The Levantine Crescent:    Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Palestine | Syria

For most of recorded history modern-day Palestine (aka Israel, aka Judea and Samaria) has been ruled by absentee landlords. Governing from Cairo, Damascus, Rome, or Istanbul, they cared little about this backwater province. So long as taxes were paid and some semblance of order maintained, they were happy to leave day-to-day government in the hands of the locals. The fellahin (farmers) – largely descended from the Arabs who came in from the 7th through 12th centuries, with a scattering of other ethnic groups and religious sects thrown in – were generally content with this de facto sovereignty, and by the time the 19th century became the 20th a land once notorious for anti-Roman insurrections had become a sleepy backwater province.

Then came the British.

England was happy to whip up the flames of Arab nationalism and enlist Arab help in taking Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. They were even happy to promise Arab self-rule throughout the region, and to answer Arab concerns about the growing number of Jews migrating to the region. First they prohibited Jewish settlements east of the Jordan River; then, as more and more Jews sought refuge from European anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, imposed rigid quotas on any Jewish presence in the area. But despite all this, 1948 happened. Britain decided to honor other promises it had made … and, in the process, help ease a war-torn Europe’s refugee crisis. In so doing, it created yet another refugee crisis, one whose effects still linger today.

The 1948 war created somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 refugees; the 1967 Six-Day War created another 250-300,000. After 1967, with the rise of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, these refugees, and the Arabic-speaking peoples living in Israel and the Occupied Territories, began calling themselves “Palestinians.” And so, as Lebanon was created to separate Christians from Moslems, a Palestinian state of mind, if not a Palestinian state, was born.

In the whirlwind which followed, all of the post-Mandate states sought to define themselves. For a time Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria, an endeavor which quickly degenerated into squabbling; not long afterward Lebanon fell into its own chaos. Amidst all this were the Palestinians, a people without a country in an area full of new countries. Those who remained in Israel and the Occupied Territories suffered daily humiliations and harassment. Those outside Israel frequently fared worse. The neighboring states did little to ease the plight of these refugees; only Jordan offered them conditional citizenship. For all their flowery speeches, most Arab leaders came to see the Palestinians as a dangerous and destabilizing influence.

They had some reason for this distrust: Palestinian militants killed King Abdullah of Jordan’s grandfather, stoked the flames of civil war in Lebanon, and launched attacks against Syria’s Alawite leader. These radicals agreed with the right-wing Israelis who said “Jordan is Palestine” – only, in their view, Israel was also Palestine. Some envisioned a theocratic Islamic dynasty like the Abbasid or Umayyad Caliphates; others sought a Marxist Revolution which would begin in the Arab world, then spread outward; still others envisioned a secular pan-Arabic coalition which would unite the Arabic-speaking world as a superpower alongside Europe and the United States. They were not the first to use terrorism in support of their cause, but they were among the most flamboyant. Alas, atrocities like the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics along with several high-profile bombings and hijackings, eroded popular support for the Palestinian cause in Europe and America. Not until the current uprising would the Palestinians regain a significant popular support base in the West.

Deprived of land, a state, and a standing army, the Palestinians have perfected yet another weapon – suicide bombers. Before the recent Israeli crackdown/invasion, hundreds of Israelis died and hundreds more were maimed by Palestinians armed with explosive belts. These attacks, which have been alternately condemned and encouraged by Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, have enraged and demoralized Israel. As the intefada has continued these devices have become increasingly sophisticated; several countries, particularly Iran, are suspected of supplying these devices to Palestinian militants. (Iran is well aware of how effective martyrs can be. During the Iran/Iraq War Iranian children, wearing keys around their necks to represent the “keys of Heaven,” ran through minefields to clear them for Iranian troops, and to unnerve their Iraqi opponents).

Despite all this, the Palestinian cause is becoming increasingly popular in the West. Once Israel was a plucky David, beating the Arab Goliath against all odds. Today the roles are reversed; the Israelis are called bullies at best, and genocidal Nazis at worst, while the Palestinians are seen as heroic underdogs, victims of “Israeli Apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” In yet another role reversal, the Israelis are now the ones shooting themselves in the foot with the world media. Israeli mistreatment of journalists on the West Bank in the current crisis has become notorious, and has resulted in a groundswell of Palestinian sympathy in many formerly pro-Israel quarters.

It is difficult not to sympathize with the Palestinians. Whether they lived on the land for five years or fifteen hundred years, whether they fled the oncoming Israeli army voluntarily or at gunpoint, they once called the land which is now Israel home. Many Palestinians have spent their entire lives stateless, with no recompense for the assets they and their families lost in 1948. Until those claims are addressed, and until some solution to this long-running refugee problem is implemented, we are likely to see continued trouble in the region. Still, it’s also difficult not to fear the post-Zionist visions which have arisen in some Palestinian quarters… or the tendency in those same quarters to murder “traitors” or “collaborators.”