Sunday, December 28, 2008

Muslim world in turmoil - Possible Solutions: Israeli/Palestinian Conflict - I

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ وَهَاجَرُواْ وَجَاهَدُواْ بِأَمْوَالِهِمْ وَأَنفُسِهِمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ وَالَّذِينَ آوَواْ وَّنَصَرُواْ أُوْلَـئِكَ بَعْضُهُمْ أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضٍ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ وَلَمْ يُهَاجِرُواْ مَا لَكُم مِّن وَلاَيَتِهِم مِّن شَيْءٍ حَتَّى يُهَاجِرُواْ وَإِنِ اسْتَنصَرُوكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ فَعَلَيْكُمُ النَّصْرُ إِلاَّ عَلَى قَوْمٍ بَيْنَكُمْ وَبَيْنَهُم مِّيثَاقٌ وَاللّهُ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ
BEHOLD, as for those who have attained to faith, and who have forsaken the domain of evil and are striving hard, with their possessions and their lives, in God's cause, as well as those who shelter and succour [them] - these are [truly] the friends and protectors of one another. But as for those who have come to believe without having migrated [to your country] - you are in no wise responsible for their protection until such a time as they migrate [to you]. Yet, if they ask you for succour against religious persecution, it is your duty to give [them] this succour-except against a people between whom and yourselves there is a covenant: for God sees all that you do.
(Al- Qur’an, Chapter 8, verse 72)

As expected, the end of cease fire in Gaza by Hamas, has quickly escalated into the possibility of a full scale invasion into Gaza by the Israeli security forces…..just one more victory for extremist factions on both sides. This same cycle happens over and over again and once started, is almost predictable the way it escalates and eventually calms down after taking lives of hundreds of innocents and giving enough for both sides to brag about till the next point of escalation. Lets try to briefly explore together what actually happened here without getting into too much technical and historical jargon.

It is indeed ironic that the current Palestinian / Israeli conflict has come to define the relations between the Jewish world and the Islamic world, taking into account the relative calm and mutual respect that existed between these two communities for generations (after the initial battle where local Jewish tribes decided to support the polytheist Quraish against the fledgling Islamic state at Medina eventually leading to the mass expulsion of all remaining Jewish tribes from the Hijaz (Arabian peninsula) during Caliph Umar’s rule (634 – 644 AD).
But other than this area, which was declared to be a ‘holy land’ and a land of pilgrimage for Muslims’, Jews actually prospered greatly in the lands under Muslim rule.

In fact, on capturing Jerusalem from Byzantine in 637, Caliph Umar demonstrated the utmost respect for members of the other faiths living in the city. For the first time in 500 years since their expulsion from the Holy Land, Jews were allowed to practice their religion freely and live in the vicinity of Jerusalem. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, seventy Jewish families took up residence in the city. `Umar also agreed to several pacts, called the Covenant of Omar, with the local Christian population, determining their rights and obligations under Muslim rule.” (Wikipedia entry under ‘Caliph Umar’)

There is a famous incident when Caliph Umar, who’s armies captured Jerusalem from the Byzantinians, entered the city he enquired about the location of famed jewish temple from Patriach of Elya Al-Quds. He was shocked to find the site covered in rubbish, as the Romans had initiated the custom of using it as a dung heap. `Umar knelt down immediately, and began to clear the area with his hands. When the Muslims saw what he was doing, they followed his example, and soon the entire area of al-Aqsa was cleaned up. He later commissioned the construction of a wooden masjid on the southern end of the site, exactly where the present-day masjid of Al-Aqsa stands.
In fact at no other time since the Jewish kingdom that was overrun by the Romans, did the Jewish community have such freedom and equality. They were ,of-course, expected to pay the ‘Jiziya’, a tax in lieu of military service imposed on all non-Muslims (Muslims were expected to serve in the military whenever called upon; but as the empire grew some Muslims were also exempted service in lieu of paying this tax), and even though there were times of uncertainty and internal strife (for example attack by Tamerlane and the massacre of Jews of Aleppo in 1400), they were on the same footing as all of the other ‘minorities’ in the Islamic world and by and large enjoyed the same rights as the muslim population.
In fact after the fall of the Muslim rule in Spain (by Moors), Jews sought refuge in the lands of the Ottoman empire to escape the persecution in Spain and later to escape the Inquisition carried out by the Roman Catholics.

Conditions started to worsen as the internal strife among the various faction of the Muslim empire started to fight to gain control and influence. They started going downhill from the early 1800 onwards with the decline of the Ottoman Empire and strife arising in various areas of the Middle East, especially with the independence movements gaining strength and national identification gaining precedence over Islamic principles. Things also started getting worse with the whole scale migration of Jews in to the Arab dominated lands of Palestine, escaping the pogroms of Eastern Europe and then eventually the holocaust propagated by Hitler, himself a christian man.

Meanwhile the idea of a Jewish state was propagated by Theodor Herzl published 'Der Judenstaat' (The Jewish State) promoting creation of a Jewish (or Zionist) state in the land of Palestine which was the historical location of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah (of the Old Testament). This idea quickly gained strength and started having international appeal after a group of ‘Zionist Volunteers’ known as ‘Jewish Legion’ helped the British regain Palestine in WWI. Of-course the Arabs opposed the plan as it involved carving out a separate country of foreigners (a majority of the Jews were immigrants from Europe where they had been persecuted for centuries) right in the middle of their homeland. Tensions rose between the local arab population and the Jewish immigrants, who by the end of WW II and the holocaust, constituted about 33% of the population up from 11% in 1922.

The events following are sourced from the following Wikipedia post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel:
"1947, the British government withdrew from commitment to the Mandate of Palestine, stating it was unable to arrive at a solution acceptable to both Arabs and Jews.[51] The newly created United Nations approved the UN Partition Plan (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181) on November 29, 1947, dividing the country into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to be designated an international city – a corpus separatum – administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.[52] The Jewish community accepted the plan,[53] but the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected it.[54] On December 1, 1947 the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a 3-day strike, and Arab guerrilla attacks began against Jewish targets. Convinced that these attacks were merely a prelude to full-scale military confrontations with the regular armies of the Arab states, Ben-Gurion elected to escalate the military conflict. As such, Haganah embarked on a policy of "aggressive defense." This strategy was accompanied by economic subversion and psychological warfare.[55]

On May 14, 1948, the day before the end of the British Mandate, the Jewish Agency proclaimed independence, naming the country Israel. The following day five Arab countries – Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq –invaded Israel, launching the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.[56] > Morocco, Sudan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia also sent troops to assist the invaders. After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on May 11, 1949.[57] During the war 711,000 Arabs, according to UN estimates, or about 80% of the previous Arab population, fled the country.[58] The fate of the Palestinian refugees today is a major point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[59][60] "

What happened after this is, as they say, history. The increasing disunity and corruption among the leader of the Arab world continued to weaken the Arab state whereas Israel grew from strength to strength, roundly defeating an Arab coalition in the Six-day war (capturing West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights and East Jerusalem) and holding its own in the Yom Kippur war. The Arab head-of-states backed off any direct support of the Palestinian Arab cause, owning to the turmoil in their own lands and rising discontent against their authoritarian and intensely corrupt and exceedingly brutal dictatorships.

What was left was an occupier / occupied relation between the two proud nations fighting for the same piece of land, the threat of mass civilian casualties looming on both sides, and the question of millions of refugees living in extremely squalid refugee camps in areas ranging from Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and even in European countries and in US.

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