Olive Roots Fall 2010

oliverootsvolume I | issue I | fall 2010

2 | Olive roots | Fall 2010 Olive roots | Fall 2010 | 2 3 | Olive roots | Fall 2010 Olive roots | Fall 2010 | 3

olive roots Editorial board

Editor-in-ChiefJackson Wyrick

Managing EditorAnna Joseph

Business ManagerWill Brown

Communications Director Sara Birkenthal

Outreach DirectorJennifer Good

Layout Artist Chelsea Carlson

faculty advisory board

Chair of International and Strategic StudiesP. Edward Haley, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Literature & Faculty Director of the Writing Center

Audrey Bilger, Ph.D.Department Chair for Religious Studies

Gaston Espinosa, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Government

Jennifer Taw, Ph.D.

Olive Roots is an international undergraduate research journal on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The journal is published by the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Student Research Forum, a student group at Claremont McKenna College that seeks to promote intellectual discourse, mutual understanding, and a solution to the conflict.


contents

Just as Possible: Water and Prospects for Peace in Israel and the West BankSarah E. Friedman, Kenyon College

4

Wartime Worries:Britain’s Motivation for Supporting Mandatory PalestineAnna Joseph, Claremont McKenna College

18

Overcoming Anti-Semitism:Three Methods of Countering Palestinian RacismSara Birkenthal, Claremont McKenna College

22

The Blame Game:The Israelis and the Suez CrisisCamille Cole, Pomona College

29

Herbraization:The Role of Language in the Israeli-Palestinian ConflictYara Sa’di, University of Haifa, Israel

34

food for thought

articles


An alternative to the commons need not be perfect just to be preferable. Injustice is preferable to total ruin. -Garrett Hardin

When Garrett Hardin wrote these words in 1968, predicting that if all who are entitled to take freely from the commons do so, everyone will suffer, he unwittingly evoked what is now one of the central problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the situation stands, if Israel and the Palestinian National Authority each pursues its own interests, try-ing to acquire the water needed for the domestic and agricultural use of its citizens and industry, the inter-ests of both will be thwarted in the long term. Successfully addressing water issues is not only critical to domestic harmony and economic development, but also a useful and necessary step in the peace process.

The Water Crisis

Water is not, strictly speaking, a finite resource, but its regeneration process is very gradual. Water re-sources, especially those shared by rivals, are not amenable to the same type of energetic reclamation/instal-lation movement employed by the Jewish National Fund to develop for-

ests. Forests develop over time, and humans can both disrupt and initi-ate this process. Freshwater resourc-es are less flexible. Once defiled and depleted, they can only be fully re-stored by time and nature. The time scale on which humans operate is a blink of the eye in the lifetime of a river, and although concentrated ef-forts to sanitize polluted streams can be effective, no practical technology can yet compensate for the depletion of a source. Avoiding pollution and depletion in the first place is easier — and infinitely more beneficial to humans and to nature. Water scarcity has always imposed severe limits on life in historic Pal-estine. In 1947, the Arab Office of London claimed that despite its abundance of land, Palestine’s wa-ter scarcity rendered it unable to support its population even before Zionist immigrants began to settle there. Today, the region faces the same problem, exacerbated beyond the Arab Office’s or anyone’s expec-tations. The riparians of the Jordan River have one of the lowest per capita water availability rates in the world. The region has a decreasing water supply, but a rapidly growing population — 2.2 percent annual growth in the West Bank and 1.7 per-cent in Israel — with rising demand

Just as Possible:Water and Prospects for Peace in Israel and the West Bank

Sarah E. Friedman Kenyon College


to match. Climatic changes and de-velopment projects that divert the Jordan’s tributaries have decreased the river’s water supply drastically in the last century in the last cen-tury to two percent of its capacity today. The overpumping of aquifers beyond their annual recharge capac-ity further exacerbates the shortage. And because pollution is flowing consistently into dwindling fresh-water, water sources are increasingly not only scarce, but also unsanitary.

The Political Roots of the Water Crisis

Historical mismanagement, eco-nomic issues, and political issues play a large role in today’s dysfunc-tional state of water access. The water table beneath Israel’s coastal plain was falling as early as 1947. Generations later, corrections have not been made, and Israel now boasts the distinction of having made the Earth Policy Institute’s 15-country “Countries Overpumping Aquifers in 2009” list. Short-sighted policies exacer-bated the problem; industrializa-tion coupled with socialist ideas created large, government-owned corporations guilty of extensive mistreatment of the environment which nevertheless enjoyed various forms of environmental immunity. Compounding that problem were Israel’s ideological attachment to agriculture and the fact that munici-pal governments, not the national government, profited from water

sales and thus had a financial in-centive to discourage conservation. In the late 1980s, State Comptroller Miriam Ben-Porat issued a special report that explained: “Water alloca-tion, particularly to agriculture, in a quantity that exceeds the water that is replenished from rains on an aver-age basis, is what caused the over-pumping and the liquidation of op-erational reserves.” Her warning was disregarded. The Israeli government never took a strong enough stand to discourage people from using more water than the country had to offer. Ignoring the damage its actions have caused, Israel has depleted not only its own water sources, but also those of the Palestinians. Before 1967, there were 774 functioning wells used by West Bank Palestin-ians; by 2002, only 321 remained in use. Some of this loss is due to natu-ral drying, but most can be traced to political maneuvers. Because of the way in which Israel has carved up the land it captured in the Six-Day War — for Jewish settlements, military use, and most recently to build the security wall — some Pal-estinian villages have been separated from their wells, including fifteen in Baqa a-Sharqiya alone. In that war, Israel gained control over all the Jordan River tributaries; once in control of these water sources, how-ever, it did not institute sustainable policies. Instead, Israel built water systems in “hundreds of villages” in the West Bank and Gaza and allowed forty wells to be drilled, despite the knowledge that more drilling could


salinate existing wells. Since then, Israel has mostly forbidden Palestin-ians from sinking new wells, and all two hundred applications for new wells put in since 1993 have been de-nied. Denial of applications is not just a power play: even the best place in which to drill the West Bank’s East-ern Aquifer, a spot in the Jordan Valley, now makes for a risky invest-ment. The water table is “a third to a half a mile down” and drilling is “just not economical,” according to Clemens Messerschmid, who works for the British Department for Inter-national Development and the Pal-estinian Water Authority. According to Messerschmid, aid agencies no longer want to drill wells because at

$1,000 a yard with no guarantee of finding water, they are too expensive and precarious an investment. To pump water from the sunken water table up to villages, USAID uses oil-industry pumps instead of the less capacious water pumps. Even with powerful pumps, however, this aqui-fer may be able to provide only up to 24,000 acre-feet of water per year, a quarter of the estimation discussed in the Oslo Accords and certainly

not enough to rnsure the well-being of those living in the West Bank – particularly the Palestinians.

A Human Rights Issue

Although both Palestinians and Israelis living in the West bank face a water shortage, for Palestinians the crisis is much more severe, both in terms of water quantity and quality. Two main water sources run through Israeli and West Bank territory: the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan River System. The former supplies a quarter of Israel and its settle-ments’ total water and all of the West Bank Palestinians’ water, while the latter supplies a third of Israel’s total water and none of the Pales-tinians’ water. Although Israel takes only a quarter of its supply from the Mountain Aquifer, it uses 80 per-cent of that source’s water, leaving the Palestinians only 20 percent as their entire water supply. The an-nual recharge rate of the Mountain Aquifer is 615 MCM, of which Israelis use 490 MCM and Palestinians use 125 MCM, as of 2004. Israel allocates fifteen times more water to Jewish settlers than to their Palestinian neighbors. The disparity between West Bank Palestinians and Israelis living in Israel proper is less than that, but still significant: including industrial usage, of which Israel has much more, water consumption per capita is more than five times higher for Israelis than for West Bank Pal-estinians — 330 liters per person per day compared to 60 liters — and by

Israel allocates fifteen times more water to Jewish settlers than to their Palestinian neighbors


some accounts is between six and seven times higher. Two hundred and fifty Palestinian villages and camps do not have piped water sys-

tems, meaning that 10.4 percent of West Bank Palestinians do not re-ceive running water. Even in some areas that are con-nected to a running-water network, there are frequent shortages and in the summer months some regional Palestinian authorities are forced to ration water, providing it to vil-lages on a rotating basis. Those left without water must purchase it from private sellers, who often sell wa-ter for five to six times the govern-ment’s rate. Israeli military control in the West Bank also hampers the efficiency of outside aid to needy villages. In spring 2009, the World

Bank was forced to invest in quick-fix projects with little long-term value, according to Pier Mantovani, a Middle East water specialist for the

Bank, because it could not effectively set up the sustainable projects truly needed in the region. Given that the Palestinians lack basic infrastructure, such as water management systems, they can-not competently address the health crisis that an undersupply of clean water brings. Every year, Palestinian and Israeli communities situated on the Mountain Aquifer discharge 60 MCM of untreated or poorly treated sewage that later ends up in the com-munities’ water supplies. Further-more, in the dry summer months when the entire region is parched, Mekorot, the Israeli National Wa-

jerusalem from the old city ramparts - Will Brown


ter Company that provides about 50 percent of West Bank water, some-times cuts off water supply to Pales-tinian villages. In 2005, for example, the village of Qira, was denied water for three consecutive weeks. Chil-dren in the village suffered from kid-ney failure and other health prob-lems caused by drinking unsanitary water. In this case, irresponsible administration results in more than humiliation or inconvenience. In this case irresponsible administration re-sulted in more than humiliation and inconvenience. These children were denied a basic human right. International law requires Israel to protect the human rights, includ-ing access to adequate water, of its occupied population. Article 20 of the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, of which Israel was an original signa-tory, protects the rights of stateless persons to access “products in short supply,” which in the Middle East surely includes water, to the same extent as nationals. But internation-al law also gives priority to “existing” and “historical” water uses, a consid-eration that would seem to favor Is-rael’s interests as the current admin-istrator and as the developer of most of Israel-Palestine’s modern water sources. Certainly, the existing water uses reflect unfair allocations made by the vastly more powerful Israel. By restricting access to water within the West Bank — not to mention movement of people and transport of supplies — Israel is disregarding a long-established international ob-

ligation, embroiling itself in an ever-worsening PR and political disaster, belying its founding principles, and violating human rights in its occu-pied territories. When considering “historical” water uses, however, the issues become murkier. Both peoples have such intense, intimate connections to the land of historic Palestine that it is unclear which takes historical precedence. If their historical claims are equal, priority should be shared. Nevertheless, be-cause water legally is a human right, an equitable system of water alloca-tion must be established in spite of existing or historical claims. This is the only sustainable option.

Signs of hope

Despite the deep historical dis-trust that exists between Israelis and Palestinians, and current human rights violations, there are three important reasons to believe that an equitable system of water man-agement can be achieved: (1) Israel has historically made considerable efforts to conserve water; (2) Israel and Palestine have some history of cooperation on water issues; and (3) Israel is taking new efforts to limit its water consumption. First, the discrepancy between Jewish and Palestinian water con-sumption was not always so great. The Yishuv started out with no water infrastructure at all, and it was not until the 1960s that most kibbutzim permitted their members the frivol-ity of a flush toilet. Remarkably and


despite Israel’s explosive industrial and infrastructural growth and sky-rocketed affluence, annual per cap-ita water use has remained steady at around 300 cubic meters since 1948. The country has maintained this level through successful water conservation campaigns, reuse of 84 percent of its wastewater, improved water efficiency through better pip-ing and campaigns to retrofit toi-lets, faucets, and showerheads, and a switch from growing to importing most of its grain. Thus, although the figures of water-use discrep-ancy are startling, Israel has always recognized its vulnerability to water shortage and taken significant, if insufficient, steps toward water con-servation. A second reason for hope comes from two examples of past coopera-tion between Israel and Palestine on water issues: the Joint Water Com-mission and Friends of the Earth Middle East – EcoPeace (FoEME). One of the only concrete, lasting gains to come out of the Oslo Ac-cords was the establishment of the Joint Water Committee (JWC), an egalitarian body to oversee general management of all water resources and sewage systems in the West Bank. Nevertheless, the JWC has plenty of flaws. For example, the Oslo Accords established no struc-ture to deal with disputes within the group, so because both sides are rep-resented evenly, either side has the power to veto a measure supported entirely by the other side. Addition-ally, under Oslo, although the Pal-

estinian National Authority (PA) gained exclusive control of systems used only by Palestinians, Israel re-tained control of those used only by settlers, as well as those used by both settlers and Palestinians. Still,

the JWC proved to be an indispens-able institution during the Second Intifada. In the midst of renewed hatred and violence, the JWC issued the Joint Declaration for Keeping Water Infrastructure out of the Cycle of Violence, which stated: The two sides wish to bring to pub-lic attention that the Palestinian and Israeli water and wastewater infra-structure is mostly intertwined and serves both populations. Any dam-age to such systems will harm both Palestinians and Israelis. Both sides wish to take this opportunity to re-iterate their commitment to contin-ued cooperation in the water and wastewater spheres. The JWC has proven the desire of both governments to cooperate on water issues, although imple-mentation is far from perfect. The non-profit sector provides a more successful example of cooperation seen in Friends of the Earth Middle

israel has always recognized its vulnerability to water shortage and taken significant steps toward water conservation


East—EcoPeace (FoEME), an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian environmen-tal NGO which focuses on water is-sues. FoEME conducts its work in a coordinated and egalitarian manner among its three regional branches, and it is this shared commitment to environmental and political princi-

ples that has allowed FoEME to sur-vive when likeminded organizations have failed. Its community-based capacity- and relationship-building efforts are what define FoEME to-day. The most significant grassroots project it has carried out is the Good Water Makes Good Neighbors initia-tive, called Good Water Neighbors (GWN) for short. GWN was estab-lished in 2001 and continues today. According to a 2005 FoEME publica-tion, GWN aims to:...create real improvement within the water sector by building trust and understanding that trust will lead to common problem solving and peace building between com-munities. This is done with the ex-pectation that the trust and under-standing built around water issues will advance cooperative problem solving and peace building on a broad range of issues beyond water resources. To date, FoEME has established

projects connecting twenty-five Is-raeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian communities with a partner com-munity that shares a water source across a national border — includ-ing nine in ten months. In each of these communities, FoEME orga-nizes youth groups, workshops, and mayors’ forums to educate riparian communities about their shared en-vironmental issues and ways to ad-dress them that simultaneously pro-mote peace. According to an FoEME questionnaire about GWN, 93 per-cent of participating youth said they “very much” enjoyed “meeting and getting to know better students from the neighboring communities.” Sev-enty percent said it was “somewhat difficult” to communicate with each other, but 78 percent said that they became friends with youth from neighboring communities during workshops. Considering that one of the project’s main challenges was finding communities willing to work with the other side — in Palestine and Jordan, blacklists identify peo-ple cooperating with Israelis — these impressive statistics speak to the power of cross-border cooperation in changing political attitudes. A third reason for hope is a new Israeli water initiative with an eye to the future. In January 2010 the Wa-ter Authority Council voted to sig-nificantly increase water prices over the next year. A 25 percent price increase for domestically used water was put into effect on Jan. 1, and on July 1 the price will increase another 16 percent. On Jan. 1, 2011, the price

78 percent said that they became friends with youth from neighboring communities


will rise by a final 2 percent. The new price of domestic water will reflect the full costs of supplying, trans-porting, and distributing water, as well as purchasing desalinated wa-ter and improving municipal water and sewage infrastructure. This is an extraordinary measure, compared to the former water-pricing system: water prices used to not even cover Mekorot’s pumping and transport costs. The company stayed afloat only due to borrowing from the gov-ernment at subsidized interest rates and receiving periodic government bailouts. These price hikes are a long-awaited change, and although the long-term consequences are yet to be seen, making Israelis aware of the urgency of water preservation by pressuring their wallets instead of their consciences is a crucial first step that the government should be applauded for finally taking. The West Bank Palestinians already deeply understand the shortages be-cause they suffer most from them, and now that water prices in Israel more accurately reflect the vanishing resource’s true cost, perhaps the is-sue will gain even more public atten-tion in Israel. Yet re-pricing domes-tic water is only the first step; many changes are still needed.

Next Steps

Although Israel has made great progress in addressing the crisis and cooperating with the Palestinians, much more remains to be done. Isra-el must change its agricultural poli-

cies and increase its use of greywater and, most importantly, the two sides must work together to establish a joint water management system. Agricultural subsidies are incred-ibly costly to the environment. Is-rael’s renewable water resources used annually total 1.7 billion cubic meters, 65 percent of which is used for irrigation. Because water for agri-culture is so cheap, farmers can grow water-intensive crops, such as wa-termelons, citrus, and wheat, for ex-port even in water-scarce areas such as the Negev. Farmers may benefit economically, but the country as a whole and the environment lose out; by exporting these water-inten-sive crops, Israel effectively exports 100 MCM of water annually, even though it imports more grain than it used to. That water loss negates what the country’s desalination plants produce, making the entire enterprise just a band-aid for Israel’s misuse of its most precious resource. If Israel imported these products instead, choosing practical econom-ics over ideology, its precious water resources could be put to other uses that might benefit more of the popu-lation in the long term. The recycling of “greywater,” a type of wastewater more sanitary than sewage water, offers another excellent opportunity for the Israeli government, which until recently resisted implementing the technol-ogy for domestic purposes despite already recycling 75 percent of its “black” (sewage) water for agricul-tural use, “by far the best rate in the


world.” Wastewater recycling already has been immensely helpful in agri-culture; if Israeli agriculture drew solely on the already overdrawn aquifers and depleted freshwater sources, the region might already

be beyond ecological salvation. It is a tested and scalable technology, and there is a clear economic incen-tive: cities can get rid of unwanted wastewater by selling it treated to farmers, allowing the highly valued agricultural sector to grow stronger

crops than would be possible with freshwater, which has fewer nutri-ents than greywater. In 2004, waste-water irrigated 705,252 dunams, or about 174,271 acres. One concern in implementing a large-scale greywa-

ter recycling program is that it would throw off the proportions of grey and black water recycled for agricultural use. The NGO Shomera for a Bet-ter Environment is heading the pilot project to recycle greywater for use in urban areas, but in order to meet

The Tel Aviv skyline as seen from Jaffa - Will Brown


Health Ministry standards (thereby enabling it to include the govern-ment body in the effort), the project focuses on shower water only. The Health Ministry has previously for-bidden greywater recycling on the grounds that even recycled water has an “unacceptably high bacteria count.” Now, however, it is realizing that because water scarcity in Israel might prompt individuals to pursue homemade — and therefore likely ineffective or unsafe — greywater re-cycling projects, it will be beneficial to pursue a government initiative in the long run. The potential water savings from greywater recycling are small but not at all negligible: once 20 to 30 percent of Israeli households use re-cycled greywater, Israel will save as much water as a small city uses an-nually. To give an idea of scale, the small city of Beer Sheva, has a popu-lation of 186,800, about a quarter of the population of Israel’s largest city, Jerusalem. Shomera for a Bet-ter Environment gives an even more optimistic estimate: according to its website, if by 2025, 30 percent of Is-raeli households recycle their grey-water, Israel will save enough water to supply a mid-sized city of 300,000 residents. Every drop counts, and the government’s dedication to a greywater initiative will give water policy renewed energy. While changes to agricultural policy and greywater recycling are important, the most critical step needed to solve the water crisis is a joint water management system.

Indeed, this may be the only vi-able solution to the problem. While there have been many proposals to solve the problem by creating new water sources or importing water from Turkey, in the long term, the only sustainable solution will be one that forces Israelis and Palestinians to work together in their home en-vironment and respect each other’s rights. They cannot trust the resolu-tion of so great an issue to nascent technologies nor to the goodwill of other countries. According to Naser I. Faruqui, “most developing countries do not yet have the legal, institutional, regulatory, and economic prereq-uisites to establish sustainable and equitable water markets.” Creating a single joint water market might be a short-lived solution and coun-terproductive in the long run, as the West Bank may become part of the future Palestinian state with its own market, but Faruqui’s idea applies to

water management systems as well. The Israeli government could help West Bank Palestinians avoid the fate Faruqui describes and gain re-gional and international credibility

if by 2025, 30 percent of Israeli households recycle their greywater, Israel will save enough water to supply a mid-sized city of 300,000 residents


for Israel by encouraging innovation and spearheading the creation of a joint water management system. A joint management scheme in which shared aquifers would be pub-lic utilities would appropriately ad-dress groundwater disputes, which in general are more difficult to solve than surface water conflicts. The Is-raeli government and the PA could negotiate a set amount of water each could extract from shared aquifers annually. Price would be based on per capita consumption, and the two governments could share prof-its in order to sidestep the issue of sovereignty. Realistically, because Israel is more technologically and economically powerful, a joint water management system developed now would likely favor Israel’s interests, even if only economically and not to the physical detriment of Palestin-ians. As Israel currently has the sig-nificant water advantage, however, a joint management system would also diminish Israel’s current supply of freshwater. Still, if Israel is willing to take the lead, this solution could greatly improve day-to-day living for Palestinians and long-term pros-pects for peace and security on both sides.

Israel Must Take the Lead

Palestinians and Israelis, who share a tumultuous history of mu-tual distrust, have little incentive to trust each other when it comes to the scarce, but vital resource of water. Yet the end game is so critical that both

sides must take risks along the way. According to Raj’a Shehade, an up-per-class Christian West Bank Pal-estinian lawyer and writer, the West Bank Palestinians’ weaker position precludes them from offering “cre-ative thinking” about conflict resolu-tion. “For now, we are not in a posi-tion to propose attractive or inspired things,” Shehade said. “We can only respond to proposals that reconfirm our humanity and our personal and national pride.” By contrast, Israel is established as a state and more powerful economically; it is thus in a better position than the Palestin-ians to spearhead a joint water ini-tiative. In its 62 years of statehood, Israel has grown its economy 50-fold and maintained its security by turn-ing its greatest liabilities into assets: besieged by hostile neighbors, the

small, new country created one of the greatest militaries in the world, and in a barren environment, Israelis have become innovators and experts in drip irrigation, desalination, and desert agriculture. This is not to say that Palestinians hold no responsi-bility for participating in cooperative efforts or that they are incapable of producing intelligent and creative ideas. In the current political situ-ation, however, whether or not the responsibility for creating environ-mental peace initiatives should fall

Peace cannot be made from nothing


to Israel, it likely will. There will be Palestinians eager to join the effort to work toward peace through the environment, but Israel must be the catalyst. Peace cannot be made from noth-ing. In this case, it must start with the cooperation of people over vital issues related to politics but rooted in objective science. Peace, when it comes, will be shared by the entirety of both populations, and thus now and in the future, natural resources should not belong to one party alone. If Israelis and Palestinians together conceived of and executed a profit-able enterprise focused on environ-mental issues, they would have the groundwork to establish ever more complicated collaborations. As Uri Savir, Israel’s chief negotiator during the Oslo process, writes: “Coopera-tion in joint ventures generates more effective partnerships and cements common interests between former enemies.” A joint solution to the wa-ter crisis can be an important step in the peacebuilding process. If this sounds ignorant of political realities, think of it as the extension of Israel’s founding ideology, unde-niably quixotic but ultimately suc-cessful nonetheless. The basic Zion-ist dream of creating a Jewish state has already been achieved. The new Zionism is about innovation, and if political and technological coopera-tion on water issues with Palestin-ians is what it takes to ensure Israel’s security, the state should embrace the opportunity. No matter how painful, the process of peacebuild-

ing must continue and be acceler-ated. Proponents of peace must take action as decisive as its enemies’ if peace is to be achieved. The drive for environmental peace building must be active, strong, and preva-lent enough to combat the feeling of desperation that pervades the lives of so many Palestinians and Israe-lis: “Words, hopes, temperate ideas have meager strength when the daily reality is so brutal, and when people are literally being blown apart.” Co-operation on water issues will build the foundations for future politi-cal negotiations, and though it may not be appealing to either side, both sides must work together to devise an acceptable, if not completely just, compromise that will trump the “to-tal ruin” of which Garrett Hardin warned.

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26. Ehud Zion Waldoks, “Grey water recycling pilot project under way: Reusing shower water could save 50 million cubic meters per year, ex-perts say,” The Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2009, News Section.

27. World Health Organization, Guide-lines for the Safe Use of Wastewa-ter Excreta and Greywater. Volume 1:Policy and Regulatory Aspects (Geneva: World Health Organiza-tion, 2006).

28. “Principal Cities,” Israel, http://www.citypopulation.net/Israel.html#Stadt_gross.

29. Naser I. Faruqui, “Islam and Water Management: Overview and Prin-ciples,” in Water Management in Islam, ed. Naser I. Faruqui, Asit K. Biswas, and Murad J. Bino (New York: United Nations University Press, 2001).

30. David Grossman, The Yellow Wind, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Picador, 1988), 156.

31. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Eco-nomic Miracle (New York: Twelve, 2009), loc. 282 (read on Kindle).

32. Uri Savir, Peace First: A New Model to End War (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2008), loc. 196 (read on Kindle).


wartime worries:britain’s motivation for supporting mandatory palestine

Anna JosephClaremont McKenna College

External pressures have constantly dictated British policy towards Pal-estine; just as preparation for World War I had prompted the British to support the Zionist cause, prepara-tion for World War II caused them to grant more concessions to the Palestinians. Until 1917, Palestine held little interest except as a buf-fer zone between British-held Egypt and French-controlled Syria and Lebanon. After the Russian Revolu-tion, Britain feared that USSR might withdraw from the war; it started to actively promote Zionism in an ef-fort to win over Jews in Russia. Brit-ain also needed aid from the United States, and they believed supporting Zionism would encourage President Woodrow Wilson to join the En-tente. The combination of these stra-tegic considerations led Britain to is-sue the Balfour Declaration of 1917, meant to quickly gain them influen-tial allies. The declaration promised the Jews a national home in Pales-tine, representing the first political endorsement of Zionist aims by a Great Power. In response to pressure from Brit-ish and American Jewry, Britain continued to show favor to the Jews in Palestine after the World War I. In 1918 Britain granted Hebrew language equal status in all official

proclamations, otherwise showing favor by paying Jewish government employees higher wages than their Arab equivalents.The British government also dem-onstrated continued support of the strategy of, as succinctly coined by Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, “pouring Jews into Palestine.” Be-tween 1933 and 1935, the Jewish pop-ulation in Palestine doubled. Jewish immigrants were mostly Polish or German, and were primarily middle-class. An economic boom resulted in the Jewish sectors in the 1930’s - Tel Aviv alone expanded from 46,000 to 135,000 people between 1931 and 1935. The number of industrial firms doubled, and the Jewish community was more economically stable than ever before. The influx of capital almost ex-clusively benefited the Jews, while the Palestinian Arabs faced grow-ing poverty and debt into the 1930’s. The assistance of Western special-ists with modern agricultural tech-niques, as well as access to outside funds from Jewish investors and organizations, such as the World Zionist Organization, set a clear dis-tinction between Jewish and Arab landowners, resulting in widespread sale of land to Zionists. With the economic depression of the 1930’s,


even many wealthy Arab landown-ers, banned by the mandatory gov-ernment from receiving outside cap-ital, were also forced to sell land for cash. Thousands of Arabs, formerly peasant tenants who had worked the land for their livelihood, were forced to leave their homes, creating an angry and impoverished landless population. The British government tried to deal with this problem by establishing the Landless Arab In-quiry of 1931, but they soon caved to Zionist pressure, only accepting 900 claims of displacement out of 4,000 reviewed. Also, the British economic imperialism further disadvantaged the Palestinians, who were forbid-

den from placing tariffs on imports from League of Nations member states; thus Arab Palestine became an open market for excess goods. Wheat production dropped in the

1930’s and imports increased, driv-ing Arab peasants even further into debt. As another World War loomed, British policy made a complete turn-around; they could no longer afford to lend troops to the cause of rebel-lion in the Middle East, and peace in Palestine therefore became essen-tial to British military security. Nazi propaganda was encouraging Arabs to revolt, pressuring Britain to take action to earn Arab favor. In a show of sympathy towards the Palestin-ians, British government published the 1939 White Paper, which called for severe restrictions on Jewish im-migration and seemed to guarantee

an Arab Palestine within ten years, granting a de facto partition and bi-national government. The White Paper was meant to gain Arab support, both to ensure

bethlehem - jackson wyrick


peace in the region (Britain lacked the resources necessary to engage in multiple conflicts simultaneously) and gain Arab allies in the war. Brit-ain could not afford to endanger the safe arrival of reinforcements from India who would be sent from Iraq through the disputed territory to Egypt, or the pipe that linked oil fields in northern Iraq to an integral modern harbor in Haifa. The Brit-ish Foreign Office issues a statement that, “The European implications of a hostile Middle East aligned with Britain’s enemies must override the arguments in favor of a partition.”Zionists called the 1939 White Pa-per illegal according to international law, as it rejected the promises of the Balfour Declaration. Nevertheless, Britain knew it could depend on Jewish support in a war against Hit-ler, and therefore continued to try to build Arab support during wartime.The Arabs ultimately rejected the White Paper for not promising them immediate independence and a halt to Jewish immigration into Pales-tine. After the perceived betrayal, the Zionists reconsidered their ties to Britain and instead focused their efforts on winning the support of the United States. They stockpiled weapons and otherwise prepared to fight Britain after the war should its policies continue to favor the Arabs.Both the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the White Paper of 1939 were acts of expediency, motivated by the need for allies and by regional military strategy in preparation for war. As the United States took over

as the premiere world power after World War II, Britain suffered great economic losses, the newly elected British Labor government withdrew from the empire’s colonies. British colonialism, and the accompanying trend of basing local policy on a for-eign power’s ever-shifting strategic needs, left a legacy of lasting insta-bility and violent strife in the region.

sources cited

1. Charles Smith, Palestine and the Arab – Israeli Conflict, A History with Documents, Seventh Edition (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2010), 53-165.

2. Jewish Virtual Library, “The Brit-ish White Paper of 1939,” 2010. The American-Israeli Cooperative En-terprise. <http://www.jewishvirtu-allibrary.org/jsource/History/pa-per39.html>

3. Encyclopædia Britannica, “Passfield White Paper.” 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 22 Oct. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EB-checked/topic/445739/Passfield-White-Paper

4. Encyclopædia Britannica, “Susayn-McMahon correspondence.” 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 22 Oct. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/277478/Hu-sayn-McMahon-correspondence>. Woodhead Commission Report, Smith, 144).

5. Palestine Royal Peel Commission Report, CMD 5479 (London, 1946), 278-96.


overcoming anti-semitism:Three methods of countering palestinian racism

Sara BirkenthalClaremont McKenna College

“Principles of human equality are alien to many cultures” -Bat Ye’or

Richard Webster, in his article “Is-rael, Palestine and the tiger of ter-rorism: anti-Semitism and history”, states that “although there is a sig-nificant anti-Jewish strain within the Koran, [Palestinians] ha[ve] never shown signs of succumbing to de-monological Jew-hatred.” Although Webster claims that Palestinians are not actively racist against Israe-lis, this, in fact, is not the case. To the opposite effect, some Palestin-ian Muslims view Jews in a racialized manner, as evidenced by Qur’anic suras and speeches by respected imams that paint Jews as racially in-ferior, as well as by Palestinian social and legal policies that attempt to debase Jews. If racism is defined as “any attitude, action, or institutional structure or any social policy that subordinates persons or groups be-cause of their color or innate charac-teristics,” Palestinian hatred of Jews certainly qualifies as racism. Israelis, however, have not sat passively and accepted Palestinian racism. On the contrary, Israelis have attempted to overcome Palestinian racism via three unique approaches: the reli-gious violence/terrorism approach, embodied by terrorists Yoel Lerner

and Baruch Goldstein, the “power of the pen” intellectual approach, embodied by Bat Ye’or, and the legal approach, embodied by Andrew Bo-stom. Before analyzing Israeli attempts to surmount racism, it is first neces-sary to prove that this racism truly exists. One key source of Muslim Palestinian racism is the Qur’an, which contains numerous state-ments that degrade Jews and paint them as racially inferior. Namely, verse 8 of Sura II, “The Cow” states that “Allah has cursed them (the Jews) on account of their unbelief.” According to Islam, the ancient Jews were turned into animals for trans-gressing the word of God. Specifical-ly, verse 65, also of Sura II, states that “you have surely known the end from those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath, in con-sequence of which we condemned them: Be ye like apes, despised.” Muslim scholar Salah ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Khalidi has gone so far as to ex-tract twenty Jewish traits from the Qur’an. According to the Qur’an the Jews are: liars, perverters, envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, hu-miliated, dastards, misers, avid for life, disloyal to their firm contracts,


rush into sinful aggression, conceal-ers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructers in God’s path. These traits undoubtedly in-fluence the racist attitude of some Palestinian Muslims toward Israelis. Speeches by respected imams also reflect Qur’anic anti-Semitism, which is significant because imams provide moral and religious guid-

ance for communities of Muslims. Most notable is Islamic preacher Sheikh Abdullah Hakim Quick who asserts that Jews are “filth.” Despite his extreme anti-Semitic beliefs, Quick has been continually invited to speak at colleges and universities throughout the Western and Arab Worlds. Another vocal anti-Semitic imam is Amir Abdul Malik Ali, who runs Masjid Al Islam, a mosque affil-iated with the anti-Semitic Sabiqun movement. In speeches from re-cent years, Ali has claimed that the economy and the media are part of a corrupt global super-structure that is controlled by Zionist Jews against Muslims: “he has praised Hezbol-lah, Hamas and the Iranian regime,

extolled martyrdom and blamed Israel for the September 11 terror-ist attacks.” While the ideas of anti-Semitic Islamic extremists seem just that—extreme, such beliefs run the risk of becoming more widespread in today’s era of globalization and ex-tensive use of the Internet, through which people can quickly and easily transmit ideas over long distances. Some Palestinian Muslims have brought anti-Semitic principles off the pages of the Qur’an and the lips of imams and into their social and legal policies. Hamas, mean-ing “Islamic Resistance Movement,” is a Palestinian sociopolitical orga-nization known for its anti-Semitic beliefs. After winning a large major-ity in the Palestinian Parliament in 2006, Hamas has governed the Gaza region of Palestine. While Hamas took only 26 percent of the Palestin-ian vote, this is still a fairly significant percent of the Palestinian popula-tion that supports Hamas’ extreme anti-Semitism. Hamas’ Covenant reads “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?” What does it say about Palestinian attitudes towards Israelis if such a significant portion of the population supports an organization with such an extreme anti-Semitic ideology? Mark Juergensmeyer, in his book Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence explains

Despite his extreme anti-Semitic beliefs, Quick has been continually invited to speak at colleges and universities throughout the Western and Muslim worlds


how the 1999 peace talks between Is-raelis and Palestinians “had prepared a climate of hatred that justified a series of violent demonstrations” by the Israelis. The fears of the Israe-lis, manifested in their outbursts, were largely religious. Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sover-eignty in Israel, was an undeniable motivation for, on a less extreme scale, the mass movement of Jews to Israel and, on a more extreme scale, the terrorist activities committed by Jews aggravated by the thought of losing their “promised land.” Zionism certainly gave Jews a cul-tural rallying point around which to communicate ideas and inspire oth-ers to join their cause. Journalist and founder of modern political Zi-onism, Theodore Herzel published his pamphlet “Der Judenstaat” or “The Jewish State” in 1896. “It her-alded the coming of age of Zionism” and proposed a modern solution to the “Jewish question.” He believed that attempts at assimilation of Jews into European society were vain, as the majority of each country de-cided who was a native and who was an alien. Only the creation of a Jew-ish state would put an end to anti-Semitism. In the conclusion of “Der Judenstaat”, Herzel writes “and what glory awaits those who fight unself-ishly for the cause.” Herzl’s call to Zionist action, along with Jewish theology, historical precedents, and Biblical examples, has served as a justification for a vio-

lent, oftentimes terroristic religious response of the Israeli people. Yoel Lerner, like many Zionists, yearned for a Jewish society in Israel and the creation of a state based on Bibli-cal law. Lerner has been described as having a “discursive and logical mind” and has completed prison time for his part in an attempt to blow up Dome of the Rock, “the Muslim shrine believed to be located almost exactly on the site of the great Jewish temple that was destroyed al-most two thousand years ago.” Ac-cording to Lerner, “Jewish control over the sacred city is essential” and giving up any Biblical land is hereti-cal. Lerner’s Zionist drive is so strong that it has motivated him to kill other Jews whom he considered “de facto enemies of Judaism,” such as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated by a college student who claimed to have “acted on orders from God.” Baruch Goldstein, like his col-league Yoel Lerner, saw the Jewish people as victims of oppression by the Palestinians. Goldstein lived on the West Bank and was threatened by the encroaching presence of Ar-abs. He watched with wrath as the Palestinians continually attacked Kiryat Arba, the settlement where he lived. At night he could hear noises from the loudspeaker of the mosque located just across the fence from the settlement and he occasionally heard someone shouting the words “itbah al-yahud”: “slaughter the Jews.” Before dawn one morning he went to the Muslim side of the Tomb


of the Patriarchs and pulled out a rifle, firing openly on the crowd of men and boys who were praying on the floor before killing himself. Over one thousand people showed up at Goldstein’s elaborate funeral, many claiming that he had “done the right thing.” This case study proves that even if Israeli terror is not yet wide-spread, some Israelis react to Pal-estinians racism and aggression by sympathizing with terrorists. Another method by which the Is-raelis attempt to overcome racism is through the “power of the pen” ap-proach, embodied by Bat Ye’or. Ye’or, an Egyptian-born British scholar re-searches and writes about the his-tory of dhimmis (non-Muslims) living under Islamic governments. She serves as the intellectual voice of many Israelis forced to bear the grunt of Palestinians racism. Ye’or describes the dhimmitude as the “specific social condition that re-sulted from Islamic jihad” and as the “state of fear and insecurity” of “infidels” who are required to “ac-cept a condition of humiliation.” She studies and puts into words via the “power of the pen,” the relationship between the ideological tenants of Islam and the and the sufferings of Christians and Jews. Her book Islam and Dhimmitude begins to elucidate how Israelis have attempted to overcome Palestin-ian racism by explaining the role of the Muslim-Christian Association (MCA), formed in 1917 as the basis of the “anti-Zionist political plat-form.” She discusses the restoration

of Shari’a law and the publication of “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” as evidence of Palestinian racism against Israelis. She claims that “Arab nationalism and The Protocols,” the most notorious and widely distributed anti-Semitic pub-lication of modern times, “became indissociable themes of the policy aimed at nullifying any Jewish rights to Palestine.” She then lists a set of principles upon which Palestinian anti-Semitism is based. These prin-ciples include: The obligation to demand and to maintain the exile and dispersion of the Jewish people, that Palestine belonged solely to Muslims, they alone should control it and the Jews had no place in it, the Jews had no religious relics, nor connection with Palestine, and consequently, had no historic right there, the Arabs were living in Palestine before the Jews, the MCA rejected the use of Hebrew as an official language and only rec-ognized Arabic; it opposed the des-ignation of towns and provinces by their biblical names, the MCA listed

the diabolical characteristics of the Jewish people mentioned in “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” in order to demonstrate the peril of the Jewish state, the Arabs

he occasionally heard someone shouting the words ‘itbah al-yahud’: ‘slaughter the Jews.’


were the creators of science and of civilization whereas the Jews were destroyers and the agents of Evil. Moreover, the Jews have been the most degraded of the dhimmis,” writes Ye’or in The Dhimmi. Through her writing, Ye’or helps her readers see the reality of Palestinian racism against Israelis. Ye’or not only includes evi-dence of Palestinian racism against Israelis, but also pres-ents evidence of Israelis at-tempting to overcome this rac-ism. Most significantly, Israelis and other Middle Eastern Jews turned to Christians for help achieving emancipation, over-turning tradition prejudices, and obtaining equal rights. By the eighteenth century, Israel had gained Christian allies in its fight against racism. Ac-cording to Ye’or, “In this way, public opinion was successfully persuaded to reconcile respect for the dead victims of anti-Semitism.” The Judeo-Christian dialogue was established “to recognize Judaism in its es-sence.” The determined efforts of many Catholics culminated in the Vatican’s recognition of the State of Israel in 1993. Allying with Christians is not the only technique mentioned by Ye’or that Israelis have utilized in their attempt to overcome racism and in-fringement on their national rights. Jews executed revolts, as “it is well-known that the successful revolt of the colonized frequently traumatiz-

es the colonizer.” One of the earliest and most significant of these Jewish revolts was that of July 18, 1855, when “the roads and fields were thronged with an unwanted Jewish popula-tion,” as described in Ye’or’s The Dhimmi. The crowd of Jews gath-

ered outside city walls and proceed-ed to the Synagogue. This particu-lar protest was significant because “never before in modern times had there been a Jewish demonstration publicly made, for in former days of oppression and sorrow it would have been as impolitic as impossible.” This demonstration, which falls un-der the category of intellectual re-sistance, because of its nonviolence

christian quater in old city- jackson wyrick


nature, effectively symbolized the unity of the Israelis against racist Palestinian dhimmi law. Bostom, an American scholar of Islam, best detailed the legal ap-proach to overcoming Palestinian racism, through which Israelis at-tempt to overturn racist social and legal policies. Before analyzing this method of overcoming Palestinian anti-Semitism, it is important to understand the oppressive nature of these policies. In Bostom’s book The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, he lays out these policies in a straight-forward manner. Some of the most discriminatory social and legal prac-tices have included: stripping Jews of citizenship, arresting and detaining Jews, rioting against Jews, restricting Jews’ religious freedom, criminal-izing Judaism, curtailing freedom of movement, freezing of assets, and confiscating Jewish property. That Israelis were forced to live un-der such strict laws further demon-strates Palestinian racism. Bostom describes racist laws im-posed on Israelis, then goes on to describe how they have attempted to overcome them. He explains how Jews joined together under the World Jewish Congress to vocalize the self-determination of the Jew-ish people. In an attempt to over-come Palestinian oppression, Israe-lis reached out to the United States and the United Nations for protec-tion. On January 18, 1948, World Jewish Council President Steven Wise called on the U.S. Secretary of State, George Marshall, to intervene.

The next day, on January 19, 1948 the World Jewish Congress submit-ted a detailed memorandum to the United Nations expressing its worst fears that “the very survival of the Jewish communities in certain Arab

and Muslim countries is in serious danger unless preventative action is taken without delay.” As clarified by Bostom, Israel’s calls for help were successful in mobilizing the inter-national community, especially the United States, to come to its aid. Having analyzed three Israeli ap-proaches to overcoming Palestinian racism, the religious violence/terror-ism approach, the intellectual “pow-er of the pen” approach, and the le-gal approach, it is logical to discuss which of these three approaches has been most effective historically and which will be most effective in the future. The legal approach, as analyzed by Bostom, has been most effective historically because it has helped Israel to ally with the United States, its strongest and most con-sistent ally, as well as to gain the at-tention and support of the United Nations, one of the world’s most significant inter-governmental or-ganizations. However, the religious violence/terrorism approach, em-

That Israelis were forced to live under such strict laws further demonstrates Palestinian racism


bodied by Yoel Lerner and Baruch Goldstein, is presently the most ef-fective approach and will continue to be so into the future. While vio-lent acts of terror are certainly con-demned by much of the Western World, in today’s era of globalization and widespread use of the Internet, they attract immense media atten-tion and literally draw the eyes of the world’s governments and individuals to the racist roots of the Israeli-Pal-estinian conflict. Regardless of how Israelis attempt to overcome racism, the most significant fact of the situ-ation is that Palestinian racism is, in fact, racism.

sources cited 1. ‘Sala Abd al-Fattah al-Khalidi’,

Haqa’iq Qur’aniyya Khawla al-Qadiyya al Filastiniyya [Qur’anic Truths regarding the Palestinian Is-sue] (London: Muslim Palestinian Publications, 1994), pp 73-79, 139-279. Dedicated to Mujahadeen [on] the Blessed Palestinian Earth.

2. Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor. Minorities and the State in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1999).

3. Andrew G. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitsm: from sacred texts to solemn history (Amherst: Promethus Books, 2008).

4. Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1987).

5. Abraham I Katsh, Judaism in Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1954).

6. Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

7. Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

8. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, “The Sons of Israel in the Koran and Muslim Tradition,” Cairo: Dar Al-Shurouq, 2nd ed. (2002), 695-97. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/754.htm

9. Aluma Solnick, “Based on Qu’arnic Verses, Interpretations, and Tradi-tions, Muslim Clerics States: The Jews Are the Descendants of Apes, Pigs, and Other Animals,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Re-port #1, November 1, 2002, http://memri.org/bin/articles/cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR01102.

10. Norman A. Stillman, “New Atti-tudes toward the Jew in the Arab World.” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 1975), pp. 197-204 Published by: In-diana University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4466889.

11. Ehud R. Toledano, Slavery and Abo-lition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998).

12. Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1985).

13. Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: where civilizations collide (Cran-bury: Associated University Presses, 2002).


the blame game:The Israelis and the Suez Crisis

On October 29, 1956, Israeli forces attacked the Sinai Peninsula, as they had planned with their British and French allies. Although the United States eventually compelled the Is-raelis to retreat, Israeli forces man-aged to occupy all of Sinai first. At the time, the invasion seemed a great success to the Israeli leadership and the Israeli people, even though most of their main war aims were not achieved. Despite the numerous jus-tifications the Israelis presented for going to war, and the successes they claimed after the close of hostilities, the military planners should have re-alized at the time that the plan was unwise. They should have realized soon after the crisis that the attack had done more harm than good, and it should be perfectly clear at this point that not only did the attack fail to achieve its goals, but it directly contributed the outbreak of the 1967 war, and thus contributed to the hostile and fragile environment in which Israel has existed ever since. Israel had several reasons for at-tacking Egypt, but all were short-sighted and did not necessarily require military hostilities or an al-liance with Britain and France. The Israeli military’s main argument involved the Egyptian blockade on the Straits of Tiran; any ships bound

for Israel had to request permission to pass through, and airplanes were forbidden to transition the over-lying airspace. This was a serious economic irritant for Israel, and the government understandably wanted the blockade gone. Israeli irritation over the restriction was exacerbated by the increase in Egyptian-spon-sored Palestinian raids into Israel. The Israelis had already undertaken disproportionate retaliatory attacks against Egypt, but the activist men-tality remained prevalent within the leadership. That is, the Egyptians had provided prodigious provoca-tion, and as Israel was already in-clined to undertake excessive retali-ation, it is likely that at least part of the desire to attack Egypt stemmed from a desire to teach Nasser a les-son. Indeed, Israel often justi-fied excessive attacks as necessary demonstrations that Israel would not stand having her national sov-ereignty abridged in any way. The blockade and subsequent curtail-ment of Israeli trade could certainly be interpreted as abridgement of sovereignty. The third main reason for the Israeli desire to attack was the arms deal Nasser had recently completed with the Russians. The Israelis wanted to overthrow Nasser and destroy Egypt’s military capacity

Camille ColePomona College


before the arrival of the bulk of the Russian weaponry in order to fore-stall the possibility of an Egyptian attack, but they needed an excuse. This was their excuse. The Israelis were further influenced in their de-cision by their existing arms deals and hence close ties with the French, who wanted to attack Egypt for their own reasons (Egyptian aid to the Al-gerian Revolution), and by a distant wish to remake Israeli borders in the image of the original Zionist dream of Eretz Israel. At the time, then, the short-term desires to free shipping, teach the Egyptians a lesson, and destroy the Egyptian military, com-bined with the dream of a greater

Israel and the predisposing factor of the French alliance to create an in-exorable push towards war. The Israelis were pleased with their decision in the immediate aftermath

of the crisis. Although they did not manage to depose Nasser, redraw their boundaries, or occupy the Si-nai, they did manage to demonstrate military superiority with few casu-alties, secure de facto peace on the border with Egypt, and garner more support in the American administra-tion. They achieved their main goal of opening the Straits of Tiran, and the international community stood firmly behind that achievement. Is-rael should have realized even then, though, that the attack had been a poor choice. In fact, had the leader-ship taken any time to consider, they would have had that realization even before the attack.

In attacking Egypt, Israel man-aged to both associate itself with the oppressive colonial powers and set itself against the most charis-matic leader in the Arab world, and

Nablus at sunset - Will Brown


it could easily have foreseen some obvious consequences of those ac-tions. Britain and France were the old colonial powers in the Middle East, and both had oppressed peo-ple throughout the region. In ally-ing with them, Israel allied itself with imperialism and with Europe. It encouraged the idea that Israel and the West were conspiring to continue the Arabs’ oppression and to retard development of the Arab people and the Arab economies for their own purposes. The Israeli cause was not aided by the fact that they attacked the most popular leader in the Arab world, a leader who was revered not only in his own country, but who served as a unifying and inspirational figure throughout the Middle East. In attacking him, the Israelis virtually ensured an increase in their unpopularity among their neighbors. Neither the Arabs’ revul-sion for the British and French nor their reverence for Nasser was secret. The Israelis absolutely knew about both before they had attacked, and yet they sacrificed their image and position in the region for a few rela-tively minor short-term goals. This decision probably had a lot to do with the structure of power in the Is-raeli system and especially with the influence of Ben-Gurion. To a large degree, the attack on Sinai was a bloated case of excessive retaliation, including a little pre-emptive exces-sive retaliation. Excessive retaliation as an official Israeli act was closely tied to Ben-Gurionist activism, and had mostly psychological benefits

for the Israelis, or at least for Ben-Gurion and his coterie. In the years prior to 1956, the Israelis had prac-ticed retaliation on an extensive ba-sis in multiple Arab countries, and yet Arab attacks continued and Arab resentment did not abate. The allure of retaliation, though, lay in its con-tribution to psychological satisfac-tion: It seemed to prove Israeli (and thus Jewish) self-sufficiency and full human status. The Suez Crisis was a perfect opportunity to exercise this theory on a grand scale, and it succeeded in that it gave the Israe-lis psychological satisfaction and confirmation of their superiority. The desire to prove self-sufficiency, though, combined with the total dominance of Ben-Gurion and his supporters in the cabinet, ensured that the Israeli government would not properly examine the probable consequences before attacking. After the attack, it should have become even more obvious that the attack had been a bad idea, and yet

the Israelis continued to be pleased with their “success.” The Arab per-ception of Israel as a Western stooge forestalled any possibility of regional cooperation. The crisis clearly and quickly augmented Nasser’s stand-ing in the Arab world, and thus his

To a large degree, the attack on Sinai was a bloated case of excessive retaliation


rejection of the West. His increased hostility, although it did not mani-fest immediately as military aggres-sion, should have made the Israeli leadership nervous. Although Israel

was pleased by the greater support they now found in the U.S. Congress, Israel should have been wary of be-ing drawn into Cold War politics, and the attendant risks of American manipulation. Still, this was a minor concern beside the now-cemented Arab perception of Israel as a West-ern, colonial puppet, which meant it was reviled both for the attack and because of Nasser’s growing es-trangement from the West. Today, it is perfectly clear that the Israeli intervention in Egypt in 1956 was not only an unqualified disaster, but it also directly contributed to the deteriorating situation in the Mid-dle East over the next few decades. It can be somewhat difficult to see

the links, because for the ten years after the crisis, the situation in the region was relatively quiescent, es-pecially in terms of Israeli-Egyptian relations. Nonetheless, the Suez Cri-

sis, and particularly the attendant radicalization of Nasser, was directly responsible for the Six-Day War of 1967. Although Egypt was defeated militarily in 1956, Nasser’s standing in the Arab World was enhanced as a result of the conflict. He was further denied standing with the Western powers, most significantly the Unit-ed States. Nasser’s ideas about pan-Arab unity, nonalignment, and soli-darity became de rigeur and gained influence. Because of his personal desire for power, Nasser felt he had to support other Arab causes in order to maintain his reputation as a pan-Arab hero. Essentially, he was boxed in by his own popularity and influ-ence, so that when Syria and the PLO

Olive trees outside Tantur - Jake Wyrick


expressed a desire for war with Israel in 1967, Nasser could not – or felt he could not – abstain. The 1967 War was thus a direct result of the Suez Crisis in two ways: Nasser’s standing was enhanced, his leadership more respected, and his ideas became more anti-West, and pan-Arab. The two combined disastrously to create the conditions for the Six-Day War. Again, it may not be immediately obvious why this was undesirable; after all, the Six-Day War was a mas-sive rout for Israel. They decisively demonstrated military superiority, this time without allies, and added vast tracts of territory to their bor-ders, including the dreamed-of holy sites in East Jerusalem. In the long run, though, the 1967 War was disas-trous. It hardened opposition to Is-rael in the rest of the Arab World, led to a dangerous arrogance on the part of the Israelis, and ushered in the oc-cupation, which has been a destabi-lizing force in the region and a major point of contention ever since. The Israeli intervention in 1956 was clearly not worth the conse-quences. The Israelis were not be-loved in the region even before this, but their involvement in the conflict netted them only cheap psycho-logical victories and minor mate-rial gains, while it solidified the Arab perception that Israel was a colonial stooge, and played a major role in creating the conditions leading to the Six-Day War and the ensuing instability. It’s easy to say this from the standpoint of posterity, but the Israeli leaders should have foreseen

at least some of these consequences. Maybe they would not have predict-ed the Six-Day War, but they could certainly have predicted that allying themselves with Britain and France against a wildly popular pan-Arab leader was not the best choice in terms of image. If they had thought about it, they probably would have reached the conclusion that their aims in the war, or most of them, could have been reached through other channels; after all, there al-ready existed immense international approval for opening the Straits of Tiran. Israel was simply determined to attack. The leadership actually considered attacking without allies, and their motives were completely separate from British and French ones. There were obvious downsides to both the attack itself – Nasser’s popularity – and to the British-French alliance – hostility to imperi-alism – but their incessant focus on short-term objectives and Ben-Guri-on’s leadership style obscured those downsides. The Israeli attack on Si-nai was merely one of the first in a long series of unconsidered Israeli actions. The consequences, both for the Israelis and others, have been se-vere.

sources cited 1. Charles Smith, Palestine and the

Arab - Isreali Conflict, A History with Documents, Seventh Edi-tion (Boston: Bedford/St/ Martin’s, 2010), 230-250.


“Hebraization” has long been viewed among Palestinians as a way of oppressing their Arab identity. The Arabic language has a special role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is the mother tongue of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as the official language of the neighboring coun-tries. Moreover, it was the language spoken in the region before the es-tablishment of the state of Israel fol-lowing the 1948 War (referred to by Palestinians as el-Nakba, meaning disaster). In that sense, Arabic rep-resents an undesired culture within the Jewish state. The “Hebraization” of the Palestinian cities and sites re-flect attempts to strip Arabic from Palestinian history and to prevent it from representing a strong Pales-tinian culture and identity. In 1949, David Ben-Gurion created a names committee to give Hebrew names to places that for centuries had had Ar-abic names. Examples include Sha’ar Ha-Gai (a translation of the Arabic name Bab al-Wad ), Nahal Poleg (from Arabic name Wadi al-Falk), Hamat Gader (from Arabic name Alhama), and so on. After 1967, the settlements established next to Arab villages were given Hebrew versions of Arabic names. For example, next

to the Arab village Anbata in the West Bank was built the settlement Einav, and next to Alhafsa was built the settlement Avnei Hefe. The role of language in establishing the iden-tity of Israel is also reflected in the Israeli citizenship legislation. The

Citizenship Law of 1952, according to which new citizens of Israel must acquire “some knowledge of the He-brew language,” and the Chamber of Advocates Law of 1961, which also dictates that a “basic knowledge of Hebrew” is a condition of citizen-ship. In his study of the Portrait of the Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi claims that the privileging of one group entails oppression and discrimination against another. In his claim regarding the “colonized” and the “colonizer,” Memmi adds that granting a certain group privi-leges and depriving another group of its rights eventually contributes

herbraization:The role of language in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Yara Sa’diUniversity of Haifa, Israel

new citizens of Israel must acquire “some knowledge of the Hebrew language”

food for thought


to the inferiority of the latter, thus bolstering the image of “the colo-nized” as less developed, weaker and less human. The Hebrew language has been weilded as a tool by those who wish to emphasize a perception of Palestinian inferiority. The lim-ited skill of many Arabs in Hebrew reinforces the image of Palestinians as subordinate, less intelligent, and powerless. This bolsters prejudice against Arabic, and the view that it is the language of the weak and the primitive. It is a rather common phenom-enon, whereby the colonized/the oppressed internalizes the distorted image of identity created by the col-onizer/the oppressor. This phenom-enon characterizes power relation-ships between the strong and the weak. According to French philoso-pher Franz Fanon, when the slave adopts the perspective of the master, he ceases to resist his slavery and eventually shares the same ambi-tions of his master. Thus the slave no longer attempts to break the struc-ture of power and overcome this dia-lectic of master-slave relationship. It is therefore the responsibility of the Palestinians to resist adopting their “master’s perspective” and to contin-ue speaking Arabic, despite conflict-ing cultural differences.

sources cited

1. Majid Al-Haj, Education, Empower-ment, and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel (NY: State Univer-sity Press, 1995)

2. Muhammad Amara, “The place of Arabic in Israel”. International Jour-nal of the Sociology of Language Is-sue 158, 2002.

3. Tia DeNora, After Adorno; Rethink-ing Music Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

4. Nigel Gibson, Fanon the postcolo-nial Imagination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003).

5. Ifat Maoz, “Power Relations in In-tergroup Encounters: A Case Study of Jewish-Arab Encounters in Is-rael”. International Journal of Inter-cultural Relations, 2002.

6. Alber Memmi, “The Portrait of the Colonizer and the Colonized (Je-rusalem: the Carmel (in Hebrew), 1985).

7. Ramzi Suleiman, “On Identities, Ju-risprudence and Politics”, Adalah’s Newsletter, Volume 31, Decem-ber 2006. http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/dec06/ramzi.php

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food for thought


Bethlehem and the separation barrier - Will Brown

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e I | issue I | fall 2010