The Middle East conflict Religion and Nationalism in Israel/Palestine

Fighting over the Holy Land is among the world’s most enduring conflicts. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought for over a thousand years to control this small strip of Land in the Eastern Mediterranean.

CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE Each religion has a specific claim to the ‘Holy Land’ based on their unique narratives. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE WESTERN WALL DOME OF THE ROCK

Judaism claims the territory it calls the Promised Land, where major events in the development in the religion occurred thousands of years ago.

For Islam, Jerusalem is the third holiest city, because it is believed to be where Muhammad ascended into heaven and spoke with Allah.

Christianity considers Jerusalem a Holy City, because the major events in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection occurred there.

The conflict between Jews and Muslims over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem’s Old City is the most central of all religious tensions in the region.

FIGURE 6-53 OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM The Old City of Jerusalem is less than 1 square kilometer (0.4 square miles). It is divided into four quarters.

Despite the importance of Jerusalem, there are two narratives at work in the Middle East conflict- one is RELIGIOUS, one is POLITICAL. We will examine both.

The long history of RELIGIOUS conflict over the Holy Land began with the CRUSADES, a series of campaigns between 1099-1244 a.d. when Christian Europeans attempted to wrestle control of Jerusalem from the Muslims.

The Crusaders gained and lost control of Jerusalem over the course of the six main Crusades; finally, in 1244, they lost the city for good. These bloody campaigns left deep divide between Muslims and Christians, a rift which exists to this day in some forms.

the ARAB/ISRAELI conflict, The POLITICAL narrative behind the MidEast Conflict is much more recent, and can be divided into three stages- the MANDATE period, the ARAB/ISRAELI conflict, and the ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN conflict, which continues today.

THE MANDATE PERIOD

The end of the 19th century was an era of expanding NATIONALISM, when groups in Europe began to clamor for their own territories.

Theodore Hertzl, a Jew living amidst this nationalist atmosphere, was the first to articulate the demand for a Jewish state. His idea became known as ZIONISM.

Hertzl and the early Zionists developed a dream to re-establish a Jewish state called Israel in the place where it had been located 3,000 years ago, the Holy Land. Their call became ‘a land without a people for a people without a land.’

In the late nineteenth century, the Holy Land was controlled by the aging Ottoman Empire, a Muslim power. The territory was then called PALESTINE; at the turn of the century, it was inhabited by roughly 800,000 ‘Palestinians.’

The Ottomans entered WWI on the wrong side, aligning with the Germans.

Defeated, the Ottoman empire was dissected by the Allies, with England gaining control of Palestine with a ‘Mandate’ from the UN.

The British allowed some Jews to migrate to Mandate Palestine, but by the end of the 1930s, they cut off this flow after fighting and tension in the country grew. Some Jews formed armed gangs to keep pressure on the British- proudly calling themselves ‘terrorists.’

By 1947- weakened by WWII- the British had enough, and handed Palestine over to the United Nations. It was now up to the world body to solve this deep conflict.

THE ARAB/ISRAELI CONFLICT

As soon as the UN declared the division, Jews declared Israel independent. Almost immediately thereafter, Arab armies attacked Israel from several directions.

However, Israeli forces- supplied arms by the United States- prevailed, greatly increasing their territory.

More than 700,000 Palestinians fled the fighting as refugees, mostly to areas called the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinians remember this exodus as ‘al-Nakba’- the catastrophe.

Several wars were fought between Israel and its neighbors, but none were as impactful as the SIX-DAY WAR in 1967. During this, Israel decimated several Arab armies and occupied Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Palestinians living there.

In 1979, Israel and its greatest enemy, Egypt, signed a peace treaty In 1979, Israel and its greatest enemy, Egypt, signed a peace treaty. From this point on, Arab armies would no longer threaten Israel.

Since 1979, the conflict has mostly been between Israel and the Palestinians it controls militarily.

THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Today, Israel has not relinquished any of the land in the West Bank or Gaza that it occupied in 1967. More than 2.5 millions Palestinians now live in those territories, most of them deeply impoverished.

While Palestine has simmered under occupation, Israel has become one of the most powerful and wealthy nations in the Middle East.

In both 1988 and 2000, Palestinians launched uprisings against the Israelis, called INTIFADAS. In each, thousands of Palestinians were killed or injured, as were hundreds of Israelis

The two most contentious elements of the modern conflict are the SETTLEMENTS and the SEPARATION WALL.

SETTLEMENTS are communities built by Israel in the West Bank for Jewish settlers. This is illegal under international law, as the West Bank in an occupied territory.

Today more than 800,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank.

The other biggest issue is the SEPARATION WALL The other biggest issue is the SEPARATION WALL. Built by Israel, this wall is more than 30 feet high in places.

Israelis feel the wall gives them security, while Palestinians see it as a barrier from free travel - and a land grab.

In order to maintain control of its many settlements, Israel has solidified total control over much of the West Bank. Palestinians today live in tiny ‘islands’ surrounded by Israeli settlements and military positions.

FIGURE 6-49 BOUNDARY CHANGES IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE (left) The 1947 UN partition plan, (center) Israel after the 1948–1949 war, (right) Israel and its neighbors since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Summary The world has three large universalizing religions—Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism—each of which is divided into branches and denominations. A universalizing religion has a known origin and clear patterns of diffusion, whereas ethnic religions typically have unknown origins and little diffusion.

Summary Holy places and holidays in a universalizing religion are related to the events in the life of its founder or prophet. They are related to the local physical geography in an ethnic religion. With the Earth’s surface dominated by four large religions, expansion of the territory occupied by one religion may reduce the territory of another. This may lead to conflict between these groups.