 people.
The American military expert John Lois Peeke wrote that Robert Asprey (American military historian), Menachim Begin (Israel's sixth Prime Minister), and Samuel Katz (New York Times best-selling author and "Middle East security and international terrorism expert") all "indicate that the King David was blown up for two reasons, to retaliate for the British attack on the Jewish Agency and to destroy the secret documents which would have linked the Jewish Agency and [David] Ben-Gurion to Haganah terrorism."
Haganah was the armed wing of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (JA), itself a branch of the same World Zionist Congress founded by Herzl and later led by Weizmann. The JA changed its official name to the Jewish Agency for Israel following the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, but continued to "encourage, ensure, and implement" the resettling of Jews in Palestine. David Ben-Gurion served as their president 1935-1948, playing a pivotal role in the Haganah's operations. "Haganah" is Hebrew for "defense force", which was the inspiration for the naming of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) following the founding of Israel.
The Irgun and Lehi cooperated in the massacre of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. 107 Palestinians in a village of 600 near Jerusalem were slain, including women and children. In addition to the destruction of the native population, such massacres were committed with the intention of scaring them to leave. The following massacres in Saliha and Lydda triggered the flight of Palestinians from violence en masse, the expulsion, or the Nakba sensu stricto (the displacement of these refugees of the 1948 war, and later the June 1967 war).
On May 14th, 1948, Israel declared independence from Britain. (Here we cease to use the term "State of Israel" to denote a difference between the ancient kingdoms of Israel and the modern nation-state.) With the declaration of independence came the consolidation of all Zionist paramilitary forces into the official Israeli Defense Force.
Thus, there are direct links not only between the Mufti's paramilitary forces in the 1950s and the Anglo-Nazi alliance, but between Zionist paramilitary forces, the Anglo-Nazi alliance, and the IDF. Far more massacres have been carried out over the years, as are linked below.
Some try to relate the founding of Israel to the founding of America, whether it be Zionists attempting to court supporters from the unipolar order, "landback" liberal "anti-Zionists" comparing the genocide of Palestinians to that of First (Native) Americans, or those in between. However, this is a false equivalence. The two share only the fact that they were both products of British imperialism, and that they turned against Britain-- the US in a historically progressive revolution during early capitalism, on the one hand, based on popular sovereignty and constitutional democracy; and Israel in a historically reactionary revolution founded upon the explicit dispossession and genocide of an authentic, indigenous population, on the other. Where the whole of America had plenty of land to share and European settlers didn't require immanently the dispossession and mass murder of First Americans in order to live on the land, the Zionist Jews knew that the violation of Palestinian/Arab self-determination and popular sovereignty was inherent within the plan to found a Jewish state in the holy land. Infrared views the treatment of First Americans by European settlers and later by America under Andrew Jackson as a "mutual misrecognition [of antagonism]" and a product of "incommensurate ways of life" owing to differences of culture and means of production, we also think it was wrong to steal their land and that First Americans should have better representation in our country. On the same token, the Israelis knew what they were doing and tried to assert it as progressive (viz. "socialist" kibbutzim and "labour Zionism"); Palestinians don't want representation within what they view as an invading force supported by the imperialist system, they want an authentically Palestinian state and authentic popular sovereignty. This is why, whether in favor of Palestine or not, the comparison between First Americans and Palestinians falls flat.
Following the violent uprisings previously discussed, the Peel Commission was convened to assess what Britain should do about the unrest. In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended that Palestine be partitioned, or divided by the judgement of the British, for the very first time. The proposal was a Jewish region in the north, a large Arab region encompassing the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Palestine, and a British mandate engulfing Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, stretching northwest towards Tel Aviv. Though it was thrown out, the Peel Commission served as the basis for the 1947 Partition plan, much like Sykes-Picot served as the basis for the Anglo imperialization of Arab territory which followed. The Mufti rejected this plan, acting as if he had sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs in his saying that no land could be ceded to Jews.
In 1942, the Biltmore Conference was held in New York. Ben-Gurion and the Zionists, for the first time, --diplomatically, politically, officially -- demanded "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." Chaim Weizmann demanded the British allow unrestricted immigration of Jews into Palestine, while Jabotinsky worked to organize said immigration efforts on the logistical end.
1944 British Labour Party endorses "transfer" (expulsion) of Arabs out of Palestine. At this time Bertrand Russell was a member of the Labour Party.
When the French Mandate of Syria expired in 1946, the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic was formed, which retained control of the Golan Heights region in northern Palestine. This is important with regard to the war of 1967, when Israel began to occupy the Golan Heights and heightened tensions between itself and Syria.
1947 Partition Plan
The UN, weighing in on the situation in the British Mandate, came up with Resolution 181: it proposed 55% of the land be held by a Jewish state and 45% by a Palestinian Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control. Thirty-three countries approved, including the entire Anglophone world and the Soviet Union among others. Nearly the entire Arab world rejected this proposal, along with Orthodox rabbis who appeared at the UN. Along with the massacre of Deir Yassin and Israeli declaration of independence the following year came a steady stream of immigration encouraged by the Zionists; for Palestinian Arab sovereignty and determination, the outlook was bleak. The Arab states, which recently declared their own independence from the European imperialists, chose not to sit back and watch: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq sent forces to Palestine, which also was the founding event of the Arab League.
Some actors weren't concerned about the self-determination of Palestinians however-- King Abdullah of Jordan, for one, sought to expand his borders, beginning special negotiations with Zionist organizations. King Faruq of Egypt also didn't show conviction on the issue, according to Professor of International Relations Fawas A. Gerges. That being said, it was only a matter of weeks before Israel was surrounded by Arab troops, at which point the UN called for a 4-week-long ceasefire. Though there was a UN arms embargo on the entire region, Israel evaded the UN by importing Czechoslovakian armaments seized by Slansky and company.
Using the time to regroup and reload, Israel immediately launched a counteroffensive once the ceasefire ended. Forming garrisons in Lydda and Ramla in the West Bank, two Palestinian towns in UN-allocated Arab territory, the IDF expelled 70,000 Arabs from their homes, to join the other thousands of Palestinian refugees of the Nakba. This is known as the Lydda Death March.
In total, over half of the Arab population fled or were expelled, and many more were killed.
With their armies uncoordinated and the IDF occupying Palestinian-Arab territory in the West Bank, King Faruq led the charge to create a Palestinian government based in Gaza; however, this was mostly a play by Faruq against King Abdullah, to prevent his expansion. This took the Arab leadership away from focus on repelling , while the Israelis continued gaining ground and fortifying what they had already taken. The IDF launched an air raid on Egyptian forces in Gaza. By 1949, Egypt was defeated, destroying both the plans of Faruq and the hope for a unified Palestine from the rest of the Arab League.
Egypt turned to Britain's authority to protect its territory, and the Arab states signed bilateral peace agreements with Israel, which then occupied 77% of the former British Mandate of Palestine. Egypt continued its military presence in the Gazan area and Jordan annexed the West Bank. Israel controlled the larger portion of Jerusalem, and the armistice which followed roughly set the modern borders of all future conflicts.
The State of Israel was founded on May 14th, 1948. President Truman issued a statement within a few hours recognizing Israel. On May 17th that year Britain attempted to distance itself from Israel in a statement, claiming it "didn't meet the criteria" of an independent state. That same day the USSR, via Molotov, issued a formal recognition of Israel.
Some point out Stalin and the USSR's early support for Israel, which we see as a mistake which was corrected only a few years later, both personally by Stalin and by the few Soviet republics which supported Israel. Stalin recognized Israel by simply accepting reality as it was; he thought that Israel, on the basis of Labor Zionism, might become socialist and adhere to the outline given by the Balfour Declaration. However, Stalin did not sanction the Czech arms sent to the Zionists by the Geminder-Slansky group, while he didn't interfere with other Soviets arming Syria. Stalin supported the Israeli Mapam party, a left-wing party which was really an outfit for Soviet intelligence. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, when many Soviet Jews applied for visas and exit permits to emigrate, Soviet authorities arrested and deported Jews who expressed pro-Zionist and pro-Israel sentiments. From May 15th, 1948 until the end of 1951, emigration was halted; only four old women and a disabled ex-serviceman were allowed to leave for Israel. It was on February 12th, 1953 that the Soviet Union severed its relations with Israel after a state-sanctioned bombing, which injured three Soviet officials and destroyed the Soviet embassy. The Soviets soon closed the embassy and withdrew its personnel from the area. Finally, when Stalin was informed of the Czech arms shipments to Israel by Matyas Rakosi, they together informed Gottwald and other Czech leaders. The Geminder-Slansky group was executed on charges of service to the UBD (Yugoslav secret service), MI6, CIA, and Mossad.
post-Partition (1948 - )
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1949 Rhodes Armistice line drew out the original borders for the West Bank and the modern borders of the Gaza Strip.
With its borders now set, here are the basic conditions of the Gaza Strip. With a community living mostly on crops and fish, Gaza (as defined by the Armistice line) is a piece of land 25 miles long and 5 miles wide. It is roughly the size of Philadelphia or Washington D.C., with almost exactly the same land area as Las Vegas. The Strip is today the fifth most densely populated place on Earth, home to 2.1 million; this is more dense than any city in the U.S., including Los Angeles. As we will explain, throughout the rest of the post-Partition era, the Gaza Strip has been surrounded by walls, with the land made infertile, water undrinkable, people starved, and the airspace above (and land and sea surrounding it) militarized and controlled. Imports and exports are not allowed without Israeli approval and Israel routinely provokes armed conflict with Gazan paramilitary groups. Israel's goal, as we hope to demonstrate, is to either expel or kill the Gazans, whose territory would thus likely become a series of luxury beachfront tourist locations and oil fields on and off the coast. The Gaza Strip has thus been described as an "open-air concentration camp" since the early 2000s, by British PM David Cameron and by former Israeli Major General and director of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland. In 1947, however, the Gazan population numbered only 80,000, and by 1950 rose to 250,000 due to immigration and births.
With Israel declared a Jewish state, the 150,000 Arabs who remained in Israeli territory after the 1948 were second-class citizens. Though they received citizenship and the right to vote, Israel was a Jewish state-- and the majority of the Arabs were non-Jews. Nominally, and as Ben-Gurion painted it in 1947-48, Israel was supposed to be a liberal democracy, an "outpost" or "rampart" against the Arab world's "barbarism", and with a socialist tinge viz. kibbutzim. However, when push came to shove, liberalism was as easily discarded as it was declared.
Between 1948 and 1966 most Arabs were monitored under a military government (junta) which restricted their rights to free speech, to assembly, to movement, and so on. They were not allowed to join the Israeli trade unions federation until 1965, and 40% of the land was taken by the Israelis for their own use, which usually did not benefit the Arab citizenry. The Arab sector was and is afforded disproportionately less than Jewish Israeli territories in terms of educational, medical, infrastructural, and other public funding. Thousands of refugees tried to cross the armistice borders seeking their relatives, homes, and lost possessions. It is estimated that Israeli forces killed 2-5,000 people who tried to cross.
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, the Palestinian Fedayeen movement gained prominence as a band of decentralized rebel forces against Israel. In retaliation for the Yehud attack, in which a Palestinian Fedayeen squad attacked and killed a family in their home, the Israelis launched the Qibya massacre under Operation Shoshana (1953). Operation Shoshana was a revenge operation against Palestinian forces in the West Bank who resorted to violence against Israeli settlers in addition to the IDF soldiers who occupied the land. During the Qibya massacre, Israelis killed 69 Palestinians villagers (two-thirds of whom were women and children) and blew up 45 houses, a school, and a mosque. Ariel Sharon wrote in his diary later: "The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an example for everyone." Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property", and post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.
In 1954, Israel launched a failed covert operation called Operation Susanna (also known as the Lavon affair) in Egypt. A group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by the Mossad to plant explosives at civilian targets owned by Egypt, Britain, and the United States. The terror attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian communists with the goal of forcing Britain to retain its occupying troops around the Suez Canal. No one was killed as the plan was thwarted, but Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon was forced to resign and the Mossad cell was prosecuted in Israeli court.
1956 Suez Crisis
The Soviet Union provided huge Czech arms shipments to Egypt and Syria in 1955 and 1956, respectively. The Soviet Union also provided training to the Egyptian forces starting in 1955. From 1949 through the 1950s and onward, Syria was embroiled in protests, coups, and civil wars, and after the Suez crisis, in 1958, Syria was again absorbed by Egypt into the United Arab Republic (UAR), under Nasser.
In 1956 Israel struggled against the US over policy, culminating in the Suez crisis. Israel colluded with Britain and France to attack Egypt's nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser's platform was a secular socialist Egyptian state, in contrast to the MB's theocratic ideal. Having taken power with the anti-monarchical Free Officers movement in 1952, Nasser banned the Muslim Brotherhood (who allied with the Free Officers) in Egypt, which gained prominence anyway as a populist organization. Nasser announced the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the Anglo (British-French) joint-owners of the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. He offered Britain and France compensation, but instead they colluded with Israel to invade Egypt and take back the canal. Moshe Dayan led the Israeli forces, culminating in a 100-hour campaign against Egypt.
In a swift victory, Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula after a week of fighting (October 29th - November 7th), demonstrating itself as an asset to the unipolar order. However, President Eisenhower was not convinced of Israel's usefulness, and was worried about Soviet support for Nasser. He ordered a full withdrawal, and Israel reluctantly obliged. Zionists claimed that Israel needed to keep the Sinai in order to give themselves breathing room against the "Arab hordes" of surrounding countries. Having not become aligned with either geopolitical pole, Egypt became a major player in Middle Eastern politics for itself, with Nasser a hero to "overexploited" undeveloped countries.
Israel Defense Forces didn't simply stop the extermination and expulsion of Palestinians during their military operation in 1956. Just before, on October 29th, Israel Border Police shot and killed 19 men, 6 women (one of whom was pregnant), and 23 children (not counting the pregnant woman's child) at Kafr Qasim after imposing an unannounced curfew the same day. The massacre of 275 Palestinians at Khan Yunis and its nearby refugee camp on November 3rd was documented by the UN. On November 12th in Rafah, the IDF rounded up males over the age of fifteen using force (including beatings and shooting over their heads; some were injured or killed from this alone), after which the IDF conducted interrogations and summary executions. The number of deaths in the Rafah massacre were disputed, with the UN claiming 111 casualties and Palestinian sources claiming nearly 200 casualties. Israel naturally claimed the refugees got uppity, so to speak, and had to be punished collectively for resisting the Rafah screening operation. Similar operations, though less deadly, were carried out by Israeli forces in the days between the massacres at Khan Yunis and Rafah, at multiple refugee camps; men between 15 and 60 years of age were detained en masse, interrogated, with some let go, some executed in secret and others imprisoned at Atlit or forcibly relocated to Gaza.
The UN stationed peacekeeping troops for the first time ever in the Sinai to secure the borders against escalation, and Israel was happy to serve the British and French as the protectors of imperialist trade through the canal. After all, this was the exact purpose for which Israel was supported by the British, and the French were the largest benefactors of Zionist organizations before the British. However, the Suez crisis was a nail in the coffin of British leadership of the unipolar world order; the US had been rising rapidly as its heir and ascended to rulership with Eisenhower's display of "tough love".
1967 Arab-Israeli War
The 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Six-Day war, or, in the Arab world, the June 1967 war, was another major turning point for Palestinian resistance. It marked the second major wave of Palestinian expulsion, the second part of the Nakba (sensu stricto), and the beginning of many different resistance groups founded in its aftermath. We here will cover the events which led to the war, its resolution, and afterwards the legacy it left to both Israel and Palestine moving forward.
By 1961 Syria broke away from the UAR led by Nasser, following a military coup. In 1964 Syria, still struggling internally, had a dispute with Israel over the rivers which flowed into the Sea of Galilee from Syria's Golan Heights territory. Israel was attempting to dig a canal which funneled this freshwater from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev Desert in the south. Syria disputed this exploitation of the water source, and moved to divert the upstream water away from the Sea of Galilee in 1964. Violent conflicts, though sparse, began in and around the northern DMZ that year.
In 1966, following the murder of a few IDF soldiers by the guerilla Fatah movement, Israeli forces raided the West Bank village of As Samu' in the largest military operation since 1956. They rounded up the locals, killed 18, injured over 100, and blew up dozens of homes.
By this point, Israel was on thin ice with its neighbors, and was still not welcome by the local populations. On May 13, 1967, the Soviet Union falsely warned Egypt that Israel was assembling its troops to invade Syria. Similarly, declassified CIA documents and then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban revealed that Israel lied about Egyptian troop concentration in order to secure U.S. diplomatic and military support for Israel and against Nasser. Under the Egyptian-Syrian defense treaty of 1955, both countries were obligated to protect each other in case of an attack on either. On May 16th, 1967, Nasser ordered the UN troops out of the Sinai, and-- to his surprise-- the UN completely withdrew. He threatened to obliterate Israel once and for all. Jordanian King Hussein joined the Egyptian-Syrian coalition against Israel, signing a mutual defense pact with Egypt and overseeing construction of the Syrian canal while the Egyptians amassed in the Sinai. Iraq soon followed Jordan in joining the coalition. Additionally, Nasser blocked Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. The superpowers repositioned their naval assets in the region that same week.
On the eve of the 1967 attack, Israeli minister Yigal Allon wrote: “In … a new war, we must avoid the historic mistake of the War of Independence [1948] … and must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel”. However, respective motives are debated even today.
Moshe Dayan, under Israel's third Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, led the Israeli forces as in the Suez crisis, and the Israeli air force prepared for intense fighting. The Egyptian air force sent patrols up to defend its airspace at dawn on June 5th, but left a gap in their timing which would cost them dearly. Eleven Egyptian air bases were destroyed in the Israeli morning assault, timed between patrol shifts and leaving the Egyptians scrambling and defenseless.
Syria launched a sortie against oil refineries in Haifa, but were destroyed. Syrian airfields were flattened on the evening of June 5th. The Jordanian and Iraqi air forces were destroyed as well as they tried to move towards Israel. The Israeli air force then devoted itself to holding the Sinai to the south, the West Bank, and Golan Heights to the north. Following this, Egypt repositioned to attack. The Egyptians moved into the Gaza Strip and planned to meet Jordanian forces by cutting across and taking southern Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli forces sought to break through the flanks of the Egyptians. Ariel Sharon sent troops and helicopters for an assault on Egyptian positions. Fifteen-thousand Egyptian soldiers were killed in just four days. Many were captured, as well as hundreds of tanks and guns-- more than 80% of their equipment. By June 8th, Egypt was ready to accept a ceasefire.
Jordan had multiple brigades in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, with others in Samaria to the north. By the morning of June 6th, the Israeli Jerusalem brigade was at war over Jordanian-held East Jerusalem. By mid-day on June 7th, Israel had taken the Old City amid calls for a ceasefire by the UN, which Israeli representatives tried to delay in New York and Washington, D.C. The Israelis took Latrun from Egypt from their position at Lydda airport, and the major cities of Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron, and Jericho in the West Bank were taken by Israel. Throughout the war, under orders from future fifth Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli forces expelled 10,000 Palestinian villagers, destroying the villages in what could only be described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Yalu, Beit Nuba, and Imwas were among the most notable of targets; In the West Bank, the towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarem were deliberately and systematically erased. 12,000 Palestinians were expelled from Qalqilya alone as "punishment", according to Moshe Dayan's memoirs.
On June 9th, Israel began its assault on the Syrian Golan Heights in the north, capturing it on June 10th, and coming within staggering distance of Syria's capital, Damascus. The UN assisted in peace negotiations; Israel signed a ceasefire with Egypt on June 9th and Syria on June 11th.
The Israelis demolished the entire Mughrabi quarter of East Jerusalem on June 11th, which stood for 770 years prior. That night, the homes of over 100 Palestinian families, as well as the two mosques in the Mughrabi quarter, were destroyed using bombs and bulldozers in order to make an easily accessible plaza for Jewish worshippers in front of the (Western) Wailing Wall. The neighborhood was built by al-Malik, son of the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin as a Muslim waqf (an inalienable charitable trust under Islamic law).
Many Palestinian refugees fled to Jordan across the river with very few personal belongings. The Israelis annexed Golan Heights and much of the West Bank, which eventually was reduced to its modern state of various disparate enclaves ("Bantustan-ization"). However, they refused to withdrawal from the Sinai-- instead, they planted secret weapons caches and mapped the territory, and soon after Egypt began a war of attrition against the Israeli invasion. Israeli shelling led to exorbitant civilian deaths in Ismalia, Port Said, and Suez, the lattermost almost completely destroyed.
Prior to all this, in 1964 the Arab League convened in Cairo for its first summit, during which it authorized the creation of an authority representing the Palestinian Arab population, an umbrella organization of Palestinian groups called the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The Palestinian National Council met for the first time in Jerusalem on May 28th, 1964, and the PLO was formalized on June 2nd, 1964 with its stated goals being Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. That same year, the PLO authored a National Covenant to formalize their ideological line, which was later revised and replaced in 1968.
The Soviet Union slowly recognized the PLO and its efforts viz. national liberation in the late 1960s. By 1974 the USSR supported the establishment of a Palestinian state and in 1978 recognized the PLO as the sole representatives of the Palestinian people.
The PLO is a united front of various groups who, at least nominally, act on behalf of the Palestinian people. They saw the 1948 war as an unsettled matter, and in the context of the popular Arab sentiments of anger and distrust which followed the Crusades, as well as both inter-imperialist (world) wars, these groups were founded. The umbrella includes eight groups during various periods, but they were founded with only a few.
Here were will briefly discuss the origins and lineage of various prominent factions of the PLO. These groups were mainly founded after and/or influenced by the 1967 war.
Fatah is the most notorious and most powerful of the PLO factions. It is a secular nationalist organization first established by Yasser Arafat, a prominent leader of the Palestinian (Arab) community and its mass of refugees, in 1959. They were at first advocates of armed struggle, and in the mid-1950s were only a revolutionary mass movement which had no formal political hegemony or representation. Fatah participated in diplomacy with Israel and its allies, including via the Oslo Accords, and seeks a two-state solution along 1967 borders with absolute right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. In 1988, after renouncing terrorism, the party was taken off the US list terror organizations.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded in 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day war. George Habash, the main founder of four, was a Palestinian Orthodox Christian, a physician, and a member of Fatah until the Six-Day war. Habash wanted Fatah to take a stance more cooperative with Marxist-Leninism, and split to form the PFLP after the Six-Day war. Thus, they became Fatah's main opposition in the PLO. The PFLP was originally supported by the Soviet Union and some of its allies. Habash's co-founders are also important figures in Palestinian politics: Wadi Haddad, Nayef Hawatmeh, and Amhad Jabril. The PFLP opposes the PA and participation in its government, but has done so since 2006. The party opposes a two-state solution and instead calls for a democratic secular state to be won in historic Palestine through armed struggle. They are opposed to any kind of ethnonational or theocratic rule. It is listed as a terrorist organization by the US and EU. In their founding document (11 December 1967) and Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (1969) they are very explicit; their enemies are Israel, the World Zionist Movement, World Imperialism, and "Arab reaction represented by feudalism and capitalism"-- not Jews. The PFLP bases it's political analysis on class, not race or religion.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was a group which split from the PFLP in 1969, but retained its membership in the PLO. Nayef Hawatmeh is its founder (along with Yasser Abed Rabbo) and current leader. It is a Maoist party which organizes the National Resistance Brigades. Their founding goal is to "create a people's democratic Palestine, where Arabs and Jews would live without discrimination, a state without classes and national oppression, a state which allows Arabs and Jews to develop their national culture." The DFLP is based in Damascus, Syria and was initially supported by the Soviet Union, Syria, and others.
Rabbo, who founded the DFLP, later split to found the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA). They are a minor group in the PLO which supports the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The Palestinian People's Party (PPP) was originally called the Palestinian Communist Party. It was founded in 1919, but after the war of 1948, the original party was dissolved and its members in the West Bank joined the Jordanian Communist Party. They re-established the Palestinian Communist Party in February 1982, just months before the 1982 Lebanon War. Later, when the Soviet Union fell, they changed their name to the PPP. The PPP constitutes a minor bloc in the PLO, which they joined in 1987.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Central Command (PFLP-GC) is another offshoot of the PFLP. Founded by Ahmad Jibril in 1968, The PFLP-GC took a clear pro-Syrian stance in addition to its Marxist-Leninist line. They are opposed to peace with Israel and are designated a terrorist group by the US and EU, sharing the PFLP's vision for a secular democratic state across the region.
The Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) was originally the Palestinian Popular Struggle Organization (PPSO), founded in the 1967 by Bahjat Abu Garbieh, a former Ba'athist. Closely linked to Fatah, they became officially partnered with Arafat in 1971. In 1973, the PPSF split from Fatah and Arafat, rejecting the Ten Point Program of 1974 and subsequently leaving the PLO. Their Secretary-General Samir Ghawshah later elected to rejoin the PLO, accept the Oslo Accords, and form the PA. This led to a split within the PPSF, spawning another organization under the same name in 1991, which rejected the PLO and PA but takes part in military exercises and operations led by the PLO. Their armed wing, formed in 2008, is the Palestinian Popular Jihad Brigades.
Rejecting the Ten Point Program, aligning itself with Fatah, and rejecting the Wadi Haddad faction which carried out the Dawson's Fields plane hijackings, the PFLP split again during its Congress in 1972. The PFLP renounced the use of plane-hijackings, stated that the Haddad gang's adventurism gave King Hussein pretext for war on the PLO, condemned them as a "right-wing" element with ties to Egyptian, Jordanian, and Iraqi intelligence, based on intelligence provided by the Syrian Mukhaberat. Wadi Haddad, an agent of Saddam Hussein's intelligence service (Mukhaberat), formed the PFLP-EO (External Operations) and continued carrying out terror attacks.
Syrian intelligence supported the PFLP's "Leftist faction", instigating another split. The Revolutionary PFLP (PRFLP) split because George Habash retained contacts with Haddad. The Syrian Mukhaberat disliked Habash for this reason, helping to set up the PRFLP. In the midst of all these splits from the PFLP, their spokesman, the author and artist Ghassan Kanafani, was killed by the Mossad, who accused him of orchestrating Haddad's attacks.
The defeat of June 1967, also called the "Naksa" or "setback", changed the mass-sociopolitical state of Arab nations. Arab nationalism began to wane among the masses as a sort of "renaissence" period, and soon new-Islamic and other forms of resistance to the unipolar order emerged. The Arab populations of each respective country took on revolutionary attitudes, including Palestine, as evidenced by the founding of the many PLO factions and other resistance groups in its wake. Syria continued to be plagued by civil war, coups, and general factional and religious violence until the former general and Prime Minister Hafez al-Assad (father of Bashar) secured the Presidency in a bloodless Ba'athist coup in 1970, bringing with his administration statecraftsmanship and administrative security; the Jordanian monarchy carried on but was soon faced with violent opposition from the PLO, culminating in Black September of 1970 and leading to the PLO's expulsion to Syria and Lebanon the following year; Soon Lebanon would succumb to civil war, while Egypt under Sadat began to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and took kindly to Western influence.
1973 "Yom Kippur" War
When in South Africa the Bantustan territory was founded in 1970 to nominally solve racial and demographic issues, giving black South Africans enclaves of their own, it was a disastrous failure. However, future decades of Israeli leadership saw this as another model for how to carve up and control Palestinian territory, by breaking it into separate, easily surrounded and controlled regions. This has been referred to as the "Bantustan option" for "dealing with" the "Palestinian problem", as Israel and its defenders put it. First put forth during this time, this "option" is one tactic used by Israel and its allies over many years to curb peace talks and assert their right to the domination of the occupied territories. As we have already stated, the Bantustan option has been used since 1970 across the West Bank, destroying highways and setting IDF checkpoints between the enclaves.
At the end of the Egyptian war of attrition, the Israeli-Egyptian border did not move. Nasser died of a heart attack in September 1970, putting an effective end to the war as it was. Anwar Sadat took over as president. Israel continued occupying the Sinai while Egypt continued military exercises and operations, planning to retake the Sinai. Sadat offered Israel a peace deal in exchange for their withdrawal from the desert, but Israel's fourth Prime Minister Golda Meir rejected it. Sadat then turned to Assad, whose mission it was to liberate Golan Heights from Israeli occupation, as an ally.
In coordination with Syria, Egypt deceived Israeli forces of their intentions of invading and reclaiming Golan Heights and the Sinai, respectively. They chose Yom Kippur not for its religious significance, but for the fact that Israeli television and radio broadcasts don't air, nor do shops open or transportation run on the holiday. Thus Israel was unable to issue a 48-hour alert unlike in June 1967, which led to early successes for Egypt and Syria.
Sadat commenced Operation Badr on October 6th of 1973, crossing troops and armored vehicles over the Suez canal into Israeli-occupied territory. They captured the Bar Lev Line, a giant fortified sand wall on the banks of the canal. Syria, in the north, quickly crossed the 1967 ceasefire line and within two hours captured Mount Hermon. However, within 24 hours two Israeli armored divisions pushed back the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and pushed deep into Syrian territory themselves. Iraqi, Saudi, and Jordanian units moved in to help defend Syria against the counterattack, but Israel still managed to burrow towards Damascus.
The Soviet Union supported the Arab states with funding and weapons, while the US supported Israel with the same. When their stockpiles ran low, each superpower would ship the necessary armaments and artillery to their respective beneficiaries. This conflict was one of the tensest proxy wars of the Cold War for that reason.
By October 16th, Ariel Sharon's forces penetrated Egyptian and Syrian defenses, and moved swiftly towards Cairo. Having nearly mobilized Israeli forces almost to both capital cities, the fighting came to a standstill. The next day, the Arab oil-producing countries under the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reduced production by five percent. They pledged to “maintain the same rate of reduction each month thereafter until the Israeli forces are fully withdrawn from all Arab territories occupied during the June 1967 War, and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are restored”. They imposed an oil embargo on the US and its allies, which led to sky-high oil prices across the world and a US reassessment of support for the war. The embargo lasted from October 1973 to March 1974 and targeted Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Rhodesia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Finally, in the final week of October, both sides were ready to sign a ceasefire. Estimates of Israeli casualties at 2,600, of Egyptians at 7,700, and Syrians 3,500.
The 1973 hostilities were followed by Security Council Resolution 338, which called for peace negotiations between the parties concerned among other things. In 1974 the General Assembly reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty, and to return. The following year, the General Assembly established the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and conferred on the PLO the status of observer in the Assembly and in UN conferences.
Israelis were utterly traumatized by the war. Golda Meir resigned as Israeli PM the following year and her Labor party fell into decline. Yitzhak Rabin took over as Prime Minister. Henry Kissinger helped negotiate the peace settlements and prisoner exchanges, broking the Egyptian-Israeli peace deal and helping negotiate between Tel Aviv and Damascus. Partial territorial concessions were made, but Israel retained a portion of the lands it took in 1967. Meanwhile, Sadat cozied up to Israel and began a process of détente.
After only four years, Sadat went to Jerusalem to give the Knesset a speech on peace with Egypt. In September 1978, President Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Sadat and Menachim Begin, which ended with Egypt as a cautious (better yet, precarious) ally of Israel. Sadat took some early cues from the waning Soviet Union in "opening up" Egypt to Western influence. This was the origin of Egypt's treating Israel with kid gloves, greatly influenced by Egyptian military losses in 1956 and 1967. The treaty was signed in March 1979 but never was enacted, with both sides blaming each other. However, the IDF did withdrawal from the Sinai, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty served as the basis for the later Abraham accords. Golan Heights was formally annexed by Israel in 1981, though it is still considered to be occupied by Syrians and Palestinians alike.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 inspired many across the Arab world, especially Shias, and renewed a sense of civilizational unity. However, there also came intensification of certain contradictions in the Arab world which arose from this. Iran was asserting itself as the superpower of the Middle East, and has since emerged as the main pole of the region in the transition to a multipolar world.
Out of the Muslim Brotherhood came a splinter group: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which grew as a faction in the MB until it split in October 1981, following the Iranian Revolution. It was founded by Fathi Abd al-Aziz al-Shikaki, a physician from Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Its armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was founded in 1992. Three years later, al-Shikaki was assassinated by the IDF in retaliation for a double suicide bombing. PIJ's fundamental program is the destruction and dissolution of the artificial state of Israel, on the basis of revolutionary Sunni Islam. Its sister group in Egypt was responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat on October 6th, 1981.
1982 Lebanon War
Lebanon was ripe for a civil war to the north of Israel. This was, in part, due to religious tensions between the three main groups of Lebanon: Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Christians. The Lebanese political system was designed to give all three power to share, in which each group is guaranteed representation in its assigned leadership position. However, Shia Muslims felt they were getting the worst deal of the three.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization was based in Jordan before King Hussein mobilized Jordanian forces to attack and expel them to southern Lebanon and Syria (known as Black September or the Jordanian civil war). The PLO launched mortars at Israeli territory from across the borders of all three countries. Israel's motive for invading Lebanon was to stomp out the PLO entirely-- not only those who perpetrated such attacks. The problem with the PLO was (and is) their moderateness in the eyes of Israel. They have consistently advocated peace based on the 1967 borders with a right to return for all displaced Palestinians. However, Israel saw this as too reasonable-- they'd rather go to war than return to the 1967 borders.
Various groups were vying for power, but by 1975 they succumbed to infighting and a civil war erupted. The Lebanese civil war lasted until 1990.
In 1979, the Iranian monarchy was overthrown and replaced with a republic led by the Shia cleric (Ayatollah) Ruhollah Khomeini. This revolution became a regional symbol of power, and Khomeini saw the revolution as extending beyond the borders of Iran. Some even say Khomeini saw this revolution as "pan-Islamic", extending beyond the limits of Shia Islam as well. Thus, in the mayhem of the Lebanese civil war, Iran used the situation to spread its influence.
The CIA attributed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to the discrediting of Islamic politics as it developed since 1950, up until the Islamic Revolution in 1979-- which many feel gave Islam its proper modern political expression.
The following year the PLO sent multiple factions to train in the Soviet Union together. The PLO was funded and armed by the then-destalinized Soviet Union, under Brezhnev. At this point, the Soviets had been dragged through Khrushchev giving weight to claims of a "Soviet empire" with his foreign policy, as well as Brezhnev's attempts to dictate the foreign policy of other countries. Here, though, lay an unavoidable legacy of Stalin's reversal of policy regarding Palestinian self-determination, which Breznev was acknowledging in assisting the PLO.
The PLO attempted to assassinate Israeli Ambassador to London Shlomo Argov on June 3rd, 1982. It was in August 1982 when Israel sent tanks, troops, and bombs across the border in its invasion of southern Lebanon with the solitary goal of eradicating the PLO, who were beginning to fire rockets into northern Israel again, driving Israelis from their northern settlements along the border. This invasion is known as Operation Peace for Galilee, in which Israeli forces reached Beirut. After withdrawing to southern Lebanon, Israel occupied southern Lebanese territory until 2000.
The Israeli goal of destroying the PLO was essentially completed during this operation; the PLO was sent into exile in multiple Arab countries.
It was during this time, and in response to the Israeli invasion, that the Hezbollah political and military force-- a group of Shia Muslims inspired by the Iranian Revolution who came together to oppose Israel-- was founded. Hezbollah is led by Hassan Nasrallah (1960 - ), who joined and climbed its ranks throughout the 1980s, assuming command as General-Secretary in 1992. Hezbollah remains openly supportive of Iran as a unifying power in the region today, and Iran trains, funds, and arms Hezbollah fighters since 1982 through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), specifically its Quds (foreign ops) Force. This is overt-- both Iran and Hezbollah admit that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy against Israel-- and Iran had only attacked Israel through this or another proxy group until Israel's direct attack on the Iranian embassy in 2024. In 1985, Hezbollah claimed "the obliteration of Israel from existence" was a top priority, alongside taking control from US and French occupying troops acting as peacekeepers. Their tactics included suicide bombings and other terrorist acts until the 1990s. A major political shift occurred in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, and Hezbollah grew from an underground resistance force into a major political hegemon. They won their first seats in parliament in 1992. Since 2005 Hezbollah has had cabinet ministers running various different parts of the Lebanese government, and they became major providers of social services such as health, education, youth programs, and sometimes food vouchers in areas they control. Unlike other groups which participated in the civil war, Hezbollah kept its weapons, which it used to continue fighting the Israeli occupation, pushing them out of southern Lebanon and gaining a positive reputation among the Lebanese and international communities for it.
First Intifada (1987 - 1990)
By 1987, Palestinians realized they were not going to receive any external support against Israeli occupation. They engaged in non-violent civil revolt for two years before it was defeated by harsh Israeli repression. 15,000 Palestinians were jailed per year during the First Intifada. Amnesty International reported in 1998/9 that there were as many political prisoners in the occupied territories as in Iraq, but as a portion of the population the difference was astronomical. Amnesty, Bt'selem, Human Rights Watch documented "the systematic and methodical ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian detainees."
Hamas (or the Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded on December 10th, 1987, early in the First Intifada. It was founded by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic and partially blind Muslim cleric. It was at first a charity group-- also an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was committed to peaceful resistance to the occupation by Israel. Eventually, Hamas was pushed by the IDF's continuous murder of civilians to take up armed resistance.
Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni political party and military force which today controls the Gaza Strip. In its founding charter, the "Covenant" (1988), Hamas cited the Holy Quran in saying "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
However, as the Wilson Center points out:
"In 2017, a revised Hamas manifesto included three departures from the 1988 charter... First, Hamas accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state separate from Israel —although only provisionally. Its statement on principles and policies said, 'Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.' Second, it attempted to distinguish between Jews or Judaism and modern Zionism. Hamas said that its fight was against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project, Israel, but not against Judaism or Jews. The updated platform also lacked some of the anti-Semitic language of the 1988 charter. Third, the document did not reference the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas was originally an offshoot."
Here we will mention briefly our view on the violent attacks which have taken place since 1989. Although Palestinian Islamic Jihad had carried out one suicide attack in 1989, and individuals from Hamas coordinated with PIJ on attacks in 1993, the overwhelming consensus is that Hamas (especially) and the PIJ didn't sanction use of terror or suicide attacks until 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron. On February 25th 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a Zionist from the ultranationalist Kach party (1971-1994) made his way past IDF security at the holy site with a rifle and other armaments, opening fire on and killing 29 and 150 Muslims while they prayed. This led to the dissolution of the Kach party in Israel, but at the same time kickstarted the spell of terroristic violence which Hamas and PIJ considered a proportionate reaction to not only the actions of Goldstein and other armed Israeli settlers, but the state of Israel and its supporters as a whole for fostering these attacks in the occupied holy land. Thus, these attacks by Palestinian resistance groups were a response to Israeli occupation and settler violence. Not to be lost is the fact that many of these attacks targeted Israeli military, not civilians, and almost completely disappeared after the Second Intifada.
Another brief excursion: Should we not support armed resistance? Should we oppose _all_ violence as a matter of "principle"? Infrared argues that we should support just wars on the principles of self-determination and popular sovereignty, especially as Americans. To take up arms against an invading force is rather to fight to the death for one's family, land, country, and lastly themselves. To take up arms against an invader is to be armed for defense, and against an occupier it is to be armed for liberation. Thus we support wars of popular sovereignty, of national liberation, of self-determination; in a word, those against. All criticism of such armed struggle should be secondary to this support since the basic precedent is a battle to the death between invader (or occupier) and invaded (occupied). The one-sided, rigid, and universal condemnation of violence lacks recognition of the world-historical development of class struggle and antagonism, which necessarily leads to violence on a major scale-- they are the progenitors of both violence which has no basis in the common sense notion of popular sovereignty, and, in turn, that which does. Meanwhile, in the 21st century, it has become more effective to manage both peaceful (diplomatic, civil, legal, etc) protest movements as well as online "discourse" (see Information warfare).
By 1990, Palestinian opposition was defeated, and so was the Intifada. The Soviet Union was dissolved the following year, crippling the Palestinian resistance. Later, it seemed, the defeat of Iraq destroyed the main economic and political support for Palestine once and for all.
At that point, Israel gave the PLO an ultimatum: genuflect to Israeli rule or the PLO will be extinct. They thought Arafat was the toadying leader they were looking for, a "rebel" who was in a position of defeat, and tried to recruit Palestinian leadership as leaders of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gazan territories under the guise of Palestinian self-determination. This recruitment was known as the Oslo Peace Accords.
Oslo Accords (1993 - 1995)
Yasser Arafat signed a partial peace agreement with fifth Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993. Arafat was being groomed to take over a group of Bantustan-ized Palestinian territories, and was offered leadership in return for a cessation of resistance. In the Oslo Accords, he and the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty while maintaining a call for Arab statehood/recognized sovereignty only in the continuously occupied West Bank and Gazan territories-- a key reason as to why Hamas and other Palestinian groups rejected the deal.
The Carter Center observed Gazan and West Bank elections thrice, beginning in 1996, with the election of Arafat and 132 members of parliament.
From 1993 to 2000, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories nearly doubled from 200,000 to 400,000. The settlements encompassed 50% of the West Bank. This settlement was far more rapid under Labor than Likud, under PMs Rabin and Barak than others. In B'Tselem's 2002 report on the West Bank, a 200-page report, the investigators conclude: "Israel has created in the occupied territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two different systems of law in the same area, and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa."
It was during the negotiations in 1994 that the Palestinian Authority was established. The PA held elections separate from the PLO and rejected the PLO's rule unless it or its factions participated in the PA's elections and parliament. The PA has been led by Fatah and Arafat since the 2007 Palestinian civil war. Also in 1994 Israel signed a treaty with Jordan, after decades of cooperation.
In the 1990s, Sheik Yassin of Hamas gave an interview in which he explained his views regarding Jews. He said "We don't hate Jews and fight Jews because they are Jewish. They are a people of faith and we are a people of faith, and we love all people of faith. If my brother, from my own mother and father and my own faith takes my homes and expels me from it, I will fight him. I will fight my cousin if he takes my home and expels me from it. So when a Jew takes my home and expels me from it, I will fight him. I don't fight other countries because I want to be at peace with them, I love all people and wish peace for them, even the Jews. The Jews lived with us all of our lives and we never assaulted them, and they held high positions in government and ministries. But if they take my home and make me a refugee like 4 million Palestinians in exile? Who has more right to this land? The Russian immigrant who left this land 2000 years ago or the one who left 40 years ago? We don't hate the Jews, we only ask for them to give us our rights."
In a speech in 1997, he elaborated the same point: "I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews! We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land, our homes, our children, our women, they scattered us, we became scattered everywhere, a people without a homeland. We want our rights. We don't want more. We love peace, but they hate the peace, because people who take away the rights of others don't believe in peace. Why should we not fight? We have our right to defend ourselves."
The various factions of Palestinian resistance have differences-- secular vs. Islamic, nationalist vs. internationalist, recognition of the State of Israel vs. not, and so on-- however, they are bound together by a single thread: the fight for self-determination for the Palestinian people. They are also bound as a whole to the people, the land, and the rest of world history in various ways.
A product of Zionism, the state of Israel, and American foreign policy, the network of American Jewish organizations formed throughout the mid-20th century, gained extreme and swift prominence in America following the 1967 war, and served as advocates of Zionism and the state of Israel ever since. This NGO complex was dubbed "The Holocaust Industry" by liberal professor and author Norman Finkelstein, in the book of the same name. In said book, Finkelstein documents the NGO complex ("organized American Jewry") and the prominent public figures ("Jewish elites") in it, such as Chaim Weizmann, Elie Weisel, and Jocko Wilkomirski, among many others. He seeks to expose the Zionist-NGO complex's exploitation of the memory of "The Holocaust": a dramatized and dogmatic version of the Nazi holocaust which, to the Zionists, represents the culmination of an eternal Gentile hatred of Jews as well as the worst, most incomparable event in human history. These organizations, even including those which were state-sponsored such as the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., have "shaken down" various nations for millions by stealing reparations from Holocaust survivors and claiming both the survivors' possessions as well as assets held by state and private banks since the second World War. Of course, the American Jewish network is only a small subsect of the vast network of charities, universities, NGOs, PACs, and other institutions which serve as devices for funneling money from monopolists under the guise of philanthropy. As Marx wrote, this type of bourgeois socialism was worked into a full system by the mid-19th century, and later became consolidated and socialized by the ruling class well into the 21st century.
Second Intifada (2000-2005)
At Camp David in July 2000, President Clinton and Israel's tenth Prime Minister Ehud Barak conferred, and came up with an ultimatum for Arafat: either he was going to accept the Bantustan-ization, the surrounding and splitting up of many enclaves of Palestinian territory, or his career was over. Continuing support for a two-state solution, Arafat wanted concessions such as land-swaps of equal value and right of return for displaced people. That was rejected and Arafat was again demonized as an opponent of peace, since this peace deal (and Arafat's stay in power) was predicated on the Bantustan-ization of the occupied Palestinian territories. He again became a terrorist in the eyes of the Zionists and their American allies after having been rehabilitated as a statesman by Western diplomats and media. There is a lot of dispute on Camp David as nothing was written down and our knowledge comes from personal testimonies alone.
After the negotiations were axed, Palestinians felt again hopelessness and frustration. They were hoping for an end to the occupation and the right of return for refugees, but most likely neither was ever on the table. Later that year, on September 16th, 2000, Palestinians were mourning the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres which were executed in West Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war by the IDF. Israel's eleventh Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was the leader of the IDF at the time of the massacres, the victims of which were almost entirely Palestinian, the exceptions being Lebanese Shi'i. On September 28th, 2000, Sharon entered Al-Aqsa Mosque with a large delegation, which was seen as a provocation and an intrusion in the context of the Camp David negotiations and the anniversary. The month of September was rife with small skirmishes and violent incidents, but this led to a larger convergence of forces unified against Israeli occupation in the wake of the failed peace talks at Camp David. The protests were surpressed by the IDF using rubber bullets, tear gas, and live ammunition. Within the first few days after the protests at Al-Aqsa Mosque, the IDF fired over a million rounds. Following peaceful rallies, the IDF opened fire on the protesters, killing seven. The demonstrations that followed were put down just as savagely. Civilians were murdered, including young children with their parents. This was the boiling point for Palestinians; they were furious.
Diana Buttu, a Ramallah-based analyst and former adviser to the Palestinian negotiators on Oslo, told Al Jazeera: “Everybody, including the Americans, were warning the Israelis that the Palestinians are reaching a boiling point, and you need to calm down. Instead, they turned up the fire even more."
Many groups took up arms against the Israeli armed forces, as well as the population of Israeli settlers who continued encroaching upon their land. Suicide bombers attacked Israeli buses and cafes in a series of attacks. Israel launched its largest offensive on the West Bank since 1967. Over the following five years, 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed. However, on February 8th, 2005, a ceasefire was announced by Sharon and Abbas, after which the violence dwindled. Israel withdrew its military forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip, but imposed strict control of movement in Gazan airspace, seafront, and at its checkpoints. This was soon coupled with the enhancement of the wall between Israel and Gaza, originally a fence built in 1971, which has since been upgraded with technology and other structural features and dubbed "The Iron Wall" (after Jabotinsky's book).
Operation Defensive Shield (April, 2002) was perhaps the most notorious IDF operation during the Second Intifada. During this operation, the IDF's use of human shields-- common during and since the 1967 war-- became official ("open") policy. Assaults and raids were carried out in major Palestinian population centers, and though the use of human shields ("neighbor policy") was challenged in Israeli High Court, regulation was circumvented and has been used ever since, though publicly condemned by the state.
Israel and its allies continued for years to blame Arafat and others for the uprising, claiming Palestinian leadership pre-meditated the violence "as early as" July 2000. Meanwhile, some Palestinians blamed Sharon personally for the violence on Israel's part, but overinflated his already significant role (as opposed to most Palestinians who blamed the IDF and Israel as a whole).
In March 2002, the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah put forward a peace pan for Palestine. However, his plan went even further than the international consensus in favor of Israel. For example, it called for "normal relations" on top of Palestinian and international recognition of Israel. This plan did not uphold the right of return, but used an even more vague expression. However, it was endorsed by every member of the Arab League as well as the Palestinian Authority. It thus became just another "failed" "peace" plan in Israeli history books.
That same year, the Israeli cabinet began the construction of the West Bank Wall, also known as the Separation Barrier. This wall was nominally supposed to stop Palestinians from entering the West Bank without a permit. However, it was also used to further the goal of Zionist Lebensraum policy. Not only was this barrier erected right through and between Palestinian communities which were culturally bonded for centuries; 85% of it runs through the West Bank, inconsistent with the 1949 Armistice "Green Line". This allows Israel to erect a fence without consequences in which the land occupied since the 1967 Six-Day war is developed into settlements, which are completely illegal under international law and which are often cited as a method of Israeli apartheid. This includes East Jerusalem, which was illegally annexed and occupied by Israel in the Six-Day war. When taken with the boxing-in of Gazans after the ceasefire and cessation of violence, the erection of the wall can be seen as part of the same plan-- the subjugation, annihilation, and (the eventual goal of) expulsion of Palestinians from all their territories.
In 2005, following the Second Intifada, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement was founded by over 170 Palestinian unions, professional and women's associations, refugee and refugee aid networks, and other organizations from Palestinian civil society. The BDS movement's roots lay in the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in South Africa. At the conference, which took place during the most tumultuous point in the Second Intifada, the discussions led participants to reaffirm popular principles of self-determination for all peoples, as well as an acknowledgement of Zionism and the similarities between the struggles of South Africans and Palestinians. The BDS movement has advocated international civil struggle via a) boycotts on Israeli companies and their products, b) divestment by national and international institutions from Israel, and c) calling for sanctions on Israel.
2006 Elections
Sheik Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was killed in a targeted helicopter strike in 2004. His bodyguards and nine bystanders were also killed. Soon after, his deputy Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi took over, but was soon also killed by a helicopter strike, along with his son and a handful of other civilians. Following this, Ismail Haniyeh, who appointed head of Yassin's office in 1997 and ran as the representative of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority's 2006 elections, took charge of Hamas.
Yasser Arafat died in 2005, and Mahmoud Abbas was elected to lead the Fatah party.
American President George W. Bush called for the Palestinian Authority to hold elections in Gaza in 2006. They did, and the PA thought Hamas wouldn't participate, leaving only the Fatah party (part of the PLO) to win.
Hamas won the election with Haniyeh as their leader, and have remained in power ever since, working in tandem with various other parties and armed forces in Palestine. The Carter Center and other independent international observers certified the election outcome as fair and democratic. This was the Carter Center's third time observing Palestinian elections in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Western governments refused to recognize Hamas as the winner of the 2006 elections, and designated the Islamic Resistance a terror organization. Hamas refused to recognize Israel while Fatah and the PA supported a two-state solution. However, the two camps met in Mecca and established a unity government in November 2006. Before long, the sparse violence that cropped up in Gaza since October 2006 led to Hamas raids on PA security compounds. In February 2007, Haniyeh and the Hamas-led cabinet resigned but was reappointed by Abbas, who attempted to establish a new unity government. In March of 2007 Israel vowed to continue the sanctions and military operations, causing Hamas to refuse cessation of rocket fire towards Israel.
Finally, Hamas had taken control over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority by force after the election during a battle with Fatah in June 2007. The war killed over a hundred people, and injured more than 300 others. It was only after this unfavorable outcome in June that Israel imposed a brutal, vicious, and inhumane blockade upon the Gaza Strip as a form of collective punishment of Palestinians. In response, Israel collectively punished Gazans by restricting movement/travel, blockading air, land, and sea; Israeli representatives boasted about putting Gazans on a "diet", which consisted of precisely calculating how many calories the average man, woman, and child needed to survive at the very minimum; and restricting imports on important foods such as meat and medical goods. Chocolate, seeds, nuts, dried fruit, fresh meat; paper, glass/plastic/metal containers, tractor and hatchery parts, fishing nets, heaters; horses, donkeys, cattle, chicks, and goats; as well as concrete, iron, wood, tar, and plaster for construction were all prohibited by the Israeli blockade, which continues to this day.
The Zionist blockade on Gaza could easily be compared to "Der Hungerplan", Hitler's plan to starve 30 million Ukrainians, Russians, and Slavs in order to resettle Ukraine and Czechoslovakia with Germans. The food surplus was redirected during the 1940-41 plan to German soldiers and civilians. The plan was to starve and evict the native population in order to realize Hitlerian Lebensraum policy. It has been established above that Zionists were highly involved with the Nazis and admired many aspects of their ideology both in theory and in practice, so the comparison is not especially taboo.
In 2006, Israel initiated the Second Lebanese war after Hezbollah rockets continued in the fashion of the PLO's rocket fire. Hezbollah's rockets were not hand-made, like most Palestinian mortars and bombs. These were the same Katyusha rockets used by the Soviets and their allies. The Israeli Air Force was regularly surveilling and flying over southern Lebanon, yet failed to stop Hezbollah rocket fire even after bombing Lebanese military installations and artillery. Hundreds of tanks were deployed but with no element of surprise; the IDF hadn't fought a ground war for decades and launched frontal assaults of Lebanese positions, taking no prisons and killing less than a thousand-- even the most mainstream Israeli historians call the operation "clumsy, heavy-handed, and slow", not to mention "disappointing." Israeli public opinion turned against the IDF (and by extension the IAF), albeit for stopping just short of a ground invasion. The war lasted 34 days, but had rippling geopolitical costs-- Hezbollah became more aggressive and their relations with Hamas and the PLO were strengthened. Israel quickly gave up the Lebanese land it was occupying after only a few weeks, during which fighting ceased. Over the next decade they would exact "revenge" on Arabs collectively for the Second Lebanese War by occasionally "mowing the lawn".
Operation Cast Lead (2008)
Israelis often use the phrase "mowing the lawn" to describe what they've done every so often in Gaza-- killing scores of people, terrorizing others, and destroying homes and infrastructure. In addition, another tactic is employed to justify doing so: the IDF purposefully kills Palestinians, including children, in order to provoke retaliatory attacks from Hamas. Once Hamas retaliates, the Israelis claim they can respond with such actions and claim they had no choice-- that their enemy (Hamas) is violent and does not want peace.
In January of 2008, Israel intensified its operations in Gaza. Twelfth Israeli PM Ehut Olmert swore to seek vengeance for Palestinian rocket fire. Food, water, fuel, and electricity controlled by Israel became scarce, and the IDF killed seven Palestinians. With the Strip's airspace completely locked down and checkpoint-laden walls erected in prior years, more and more air strikes on Palestine continued until the Israelis decided they needed a real show of force, following the shameful second Lebanese war operation.
From December 2008 to January 2009, the IDF carried out a brutal assault on Palestine dubbed "Operation Cast Lead". Their goal was nominally to destroy the Palestinian armed resistance, similar to the stated goals of the 1967 war, the 1982 war, and the various sporadic crimes of the first and second Intifadas. 12 hospitals were damaged, 29 ambulances left damaged or destroyed, and 40 primary care clinics were destroyed; mosques, businesses, 217 schools and 60 nurseries damaged or destroyed, and a UN compound left in non-functional condition. 3,425 housing units were destroyed; 2,843 sustained major damage while 54,800 sustained minor damage. After 22 days of fighting, 1,387 Palestinians were killed-- 773 having been civilians and 320 children. On the Israeli side, only 13 were killed, including 3 civilians and four killed by friendly fire. Over 5,000 were wounded in the fighting. Hamas and Israel separately declared a ceasefire.
Following this operation, the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, also called the "Goldstone report" commenced. This report (published September 2009) by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was authored by Jewish South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who worked to subvert apartheid in South Africa and worked for the international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; his co-authors were similarly credentialed figures from Ireland, Pakistan, and Britain. Israel's thirteen and current PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak refused to comment or explain Israel's motivation for the operation in Gaza; Goldstone and his colleagues were barred from entering Gaza via Israel, and they instead had to travel through Egypt to investigate. The IDF unilaterally declared its own internal investigation, and the report investigated crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. Goldstone later effectively recanted his report, claiming he was too harsh on Israel and that Hamas didn't investigate and claiming he remained a Zionist-- even after investigating and confirming such Israeli acts as the murder of civilians carrying white flags, use of human shields including a nine-year-old boy, bombing a UN school which was being used as a shelter, and the intentional murder of 29 members of the al-Samouni family. Goldstone said in his op-ed that he never would have written the report had he known he'd be attacked, boycotted, censored, and vilified by the World Zionist movement in general, as well as the government of Israel and Jewish organizations in his native South Africa. The report itself, however, was a massive blow to Israel and its international diplomatic relations.
According to B'Tselem, of those killed during the period 2000-2010: 6371 Palestinian were killed by Israeli forces; of those 6371, nearly half (2996) were non-combatants, and 1317 were minors; 1083 Israelis were killed; of those 1083, 741 were civilians and 124 were minors. Further data is linked below.
Unable to form a unity government, in May of 2011 a deal was struck between Hamas and Fatah: Hamas would govern Gaza without oversight and Fatah would govern the West Bank under the PA. Meanwhile, throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, the UN simultaneously supported Israel and Palestine, favoring Fatah and the PA's two-state solution as they have since 1947.
The Iron Dome all-weather air-defense system was built and deployed in Israel in 2011. The US sponsored its production by Israeli weapons manufacturers, and continues to allot more than one billion USD per year to Israel for Iron Dome battery and missile production. As of June 2024, Israel possesses ten Iron Dome batteries. They were first employed after President Obama called for Congress to fund production in 2010. Israel routinely claims that Iron Dome deflects projectiles (the handmade mortars and rockets) at incredible rates, yet the undeflected projectiles cause virtually no damage. Even when thousands of them are not deflected by the Iron Dome system, these "rockets" are closer to fireworks than to V-2s.
Quite often, Palestinian armed resistance is met with international scorn, not only on the basis of violence but its perceived similarity to Islamic extremist groups. The US and Israel purposefully bolster such claims, including adding organizations like Hamas to terrorist watchlists. From the perspective of US hegemony, this is a no-brainer: by equating Palestinian Islamic resistance to armed Salafists they are able to discard all nuance and portray authentic armed struggle against unipolarity as terroristic, savage, and baseless-- not to mention that this action serves to keep the Muslim world divided as well as the American Muslim population. If we take a closer look, however, at such claims, we find that Hamas and other Islamic Palestinian groups are fundamentally opposed to such extremist action.
In November 2008, the Islamic State (ISIS) group Jund Ansar Allah was founded with around 100 armed members in the Gaza Strip in Rafah. The following year, the group claimed territory and attempted to establish an Islamic Emirate in Rafah. Immediately, Hamas went to war with the Islamic State, and soon killed their leader and a few others in a series of raids, which destroyed the organization. In 2014, just five years after Hamas utterly destroyed the Islamic State Salafists, Israel funded and armed Syrian rebels in order to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's government-- to which senior Israeli officials have admitted. These rebels, whom the Assad government is still battling today, include the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and others. Syrian oil fields have been occupied since by Americans and their rebel allies, plundering the natural wealth of Syria. However, that is not th sole reason for Israeli arms and funding; they also wanted to counteract Iranian and Russian influence over the region, which is a threat to American interests in the Arab world. The prevention of formation of geopolitical poles other than the Anglo-American unipole is the primary contradiction in geopolitics since the turn of the 21st century, and the rise of contenders such as Russia, China, and Iran threatens US hegemony abroad-- hegemony which is exclusive and minimally if at all co-operative with such emerging poles.
Operation Pillar of Defense (2012)
With the Israeli occupation's end still not in sight, the Palestinian armed and peaceful resistance waged on. Gaza, so densely populated that one may fire a rocket into the Strip at random and hit a person or building, was home to the armed resistance, continued firing rockets and Israel continued striking from above, leading to skirmishes on the ground. This came to a head in Operation Pillar of Defense, November 14th-21st, 2012.
Israel launched a major ground offensive in Gaza after escalating events: On November 14th, the IDF killed Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari, which caused widespread protests. The airstrikes rained down on 20 other targets in civilian neighborhoods, which the IDF claimed were housing weapons. Ten were killed, and the airstrikes continued through the night. Hamas responded with rocket fire, but killed no one.
A three-hour ceasefire was arranged on November 16th so Egyptian PM Hisham Qandil could visit Gaza to express support for Hamas and the people. Both sides accused the other of firing over the border, and under the cover of night Israel amassed 75,000 reservists on the borders of the Strip. By November 17th Israel destroyed PM Haniyeh's office with an airstrike. That same day the WHO categorically condemned the bombing campaign, stating that Gazan hospitals were overwhelmed with patients and running out of medical supplies and drugs. Haaretz quoted Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai in saying "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages."
Over the following weekend, Israeli navy fired into the concentration camp, killing a young girl and her uncle. Journalists from Sky News, ITN, Press TV, and Al-Quds TV were injured when two buildings were targeted. Reporters without Borders notably defended Palestinian media in a statement, citing international law. The 19th of November also saw the mass murder of the Dalu family. A handful of Israelis were killed by further retaliatory rocket fire (still mostly crude, hand-made bombs), while Israeli airstrikes left scores dead and more injured. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Israel to speak with Netanyahu, but refused to meet with Hamas leaders citing their "terrorist" designation in the US. Israel, Egypt, and the UN Secretary-General brokered the ceasefire through Clinton, which was easily discarded before it was even announced after Hamas approved of a bus bombing carried out independently in Tel Aviv, injuring 28. When Hamas spokesman Zuhri called this bombing an act of revenge for the rampant death and destruction, including the Dalu family specifically, Israel began another spree of airstrikes.
All in all, Israeli forces accepted a ceasefire brokered by Egypt. Four Israelis and 174 Palestinians were killed in the week-long operation, including more than a hundred Palestinian civilians and dozens of women and children. Over 1,250 Palestinians were injured, almost 300 homes were destroyed and 1,700 homes were damaged. Despite the ceasefire's terms stating that both combatants were required to "stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air including incursions and targeting of individuals", Israel continued to regularly violate and re-violate these terms over the years.
The UN report on Operation Pillar of Defense was published on March 6th, 2013. The UN again admonished both sides of the conflict for failing to "respect" international law. Infrared views this equivocation of Israeli and Palestinian crimes as lopsided and ultimately flawed, owing to the nature of international law's application itself. To the UN both actors were equal-- they were not an occupied and occupier, even though Israeli settlements, land-grabs, occupation, war crimes, and massacres were condemned under international law and Palestinian right of return, self-determination, sovereignty, and other rights were nominally upheld-- and thus "both sides" were expected equally to follow international law without distinction or contextualization of events in their world-historical essence. International law was to be applied blindly, not impartially. Not to mention the fact that Israeli wars and crimes have led to far more death and destruction than any acts by the Palestinian armed resistance. In spite of these facts, the UN has admitted Palestinian representation multiple assemblies, which still does not bring about an equal level of representation as Israel is regularly defended by the US, including using its special veto powers to defend Israel at the UNSC.
In August 2012, the UNRWA issued a report stating that Palestine would be unlivable by 2020 for a multitude of factors imposed upon it by the Israeli occupation.
"Land restrictions imposed since late 2008 still remain, preventing Palestinians from accessing land located 500m to 1.5km from the Green Line. This restricted area on land is estimated at 15% of the total land mass of the Gaza Strip and 35% of its agricultural land: a sore restriction on the densely populated territory. Fishermen are prohibited from accessing around 85% of the maritime areas they are entitled to according to the Oslo Accords. These access restrictions are regularly enforced by Israeli military force over land and at sea when controlled areas are entered."
Around 2013 the unemployment rate skyrocketed due to the Israeli blockade imposed upon Gaza in 2007 as collective punishment. At that time about 23% of men were unemployed and 50% of young people.
Operation Protective Edge (2014)
The blockade continued and so did the occupation of Gaza-- conditions deteriorated, unemployment rose, drinking water became unsanitary, and farmland infertile. Imports and exports were still controlled by Israel, save for Hamas tunnels used to smuggle items including livestock, weapons, and other goods. They publicly stated that they sought to destroy said tunnels, thereby preventing attacks which could make use of them and cracking down on Gazan trade.
Israel again created a precedent in their usual fashion: An IDF jeep was attacked, and "in retaliation" Israeli shelling killed four teenage boys playing soccer on the beach on November 10th 2014, while Western media was covering US election results and the world was watching the FIFA World Cup. After days of rocket fire between Hamas and other Palestinian brigades on one hand and Israel on the other, the latter launched an all-out attack on Gaza. In addition to the annihilation of Hamas, the Israelis again used retaliatory rocketfire as a casus belli for invasion.
On July 8th 2014, dozens were killed and dozens more were injured. Over the next seven weeks, Israel launched a major war on Gaza. 2,200 Gazans were killed (incl. 1,560 civilians, 550 children and 640 combatants), while 73 Israelis were killed (incl. six civilians, one child, and 67 combatants). 18,000 Gazan civilian homes and one Israeli home were destroyed; Gazan infrastructure damage numbered four billion USD while Israeli damages amounted to fifty-five million. Over 150,000 homes sustained damage which left them "uninhabitable". About half a million people were displaced by the assault, most of whom sought shelter in UN schools--which Israel struck anyway. 118 UNRWA installations were damaged, including 83 schools and 10 health centers. Israel formulated the military doctrine of "deterrence", which explicitly involves the large-scale destruction of buildings and other infrastructure and creating mass casualties as a means of "deterring" future attacks; this is a development of the state's plan since even before its founding. The death and destruction is intended to cause demoralization and fatigue which is meant to destroy the morale of Palestinian Arabs in turn, to force their surrender.
Israel tank operators were quoted by The Guardian as having received orders to fire at whatever buildings were in front of them, sometimes as "revenge" for IDF deaths. Soldiers were told the night before their July 17th operations to fire on any Gazan closer than 200 meters. They also were reported taking Gazans as human shields, but no one was prosecuted. No human rights abuses were reported for the operation on the Israeli side; Hamas and resistance fighters were claimed to have attacked Israel in the vicinity of civilians, which is considered under international law to be "not taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians", as opposed to human shielding (intentionally putting someone between combatants). On this point, we recall the fact that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, in which there is little open land. Amnesty International whitewashed much of Israel's actions in contrast to its previous reports on IDF operations.
The common features of Gazan occupation now have become sedentary, set in stone. The death toll continues rising with each operation, and in so doing the proportion of Palestinians to Israelis killed and injured remains a gulf of disparity; the ratio of Gazan civilians to combatants killed also rises. So too remains a disproportionate ratio in infrastructure damages in the respective regions. Still internally displaced, refugees and their descendants continue to live in tent encampments in the Strip, suspended in the limbo of internal displacement.
Beginning in 2018, Israel funneled millions through Qatari officials to fund Hamas. Though it would initially seem contradictory, there is a simple reason: Israel needed to keep Gaza and the West Bank disunified, and that meant propping up Hamas to a certain extent to guarantee Fatah is prevented from controlling Gaza. In reality this only hurts Israeli credibility, serving as further evidence that Israel manufactures enemies in order to justify itself and the necessity of a Jewish state in general. Fatah, as previously mentioned, is seen as a bigger threat by Israel due to it's (and by extension the PLO's) moderateness in having renounced armed struggle and recognized the state of Israel.
Between 2018 and 2020, Palestinians held massive peaceful protests in Gaza. Beginning on March 30th 2018, Gazans started marching in the tens of thousands to demand an end to the Israeli blockade as well as the right of return for refugees. Though some threw rocks or burned tires, most were unarmed peaceful protesters. In response, Israeli Security Forces (Israeli border security) used tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live ammunition. Haaretz interviewed Israeli snipers who routinely shot random Gazans; whether they were near the border wall or not. Children, pregnant women, and people as far away as 400 meters from the wall were shot with high-powered rifles-- often in the kneecaps or ankles with the explicit goal of paralyzation. Over 200 were killed and 8,000 injured. None faced consequences.
President Trump helped to negotiate bilateral peace plans between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel and between the latter and Bahrain during this time.
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2023 the Israeli population is about 9.8 million, made up of 73% Jews, 21% Arabs, and 6% others. Of the Jews, about 70% were born in Israel as second or third generation Israelis, with the other 30% being immigrants (~20% from Europe and the Americas, the remaining ~10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab world). Thus Israelis, as we touched on earlier, are an entirely supplanted population today which is not organically based in the region.
West Jerusalem's population consists of 354,000 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians as of 2023, having been Israeli territory since 1948. East Jerusalem's population is made up of 236,000 Israelis and 370,000 Palestinians. The Old City itself is divided into quarters, with the Temple Mount its own designated area. More than 140,000 Palestinians of Jerusalem have been psychically separated from the rest of the city by a 700km (435 mile) concrete wall, which Israel started building in 2002.
Operation Al-Aqsa Mosque (2023) and the subsequent Palestinian-Israeli war
In the middle of September 2023, Israel killed two Palestinians, one of whom was a child. On September 19th 2023, Israel injured seven Palestinians in Gaza, including three children. That same day the IDF raided the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp in Jenin, killing five and wounding thirty. On the 22nd the IDF murdered an 18-year-old boy in a dawn raid in the West Bank. Two days later they raided Bir Zeit University in Ramallah and arrested nine students. On October 4th IDF snipers shot Gazan protesters in the ankles, and October 5th, the IDF killed three West Bank Palestinians and prevented medical aid from reaching them. That same day an Israeli settler murdered two Palestinian farmers and desecrated their bodies. This all lead to the ignition of the major Gazan operation, codenamed "Al-Aqsa Mosque".
On October 7th, 2023, Gazan Palestinian forces broke through Israeli border fences and flew into Israel on paragliders. They attacked border checkpoints, (mostly) military bases, and Israeli civilian areas such as kibbutzim (illegal settlements in the occupied territories). These forces were comprised of mostly young men who have grown up within the confines of the Gaza concentration camp; they were led by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other brigades of armed forces. Israeli security, which is usually laser-precise and fast-acting, deployed ground troops in response at 7:45 am-- an hour delayed, with jets and helicopters deployed late as well. Shin Bet, Israel's domestic (homeland) security, ordered all available forces to go south at 9 am. Later it was revealed that Egyptian intelligence warned Israel of a possible Gazan operation a year beforehand, leading many to believe that Israel allowed the attack in order to obtain a prerequisite for annihilating the Palestinians once and for all. The evidence given for previous Israeli operations would indicate the nation-state is at least willing and able to use the "provoke-and-slaughter" strategy.
During the attack 1,200 Israelis were killed, about 850 of whom were civilians, 500 being security forces or military. While Western media has claimed the Gazan forces committed war crimes including mass rape, beheadings, taking hostages, and burning civilians alive, in actuality, only the claim that they took 200 hostages was true. They did so in order to open negotiations for freeing the over 1,000 Palestinian hostages detained in Israeli prisons without access to the evidence against them, without trial, and often without being charged. A great number of these prisoners are minors. The number of these Palestinian hostages has risen to 9,500 since October 7th, 2023. Many of the 200 Israeli hostages were later killed by Israeli bombing and gunfire, starved under the same conditions as Palestinians, or were exchanged in the two deals between Hamas and Israel; some of the remaining hostages, including young women, have been identified as IDF soldiers or security for the Nova music festival.
As for the other claims levied against the Gazan fighters, there is, as of June 2024, still no evidence of any beheadings on October 7th, according to the report provided to the ICJ conducted by independent international investigators. Claims of rape and Palestinian resistance burning people alive remain unsubstantiated and even challenged.
The Israeli response was one of "scorched earth". According to Israeli media interviews with IDF footsoldiers, tank operators, and air support, IDF soldiers trapped and fired on Israelis at the Nova music festival using rifles and mounted helicopter guns; Israeli commanders authorized tank shelling on civilian targets, helicopter machine gun fire on civilians, and airstrikes on at least one kibbutz. One Israeli woman taken from her kibbutz said she and many others wouldn't have survived the indiscriminate Israeli bombardment if not for the Palestinians taking them hostage. Israeli tank shells, airstrikes, helicopter missiles-- due to their sheer power and explosive nature, these are all likely culprits for the incineration of Israelis during Operation Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In the days following these events, there were a few key statements by Israeli leadership. On October 9th, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a "complete siege" of Gaza. He continued, "There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed... We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." On October 12th, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett cited the firebombing of over 30,000 civilians at Dresden during WWII (Britain employing such force as a weapon of demoralization) as a precedent for Israel's military response. In an October 16th interview, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely stated that the Dresden attack was not only justified, but agreed with Bennett that it serves as a good example for Israel in its retaliation. Benjamin Netanyahu likened the Gazans (and, more generally, Palestinians) to the biblical Amalek who were wiped out by King Saul in the first Book of Samuel. The verse reads: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Ariel Kallner, a member of Israeli parliament from Netenyahu's Likud party, posted, "Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!" US politicians and other Israeli allies have asserted that they will do whatever possible to "turn Gaza into a parking lot."
Key reports, one by David Ben Zion claiming 40 babies were beheaded and another by the New York Times claiming mass rape on October 7th were debunked, leaving no evidence for either claim. The only photo of these burnt/beheaded infants was created by artificial intelligence, which was then circulated online. Additionally, the Mossad curated and edited footage captured by Palestinian GoPros during the attack. The Israeli government held 75 private screenings of the footage worldwide -- to which only a few hundred journalists were privately invited. Israel said the footage would not be made public.
In the wake of the operation, Israel unleashed their arsenal upon the Gaza Strip. For weeks straight Israeli air forces, which have complete control over the airspace over the Strip, bombarded Gaza. Carpet bombing, airstrikes, artillery shells, and white phosphorus levelled half of Gaza's buildings, killing ~24,000 in the first 100 days of war. In five months time at least 30,000 were killed. According to Oxfam, Israel killed an average of 250 Palestinians per day for the first 100 days, without factoring in disease, malnourishment, and dehydration. How are we to know this killing is indiscriminate? The population demographics of Gaza are (roughly) as follows: 50% children, 25% men, 25% women. If we compare these figures to the data regarding Gazan deaths, the spread is about equivalent to the overall demographics of the general population of Gaza. Thus, we can conclude that the killing of Gazans was indiscriminate.
While in the span of two years of war in Ukraine only 500 children were killed, within six months 13,000 Gazan children were killed.
Over the 6 months following October 7th, 2023, all 36 hospitals in Gaza were destroyed or made inoperable. Multiple hospitals were raided by Israeli soldiers in the north, with some footsoldiers disguising themselves as doctors to gain access in those still functioning and murder patients (yet another war crime under international law). As early as New Years 2024, only 9 of the 36 hospitals were still standing.
Al-Shifa hospital was bombed under the media cover of Thanksgiving, the IDF having claimed the hospital housed a base full of weapons and tunnels used by Hamas. Such claims were debunked by Israeli propaganda video itself. On Christmas Day of 2023, Israeli forces massacred the Maghazi refugee camp under a similar media blackout. New Years Day of 2024 saw another opportunity exploited by Israel with the massacre of 156 Palestinians in 24 hours. Israel, having learned a lesson long ago when Egypt crossed the Suez in 1973 on Yom Kippur, choosing that date for its media blackout, Israel has consistently used worldwide holidays and events to commit heinous acts and escape immediate consequences. That was exactly what they did when Obama was inaugurated during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009.
Israel has destroyed multiple UN schools (in which thousands of civilians were taking shelter), churches (including some of the oldest in the region like the Church of Saint Porphyrius-- while housing civilians of all faiths), and other civilian infrastructure. Over half of Gaza's buildings are destroyed or damaged.
All crossings were denied to Palestinians, including the Rafah crossing into Egypt. While death reigned in the north, Israel warned the Gazans to move south toward Rafah. The goal was to either kill the Palestinians to take the land, or corral them like animals through the Rafah crossing and into the Sinai Desert, where they would live in tents and be Egypt's problem. The Rafah crossing reopened on October 21st, 2023, allowing in humanitarian aid trucks from Egypt and the United Nations. This aid was hindered by Israeli protesters who blocked the crossing at the other Egyptian-Gazan border, Kerem Shalom. Notably, over the past ten years, the Rafah crossing has been closed for more days than its been open. Since February 2024 the amount of aid decreased dramatically. This is around the same time that IDF forces withdrew from the north and started applying more pressure in the south, striking targets in such a manner as to move Gazans in the south towards Rafah.
Meanwhile, the United States provided 20,000 munitions to Israel during the siege of northern Gaza, then dropping aid shipments into the Strip. Many of these airdrops killed Palestinians when their chutes failed to deploy. In the midst of humanitarian mobilization, the Flour massacre took place on February 29th, 2024. Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks in Gaza City. 118 were slaughtered and 760 injured. The construction of a port has been controlled and prevented by the Israelis, though the project was sponsored by the Biden administration.
In the Arab world, Hamas has found allies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran.
The Houthis, a group which have taken up arms since the 1990s to defend Yemenis from U.S.-sponsored genocide at the hands of Saudi Arabia, see their struggle against US proxy states (and the US-led global unipolar order in general) as unified with the struggle of the Palestinians against Israel and the Western "rules-based order". From October 2023 to February 2024, the Houthis struck commercial ships headed through the Red Sea to Israel, as well as flying helicopters full of fighters onto the vessels in order to capture them. Not a single person during this five month period died from these attacks. It wasn't until a ship was attacked in March 2024 that a single person was killed. The Houthis continue to blockade and strike ships to hinder trade and bring immediate attention to the Palestinian struggle today with minimal casualties.
On February 15th 2024, after trading strikes over five months, Israel bombed southern Lebanon killing ten civilians. The Syrian branch of Hezbollah was hit by Israeli munitions as well. 200 Syrian Hezbollah fighters were killed; weapons caches and training facilities were hit. Hezbollah continues to fire on Israeli military bases from Lebanon, providing support to Hamas fighters.
Iran, which has openly supplied Hezbollah with training, arms, and money to fight Israel since 1982, was strong-worded but did not act on behalf of the Palestinians immediately. However, after an Israeli strike destroyed the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1st-- killing 7 IRGC officers, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and 2 civilians-- Iran warned of retaliation; for this was the first ever direct attack on Iran by Israel. On April 13th Iran launched more than 300 slow-moving drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel as a show of force, 84% of which were intercepted with the help of the U.S. and Jordanian militaries and the British Royal Air Force. These barrages of missiles were targeted exclusively at Israeli military bases and stations, striking the most secure military bases in the world and only causing a single fatality. Meant as a show of strength as well as a warning, this attack was also bait to expose the allies of the State of Israel, which was only able to deflect the attack with assistance from the US military, the Kingdom of Jordan (which has its own Iron Dome defense system), France, Germany, and the UK, in addition to their own Iron Domes.
Outside the Arab world, there are multiple pillars of diplomatic support for Palestinians:
a) The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement on November 30th, 2023 calling for a "comprehensive and lasting ceasefire", the protection of civilians, the assurance of humanitarian assistance, and diplomatic/political resolution wherever possible.
b) Russia held talks in Moscow on February 29th, 2024 between Hamas and Fatah. Sergei Lavrov urged the two factions to unify on behalf of the Palestinian people. "One of the pretexts for postponing and rescheduling these negotiations is the lack of unity within Palestinian ranks. Sceptics have argued that it is impossible to negotiate when one does not know who speaks for the Palestinians," said Lavrov. "Jesus Christ was born in Palestine. One of his sayings is: 'A house divided against itself will not stand.' Christ is honoured by both Muslims and Christians. I think that quote reflects the challenge of restoring Palestinian unity. It does not depend on anyone but the Palestinians themselves." Lavrov said the Russian foreign ministry and Russian Middle East specialists were on hand to help and consult the delegates. He said he hoped the talks would foster "mutual understanding between all factions" and support for a unified government which represents the Palestinian people.
c) North Korean F-7 RPGs are currently in use by Palestinian fighters.
The diplomatic response was intense. While Israel violated a heap of UN resolutions, Hamas consistently supported investigation of the events of October 7th, 2023 by independent experts from the UN. South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice (IJC), in which Israel was found guilty. The court ordered Israel to prevent its troops from committing genocide, but did not order a ceasefire as South Africa had hoped. Israel rejected the ruling and chided the court, calling it biased and saying the court isn't understanding Israel's right to security and duty to defend its people. South Africa then argued that Israel was carrying out apartheid on the Palestinians and occupying their land. Israel again rejected such claims, asserting that the ICJ had no jurisdiction over Israel.
Protests and other demonstrations took place all over the world, including all across America. American universities, including Ivy Legue schools, saw all peaceful tent encampments on school grounds, Zionists yelling racist chants to discredit the protests, and eventually violent Zionists attacking protesters and starting brawls. Eventually these protest encampments were washed away and dismantled by police, with some universities threatening students with expulsion and police arrests for trespassing on university property. President Biden floundered, supporting the students' right to protest but condemning violence and anti-Semitic rhetoric employed by people Infrared recognizes as wreckers, idiots, and Zionists.
In May 2024, the BDS movement condemned armed resistance against Israel. BDS was then critiqued by the PFLP as having given up on the Palestinian people through their condemnation of armed struggle, as outmoded by armed resistance necessary under such conditions as the Gazans were facing.
The Gazans were systematically made refugees again, herded from the northern end of the Strip down to the south, where they gathered in Rafah. Soon after, a peace proposal was brokered with the help of Cairo; though Hamas agreed to the terms, Israel intended to invade the Rafah refugee camp and therefore declined. On the same day as the Met Gala, when again US media was distracted, Israel launched a ground offensive on Rafah. At the massive refugee camp, on Memorial Day (May 27th), Israel bombed Palestinians indiscriminately, massacring 45 Palestinians and injuring two hundred. Biden initially claimed that the Rafah massacre was a red line, but backtracked. Following these events, Ireland, Spain, and Norway announced in a joint statement that they will formally recognize Palestine and support an immediate ceasefire.
On June 8th, 2024, the US assisted the IDF in a massacre launched from the "aid pier" constructed with US funding. The reason given was a rescue operation for four Israeli hostages. During the joint Israel-American operation, some troops drove into the refugee camp disguised in humanitarian aid trucks, which were supposed the be carrying clothes, food, and water. They opened fire on arrival. Other special forces arrived earlier at the camp disguised as refugees and Gazan security forces. 210 Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp were murdered during the "mission" under heavy bombardment by Israeli warplanes, and the hostages were flown out of Gaza via the floating pier. This abuse of humanitarian equipment is no surprise as similar war crimes have been committed since October 7th 2023-- such as Israeli special forces dressing as doctors to gain access to Ibn Sina hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin, whereafter they executed Palestinians they claimed to have been Hamas operatives (who were hospitalized and unarmed). Routinely Israel targets entire blocks full of residential family homes solely based on flimsy claims that a single person might have been working for Hamas in one way or another, or that Hamas was hiding weapons among the soon-to-be-rubble.
Between October 2023 and June 2024, 30-36,000 Gazans were killed (including 15,000 children) and more than 80,000 injured. In the West Bank, 532 additional Palestinians were killed (including 133 children), with over five thousand injured by IDF forces. Israel's death toll remains the same as it was on October 7th, 2023, barring Israeli revisions, which dropped the figure from 1,405 to 1,132. 8,700 Israelis have been injured since October as well.
In terms of Palestinian infrastructure, (as of June 2024) more than half of Gazan buildings were damaged or destroyed, including 267 places of worship. 86% of Gazan schools, 60% of residential buildings, 80% of commercial buildings were either damaged or destroyed. 83% of Gaza's ground wells were left inoperable. Only 14 of Gaza's 35 hospitals were functioning in June of 2024, overwhelmed with injuries and casualties.
The UN took on Hamas' invitation and conducted the first of multiple independent investigations into the events from October 7th to December 31st, 2023. The report was leaked on June 12th, 2024 on X (formerly Twitter), and found the following to be true: first, there is no evidence that Hamas committed or ordered sexual violence to be committed on October 7th; second, that Israel lied about sexual violence given the lack of evidence; thirdly, the investigation found that systemic and gender-based violence is part of the IDF's standard "operating procedures"; fourth, that sexual violence is inexorably tied to Israeli occupation; and finally, it found that Israel systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians to sexual abuse and torture, including forced public stripping, sexual humiliation, and rape. In addition to this report, it is clear from years of other independent reports that the torture and abuse of Palestinians, including sexual abuse, has been commonplace in Israeli prisons for "decades" prior to 1999-- even according to such mainstream and controlled sources as Wikipedia. However, its also true that IDF soldiers abuse Israeli prisoners as well. What's more, the UN's investigation found that Israel also committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, forced transfer, murder in response to Hamas' attack.
The IDF employed the Hannibal Directive on October 7th 2023, a military doctrine first used in 1986, in which commanders authorize Israeli forces to prevent capture of soldiers "at all costs"-- including friendly fire. The directive was explicitly banned from Israeli media mention or discussion by the Mossad, until a partial hangout in 2003. The full text was never released, remaining only within the highest ranks of the IDF, while lower levels received differing oratory versions. The UN all but confirmed the use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7th 2023 despite its supposed discontinuation in 2016.
There was a degree of protest against Israel stemming from the state's actions both before and after Operation Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was unprecedented since its founding. This was especially true in America, its long-time ally. However, among such protesters were genuine anti-Semites. Unabashed neo-Nazis who attempt to capitalize on anti-Zionist sentiment among American youth such as Lucas Gage and Nick Fuentes criticize Israel and its founding on the basis of "Jewish sovereignty" and the Jewish Question (the assertion that Jews run the world and own everything).
References
(All references are grouped by section and, for the most part, in chronological order)
Ancient
https://www.worldhistory.org/levant/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Levant
Biblical Narrative:
https://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm
https://greekreporter.com/2023/10/09/palestinians-ancient-philistines/
https://www.worldhistory.org/Philistines/
https://www.britannica.com/place/Canaan-historical-region-Middle-East
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/abraham/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Israel-Old-Testament-kingdom
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-two-kingdoms-of-israel
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/new-jerusalem/
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/19831/what-is-the-new-jerusalem
https://www.gotquestions.org/life-Ezra.html
Middle Ages
Alexander the Great:
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/first-rulers-mediterranean/
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/07/26/335332220/the-long-history-of-the-gaza-tunnels
https://www.worldhistory.org/timeline/Alexander_the_Great/
https://www.history.com/news/alexander-the-great-key-battles-empire
https://blog.bibleodyssey.org/articles/alexander-the-great/
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/alex/hd_alex.htm
https://www.historyhit.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-alexander-the-greats-empire/
Roman Palestine:
http://pdfs.jta.org/1938/1938-04-19_016.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maccabees
https://www.museumofthebible.org/magazine/featured/who-are-the-maccabees
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0031.xml
https://bible-history.com/maps/the-roman-empire
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30098202
https://www.palestinianhistorytapestry.org/tapestry/0170-the-roman-conquest-of-judea-in-63-bce/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus/Jewish-Palestine-at-the-time-of-Jesus
Johns, Kieren. "The Roman-Jewish Wars: Jewish Resistance vs Roman Might" TheCollector.com, December 20, 2023, https://www.thecollector.com/roman-jewish-wars-history/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_church_buildings
https://enterthebible.org/time-period/judea-during-roman-rule
Islamic Rule
Muhammad and the Rightly-Guided Caliphs:
https://www.pbs.org/muhammad/ma_jews.shtml
https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/p/period4-1.htm
https://islamichistory.org/the-rightly-guided-caliphs/
https://www.welcometopalestine.com/history-of-palestine/the-rise-of-islam/
https://alkhair.org/letters-from-the-prophet/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20846971
Umayyads - Ottomans:
https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/p/period4-2.htm
https://islamichistory.org/the-umayyads/
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Umayyads
https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/lamine1.pdf
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abba/hd_abba.htm
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-abassid-caliphate-758-1258
http://www.turkishhan.org/history.htm
https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/p/period4-3.htm
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/df313ba2ad204fbe9a09dda97667d2fd
https://www.hizb-australia.org/2016/09/islam-in-al-sham-the-levant-an-introductory-history/
https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/15crusad.htm
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/who-were-mamluks
https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/11/life-in-mamluk-sultanate.html
https://asiasociety.org/education/mongol-dynasty
https://www.britannica.com/place/Egypt/The-Mamluk-and-Ottoman-periods-1250-1800
Khazarian Ashkenazi Theory:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ashkenazi
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/abbas-and-khazar-claim-separating-myth-fact
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OymtXjNviQ&pp=ygURamV3IGtoYXphciB0aGVvcnk%3D
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25079123µ/
Emergence of Zionism:
https://rumble.com/v52i3gf-interview-orthodox-rabbis-on-condemning-israels-war.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-6zLw7NJ70
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ultra-orthodox-anti-zionist/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNuEfl64jUw
https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/12/19/orthodox-jews-denounce-israel-anti-zionism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Scheme
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
https://theracket.news/p/the-iron-wall-failed
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/revisionist-zionism
https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2018/05/18/400-years-of-peace-palestine-under-ottoman-rule
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/845075
https://www.un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-i-1917-1947/
https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/31097/i-ottoman-rule
British Occupation:
Sykes-Picot Agreement:
https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-history/sykes-picot-agreement/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sykes-picot-agreement-180957217/
https://www.un.org/unispal/history/
Balfour Declaration:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/text-of-the-balfour-declaration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs&pp=ygUabGV4IGZyaWRtYW4gZGViYXRlIGRlc3Rpbnk%3D
https://palestineremembered.com/FactsAboutHaavara.html
Zionist and Arab collaboration with Nazi Germany (Irgun, Haganah, Lehi, Nili):
Lockman, Zachary. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6b69p0hf/
https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/510520.aspx
https://archive.org/details/lenni-brenner-51-documents-zionist-collaboration-with-the-nazis
https://allthatsinteresting.com/lehi
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stern-Gang
https://sovinform.net/Qasim-the-Nazi.htm
https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2015/10/10250-did-haj-amin-al-husseini-influence-hitler
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/the-mossads-long-arm-389106
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30245595
https://justvision.org/glossary/haganah
https://www.city-journal.org/article/whos-a-zionist
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-nili-spy-ring
https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/234
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-biltmore-conference-1942
1947 Partition Plan:
https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/wars-and-operations/war-of-independence/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTMRMX7Pw5U
https://sovinform.net/USSR-Stops-Czechoslovak-Arms-Transfers-to-Israel.htm
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2193961
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2193961
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49080059
post-Partition (1948 - )
1948 Arab-Israeli War
Benny Morris, _Israel's Border Wars_, ibid. pp. 257–276. esp. pp.249,262
1956 Suez Crisis
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/suez
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/syrias-1956-request-for-soviet-military-intervention
1967 Arab-Israeli War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAl605xIjjE
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/539917?ln=en&v=pdf
https://archive.org/details/moshedayanstoryo00daya/page/n7/mode/2up?q=punishment
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4327311
https://www.anera.org/how-big-is-gaza/
https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics
https://caus.org.lb/en/product/pages-of-my-struggle-memoirs-of-george-habash/
https://www.abedkhattar.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Secrets-of-the-black-box-Ghassan-Charbel.pdf
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/40678
https://twitter.com/SovinformMedia/status/1756437591317196901?t=VDRZCQwFzf6unoU154v_5Q&s=19
1973 "Yom Kippur" War
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/apr/26/comment
https://books.google.com/books?id=jY2D-u4_t7AC&pg=PA104
https://books.google.com/books?id=VEUhBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT14
https://www.un.org/unispal/history/
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/10/8/the-october-arab-israeli-war-of-1973-what-happened
https://origins.osu.edu/read/yom-kippur-war-and-opec-oil-embargo?language_content_entity=en
1982 Lebanon War
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/start-here/2024/2/1/hezbollah-explained-start-here
https://ecf.org.il/media_items/827
First Intifada (1987 - 1990)
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1652605
Oslo Accords (1993 - 1995)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/oslo-israel-reneged-colonial-palestine
https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200205_land_grab
https://archive.org/details/HolocaustIndustry/page/n25/mode/2up?q=served+
Second Intifada (2000-2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsjCdBIsNHQ&rco=1
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/220/378
https://www.btselem.org/human_shields
https://www.btselem.org/separation_barrier
https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm
2006 Elections
https://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/01/carter.hamas/
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-199537/
https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022
https://gisha.org/UserFiles/File/HiddenMessages/ItemsGazaStrip060510.pdf
https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2287.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/5/4/timeline-hamas-fatah-conflict
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/the-second-lebanon-war-a-re-assessment/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/and-after-attacks-lebanon-and-israel/6169
Operation Cast Lead (2008)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/5/4/timeline-hamas-fatah-conflict
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-190202/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/goldstones-shameful-u-turn/9294
https://www.caabu.org/what-we-do/gaza/factsheet-humanitarian-situation-cast-lead-pillar-defense
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/intelligence-chief-admits-israel-prefers-isis-over-assad-in-syria/
https://syrianews.cc/israel-prefers-al-qaeda-syrias-al-assad/
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/06/22/471679/Israel-Daesh-Syria-Assad
https://academic.oup.com/book/1728/chapter-abstract/141349744?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Operation Pillar of Defense (2012)
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171114-remembering-israels-operation-pillar-of-defence/
https://www.btselem.org/download/201305_pillar_of_defense_operation_eng.pdf
Operation Protective Edge (2014)
https://www.unrwa.org/2014-gaza-conflict
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32308
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32328
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32382
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-i-gaza-conflict/commission-of-inquiry
https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201609_whitewash_protocol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McZO0MC9gwA
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/gaza-un-school-shelling-jabaliya
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/middleeast/qatar-hamas-funds-israel-backing-intl/index.html
https://www.unrwa.org/campaign/gaza-great-march-return
Operation Al-Aqsa Mosque (2023) and the subsequent Palestinian-Israeli war
https://www.ochaopt.org/poc/5-18-september-2023
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/12/israel-hamas-war-egypt-warned-foreign-affairs-gaza
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/10/questions-nyt-hamas-rape-report/
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/03/25/israeli-propagandist-hamas-grifter-fraud/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/15/biden-israels-gaza-hospitals-intelligence/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/12/06/scandal-israeli-october-7-fabrications/
https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-11-18/ty-article/0000018b-e1a5-d168-a3ef-f5ff4d070000
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/15975
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/21/israeli-attack-axis-gaza-dresden/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142432
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/world/middleeast/gaza-school-strike-shelter-israel-war.html
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/14/gaza-building-damage-israel-war
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/31/israeli-protesters-call-benjamin-netanyahu-removal
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/22/1189627225/israel-protests-netanyahu-judiciary
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/24/israel-protests-judicial-overhaul/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/world/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-war.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206479861/israel-gaza-hamas-children-population-war-palestinians
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/GAZA-CASUALTIES/xmpjlaberpr/index.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/07/1210897789/rafah-crossing-gaza-egypt-israel-hamas-war
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/who-are-yemens-houthis
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/saudi-arabias-war-houthis-old-borders-new-lines
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/13/iran-israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/wjbxw/202311/t20231129_11189405.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-calls-palestinians-unite-moscow-talks-2024-02-29/
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf
https://thecradle.co/articles/us-army-aided-israel-in-bloody-military-op-launched-from-gaza-aid-pier
https://thecradle.co/articles/troops-hid-inside-aid-truck-for-deadly-us-israel-operation-in-nuseirat
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/09/middleeast/israel-hostage-rescue-gaza-intl-hnk/index.html
https://x.com/RTSGtm/status/1791238074824798284?t=4CXnzogQrPwtozlaIdUldw&s=19
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brutal-conditions-facing-palestinian-prisoners
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_torture_in_the_occupied_territories