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THE PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICTS

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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31995.00801

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THE PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICTS

1
 TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0 INTRODUCTION 3

2.0 SECURITY AS THE MAJOR INTERNAL ISSUE THAT PREVENTS

RESOLUTION BETWEEN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL 4

3.0 THE REASONS WHY ARAB LEAGUES FAIL TO RESOLVE THE

PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICTS 7

4.0 UNITED NATIONS DEALINGS IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL

CONFLICTS 9

5.0 CONCLUSIONS 11

REFERENCES 12

2
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Looking at history is important to understand the Palestine-Israeli conflict; we must go
back in time to understand how the issues started. At one stage, the Palestine-Israeli
conflict might appear to be simply a human rights struggle. With Israel being a sovereign
state, it must comply with all constraints listed by international human rights law for state
sovereignty. The right to self-government is notably preserved in international law and
resolutions, as well, with Palestinian calls for self-autonomy, individual rights can be
expressed with legal claims. Yet at another stage, the political arrangements in the Israel
and Palestine conflict confuse the attention for sovereignty, colonization and human
rights. Human rights laws tend to presuppose a postcolonial setting where sovereignty
and self-autonomy are paired together, whereas, here the political order is less than
postcolonial.

The conflict of Israel-Palestine has been existed since 1947. At that time, exactly on May
1947, there were a division of the region between Israel and Palestine. This had been
conducted by United Nation (UN). The result was 54 % out of the region belonged to
Israel, and the rest was for Palestine (46 %). In fact, the population of Israel people was
about 31.5% of the total population (Flapan, 1987). This causes the Palestine made a
counter effect to struggle for their freedom in their own land. On the other hand, Israel
considered that the division was still not satisfied. They wanted the region larger. Since
that time, the terror has become widely spread for Palestine.

3
 Figure 1: The partition 1947
Source: http://www.shamrak.com/Masada2000-HistoryofPalestine_files/1947mapa.gif

The quarrel has been continuing along with some pressures conducted by Israel. The
Israel soldiers attack Palestine, such as in Ramallah, a region in West Bank, Palestine.
Israel began to make a blockade for Palestine in Ramallah by sending the member of
Egoz Battalion. The Israel soldiers chased for the Palestinians especially who are
considered terrorists. This made the people and officials of Palestine upset. It became
worse when United Nations responses were so slow. Even it can be said that there was no
meaningful action to stop the Jew occupation in Palestine.

Then, in 1993, there are new efforts to peace process that led Oslo Accords. The accords
allowing the PLO to relocate from Tunisia and take ground in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, establishing the Palestinian National Authority. However, the peace is not lasting.
The Oslo Accords supposedly to guide by the concept of two-state solution that would

4
finally resolve the conflict—but two decades later, Israelis and Palestinians remain
caught in a sad, frustrating and vicious cycle that must be broken.

Thus, this paper is prepared to discuss about the Palestine-Israel conflicts by looking at
the major internal issue that prevents the resolution. This paper also try to explain the
failure of Arab League to resolve the conflict and the UN role in resolving he decades of
conflicts in Palestine-Israel issues.

2.0 SECURITY AS THE MAJOR INTERNAL ISSUE THAT PREVENTS

RESOLUTION BETWEEN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
Security is the most important issue to Israel. Due to the increasing threat to Israeli
civilians posed by Hamas and other militant Islamist Palestinian groups, Israelis do not
trust Palestinians and are thus unwilling to make any concessions that will further
compromise Israel's security. The involvement of Arab states as reliable counterparts will
strengthen Israeli willingness to compromise if they have reason to believe that a stable
and enduring agreement is achievable.

Palestinian violence has been a concern for Israelis. Israel, along with the United States
and the European Union, refer to the violence against Israeli civilians and military forces
by Palestinian militants as terrorism. The motivations behind Palestinian violence against
Israeli civilians are multiplex, and not all violent Palestinian groups agree with each other
on specifics. Nonetheless, a common motive is the desire to destroy Israel and replace it
with a Palestinian Arab state. The most prominent Islamist groups, such as Hamas, view
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a religious jihad (Kober, 2009).

Suicide bombing is used as a tactic among Palestinian organizations like Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and certain suicide attacks have received support
among Palestinians as high as 84% (Asser, 2002). In Israel, Palestinian suicide bombers
have targeted civilian buses, restaurants, shopping malls, hotels and marketplaces (BBC,
2007). From 1993–2003, 303 Palestinian suicide bombers attacked Israel.

5
Consequently, the Israeli government initiated the construction of a security barrier
following scores of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in July 2003. Israel's coalition
government approved the security barrier in the northern part of the green-line between
Israel and the West Bank. According to the IDF, since the erection of the fence, terrorist
acts have declined by approximately 90% (IDF, n.d).

Since 2001, the threat of Qassam rockets fired from the Palestinian Territories into Israel
is also of great concern for Israeli defense officials (Harel. 2007). In 2006—the year
following Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip—the Israeli government recorded
1,726 such launches, more than four times the total rockets fired in 2005. As of January
2009, over 8,600 rockets had been launched (BBC, 2008), causing widespread
psychological trauma and disruption of daily life. Over 500 rockets and mortars hit Israel
in January–September 2010 and over 1,947 rockets hit Israel in January–November 2012.

There is significant debate within Israel about how to deal with the country's security
concerns. Options have included military action (including targeted killings and house
demolitions of terrorist operatives), diplomacy, unilateral gestures toward peace, and
increased security measures such as checkpoints, roadblocks and security barriers. The
legality and the wisdom of all of the above tactics have been called into question by
various commentators (Nathan, 2010).

On the Palestinian side, a lack of internal consensus remains challenging—especially the

ideological and political gaps between the two major Palestinian camps, Hamas and
Fatah. As a result, Palestinians are unable to make inevitable compromises.

Hamas' extreme ideology holds all sides hostage. Ironically, its extremism also holds
Hamas itself hostage. Hamas desperately needs a ladder that enables it to adopt a more
pragmatic approach that will allow it to compromise its control in Gaza without formally
compromising its ideology. The involvement of proactive Arab states will provide that
crucial ladder.

6
Fighting among rival Palestinian and Arab movements has also become another major
issue in the conflict resolution. The situation has played a crucial role in shaping Israel's
security policy towards Palestinian militants, as well as in the Palestinian leadership's
own policies. As early as the 1930s revolts in Palestine, Arab forces fought each other
while also skirmishing with Zionist and British forces, and internal conflicts continue to
the present day. During the Lebanese, Civil War, Palestinian baathists broke from the
Palestine Liberation Organization and allied with the Shia Amal Movement, fighting a
bloody civil war that killed thousands of Palestinians.

In the First Intifada, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed in a campaign initiated
by the Palestine Liberation Organization to crack down on suspected Israeli security
service informers and collaborators. The Palestinian Authority was strongly criticized for
its treatment of alleged collaborators, rights groups complaining that those labeled
collaborators were denied fair trials. According to a report released by the Palestinian
Human Rights Monitoring Group, less than 45 percent of those killed were actually guilty
of informing for Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials have killed and tortured thousands of Fatah members
and other Palestinians who oppose their rule. During the Battle of Gaza, more than 150
Palestinians died over a four-day period. The violence among Palestinians was described
as a civil war by some commentators. By 2007, more than 600 Palestinian people had
died during the struggle between Hamas and Fatah (PCHR, 2007).

Based on the above discussion, it is clear that security plays the major role in preventing
conflict resolution in Palestine-Israel issues. Both party have the same responsibilities to
protect their own people thus failing any peace efforts between them.

7
3.0 THE REASONS WHY ARAB LEAGUES FAIL TO RESOLVE THE
PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICTS
In this chapter, this paper will evaluate the reasons why Arab League fails to resolve the
Palestine-Israel conflicts since six decades ago till present. The evaluation will be
focused on the performance of the Arab League in resolving conflicts in the Arab
countries.

The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq,
Transjordan (renamed Jordan after independence in 1946), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and
Syria. Yemen joined on 5 May 1945. It’s the oldest functioning regional organization, has
been conceived since its foundation as part of a broad and ambitious political project that
could have led, at least in the intentions of some of its supporters, to the creation of a
single Arab state in the Middle East.

Figure 2: Arab League logo

Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg/125px-
Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg.png

However, there seems to be no doubt among analysts that the main institutional
framework in the Middle East – the Arab League – has proven to be at best a ‘bleak’
experience of regional cooperation (Lindholm Schulz and Schulz, 2005), and at worst the
single least effective major regional organization in generating political and military
cooperation to prevent and manage regional conflicts especially in the Palestine-Israeli
issues (Solingen, 2008).

8
The empirical foundations of the latter claim lay mainly in the comparative studies of
Mark Zacher (1979). Zacher considers 116 conflicts that occurred worldwide between
1946 and 1977 and suggests that the Arab League only successfully mediated in 12
percent of the conflicts which took place in its region.

The proximate causes of the under-performance of the League are apparent. It boasts
ambitious goals and a powerful symbolic association to a widespread transnational
ideology; and yet, as the hands of its crucial organs are tied by the unanimity rule, its
agenda ‘is little more than the lowest common denominator of the desires of its member
states’ (Pease, 2008).

The gradual shrinking of the League’s prerogatives in the process that led to the final pact
testifies how its member states showed early on great reluctance to assign substantial
powers to a supra-national institution. The League, in other words, seems to incarnate the
ambiguities of the pan-Arab project at its height, trapped between ‘the quest for Arab
unity and the centrifugal forces favoring Arab separatism’ (Zacher 1979).

However, how exactly such ambiguities impacted on the allegedly disastrous

performance of the League in dealing with regional conflicts is still contentious. The
traditional realist argument interprets this ‘failure’ as the consequence either of the
influence of hegemons, mainly Nasser’s Egypt (Hasou, 1985), which monopolized the
work of the League, or of the presence of a range of opposing coalitions and interests in
the region. Zacher’s analysis shows in detail the empirical basis for claiming that ‘more
than any other region, the Arab world has been characterized by shifting patterns of
dissension and competition’ (Zacher 1979). Between 1946 and 1977, it witnessed at least
nine different configurations of opposing blocs, typically generated by local strategic and
dynastic quarrels (in particular the Hashemite/anti- Hashemite divide), the development
of the ‘nonaligned movement’ and Cold War rivalries.

Mainly in Palestine-Israeli conflicts, the ‘disastrous’ (Seabury, 1949) failure of the

League members to agree on the membership of the newly-created Palestine government

9
based in Gaza partially downsized these expectations and inaugurated a gradual process
of formal and informal adaptation of the League’s legal features and internal procedures,
hence prevents the conflict resolution of Israel and Palestine.

This can be seen with the true intention of Arab League in resolving Palestine-Israel
conflicts. For example, in 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative was proposed by the Arab
League to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the proposed framework, all Arab and
Muslim countries would establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel after the
successful conclusion of the peace process with the Palestinians.

However, for the Arab countries, truce with Israel would enable the emergence of an arc
of stability from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Peninsula. This could prove useful for
these countries who want to rally against the regional influence of Iran.

This tit-for-tat intention clear undermining the baseline for the peace process in Palestine-
Israel. Arab League however should focus on normalizing with Israel as an encouraging
gesture toward Israel, a free gift, further complicates matters. The focus must be on the
United States and other third parties committed to peace in the Middle East and aware of
the dangers of inaction to spell out the guidelines for reaching peace.

4.0 UNITED NATIONS DEALINGS IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICTS

In this chapter, this paper will analyze the United Nations (UN) dealings in resolving
Palestine-Israel conflicts by looking back to the history of the creation of the nation of
Israel until today.

The origin of UN intervention in Palestine-Israel conflicts can be traced back to the

Second World War. The creation of the state of Israel was followed by numerous cases
of aggression towards this state as a protest against its existence in the area. Palestinian
refugees wanted to return to their homeland after the 1947-48 war between Arab and
Jewish communities in the area, six months before the separation of the British mandate

10
of Palestine. The UN passed Resolution 194 (1), which gave Palestinian refugees the
right to return, in addition to them receiving compensations for their losses. The UN
Partition Plan was drawn up under Resolution 181 (2) in November 1947, giving
recommending the separation of the region into an Arab state of Palestine, a Jewish state
of Israel and the city of Jerusalem (Morris, 2008). The establishment of the state of Israel
was declared on the 14th of May 1948, which was followed by an all-out attack by
surrounding Arab countries in support of their Palestinian counterparts. This was the start
of a long and painful struggle for both Israel and Palestine, a conflict which has yet to be
resolved, with its violence and extremism only increasing in later years.

It seems that, after the partition plan and the creation of Israel, the UN was not heavily
involved in the conflict, nor was it particularly concerned with it in terms of political and
humanitarian aid to the region (Yosef, 1998). The concern was that war would occur
between Egypt and Israel, as Egypt opposed Israel's foreign policies. The UN placed
peacekeepers on the border between both countries and the UN Refugee Works Agency
(UNRWA) took care of refugees until they could return home. These were the same
refugees that had been mentioned in Resolution 194. This can be explained by the
dominant European and American powers' interests in the region after the Second World
War (Bregman, 2002). These powers were leading the Security Council and had the
power to prevent extra UN involvement in solving the conflict. These powers supported
the Israeli state and would not openly admit to supporting their cause because of the huge
number of refugees fleeing Palestine. Noam Chomsky says in his book "What We Say
Goes" that the USA saw, and still sees, a potential US powerbase in Israel. From here, we
can argue that the Security Council's leading powers did not allow for the UN to take a
more significant action.

Subsequently, it is not founded to come to the conclusion to assume the unfair dealings of
UN towards Palestine-Israel conflicts. The UN attempted to solve the crisis numerous
times by calling for international peace conferences, based on existing UN Resolutions
dealing with Israel and Palestine, such as Resolutions 194 and 242 amongst others. Israel
refused to take part and the US backed its decision (Fischbach, 2003).

11
Other than that, the General Assembly has taken a more active role in the conflict,
repeatedly taking action and often calling on parties to respect human rights. In 1988, the
Assembly took the unprecedented step of holding a special session in Geneva after the
United States refused to grant Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the visa needed to address
the Assembly in New York. Israel accuses the General Assembly of having a "pro-
Palestinian" bias. Yet the Assembly is unable to compel the parties to work towards
peace since its resolutions only have moral and symbolic weight and are not legally
binding. Both the Assembly and the Security Council could, of course, be more effective
if governments were willing to risk the displeasure and pressure of the United States.

The US referred to Resolution 242 when speaking of a peace process and a viable option
to a unanimous agreement in the region, all the while keeping Palestine-Israel interaction
and diplomacy under its control. It assured that it was a medium for communication
between the two peoples, while at the same time backing Israel's major moves on Arab
countries. Requirements in international law such as the agreements made at the Geneva
Conventions, which required Israel to protect civilians of the occupied territory and
illegalize the settling of Israeli nationals into occupied land, as well as pre-existing UN
Resolutions were largely ignored to accommodate for the American sponsored equal
opportunity peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement as to
how to resolve the conflict. Naturally, neither power would come to an agreement by
themselves, even with the USA as a mediator in the talks, for their aims were too
different. The main disagreements were over what do with about the refugees and how to
deal with Jerusalem, both cultures regarding the city as a place of piousness and sanctity.
Neither side would agree to stop the bombings as long as an agreement in favor of
themselves was not reached.

Frustrated by its own impotence and by the inaction of the Security Council, the General
Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to evaluate the legal status of Israel's
"separation wall." In July 2004, the Court declared the illegality of the barrier. The
Security Council has veto accept and enforce the Court's ruling, however, and the United

12
Nations remains sidelined in the conflict, acting primarily through the Secretary General's
special envoys and through its role as a member of the "Quartet."

Subsequently, the necessity of returning the crisis to UN supervision was growing

essential, as there were rising numbers of casualties caused by the conflict, a strict
ongoing siege and serious military occupation of Palestine. The UN Resolutions
remained largely ignored and people called for a new, UN-led peace process. The recent
recognition of the State of Palestine by the UN is a huge step forward in the struggle for
peace in the region (Reuters, 2012). It gives the Palestinian cause more weight when
appealing to the United Nations and will surely give it more international support. The
problem for the UN when getting involved in this conflict is that it is such a long-lasting
struggle, with horrors caused by one side towards the other still fresh in people's minds,
as is the case for many long-standing conflicts. The UN has made several accusations
regarding Israel, claiming a "grave and massive violations of human rights of the
Palestinian people by Israel".

5.0 CONCLUSIONS
The conflict between Palestinian and Israel is a modern phenomenon, dating to the end of
the nineteenth century. Although the two groups have different religions, religious
differences are not the cause of the strife. The conflict began as a struggle over land.
From the end of World War I until 1948, the area that both groups claimed was known
internationally as Palestine. That same name was also used to designate a less well
defined “Holy Land” by the three monotheistic religions. Following the war of 1948–
1949, this land was divided into three parts: The State of Israel, the West Bank (of the
Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip.

The failure of Arab League in resolving the conflicts intensifying the situation till the
extend causing a war between the two nations. The ‘disastrous’ failure of the League
members to agree on the membership of the newly-created Palestine government based in
Gaza partially downsized these expectations and inaugurated a gradual process of formal

13
and informal adaptation of the League’s legal features and internal procedures, also
prevents the conflict resolution of Israel and Palestine.

Finally, the UN involvement has not been consistent since the intensification of the crisis
in 1948 due to numerous difficult situations, to which it could do little or nothing. The
reason for this would be the already heavy involvement of the United States, due to its
interests in Israel and securing a powerful ally in a region rich in oil and other resources.

Summarily, the conflicts in Palestine-Israel would prolong without the intervention of

international nations. The recent recognition of the State of Palestine by the UN is a huge
step forward in the struggle for peace in the region. It gives the Palestinian cause more
weight when appealing to the United Nations and will surely give it more international
support.

(3261 WORDS)

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 ATTACHMENT

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