Is religion the main reason for the Israel/Palestine conflict?

Great Debates
1

Talking about this subject with other people and I feel like a bit of my ignorance is making me go in circles here. To me, as little as I understand it, the base of the disagreement seems to fall back into the differing religions of the groups involved.

Some argue that there are land claims but those seem to end up being based on the religious reasons of those who are claiming the land.

So, what am I missing and if it’s not religion based, what is the crux of the issue?
/Extra credit: I’d love to read a non-biased book about the whole thing.
//Extra-extra credit: It’s available in Kindle format.

2

It is about land, and scarcely about religion at all. Palestinian Arabs had lived in the area for many centuries, when, in the mid-20th century, a bunch of Jewish Zionists moved in and took over, forcibly kicking out many of the original inhabitants. The original justification for the Jews moving in was partially about religion (it was where their original holy places had been), but the main reason they want to stay there now is because it is now their home, as it was once the home to Palestinians. But even in the first place, Zionism was more a secular nationalist movement about finding a homeland for the Jewish race, rather than a religious movement.

Before the establishment of Israel, Muslims mostly had a better record in how they treated Jews than Christians did. There is not a long-standing historical emnity between the religions, less so certainly there is between Muslims and Christians.

Incidentally, it was not Muslims who were responsible for originally kicking the Jews out of Palestine. That was down to the Romans (and they were not religiously motivated either, although the Jews who ticked them off may have been).

GD here we come.

3

Indeed. Got a cite for that first part?

As for the OP, religion certainly plays a part, but like most conflicts, it’s about land and economics, too. Religion can serve as a good proxy for any number of grievances.

4

I would generalise the answer to say that religion is very rarely the cause of any conflict.

Conflicts arise from competition for resources. Religion is just one of the ways the two sides can define themselves (along with language and other cultural markers).

Absent such rivalries, people of different religions can live alongside one another and get on tolerably well (including, historically, Jews and Muslims).

5

Having your synagogues, homes, and businesses get burned down is tolerable? Wow, ignorance fought. Not that Europe was any better, mind you.

6

It is quite accurate that only a small number of the original Zionist movement was religiously motivated, in the sense of trying to fulfill messianic dreams of returning to the homeland to establish God’s kingdom.

But the “nationalism” side needs to be clarified too. “Nationalism” makes it sound like a group of power-hungry land-grabbers. They too were a small minority. The main impetus was not to be in charge of a country, but simply to escape antisemitism. It was only practical considerations which led to the conclusion that the best way to escape antisemitism would be if Jews were in charge. That is very different from simply Jews wanting to be in charge for political purposes.

7

It’s a racial/ethnic rivalry. The religion just helps clarify the sides.
Both sides want the land. Both sides are too pig-headed to come to a compromise, even though neither side allows pigs in the diet.
If you want to take the palestinian side - they were there for thousands of years (say almost 2000) since the Jews were dispersed by the Romans after their second revolt.
200 years ago there were almost no Jews in Palestine, now there are millions; many came just after WWI and then WWII.
As can be expected when cultures clash, both sides started fighting to try to force the other side to leave, to avenge previous attacks, etc. The exact causes and results of the fights, who attacked whom, etc. - you will get different versions from different sides.

The issues are simple and complex - the arabs attacked the nw state of Israel in 1948 when the two states were created, and lost big time. The second try in 1967 didn’t do much better.

Israel occupies the palestinian territories, since 1967.
If they annex them, then theywould have to acknowledge the Palestinians as citizens with all the rights of citizens. Demographically, the Palestinians will outnumber Jews, and the next election would be a disaster.
Or else, they set up an apartheid system, where Palestinians have no right to vote.

If they let the Palestineians become an independant country, then what borders? Why? Legally, the borders are those of the 1948 partition or the pre-1967 settlement boundaries. Fanatical types say all of the terrirtory should be Israel, and the Palestinians can just bugger off and have no right to be there.

Because of a shortage of land, many housing complexes have been built (continue to be built?) on formerly Palestinian land. Nobody wants to leave their nice home - to entice people to live there, these houses on occupied territory are heavily subsidized. Access roads and the border fences cut across Palestinian farms with little regard for the owners rights.

Note that “former Palestinian land”. The process for acquiring and “buying” that land are heavily weighted against the Paletinians.

Many Palestnians fled during the wars of 1948 and 167, and then fond themselves unable to get back to their land on the other side of the Palestinian frontier. They “own” land in Israel, but are not allowed back. Any settlement would probably have to settle the “right of return” by either buying it off for hundreds of thousands or swapping land. Both choices are not trivial. On one side, the radical Jewish sects decry any giving away of one inch of greater Israel and on the other side, no Palestinian government has the balls or temerity to confront the question in a realistic manner - they still insist everyone should be able to return, a totally unrealstic position.

Meanwhile, there’s Jerusalem. The original UN settlement in 1948 gave the historical old city to the arabs, but when Israel conquered it in 1967, they annexed it. Very few governments will acknowleged this as legitimate (see arguments above over right of return, citizenship, etc.) and UN rules forbid unilateral annexation. Israel says its capital is Jerusalem, but except in an election year, western governments maintain Tel Aviv is the capital. The paletinians insist it is Palestine, and like other issues, also refuse to compromise.

Logically, this should be settled with some sort of “international zone” status for the historical old city. However, this would require significant compromise by religious fanatics, so probability… zero.

The Palestinians have not even been able to agree that a fundamental tenet of any peace agreement would be acknowledging Israel’s right to exist. As long as they stick to that point of view, nothing is going to change.

Until now, Mubarak has had an interest in keeping the Palestinians in the Gaza strip from getting too troublesome, since fanatical muslim organizations like Hamas were troublesome to Egypt as well. The next government in Egypt will be more populist and less inclined to compromise with Israel, although they will not want war. So expect the Gaza strip militants to be better supplied and more troublesome in future. Once again, Israel has had 30 years to solve the Gaza problem and has frittered away all that time.

One of the recent interviews, with a retired strategist for the Israeli forces, he basically said the current government has zero interest in coming to a settlement with the Palestinians. They seem to think their current upper hand will contnue to keep them safe.

I personally think they are coasting towards the edge of the cliff and they had better look for compromise before it’s too late…

8

No.

Some of the most prominent Palestinian terrorist leaders were from Christian families ( but were often secular themselves ), the PLO in its original incarnation was an avowedly secular organization as were most of its offshoots, the Christian president of Lebanon joined the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on the Arab side, most of the original Zionist leaders were non-religious. Originally if you want to cast it in simplistic terms you could have said it was more “tribal” - Arab vs. Jew. This because the dominant ideologies at play were Jewish and Arab nationalism, the latter then at its heyday through the early 1970’s and heavily influenced by international socialism, then also in its ascendency among “revolutionary” groups. Indeed the “two” sides were in a certain odd way strikingly similar in their basic ideological backgrounds.

Religion has become more prominent as at least a unhealthy veneer in recent decades due to the gradual failure of the ideology of Arab nationalism and its partial replacement in the region by Islamic extremism as the new political flavor du jour. In a much more limited way, perhaps the increasing public tension between the Orthodox and secular branches of Israeli society has also played into that perception. But if every Arab and Jew in the vicinity of Israel were to suddenly become atheists overnight, tensions would remain, albeit in some slightly different morph.

9

I have a question regarding the Gaza Strip. For all their issues, the Israelis did bequeath an area with functioning farms, some infrastructure, and some chances (Gaza farms could sell produce to Israel.)
Now it seems, the whole place has been wrecked-why?
I remember when the Israelis pulled out-the Palestinian leadership was promising a port, a free trade zone, and airport, and foreign investment in factories-why did they screw it up?

10

[moderating]
I suppose it would be possible to keep this discussion GQ, but I think the thread is better suited to Great Debates, so I have moved it there.
[/moderating]

11

OP asked for a non-biased version.

If biased versions are permitted, it would be at least as accurate as your account to mention that the Zionists purchased their land legally; and that many Arabs fled, not for fear of the Zionists, but because they were warned by their own kinfolk that a war against the Jews was planned.

Note that all adults of 1948 are now at least 85 years old. Most of those who complain about their lost home refer to a home they’ve never seen (and, in many cases, even their parents have never seen). It’s time now that we all try to get along and move forward. Poles were dispossessed by Treaties of 1944-1945 but there is no ongoing war over that territory.

A major reason that the Palestinian crisis festers is that the Arab masters benefit from Palestinian anger, and hence view their suffering as worthy means to an end.

12

(a) Anything Israeli is “bad”, therefore the Palestinians “must destroy it”.
(b) In practical terms, how do you give a functional first world farm, with the need for mechaized equipment, meant to hold and support a few hundred Israelis etc. - to tens of thousands of Palestinians?
(c) The land originally belonged to Palestinians before it was “expropriated” by the Kibbutz. If you go to google earth, you can still see the scars from the original farm which basically sat astride the middle of the strip; the only way around it was a narrow coastal road or a crossing/checkpoint in the middle of the access road, which was often arbitrarily closed and dug up so that vehicles would not be allowed between north and south Gaza.
(d) according to an Altlantic article I recall, the guard towers for the kibbutz were manned by Lebanese who were collaborators during the Lebanon invasion, and took delight in arabic insults and shootng anyone who came near.
(e) similarly, the Kibbutz sat on top of the only clean water aquifer in the region (which is why it was built on expropriated hostile territory in the first place). A lot of the story of the conflict is also based on water resources.
(f) As a result, polluted and bad groundwater accounted for serious health problems with the Gaza inhabitants.

Basically, the Gaza strip was turned into a giant concentration camp, and the Israelis were continually frustrated by not understanding why no Palestinians wanted to collaborate with them and be the camp guards.

George Carlin said “Women are crazy and men are stupid. Women are so crazy because men are so stupid.” In the case of the middle east, both sides are crazy and stupid.

Take the example, I think it was the tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron. For decades, the Israeli army had spent massive resources to protect a tiny group of jewish settlers who insisted on living in the middle of Hebron. There were frequent dealy incidents back and forth. Finally, they told the Isrealis to leave and had the Palestinian authorities promise to protect the sacred site.

So the first day, a mob trashed the place completely… Just the result needed to demonstrate what confidence that the Isrealis could put in the Palestinians to guarantee anything.

13

Could be. But the Palestinians have varying degree of legal title to their land, and are not allowed to exercise that legal title.

This makes it conveniently easy for the Israeli government to consider property abandoned, even though close relatives of the original owners are living in the houses with the permission of the owner. Then the court takes away title, the occupants are forced out, and the land sold to a Jewish group.

For some reason, the Palestinians don’t view this as fair.

http://www.thepicaproject.org/?page_id=533

I expect irrational and prejudicial behaviour, rank legal discrimination, and greed and persecution disguised as “rule of law” in a group perhaps only a generation removed from third-world, if that. I expect better of first-world peoples.

I don’t imagine too many poles in Soviet-bloc Poland or East Germany were allowed to complain about dispossession. Yes, unlike the arabs who keep the Palestinian issue alive for its value, any complaints of dispossed eastern europeans were suppressed by the governments of the day.

Of course, the Palestinian refugees represented a massive influx of people who could disrupt the local politics as they almost did in Jordan and repeatedly did in Lebanon - so no wonder they were not welcome to assimilate in neighbour countries.

OTOH, decades after the 1959 Cuban revolution, the US embargo includes the demand that Cuba return or compensate for expropriated property.

14

Thank you ever so much for that non-biased report.

15

There have been brutal conflicts all over the Middle East for quite some time now. Between Muslims and Christians; between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims; between Arabs and Persians; and so on.

Generally speaking, the conflicts in places like Lebanon; Syria; Jordan; Iraq; and so forth have been at least as bloody – and often far bloodier – than those involving the Jews.

So the reasonable explanation is that Arab (and by extension, Muslim) culture is very intolerant of differences and very prone to violence.

16

That would be funny if it were meant to be funny. As it is, it’s just… astonishing.

Do you draw that conclusion about European culture? We got 2 world wars from them!

17

This is incorrect. For example, the UN partition plan in the late 40s would have created an Arab State and a Jewish State. The Jewish state would have been significantly smaller than Israel is today. Jerusalem would have been under international control.

The Jews accepted the UN partition plan. Chaim Weizmann famously stated that the Jews would accept a state “the size of a tablecloth.”

The Arabs rejected the UN partition plan and went to war to put an end to Israel.

This is also incorrect. For one thing, there was no group known as “Palestinians” until 40 or so years ago. Second, a lot of the Palestinian Arabs immigrated to the area in the 20s and 30s seeking economic opportunities.

The Jews were willing to give up Jerusalem in 1948. Also note that before 1948, Jerusalem was never a capital or seat of government for the Arabs or Ottomans.

I disagree, since there’s no evidence that a compromise would end the dispute. There’s no point in compromising with a party who wants to destroy you and pretty much all of the credible evidence indicates that the Arabs (generally speaking) want to destroy Israel.

Let me ask you this: What serious concessions have the Arabs offered to make in order to get peace?

18

Absolutely, except that it seems Europeans have started to grow up.

70 years ago, one could ask why Germany was attacking France. Is there something about French people which invites aggression? Are people still angry about Napoleon? Or is it just that aggression and expansionism is (was) a big part of European culture?

ETA: Do you agree that the Arab/Israeli conflict is just one of many conflicts over the years in the Middle East? Do you agree that the conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq have been pretty intense?

19

There seems to be a common denominator in there somewhere. What could it be? It’s almost like we’re all the same species.

20

I would agree with that. I do hope that the Arabs grow up just like Europeans have started.

Anyway, you don’t seem to dispute my premises.