West Bank aka Judea and Samaria Story, Part I
During the last two weeks of December 2016, the republican President-elect Donald Trump and the democratic Secretary of State, John Kerry have been trading jabs regarding Israel and the West Bank. This is a complicated situation to where one should beware of anyone claiming to have an easy solution. For many years, through republican and democratic administrations, the U.S. has been pushing for Israel and Palestine to adopt a two state solution, where both have its own territories and both states live side by side. Towards this end, the U.S. has been discouraging Israel from building Israeli settlements in the West Bank where the population is mostly Palestinian. Israel with the blessing of its hardline leader, Benjamin Netanyahu have ignored the international community by foraging ahead with construction projects in the West Bank. And the republican President-elect Donald Trump is acting in support of President Netanyahu’s position.
With the West Bank now being a point of contention, it is important that we, who are resistant to the normalization of our president-elect, learn more about the history of the West Bank.
I did find the cliff notes historical version about the 1967 Six Day War and Resolution 242 from PBS Frontline which published excerpts from Eric Black’s Book, “Parallel Realities” which shares details about the West Bank. It was reprinted with the permission of both the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the author. It is titled, “Resolution 242 And The Aftermath of 1967:”
“The argument over which side to blame for the 1967 Six Day War goes on, but all of the parties acknowledge that Israel’s dramatic victory altered the face of the Middle East and established the boundaries–literally and figuratively–within which the quest for an Arab-Israeli settlement has been conducted ever since.”
“Territories/In the 1967 war, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Except for the Sinai, Israel still holds all those territories.”
“Egypt regained the Sinai as part of the Camp David Accords of 1979. Israel has formally annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, vowing never to relinquish those territories. But Syria vows never to make peace unless Israel withdraws from Golan. And the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) declares Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.”
“The so-called “land for peace” formula at the center of the 1992 Mideast negotiations comes down to Israeli withdrawal from some or all of the territories acquired in 1967 in exchange for recognition by Israel’s neighboring states of its right to live in peace, and a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.”
“Population/By capturing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel also captured about one million Palestinians. Many were the same individuals who had fled their homes in 1947-49, or the children of those refugees. Since 1967, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza has increased to about 1.8 million.” (As of 2014, 2.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.)
“This population is often described as a demographic time bomb for Israel. The birth rate of Arabs in the occupied territories and Arabs within pre-1967 Israel is significantly higher than the birth rate among Israeli Jews. Despite the influx of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews to Israel in the early 1990s, if the higher Arab birth rate continues and no settlement is reached, Israel will lose its Jewish majority within the foreseeable future.”
“Israel has not been willing to offer citizenship to the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, as they did with the Arabs in pre-1967 Israel, nor to expel them, as some hard-liners have advocated, nor to grant them self-determination, which would result in the creation of a Palestinian state.”
“PLO and Likud/Before 1967, the leading spokesman for the Palestinian cause was not a Palestinian but Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. After the humiliating six-day defeat, Nasser offered his resignation. It was not accepted, and his popularity remained high, but Nasser died in 1970 without having successfully reasserted his leadership of the Palestinian cause. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had been controlled by Nasser, was taken over by Yasir Arafat. The PLO soon gained the leadership position among Palestinians it has enjoyed ever since.”
“Before 1967, Menachem Begin was an outsider in Israeli politics, shunned as too radical, expansionist and intransigent by founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. But in the weeks leading to the 1967 war, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Ben-Gurion’s successor, brought Begin into the cabinet as a symbol that the crisis required national unity. It was a breakthrough toward respectability for Begin. Although he later resigned from the cabinet, he became prime minister himself in 1977. His hardline Likud bloc has dominated Israeli politics ever since.”
“The special relationship/Israel used French arms to win the 1967 test against the Soviet-supplied arms used by Egypt and Syria. But after 1967, the United States quickly began to emerge as Israel’s top ally. Paris rejected Israel’s first strike in 1967 while Washington accepted it. Israel’s victory in the war, which was interpreted in America as an inspiring victory of David over Goliath, caused Israel’s popularity in the United States to surge. Soon after 1967, Israel shot to the top of the list of countries receiving U.S. foreign aid. The war helped establish the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” that has existed ever since.”
Resolution 242
“The 1967 war also gave rise to U.N. Resolution 242, which has become a sort of mantra of all Middle East peacemaking efforts since it was adopted by the United Nations in 1967. By the late 1980s, Israel, most Arab states, the PLO, the United States, the Soviet Union and most of the nations of the world had accepted Resolution 242 as the proper basis for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Whenever negotiations are in the offing, all of the parties hasten to reaffirm their support for Resolution 242, to insist that the resolution provides the road map to peace, and to imply that the other side is the one that will not abide by the requirements of 242.”
“When the fighting stopped in June of 1967, the action moved to the United Nations. The Soviet Union, then the superpower-of-choice for Egypt and Syria, pushed for a resolution demanding Israel’s withdrawal to its prewar boundaries. Israel wanted recognition of its existence and security guarantees. It found the United States more willing than ever to use its Security Council veto power on Israel’s behalf. This was one of the benefits to Israel of the just-blossoming “special relationship.” The Security Council argued throughout the summer and fall of 1967 before agreeing on Resolution 242 in November.”
“Resolution 242 was sponsored by Britain. It passed because it tied the main thing the Soviets and Arabs wanted–Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories–to the main thing Israel and the United States sought–recognition of Israel by its neighbors.”
“In its key sections, the resolution calls for:
‘”Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in recent conflict.”
“Termination of all … states of belligerency and … acknowledgment of the sovereignty … of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.”
“A just settlement of the refugee problem.”
“A just settlement of the refugee problem.”
“So what’s the hang-up? If all the requirements of Resolution 242 were fulfilled, the Arab-Israeli conflict would be settled. Yet a quarter of a century after it was adopted, Resolution 242 has turned out to be a road map to limbo. Israel still occupies several of the territories it captured in 1967; no Arab state except Egypt has recognized Israel’s sovereignty nor formally ended the state of war with Israel; and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still inhabit squalid refugee camps.”
“The hang-up, as you can also see, is that the language of the resolution is vague enough for each of the parties to see what it wants to see and interpret the rest out of existence.”
“The United States, for example, sees Resolution 242 as the embodiment of the principle of land for peace, which has been the core of U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967. But the United States has not specified what land Israel should give up, what peace guarantees the Arab states should provide, nor what would constitute a “just settlement” for the Palestinians.”
“The United States, for example, sees Resolution 242 as the embodiment of the principle of land for peace, which has been the core of U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967. But the United States has not specified what land Israel should give up, what peace guarantees the Arab states should provide, nor what would constitute a “just settlement” for the Palestinians.”
“For ten years after the 1967 war, Egypt, Jordan and Syria interpreted Resolution 242 in unison. It meant that Israel had to give back all of the territory captured in the war. Until Israel did so, the Arab League agreed, it would have no peace, no recognition and no negotiations. One of the shortcomings of the resolutions is that it doesn’t say what should come first, Israeli withdrawal or Arab recognition of Israel. Each side insisted that the other make the first concession.”
“Traditionally, the Arab states argued that the only way to implement 242 was to convene an international conference that would consider all of the issues at once and have the power to enforce a solution. This negotiating format has always been unacceptable to Israel. The three front-line Arab states also forswore bilateral negotiations with Israel. Syria in particular has worried that if Israel got recognition and peace on its Egyptian and Jordanian borders, Israel would never negotiate the return of the Golan Heights.”
“Sure enough, in 1977 Egypt broke ranks, negotiated directly with Israel, and made a separate peace with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai. The other Arab states kicked Egypt out of the Arab League.”
“But, as is often the case, the widest divergence of interpretation occurs when Israelis and Palestinians give their parallel versions of Resolution 242.”
West Bank Story, Part V / What Happened When The West Bank Was Part Of Jordan
Jordan (formerly Transjordan) won control and occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem during a period of nearly two decades (1948-1967) in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The occupation ended with the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel prevailed in battle with its neighboring Arab countries. Then Israel became the occupying power.
During the time when the West Bank was occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967, Jordan extended the rights of citizenship to the Arabs living in the West Bank and it executed a process to annex it to Jordan which was approved and recognized by Great Britain, and Pakistan, but not by the rest of the international community.
If one where to read first hand accounts of those living in the West Bank during the years that it was annexed to Jordan, it would paint a picture of how well its inhabitants were treated. But the level of discontent was also evident as Arab militants within the West Bank were unwilling to accept Jordanian rule. It was during this time frame that the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) was formed but with the approval of the Arab states including Jordan.
Richard Cavendish in the April 2000 History Today publication, in volume 50, issue 4, describes in the following commentary, the events that led up to the West Bank including East Jerusalem being formerly annexed by Jordan in 1950:
“The Arab emirate of Transjordan was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after the First World War. A region of desert and mountains, with its capital at Amman and its western border on the River Jordan separating it from Palestine (Israel), Transjordan was ruled by the Emir Abdullah, of the Hashemite family, the princes of Mecca, who traced their descent back to the Prophet himself through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali. He was a brother of King Feisal of Iraq, and both of them had been involved with T.E. Lawrence in the Arab Revolt against the Turks. Afterwards Abdullah tried to persuade the British government to give him Palestine (West Bank). He had to settle for Transjordan, but his appetite for the Arab territory west of the Jordan remained.”
“Though it suited him to be portrayed as a simple Bedouin chieftain, Abdullah was an astute character, of broad sympathies and great personal charm. He had grown up largely in a cosmopolitan environment in Istanbul, where he had been a member of the Turkish parliament, and his experience of politics had taught him to be a realist. He spoke fluent Turkish and more English than he allowed the English to know. In 1946 Transjordan became a kingdom, independent of Britain, and in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 King Abdullah’s Arab Legion, trained and led by British officers, took the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem and seized control of the West Bank area on the western side of the Jordan, which included Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron and Nablus. The kingdom now changed its name to Jordan. The annexation of the West Bank, which more than doubled Jordan’s population, was chewed over in talks with Israel which petered out in March 1950. In April Jordan held an election for a new parliament to represent both banks of the Jordan. It met on the 24th to hear a speech from Abdullah and pass a resolution affirming support for ‘complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one state’ and formally incorporating the West Bank into the Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan.”
“The arrangement was not to last. There were intense rivalries between the Arab states and leaders. Abdullah looked down on the Egyptians and was not on good terms with the Saudis. His belief in the possibility of living in peace with the Jews aroused fanatical hostility and in 1951 he was shot dead entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem by a Palestinian Arab. He was succeeded by his son Talal and then by his grandson, King Hussein. Arab militants in Palestine (West Bank including East Jerusalem) refused to accept Jordanian rule”
In 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been established to be a thorn in the side of Israel, but eventually it also became a thorn against Jordan. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) constantly incited the Palestinians against Jordan even though Jordan gave them citizenship and in general treated them better than any other Arab state. The PLO became such a threat to Jordan that King Hussein evicted them in 1970. Still, for years, Jordan proposed several ideas and peace plans for Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank but all were rejected by Yasser Arafat, who insisted that his people wanted an independent state.
The following information is from the Jordanian website, http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo:
“One outcome of a 1964 Cairo summit was the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Concurring with other Arab leaders, King Hussein recognized the need for an organization of this kind which could coordinate Palestinian efforts. His only concerns were that the PLO should cooperate with Jordan and that its military activities should be under the strict control of the United Arab Command, lest they should inadvertently drag the Arabs into a war with Israel for which they were unprepared.”
“The mid-1960s also saw the rise of independent Palestinian guerrilla groups (known in Arabic as the fedayeen), the most notable of which was Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In their relentless attempts to outbid Nasser, the Ba’thist Syrian government encouraged guerrilla raids into Israel—not from Syria, but from Lebanon or Jordan. The Israeli reprisals to these militarily senseless raids were predictably harsh, and Jordan was forced to reign in the guerrillas. For this, Jordan was attacked again by the propaganda machines in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad.”
Eventually war ensued between Israel and the neighboring Arab states including Jordan and Egypt. This was the 1967 Six-Day War in which the Israelis prevailed, mightily.
For years, the Israelis refused to negotiate on any level with the PLO, the defacto governing body in the West Bank. Finally, Jordan’s King Hussein formally relinquished any and all duties over the West Bank in 1988. Meanwhile, anti-Israel protests broke out among the Arabs of the West Bank in December 1987, and became a constant feature of life in the West Bank for the next few years, despite the Israeli army’s attempts to suppress the unrest.
According to Enclclopedia.com, as of June 7. 1967, “Israeli law, jurisdiction, and public administration were extended over a 28-square-mile (73 sq. km) area of the West Bank, including the 2.3 square miles (6 sq. km) that had constituted the municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule. This de facto annexation placed East Jerusalem and its Palestinian inhabitants under Israeli sovereignty. East Jerusalem is now considered by Israel an indivisible part of its capital city. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.”
“Other cities in the West Bank include Hebron, Bethlehem Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Jericho. The total population of the region in 2003 consisted of some 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank, with a further 180,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Over 200,000 Israeli settlers lived in the West Bank and a further 170,000 Israelis in East Jerusalem.”
“In 1967 the Arab/Palestinian population of the region was largely agricultural, but under Israeli rule many left agriculture to find employment in the Israeli cities as menial laborers. Following the onset of the first intifada in 1987, most of the Palestinians were excluded from the Israeli labor market, giving rise to widespread unemployment and severe poverty. In early 2003 the economic situation of the population was worse than it had ever been since 1967.”
The West Bank Story, Part VI/ Peel Commission report of 1937
The idea for a two state solution for Israel and Palestine is not new but many would be surprised to learn that this concept dates back to 1937 based on the British Peel Commission report. There was a proposed map that the commission recommended which was accepted by Jewish leaders but it was rejected by the Arab representatives.
It all started after WWI with the 1920 San Remo Conference held in Italy. The Conference set the framework to dissolve the Ottoman empire and thus, there was the Treaty of Sevres. It was replaced in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne, which voided previous Allied demands for Kurdish autonomy and Armenian independence but did otherwise recognize Turkey’s current boundaries.
Two mandates were created out of the San Remo Conference. The northern section of a newly partitioned land which included today’s Syria and Lebanon, was placed under the authority of France but the southern region came to be known as the British Mandate, which became Iraq, Transjordan, and a land called Palestine, based on the 1917 Balfour Declaration where the Jewish population could reside. The Balfour Declaration did favor the Jewish population but here’s the rub. It was not clearly written and it tends to ignore the Arabs as both Jewish and Arab residents dwelled in this same land and inevitably, after awhile there was significant fighting between the two camps.
Discontent in Palestine intensified after 1920, when the Conference of San Remo awarded the British government a mandate to control Palestine. With its formal approval by the League of Nations in 1922, this mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which provided for both the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine and the preservation of the civil and religious (but not the political or national) rights of non-Jewish Palestinian communities. Palestinian Arabs, desiring political autonomy and resenting the continued Jewish immigration into Palestine, disapproved of the mandate, and by 1936 their dissatisfaction had grown into open rebellion. As a result, the Peel Commission was established to investigate the situation.
Two major plans were proposed to create two states (a land for the Jewish population) and (a region for the Arabs) in 1937 and 1947. Both plans were approved by Jewish leaders but were rejected by Arab representatives.
The Peel Commission report of 1937, in full Royal Commission of Inquiry to Palestine, group headed by Lord Robert Peel, was appointed in 1936 by the British government to investigate the causes of unrest among Palestinian Arabs and Jews. The source of this and the following information with the map is from the Encyclopedia Britannica, classified under British History, and last updated on 9/3/ 2010.
“The Peel Commission published its report in July 1937. The report admitted that the mandate was unworkable because Jewish and Arab objectives in Palestine were incompatible, and it proposed that Palestine be partitioned into three zones: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and a neutral territory containing the holy places. Although the British government initially accepted these proposals, by 1938 it had recognized that such partitioning would be infeasible, and it rejected the commission’s report.”
As per Wikipedia, “partition was again proposed by the1947 UN Partition plan the division of Palestine. It proposed a three-way division, again with Jerusalem held separately, under international control. The partition plan was accepted by the Jewish leadership. However, the plan was rejected by the leadership of Arab nations and the Palestinians which opposed any partition of Palestine and any independent Jewish presence in the area. “
As soon as the British Mandate ended, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued which was instigated by neighboring Arab countries. The fighting came to an end with the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The war resulted in the fleeing or expulsion of up to 800,000 Arabs living in what was known as Jewish Palestine which became the State of Israel. The area known as the West Bank ended up under the rule of Transjordan from 1948-1967.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed during 1949 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria to formally end the 1948 Israeli-Arab War and to establish what came to be known as the green line between Israeli forces and Jordanian-Iraqi forces.
The United Nations established supervising and reporting agencies to manage the established Armistice lines.
The new frontiers for Israel, as set by the agreements, encompassed about 78% of mandatory Palestine as it existed after the independence of Transjordan (now Jordan) in 1946. The Arab populated areas not controlled by Israel prior to 1967 were the West Bank occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip occupied by Egypt.
The armistice agreements were supposed to be temporary measures until replaced by permanent peace treaties. However, no peace treaties were officially signed until decades later. As per Arab insistence, none of the borders based on the Armistice Agreements were to be permanent.
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