History

Questions:

·   How do you think British and French involvement of this sort may have changed the course of events?

·        How did Jews and/or Palestinian Arabs fit into this plan?  

November, 1917:
The Balfour Declaration

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour

Questions:

·    What made the British sympathetic with the Jewish aspirations for a national home?

·        Was Arthur Balfour a humanitarian?

British Mandate: 1922-1947

In 1922, the League of Nations granted the British with a mandate over Palestine.  The Palestine mandate originally included all of the lands that today are Israel and Jordan.  Soon after, Transjordan achieved its independence and the land west of the Jordan River became the administered lands of Palestine.  The mandate meant that the British would temporarily be the administering authority in these lands, for both Arabs and Jews.  Article 3 of the mandate states, “The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.”  At the same time as this mandate was working to fulfill the Balfour Declaration, they were working to fulfill the promises of Arab independence, extended to the Arab leadership during World War I.    

Questions:

·    What did local autonomy mean?

·        Was Britain more concerned with the well-being of the Jews or the Arabs?

  The Arab Rebellion: 1936-1939

In 1936, riots, and what is now known as the “Great Arab Revolt,” broke out all over mandate Palestine.  The Palestinian Arabs, out of frustration with the fact that there was a steady Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the corruption and incompetence of their own leadership, used violent means to fight back under the original banner of, “no taxation without representation.”  The Irgun, the armed branch of the Revisionist Zionist movement, quickly mobilized and advocated attacks on Arabs.  The British sent Lord Peel and a Royal Commission to go in and investigate the causes and possible solutions to the new conflict.  Based on the findings of Lord Peel and his commission, the recommendation was to partition Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State.  The Jews would have control in the Galilee, the Yezreel Valley, and the Coastal Plain to a point between Gaza and Jaffe.  The Arabs would have control of all remaining territory except for a bit left for the British maintain their mandate over (see map on next page).  The Arab leadership and the British government rejected the Peel Commission’s partition plan.  The Jews accepted it, but with great hesitancy.  When all was done with in 1939, the hatred between Jews, Arabs, and British had grown and much of the Arab leadership, including the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini,, was in exile.   

Peel Commission Report:

…An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country.  About 1,000,000 Arabs are in strife, open or latent, with some 400,000 Jews.  There is no common ground between them.  The Arab community is predominantly Asiatic in character, the Jewish community predominantly European.  They differ in religion and language.  Their cultural and social life, their ways of thought and conduct, are as incompatible as their national aspirations.  These last are the greatest bars to peace.  Arabs and Jews might possibly learn to live and work together in Palestine if they would make a genuine effort to reconcile and combine their national ideals and so build up in time a joint or dual nationality.  But this they cannot do.  The War and its sequel have inspired all Arabs with the hope of reviving in a free and united Arab world the traditions of the Arab golden age.  The Jews similarly are inspired by their historic past.  They mean to show what the Jewish nation can achieve when restored to the land of its birth.  National assimilation between Arabs and Jews is thus ruled out.  In the Arab picture the Jews could only occupy the place that they occupied in Arab Egypt of Arab Spain.  The Arabs would be as much outside the Jewish picture as the Canaanites in the old land if Israel.  The National Home, as we have said before, cannot be half-national.  In these circumstances to maintain that Palestinian citizenship has any moral meaning is a mischievous pretense.  Neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State…

Questions:

·    Was Lord Peel right in saying that Arabs and Jews could never live together?

·        How does this compare to the more recent Intifadas? Were the causes of the violence similar?

Map of Peel Commission Partition Plan

The following poem was a song that was written and sung during the Arab Rebellion as a motivational battle cry…  

My Homeland

Ibrahim Tukan

My homeland
My homeland
Glory and beauty
Sublimity and prettiness
Are in your hills
Life and deliverance
Pleasure and hope
Are in your atmosphere
Will I see you?
Safe and comfortable
Sound and honored
Will I see you?
In your eminence
Reaching the stars
My homeland
My homeland
***
The youth will not get tired
Their goal is your independence
Or they die
We will drink from death
But we will not be slaves to our enemies
We do not want
An eternal humiliation
Nor a miserable life
We do not want
But we will return
Our great glory
My homeland
My homeland
***
The sword and the pen
Are our symbols
Not talking nor quarreling
Our glory and covenant
And a duty to fulfill it
Shake us
Our honor
Is an honorable cause
A raised flag
O, your beauty
In your eminence
Victorious over your enemies
My homeland
My homeland

Question:

·    Could these same words be used in the context of Zionism?

  U.N. Resolution 181: The Partition Plan 1947

After the Arab Rebellion had ended, the British released The White Paper of 1939, a document that severely restricted further Jewish immigration to Palestine; the Jews initiated several years of fighting both the British and the Arabs.  During World War II, it was decided that the Jews who faced persecution from the Nazis would be able to immigrate to Palestine.  Fighting continued in Palestine, nonetheless.  In 1947, the British transferred responsibility for Palestine over to the United Nations.  The U.N. sent a special committee and came up with the new partition plan (shown on map below).  The Jews accepted the partition and the Arabs, represented by the Arab League, did not. 

Questions:

·    Why didn’t the Arabs accept the Partition Plan?

·        Why did the Jews accept it?

·        If the Partition Plan was implemented, would it have been the end of the conflict? Would you be happy with this partition?

Violent Reactions and the War of Independence

Immediately following the announcement of the partition plan, violence erupted sporadically throughout Palestine. This began as disorganized riots by Arabs in Jerusalem on December 1, and escalated into terrorist attacks by both sides, and systematic attempts by Palestinians to blockade Jerusalem.

Below is one account of a major incident in Haifa, at the close of 1947.  David Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence and a major war between all of the neighboring states broke out.  The war was devastating for all parties involved.  In the end, the Jews emerged victorious, the state of Israel was established, and thousands of Palestinian refugees were created.  There has been much controversy surrounding the issue of who may have encouraged/forced the Arabs to leave their homes.

The Descent into Madness

From: Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 Zachary Lockman

Edited and commented by Matthew Hogan and Ami Isseroff.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, Berkeley · Los Angeles · London © 1996

It is a sad irony that the single bloodiest incident of the first month of the Arab-Jewish violence that erupted immediately after the UN General Assembly endorsed partition not only involved workers employed at a mixed workplace but occurred at a site which had a history of close cooperation between Arab and Jewish unionists. This incident, one of the first massacres of the 1947–49 period though by no means the last, contributed greatly to the dissemination of fear and hatred among both Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

The site in question was the Haifa oil refinery, which at the end of 1947 employed some 1,700 Arab and 270 Jewish manual workers, in addition to 190 Jewish, 110 Arab, and 60 British clerical workers. As I discussed earlier, the refinery workers had been involved in important struggles in 1946–47. In these struggles Arab workers and union activists had played the leading role, not surprisingly given the composition of the workforce and its high degree of organization. But the Arab unionists' relations with the Jewish refinery workers seem to have been good: the Histadrut's clerical workers' union had close ties with some of the Arab white-collar employees at the site, while the local Jewish workers' committee was dominated by Hashomer Hatza’ir members who had developed good relations with Arab leftists and labor activists at the refinery.

In the summer of 1947, for example, the members of the Jewish workers' committee at CRL were invited to attend the funeral in Acre of an Arab refinery worker who had been killed in an industrial accident. The Jewish activists accepted, and at the cemetery one of them eulogized the deceased. The Jews' participation made a positive impression on the Arab refinery workers and in Acre generally. The Arab and Jewish workers' committees also cooperated in organizing a brief memorial strike in the deceased's department at the refinery, together took up a collection to help his family, and joined in pressing management for fair compensation.

Whatever good feeling may have existed seems to have evaporated during the fall, and after the UN General Assembly voted to endorse partition the Jewish workers at the refinery became increasingly worried about their safety. On the morrow of the vote violence erupted in various parts of the country. At first this took the form of random attacks by Arabs against Jews and Jewish property and settlements, but Jews soon responded with attacks on Arabs. This quickly escalated into a cycle of violence and counter violence using terrorist means, the first phase of an increasingly bitter and bloody civil war which would soon pit Arab and Jewish militias against one another in a deadly struggle for control of strategic roads, sites, and areas, and ultimately of Palestine itself.

On the Jewish side the leading role in this struggle was played by the Hagana, the Yishuv's largest military force, which was closely linked to the Histadrut and was under the control of the official leadership of the Yishuv, itself largely dominated by the labor-Zionist movement from the mid-1930s onward. There were, however, other Jewish military forces which did not accept the authority of the Yishuv's leadership. The most important of these (though much smaller than the Hagana) was ETZEL, commanded by Menahem Begin and better known in the United States as the Irgun. ... [I]t was ETZEL (linked to the right-wing Zionist Revisionist party, ancestor of today's Likud) which carried out the bombing of the King David Hotel in July 1946. And it was an operation planned and executed by this organization which at the end of 1947 touched off the orgy of bloodshed at the Haifa refinery.

During December 1947, as civil war erupted in Palestine, the Hagana focused largely on protecting Jewish lives and property and on securing key lines of communications and transportation; later it began to take the offensive by mounting a series of military operations designed to crush Arab resistance and secure territory for the future Jewish state. Although during 1948 ETZEL would also stage military operations, in December 1947 it devoted itself largely to retaliating for attacks on Jewish civilians—thereby, it insisted, deterring further such attacks—by targeting Arab civilians.

On December 29, 1947, ETZEL had staged a bomb attack at the Nablus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City which killed or wounded forty-four people. On the morning of the following day, Tuesday, December 30, 1947, ETZEL operatives threw bombs from a speeding car into a crowd of several hundred Arabs standing outside the main gate of the Haifa oil refinery in the hope of finding employment as day laborers; six people were killed and forty-two wounded. ETZEL would later announce, quite unapologetically, that these acts of terrorism in Jerusalem and Haifa had been carried out in retaliation for recent attacks on Jews elsewhere in Palestine.

{Dan Kurzman's Genesis:1948 for example mentions the massacre and not the Irgun attack; his book was a popular standard. -- Ed.}

Within minutes of the bomb attack at the Haifa refinery gate, some of the Arabs who had been part of the crowd outside surged into the refinery compound and, along with some of the Arab refinery workers, began attacking Jewish refinery workers. An hour passed before British soldiers and police arrived to restore order, by which time forty-one Jews had been killed and forty-nine wounded. This was the largest and most brutal massacre of civilians which Palestine had witnessed since the UN vote a month earlier.

A committee of inquiry appointed by Haifa's Jewish community concluded that the massacre of Jews at the refinery was unpremeditated and that it had been precipitated by the ETZEL attack on the workers outside the gate. The Jewish Agency, the official leadership of the Yishuv, promptly denounced ETZEL for the "act of madness" which had brought about the catastrophe at the Haifa refinery, but it simultaneously decided to emulate ETZEL by secretly authorizing the Hagana to retaliate.

A day after the refinery massacre, members of the Hagana's elite strike force, the PALMAH, attacked the village of Balad al-Shaykh not far from Haifa, where a number of Arab refinery workers lived, and nearby Hawasa as well. (The Nesher cement factory, where as we have seen the issue of Hebrew labor surfaced so contentiously in the 1920s and 1930s, was located near Balad al-Shaykh, and the village's cemetery contained the tomb of Shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, whose death in a gunfight with police had made him a nationalist martyr and would set the stage for the outbreak of the 1936–39 revolt.)  {other sources give entirely different reasons for the revolt -- Ed.} The Jewish attackers killed some sixty men, women, and children and destroyed several dozen houses. {Actual figure is probably lower, closer to a dozen dead more wounded, his figure is probably dead and wounded. Ed.}

The contrast between the Yishuv leadership's official stance and its actual response to the refinery massacre was not lost on many Arabs. When Eliyahu Agassi visited Haifa early in April 1948, an Arab worker berated him: "We know you Jews: you preach one thing and practice another. What was the crime of the Arab workers at Hawasa and Balad al-Shaykh whom your people attacked at night and slaughtered?"

The report of the Jewish committee investigating the refinery massacre noted that "there were isolated incidents of Arab workers and [white-collar] employees who in various ways warned and even succeeded in saving a number of Jews, their coworkers" and added that "not all the Arab workers at the enterprise participated in the rampage, and a significant number of the workers and employees did not participate in it." However, the committee also found that "some of [the Arab refinery workers] took an active part in the riot" and that "there was no effort by a group of Arab workers to prevent others from rampaging." This was, fortunately, not the case that same day at the railway workshops, located a short distance from the refinery.

During December 1947 tensions between Arab and Jewish workers there had sometimes run high, despite efforts by Arab and Jewish union activists and leaders to keep the peace. When news of the bomb attack at the refinery reached the workshops, tensions soared and some of the younger and more hotheaded Arab workers there stopped work, shut down the machines, and began arming themselves with whatever makeshift weapons came to hand. For some very tense moments it seemed that the massacre at the refinery might be repeated at the railway workshops. But Arab unionists, including veteran PAWS activists like Sa‘id Qawwas and AWC sympathizers as well, promptly intervened to prevent violence. At great personal risk they prevailed on the hotheads to calm down and preserved order until arrangements could be made for the Jewish workers to leave work and reach their homes safely.

A Jewish unionist at the workshops declared that "without a shadow of a doubt it is thanks to [the Arab unionists'] courage that what befell the workers at the refinery was not also our lot that day." The Arab unionists' effective intervention to prevent violence against Jews at the railway workshops received little public attention. Not surprisingly, the Yishuv focused on the massacre of Jews at the refinery, while the Arab community preferred to dwell on the preceding bomb attacks by Jews and the Hagana's subsequent retaliatory raid which took an even larger number of Arab lives. {Other places say more like a dozen or two - Ed.}.

The vision of Arab-Jewish worker solidarity and of peaceful coexistence which had once motivated so many people could not survive the atrocities and the mutual dehumanization which were the inevitable by-products of the ferocious intercommunal warfare which engulfed Palestine in the months that followed. Even less could it survive the actual physical displacement of much of Palestine's Arab population.

Seven Laments for the War Dead

By Yehuda Amichai #7

Memorial Day for the war-dead: go tack on

the grief of all your loses—

including a woman who left you—

to the grief of losing them; go mix

one sorrow with another, like history,

that in its economical way

heaps pain and feast and sacrifice

onto a single day for easy reference.

Oh sweet world, soaked like bread

in sweet milk for the terrible

toothless God. ‘Behind all this,

some great happiness is hiding.’ No use

crying inside and screaming outside.

Behind all this, some great happiness may

be hiding.

Memorial Day. Bitter salt, dressed up as

a little girl with flowers.

Ropes are strung out the whole length of the route

for a joint parade: the living and the dead together.

Children move with the footsteps of someone else’s grief

as if picking their way through broken glass.

The flautist’s mouth will stay pursed for many days.

A dead soldier swims among the small heads

with the swimming motion of the dead,

with the ancient error the dead have

about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies away.

A store window decked out with beautiful dresses for

    women

in blue and white. And everything

in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and Death.

A great royal beast has been dying all night long

under the jasmine,

with a fixed stare at the world.

A man whose son dies in the war

walks up the street

like a woman with a dead fetus in her womb.

‘Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.’

Taken from a collection of Yehuda Amichai’s work entitled, Selected Poems.

  Six Day War 1967

In June of 1967, Israel, in a preemptive strike, invaded all neighboring Arab states.  The war lasted only six days with Israel emerging victorious on all fronts.  She conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Israel returned control of the Sinai to Egypt, but the other territories remain issues of controversy.

Questions:

·    Why does Habonim Dror think that Israel should give back the territories that they conquered in 1967?

Khartoum Conference

In the wake of the Arab defeat, eight Arab heads of state attended an Arab summit conference in Khartoum, Sudan held August 29 - September 1, 1967. It formulated the Arab consensus that underlay the official policies of most Arab states for the next two decades and beyond, with the exception of Egypt: " no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”  The text of the conference resolution is below.  

1.      The conference has affirmed the unity of Arab ranks, the unity of joint action and the need for coordination and for the elimination of all differences. The Kings, Presidents and representatives of the other Arab Heads of State at the conference have affirmed their countries' stand by and implementation of the Arab Solidarity Charter, which was signed at the third Arab summit conference in Casablanca.

2.      The conference has agreed on the need to consolidate all efforts to eliminate the effects of the aggression on the basis that the occupied lands are Arab lands and that the burden of regaining these lands falls on all the Arab States.

3.      The Arab Heads of State have agreed to unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which have been occupied since the aggression of June 5. This will be done within the framework of the main principles by which the Arab States abide, namely, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.

4.      The conference of Arab Ministers of Finance, Economy and Oil recommended that suspension of oil pumping be used as a weapon in the battle. However, after thoroughly studying the matter, the summit conference has come to the conclusion that the oil pumping can itself be used as a positive weapon, since oil is an Arab resource which can be used to strengthen the economy of the Arab States directly affected by the aggression, so that these States will be able to stand firm in the battle. The conference has, therefore, decided to resume the pumping of oil, since oil is a positive Arab resource that can be used in the service of Arab goals. It can contribute to the efforts to enable those Arab States which were exposed to the aggression and thereby lost economic resources to stand firm and eliminate the effects of the aggression. The oil-producing States have, in fact, participated in the efforts to enable the States affected by the aggression to stand firm in the face of any economic pressure.

5.      The participants in the conference have approved the plan proposed by Kuwait to set up an Arab Economic and Social Development Fund on the basis of the recommendation of the Baghdad conference of Arab Ministers of Finance, Economy and Oil.

6.      The participants have agreed on the need to adopt the necessary measures to strengthen military preparation to face all eventualities.

Questions:

·    Do you believe that the Arab states were acting aggressively towards Israel? Why?

We Fear for a Dream by: Mahmoud Darwish

  We fear for a dream: don't believe our butterflies.
Believe our sacrifices if you like, believe the compass of a horse, our
need for the north.
We have raised the beaks of our souls to you. Give us a grain of
wheat, our dream. Give it, give it to us.
We have offered you the shores since our coming to the earth born of
an idea or of the adultery of two waves on a rock in the sand.
Nothing. Nothing. We float on a foot of air. The air breaks up within
ourselves.
We know you have abandoned us, built for us prisons and called them
the paradise of oranges.
We go on dreaming. Oh, desired dream. We seal our days from those
extolled by our myths.
We fear for you, we're afraid of you. We are exposed together, you
shouldn't believe our wives' patience.
They will weave two dresses, then sell the bones of the loved ones to
buy a glass of milk for our children.
We fear for a dream, from him, from ourselves. We go on dreaming,
oh, dream of ours. Don't believe our butterflies!

  Give Birth to Me Again That I May Know

Give birth to me again... Give birth to me again that I may know
in which land I will die, in which land I will come to life again.
Greetings to you as you light the morning fire, greetings to you,
greetings to you.
Isn't it time for me to give you some presents, to return to you?
Is your hair still longer than our years, longer than the trees of clouds
stretching the sky to you so they can live?
Give birth to me again so I can drink the country's milk from you and
remain a little boy in your arms, remain a little boy
For ever. I have seen many things, mother, I have seen. Give birth to
me again so you can hold me in your hands.
When you feel love for me, do you still sing and cry about nothing?
Mother! I have lost my hands
On the waist of a woman of a mirage. I embrace sand, I embrace a
shadow. Can I come back to you/to myself?
Your mother has a mother, the fig tree in the garden has clouds.
Don't leave me alone, a fugitive. I want your hands
To carry my heart. I long for the bread of your voice, mother!
I long for everything. I long for myself... I long for you.

Peula: Al Naqba or the Palestinian Refugees

  Goal: To give chanichim an alternate view of the “War of Independence” as seen through the eyes of the Palestinians.  To explore that while Israel gained independence in 1948, Palestinians experienced Al Naqba (the catastrophe).

Age: All ages

Trigger: Split the chanichim into six villages.  Hand out Poetry written by Palestinians and have people read it out loud. Discuss where the chanichim think this poetry came from, who wrote it, what’s it about  (don’t tell them who wrote it).  They will most likely think that it was written by Jews. Don’t explain otherwise. The trigger should be done in the chadar ochel.  (10 min)

Materials: Palestinian poetry (located in resource book, Statistics about the village, Newsflashes

Method:

1. Send the 6 groups  to different tzrifim. Turn on radio.  Give them statistics about their village (population, number of families, resources, values, history i.e., you’ve been living on this land for a long time).

2. Radio announcements will call announce an ambiguous timeline of events using nondescript terms instead of Jews and Palestinians. Newsflashes will be made over the radio about what foreign and familial neighboring villages are doing  a new settlement has sprung up near you and wants to trade, a new settlement has settled on your grazing land, an old neighboring village has been attacked by new settlers- what do you do?

3. Each group has to come up with a response after each news flash.

4. After a certain amount of time, the timeline will progress until the communities have been affected by the new settlers a number of times. They will get messages about what is happening to their people:

a. one group will get a strong warning to leave and flee to the refugee camp (being assured that after this fighting is over they will be able to return)

            b. one will get a mild warning and will be forcibly removed by the soldiers

( radio messages will announce a recent massacre of a village)

            c. one will stay and fight

d. one will get a strong warning to leave and go to another country (where they will be surprisingly put in a refugee camp and assured that they will be able to return after the fighting is over).

5. Chanichim should proceed to the refugee camp (made of tents).  An explanation should be given about where the chanichim are and that they won’t be able to return home any time soon.  Groups that leave of their own accord will be taken to “refugee camps” on the other side of the agam. They will be greeted by residents of the camps and told about life- it is a very uncomfortable life, totally makeshift and without the systems and amenities of a village- not what they expected. They keep waiting to be able to return home.

One group that does not leave of their own accord will be forcibly removed by soldiers and taken to the refugee camp. (That’s right, picked up and carried away).

One group that does not leave will be told that they are now citizens of the new country of Israel but do not have all of the legal rights of Jews- while services are being provided by the government to Jewish settlements and towns, they are not provided to Arab settlements and towns.

Sikkum: In groups by shichva.  Ask first what happened to each one of their communities. Who are you? Who were the new settlers? Can you tell that these were the same events that we have learned from a Jewish perspective? Why or why not? What are the similarities of the Palestinian experience in 1948 and the Jewish historical experience?  What happened to the Palestinian refugees?  Reread Palestinian poems. Read ‘Record! I am an Arab’.

Village Statistics and Profile:

You are a village of 200 people, made up of 40 families. You are a traditional peasant people, making your living off your orchards and cattle, and trading with neighboring villages and traders that come through your area often. You get water from a couple of springs nearby. Your large families live together- when young people get married and start a new family, they build onto their parents houses and live with their extended families. You are very attached to PLACE. Your ancestors have been living on this land, tending these orchards, and grazing animals in these fields for many generations.

Newsflashes:

#1-A neighboring village that you trade with  is having a wedding. What will you do? (will you send gifts, village representatives, goats?)

#2-(A few years later) A group of foreigners has built a small village (a hamlet) at the edge of your grazing fields. They don’t speak your language and have very different traditions than you. They are planting crops near yours, and many of their crops are failing. But they have milk and cheese a plenty. What do you do?

#3- (a few years later)There has been much news recently of hostile skirmishes between an old neighboring village and another new hamlet near them. The hamlet was planting crops on a field of the villages’ (the field was laying fallow for this season). The village and hamlet have been fighting over land. Each community has had to protect themselves from the other. What do you do?

#4- The hamlet near you has been growing in size, as new members join it.  In response to their growing numbers, they are building on your grazing land.  Your crops have been poor this year, and you are relying heavily on your grazing land. What do you do?

#5- Many of the new members coming to the hamlet near you bring supplies with them, and they are visited more and more by others like them, often being brought ammunition and guns. It appears that they are preparing for war. There is much news of fighting in the country. The immigrants are laying official claim to the country (they want their own nation/state in this land). What do you do?

#6- A village about a hundred miles away from you was attacked and massacred by the foreign army. Almost all of the villages women and children were murdered, because they would not leave their land to make way for new settlers. The fighting around the country has escalated to war, and it is headed your way.

Personal Newsflash (i.e. this one’s given in person).

Groups #1 and #2 gets a strong warning from a neighboring village elder to flee the area until the fighting is over.

Groups #3 and 4- get a warning from the armies headed their way that they should clear out before its too late.

Group #5- Is advised by neighbors to stay on their ancestral land –why should you leave and give up what is rightfully yours?

Group #6- Is advised by fleeing neighbors that the safest place to go is into the neighboring country where they will protect you until the fighting is over and it is safe to return to your village.

Operation Peace for the Galilee: 1982 Lebanon War

In 1982, Israel felt threatened by terrorists based in Southern Lebanon.  In order to combat this threat, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the terrorist infrastructure.  They successfully ran the PLO out of Lebanon (into Tunis) and maintained military presence there until 2000, when there was a military withdrawal.  During the Lebanon War, and throughout the military presence in Lebanon, there was much controversy surrounding the actions of the Israeli government.  During the war, two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, were horribly massacred by the Christian Phalangists (loosely allied with Israel) and the Israeli military.  Much of the credit of this event was placed on the head of the then Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon.  Since then, Sharon has been constantly charged with being a war criminal by many of the international community.  Currently, in Belgium, a group of survivors have lodged a legal complaint that would officially charge Sharon and others as war criminals.  Below is a copy of one of the testimonies of the survivors involved.

New York, 1981-82: A Mazkir Remembers the Begin-Reagan Era

By David Kornbluh

…In the summer of 1982, right after the outbreak of war in Lebanon, Prime Minister Begin came to New York to drum up support. One Friday afternoon, I got a telephone message telling me I was invited to a meeting Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. at Begin's suite in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. By the time I received the message, it was too late on Friday to check if it was a joke or for real. I couldn't understand why the meeting would be on Saturday, and so late.

I spent all day Saturday at the Clearwater Folk Festival up the Hudson River, sitting on the grass and listening to music. Driving home, my friends dropped me off at the Waldorf. I changed into my Habonim shirt and told them to wait ten minutes. If it was a joke, I would be right back.

  So here I was, on my way to meet Begin. I walked into the Waldorf and asked for Prime Minister Begin's suite. I was told to go to the twenty-third floor. When I walked off the elevator, two guys who made Rosey Grier look small asked me who I was. I told them, and a little guy stepped out from behind them with a clipboard and a list of names. "Mr. Kornbluh, right this way," he said.

I entered a room, and found myself surrounded by the presidents of the national Zionist organizations. There were ten of them, I think. It dawned on me that I was there to represent The Youth. Everyone else had on a three-piece suit or the equivalent, so I was glad my blue Habonim shirt had just been cleaned. Nobody seemed to notice the grass stains on my pants.

Fifteen minutes later, we were ushered into Begin's room. He plunged right into things, telling us how all of Israel supports "Operation Peace for Galilee," and how Israel has the most humane army in the world. It was quite a display, this high class briefing of the American Zionist movement. The women from Hadassah were awestruck and could not stop saying "Yes, yes, yes, we know, we know."

When the time came for questions, I raised my hand and said I thought American Jews would feel better if they believed "Operation Peace for Galilee" would lead to some kind of solution for the Arabs on the West Bank. I wasn't terribly articulate, but it didn't matter; even before I finished. Begin started screaming. "What is all this talk about a Palestinian state? We have no problem in Judea and Samaria!" And so on.

I did not get an answer to my question, but after the prime minister and I were finished, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman of the Conservative movement asked about protests in Israel against the war. Begin insisted it was only a handful I of leftist agitators. Kelman said he was taken aback, since his son was a member of Kibbutz Gezer and had participated in what looked to him like mass rallies.

With that, the audience was over. People shook hands with Begin, and I took the subway home to Brooklyn. It was a thoroughly useless but entertaining evening…

Taken from Builders and Dreamers, edited by J.J. Golberg and Elliot King.

Mahmoud Younis: Testimony of the Sabra and Shatila Massacres

I was 11 years old. It was night and we could hear shelling and gunfire. (...) We took refuge in the bedroom and stayed there. As soon as they arrived, they went straight to the living room, and they shot at the photos on the walls, especially the one of my brother who was killed in “Black September.” They ransacked the living room, cursing and swearing. After having looked for us in vain, they went up to the roof and stayed there all night long. We spent that night in terror in our hiding place, listening to the shooting and people screaming, while Israel fired flares to light the sky until dawn.

The next morning they started saying, “Give yourself up and your life will be spared.” My nephew was 18 months old. He was hungry and we were far from the kitchen. My sister wanted him to quieten down, and she put her hand over his mouth, fearing that they would hear his cries. Her husband decided that we would have to give ourselves up, adding that each person’s fate was preordained by God anyway. The women went out first, my brothers, my father, my brother-in-law and other members of the family followed. My brother was ill. As soon as they heard our voices, they shot in our direction and came straight back inside the house. They asked us where we had been the day before when they had come in and not found anyone there. Then they ordered the women and children to go out. My brother-in-law started kissing his little girl as if he were saying goodbye. An armed man came towards my niece, tied a rope around her neck and threatened to strangle her if her father didn’t let go of her. He let go of her and gave her to me. They wanted to take me too but my mother told them I was a girl. They made my mother and the women walk to the Sports Centre. While I was walking I saw my aunt’s husband, Abu Nayef, being murdered near his house with blows of an axe to his head. The dead bodies were disfigured. While I was carrying my niece, I bumped into a dead body that had been hit with an axe and I fell over. They knew then that I was a boy, and one of them put me up against the wall; he wanted to fire a bullet into my head. My mother begged him and kissed his feet so that he would let me go. He pushed her away. When he did that, he heard the clinking of some money she had hidden in her clothes. He asked her what that meant. She replied that he could have all the money he wanted but he had to let me stay with her. In this way we carried on our way and we arrived at the Sports Centre. The Israeli bulldozers were busy digging large trenches. We were told that we all had to get in because they wanted to bury us all alive. My mother started begging him again, and then she asked for a mouthful of water before dying.

At the Sports Centre, I saw the Israeli military, as well as tanks, bulldozers and artillery, all Israeli. We also saw groups of Phalangists with the Israelis.

The Sports Centre was packed with women and children. We stayed there until sunset. An Israeli then came and he said, “Everyone go to the Cola region, whoever comes back to the camp will die.” We left, as they fired shots in our direction.

Mr. Younis lost his father, three brothers, his maternal uncle, his maternal cousin, two paternal cousins and other members of his family.

The above text is an extract from the Complaint lodged in Belgium against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Amos Yaron and other Israelis and Lebanese responsible for the massacre.

Questions:

·    Do you think that Ariel Sharon should be tried as a war criminal?

·        Do you think his actions since the Lebanon War have proved him to be a better person?

1987-1993 Intifadah

 In 1987, in the Occupied Territories, there was growing frustration among the Palestinian people towards the conditions of the occupations and the poor leadership of the PLO (which was in exile in Tunis).  In December, an Israeli army truck ran into a group of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.  The following day, the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip exploded and let their pent up rage loose.  For almost six years, this rage, led primarily by Hamas, continued and served to show the rest of the world the occupation.  Below is a segment of an article from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, written ten years after the start of the first Intifadah.

The Intifadah Erupts, Forcing Israel to Recognize Palestinians

By Donald Neff

It was 10 years ago, on Dec. 9, 1987, that the Palestinian Intifadah, the uprising, erupted in the territories occupied by Israel. The violence was the worst since the fighting of 1948. But in this case the Palestinians had no arms and no help from the neighboring Arab countries.1 The uprising would continue until late 1993, with great suffering by the Palestinians and considerable damage to Israel's international image. In the end, the Palestinians gained the recognition of the world community they had so long sought, but failed to get Israel to live up to its commitments.

The immediate cause of the uprising came on Dec. 8, when an Israeli army truck ran into a group of Palestinians near the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing four and injuring seven. A Jewish salesman had been stabbed to death in Gaza two days earlier and there were suspicions among the Arabs that the traffic collision had not been an accident.2 The day after the traffic deaths, Palestinians throughout the territories exploded with pent-up rage.

Observers speculated that Palestinian rioters were motivated in part by a dramatic event of the previous month: the daring attack on a northern Israel army base by a solo Palestinian hang-glider, who killed six Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others.3 Another factor fanning Palestinian passions had been a recent increase in pressure by Jewish militants to take over Islam's third holiest site, the Haram al Sharif, the revered Temple Mount to Jews, in Arab East Jerusalem.4

Daily, the riots escalated throughout the territories, and were particularly severe in the Gaza Strip, a 5-by-28-mile area packed with about 550,000 people, mostly refugees. By Dec. 16, Gaza director Bernard Mills of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said: "We're in a situation of either total lawlessness or a popular uprising."5

There soon could be no doubt that what was happening was a national uprising against a colonial power that had been subjugating Palestinians by military occupation since 1967.

Palestinian outrage was inflamed on Dec. 18 when Israeli troops killed two and wounded 20 Muslims leaving Friday religious services, then invaded the Shifa Hospital in Gaza and beat doctors and nurses and dragged off wounded Palestinians.6 Casualties quickly mounted as Israeli troops responded to stone-throwing Palestinians with live ammunition. By Dec. 21, Israel was reporting a total of 15 killed and 70 wounded, while U.N. officials counted 17 killed and Palestinian sources reported 20 killed and 200 wounded.7

The televised beatings and killings of unarmed Palestinians by Israeli troops heavily equipped with U.S. weapons brought protests worldwide. The American Friends Service Committee on Dec. 21 deplored Israel's continued occupation and brutal suppression of the uprising. The Quaker statement also criticized Washington's "continued support of a policy that has acquiesced in occupation and failed to engage in a serious peace process."8

The next day the U.N. Security Council voted 14-0-1 to "strongly deplore [Israel's] policies and practices which violate the human rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories." The United States was the lone abstainer.9 It was the 58th time the Security Council had passed a resolution critical of Israel since 1948…

Taken from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, pages 81-83.

Questions:  

 ·    Why did the first Intifada start? What were its effects on the situation?

Identity Card by: Mahmoud Darwish

Record!
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?

Record!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks..
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?

Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before grass grew

My father.. descends form the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather..was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house is like a watchman’s hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title!

Record!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks..
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!

Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!

  Passport

They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah . . . Don’t leave
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don’t leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that followed my palm
To the door of the distant airport
All the wheat fields
All the prisons
All the white tombstones
All the barbed Boundaries
All the waving handkerchiefs
All the eyes
were with me,
But they dropped them from my passport

Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
Don’t make an example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don’t ask the trees for their names
Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is
From my forehead bursts the sward of light
And from my hand springs the water of the river
All the hearts of the people are my identity
So take away my passport!