Where Does It Stop?

The conflicts in the Middle East are millennia old.

Having engaged in many discussions about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it seems that it always gets down to who has a right to occupy that strip of land and those who ally with the Palestinians always claim these were Arab lands before the British Mandate for Palestine – and let’s get this out right up front – there never has been a kingdom or state of “Palestine.” Palestine is the name of a geographical region – the same as the term “Great Plains” identifies a region comprising several states in the US. The contemporary convention is to view only the Arabs in that region as “Palestinians” – but the fact is Hebrews have lived in that region since the 12th century before Christ, so the Jews are also “Palestinians.”

My question refers to where does the one-upmanship of geographical occupation stop as a method to determine who has “rights” to the lands?

Is it who controlled the land that is important or is it who existed there? Is it who won the land as a consequence of winning a war?

For example, it is generally assumed that the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah ended around 923 BC. Since that time, the area was controlled by the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, back to the Jews as the Hasmonaens for about 80 years, then to the Romans, back to the Persians, then to the Byzantines, then the various Muslim Caliphates from 636 to about 1099, European control during the Crusades till 1187, to the Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans until the Ottomans were defeated in WWI, then under the British Mandate.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem put the Palestinian Arabs in play by allying with Hitler and after the end of WWII the land was partitioned into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state which the Jews under Ben Gurion accepted but the Arabs did not. The Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states rejected the partition proposal. They felt that Palestine was all theirs, that the Jews were a foreign implant foisted upon them, and that they had the strength to drive them out.

The Palestinian Arabs still feel that way and have continued to try, unsuccessfully, to drive the Jews into the sea through military conflict and political maneuvering in the UN and other international bodies. Evidence of this lies in the recent declaration by the UN that the Al Aqsa mosque is Muslim territory, not Jewish – even though the mosque is built on top of the ruins of the first and second Jewish Temple and the Western Wall still stands. Also, keep in mind that Hebrews/Jews have been around for almost 4000 years – Muslims for 1400 or so. Islam was founded 600 years AFTER Christ.

My point is that if we are going to decide who has a right to what by previous occupation, then every single existing entity that has ever controlled the land Israel sits on – including the Israelites – has a claim.

The idea that the “world”, i.e. the “global community” could sit in judgment and has a role in deciding who gets what is a relatively new concept. Prior to WWI, the world was largely governed by superior force and mutually beneficial alliances concocted between individual nations. Might determined right. The idea that political borders could just be arbitrarily drawn without regard to regional makeup and tensions by some “authority” is an absurd notion and just fills an area with regional conflict right off the bat.

It is the same in the US. White Europeans are blamed for the “genocide” of Native Americans – never mind there were no such “rules” in those times. Land and political dominance was achieved through strength. Native American culture ran up against superior intellect, firepower and culture and lost – that is not to say the culture was better, only superior. It is interesting how the claims by the Azteca crowd and various Native American groups that the land be “returned” to them fall into the same “who was first” issue.

I always marvel at both the “reparations” crowd wailing about slavery like only American blacks were subject to that reprehensible institution and the “multitud enojada” (angry mob) of La Raza claiming that the Southwest is really “Azteca” – their “ownership” probably would come as a great surprise to the Apache, Comanche, Havasupai, Hopi, Jemez, Kiowa, Kiowa Apache, Lipan, Maricopa, Mohave, Navaho, Paiute, Papago, Panamint, Pecos, Pima, Pueblo, Shoshoni, Sobaipuri, Tewa Pueblos, Ute, Walapai, Yavapai, Yuma and Zuñi and the Anasazi, who predated all of them.

The point is that to try to determine “right to occupy” using historical claims is an exercise in futility. Selecting a group to support based on some historical occupation of the land has more to do with political advantage than it does historical ownership. You can say what you want about Israel but the are there now, they were both granted the territory by the international community and have militarily won the territory (actually far more had they wished to keep it) and they are surrounded by countries and factions sworn to its destruction.

That’s a tough spot to be in but even with that, they have incorporated something like 1.6 million Arabs into the country, have given them the same rights as any other citizen, included them in their government and live peaceably with them. It isn’t the Israelis who don’t want peace, it is the Muslims who hate Jews, the Arabs who still claim the land and the Anti-Semites around the world who deny the right to exist of the Jewish state and Jewish people who do not.