The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict

by Mitchell G. Bard, Ph. D.

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  Although Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance (the Israeli government provided the assistance), Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million to UNRWA. The total Arab pledges amounted to approximately $600,000. The United States is still the largest contributor to UNRWA. For all their rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, the Arab nations today donate less than 5 percent of the UNRWA budget.

  Israel’s Attitude Toward Refugees

  When plans for setting up a state were made in early 1948, Jewish leaders in Palestine expected the population to include a significant Arab population. From the Israeli perspective, the refugees had been given an opportunity to stay in their homes and be a part of the new state. Approximately 160,000 Arabs had chosen to do so. To repatriate those who had fled would be, in the words of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, “suicidal folly.”

  Israel could not simply agree to allow all Palestinians to return, but consistently sought a solution to the refugee problem in the context of a general settlement of the conflict with the Arabs. “When the Arab states are ready to conclude a peace treaty with Israel,” David Ben-Gurion said, “this question will come up for constructive solution,” and a determination would be made “whether, to what extent, and under what conditions, the former Arab residents of the territory of Israel should be allowed to return.”

  The Israeli government was not indifferent to the plight of the refugees. An ordinance was passed creating a Custodian of Abandoned Property “to prevent unlawful occupation of empty houses and business premises, to administer ownerless property, and also to secure tilling of deserted fields, and save the crops….”

  Israel did allow some refugees to return and offered to take back a substantial number as a condition for signing a peace treaty. In 1949, for instance, Israel offered to allow families that had been separated during the war to return; agreed to release refugee accounts frozen in Israeli banks (eventually released in 1953); offered to pay compensation for abandoned lands; and, finally, agreed to repatriate 100,000 refugees.

  No Welcome Mats Here

  The Arabs rejected all the Israeli compromises. They were unwilling to take any action that might be construed as recognition of the state of Israel. They made repatriation a precondition for negotiations, something Israel rejected. The result was the confinement of the refugees in camps.

  After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere.

  Although demographic figures indicated ample room for settlement existed in Syria, Damascus also refused to consider accepting any refugees, except those who might refuse repatriation. Syria also declined to resettle 85,000 refugees in 1952–54, though it had been offered international funds to pay for the project. Iraq was also expected to accept a large number of refugees, but proved unwilling. Lebanon insisted it had no room for the Palestinians. In 1950, the United Nations tried to resettle 150,000 refugees from Gaza in Libya, but was rebuffed by Egypt.

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  Ask the Sphinx

  To this day, Jordan is the only Arab country in which Palestinians as a group can become citizens.

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  Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome the Palestinians and grant them citizenship. King Abdullah considered the Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians one people. By 1950, he annexed the West Bank and forbade the use of the term Palestine in official documents.

  In 1952, the UNRWA set up a fund of $200 million to provide homes and jobs for the Palestinian refugees, but it went untouched.

  The treatment of the refugees in the decade following their displacement was best summed up by a former director of UNRWA, Ralph Garroway, in August 1958: “The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

  The Least You Need to Know

  Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee their homes in 1947–48, and almost equal numbers of Jews flee Arab countries for Israel.

  Jewish refugees are welcomed as Israeli citizens, but Palestinian refugees are prevented from becoming citizens in neighboring Arab countries (except in Jordan) and are largely confined to camps.

  The United Nations gets no cooperation from Arab states over the refugee problem, so it becomes essentially a welfare agency for the Palestinians.

  The Arabs see the Palestinian refugees as a weapon against Israel, which makes the Israelis unwilling to repatriate most of the Palestinians.

  Chapter 12

  We’ve Got a State—Now What?

  In This Chapter

  Dividing Jerusalem

  There’s oil in them there dunes

  Israel chooses democracy

  Economic warfare

  In 1947, the United Nations gave international support to the establishment of a Jewish state, but that entity came into being only by force of arms after the Jews of Palestine vanquished the Arab armies that openly vowed to drive them into the sea. Once victorious, Israel’s leaders believed that their neighbors would reconcile themselves to the new state’s existence and normalize relations, but this proved to be wishful thinking. The armistice agreements signed in 1949 brought only the present fighting to an end; the war would be continued by different means.

  Meanwhile, Israel turned its focus from survival to state building, creating a parliamentary democracy, and welcoming Jews from around the world to become citizens. Many of the Arab states were also adjusting to newfound independence as the influence of the Western imperialists began to fade (see Chapters 25 and 26).

  The Boy King

  In 1921, Winston Churchill installed one of Sherif Hussein’s sons, Abdullah, as the emir (a ruler in an Arab country, which is called an emirate) in the country the British carved out of Palestine that they called Transjordan. Unlike oil-rich countries such as Iraq, the area had no natural resources. But the British wanted control over as much of the Middle East as possible—if for no other reason than to prevent any rival from staking a claim. Transjordan also was a link on the British-controlled land route between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.

  Jordan Annexes Jerusalem

  The Transjordan emirate was heavily subsidized by the British government, and its army, the Arab Legion, was trained, supported, and led by English officers. It was no coincidence that the well-trained, heavily armed Legion was the one Arab force the Jews did not succeed in expelling in their war for independence. Consequently, the war left Transjordan in control of a large swath of territory west of the Jordan River, colloquially referred to as the West Bank, and half of the city of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

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  Ask the Sphinx

  On May 11, 1949, Israel was admitted as the fifty-ninth member of the United Nations. Jordan’s application was vetoed by the Soviet Union two years earlier because the Russians believed Abdullah was a British puppet.

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  For the Jews, the loss of Jerusalem was a crushing blow, particularly when it became clear that Abdullah would not allow them access to their holy places. The United Nations, the Vatican, and others who had expressed great concern over the future of the city and the freedom of all to worship there quickly lost interest in their commitment to internationalization and acceded to Jordanian occupation for the next 19 years. Their concern only was piqued again after Israel captured the city in 1967 (see Chapter 14).

  Abdullah’s decision to annex the parts of Palestine he had conquered angered his fellow Arabs. He ignored them and renamed the country the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (after his family, the Hashemites). While Israel doubled its population through immigration, Jordan accomplished the same feat by unifying the territory on both sides of the Jordan River.

>   Israeli-Jordanian Agreement Fails

  Despite Abdullah’s actions, the Israeli government believed it might achieve some accommodation with him. Prior to the partition vote, Ben-Gurion had sent Golda Meir to meet with him secretly, and they had reached an understanding that the Jews would not object to Abdullah annexing the area allocated to the Arab state. In May, before the Arab invasion, Meir made a perilous journey to meet Abdullah in Amman in hopes of reaching an agreement to forestall a war between them. But the monarch told her that he had allied himself with the other Arab nations.

  The hope for reaching an agreement with Abdullah after the war ended abruptly on July 21, 1951, when an assassin shot him on the steps of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in front of his 16-year-old grandson, Hussein. Abdullah’s son Talal ruled briefly, but his repeated mental problems led him to be deposed. He was replaced by his son Hussein on August 11, 1952 (though technically he did not become king until he came of age on May 2, 1953). Hussein remained on the throne until his death on February 7, 1999, when he was succeeded by his son Abdullah.

  Israel’s Complex Democracy

  The provisional government of Israel, formed in 1948, included representatives from all the various segments of the Zionist movement, religious factions, and the anti-Zionists. To achieve this unity, however, the secular leaders—notably David Ben-Gurion—were forced to make an agreement with the religious leaders guaranteeing that certain aspects of Jewish law, such as the dietary laws and the observance of the Sabbath, would be institutionalized in the new government.

  Religion Versus Politics

  From the day of independence to the present, Israel has struggled with the conflict of being a democratic rather than a theocratic (that is, one ruled by religious leaders) Jewish state. As a further concession to the religious community, a decision was made to follow the Turkish tradition of recognizing the state’s right to legislate public matters while leaving private matters—primarily marriage and divorce—to the religious courts.

  Even this compromise is frequently challenged by the religious factions that, because of Israel’s proportional representation system, have been able to achieve disproportionate political power. In fact, every Israeli government has included members of the religious parties who have, at one time or another, tried to chip away at the separation that does exist between “church” and state. The secular parties who have controlled the government from the outset have succeeded in forestalling most, but not all, of these efforts.

  Israel has no constitution because of objections raised by both the secular and religious camps. When a constitution was first proposed in 1949, the leftists objected to a document that did not declare the basis of the state to be socialism. The religious factions feared that a written constitution would immortalize the values of secular Zionism, and they argued that it was not necessary to have a constitution because the Torah was, in essence, the constitution.

  Still, the Knesset—the Israeli parliament—legislated a series of “basic laws” that had the effect of guaranteeing most of the rights in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, for example, despite the identification as a Jewish state, freedom of all religions is guaranteed.

  The Law of Return

  Perhaps the most important piece of legislation adopted by the new state was the law of return, which provides all Jews the legal right to immigrate to Israel and immediately become citizens if they choose to do so. The only exceptions are those people whom the minister of the interior considers a threat to the public health, welfare, or security of the state. This law legally recognized the connection between the Jewish people and their homeland.

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  Sage Sayings

  Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world.

  —Syria’s UN delegate Faris el-Khouri

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  Every Jew settling in Israel is considered a returning citizen, and many Jews, particularly from Arab countries, wished to come home. Non-Jews are also eligible to become citizens under naturalization procedures similar to those in other countries.

  The Jews Come Home

  The danger for Jews in Arab countries had grown acute, as a showdown approached in the United Nations over partition in 1947. And the situation grew progressively worse when threats against Jews turned to violence. More than 1,000 Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen. This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.

  Operations Ezra and Nehemiah

  Jews had lived in Iraq for 2,700 years. In June 1941, however, a group of soldiers launched an unprovoked attack on Jews in Baghdad celebrating the holiday of Shavu’ot. Anti-Jewish rioting led by soldiers, gangs, and civilians murdered 180 Jews and wounded almost 1,000. This pogrom shook the community’s confidence. The level of insecurity increased as tensions grew over the future of Palestine. Additional outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred between 1946 and 1949. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime in Iraq.

  In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year, provided that they forfeited their citizenship. From 1949 to 1951, Israel evacuated 104,000 Jews from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. In 1951, the Iraqi government froze the property of Jews who emigrated and placed economic restrictions on Jews who chose to remain in the country. In 1952, Iraq’s government barred Jews from emigrating, and it publicly hanged two Jews after falsely charging them with hurling a bomb at the Baghdad office of the U.S. Information Agency.

  Those Who Can, Flee Syria

  In 1944, after Syria gained independence from France, the new government prohibited Jewish emigration to Palestine and severely restricted the teaching of Hebrew in Jewish schools. Attacks against Jews escalated, and boycotts were called against their businesses. When partition was declared in 1947, Arab mobs in Aleppo devastated the 2,500-year-old Jewish community there. Scores of Jews were killed and more than 200 homes, shops, and synagogues were destroyed. Thousands of Jews illegally fled Syria to go to Israel.

  Shortly after, the Syrian government intensified its persecution of the Jewish population. Freedom of movement was severely restricted. Jews who attempted to flee faced either the death penalty or imprisonment at hard labor. Jews were not allowed to work for the government or banks, could not acquire telephones or driver’s licenses, and were barred from buying property. Jewish bank accounts were frozen. The Jewish cemetery in Damascus was paved over to build an airport road; Jewish schools were closed and handed over to Muslims.

  The Magic Carpet

  After the partition vote, Muslim rioters in Aden, Yemen, joined by the local police force, engaged in a bloody pogrom that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. Aden’s Jewish community was economically paralyzed as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, after six Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of two Arab girls, more Jewish businesses were looted. This increasingly perilous situation led to the emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite Jewish community—almost 50,000—between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation “Magic Carpet.” A smaller, continuous migration continued until 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus.

  While whole Jewish communities left Eastern European and Arab countries, few Jews from the West chose to emigrate. In the past 50 years, the total number of American Jews who have moved to Israel is fewer than 80,000. Although an overwhelming percentage of American Jews support Israel, very few are willing to trade their birthplace for their homeland.

  All together, nearly 700,000 Jewish refugees fled Arab countries, came from displaced persons camps in Europe, or emigrated from other nations to become citizens of the Jewish state. By 1951, the number of immigrants more than doubled the 1949 Jewish population of Israel. The total included one third of the Jews of R
omania, a majority of the Jews in Bulgaria and Poland, and nearly the entire Jewish populations of Libya, Yemen, and Iraq.

  Overwhelming Numbers

  In those early years, Israel did not have the resources to easily and quickly absorb so many newcomers. It was just emerging from a war for survival and hadn’t begun to build a national economy. Years later, the immigrants who grew up in ma’abarot—camps of tin shacks and tents—would harbor resentment toward the government for its failure to do more to ease their transition. Still, the fledgling government did what it could to provide shelter, jobs, and education for an incredibly diverse flood of immigrants.

  No Pepsi for You

  Although the fighting ended in 1948, and Israel shifted most of its immediate attention to settling the flood of newcomers, a major impediment was the economic war the Arabs were waging against the country. The Arab boycott was formally declared by the newly formed Arab League Council on December 2, 1945: “Jewish products and manufactured goods shall be considered undesirable to the Arab countries.” All Arab “institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents, and individuals” were called upon “to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods.” As is evident in this declaration, the terms “Jewish” and “Zionist” were used synonymously by the Arabs. Thus, even before the establishment of Israel, the Arab states had declared an economic boycott against the Jews of Palestine.

  The boycott, as it evolved after 1948, is divided into three components. The primary boycott prohibits direct trade between Israel and the Arab nations. The secondary boycott is directed at companies that do business with Israel. The tertiary boycott involves the blacklisting of firms that trade with other companies that do business with Israel. Thus, for example, Coca-Cola was sold in Israel, so the Arab countries boycotted the company. Pepsi did not want to run afoul of the Arab blacklisters, so it stayed away from Israel.