Dismantle Hebron?

Great Debates
41

Okay, this is going to sound weird coming out of me, because I’m strongly in support of Palestinian rights and have strong objections to dozens of Israeli policies. I’m strongly against the displacement and dispossession that’s occuring in the territories (and still believe that Israel will need to correct all of the displacement in 48 and 67, i.e. solve the refugee problem, because as much as Israel may like to deny it the plight of the refugees is largely their responsiblity. Sure other Arab states haven’t helped, but it’s not their job to) - but for the sake of historical correctness, it needs to be pointed out that Hebron is different.

Hebron has been home to a Jewish community for essentially as long as Jews have been Jews; the Jewish community of Hebron is drastically older than Zionism and the state of Israel. These Jews are the Jews that the PLO charter referred to when it said that Jews living in Palestine prior to the “Zionist Invasion” shall be regarded as Palestinians. During the rise of Zionism, many of the Jews of Hebron rejected Zionism as hearsay, and were not there to disposses, but rather there to live peacefully with their Arab neighbors as they had for centuries.

This being said, the community of Hebron today has drastically changed. Hebron and Kiryat Arba are strongholds of Kahanist ideology, and it is from here that the likes of Baruch Goldstein come out. These settlers who are inhabiting Hebron now are the worst of the worst, and I have no sympathy for them.

The only permanent solution for peace in the land of Palestine as defined by the British Mandate after 1922 is for Jews, Christians, and Arabs to learn to share the land. It is too little land to be divided in a way that is fair to all, and the population has claims to or inhabits land in too meshed a manner to satisfactorally separate them. If Jews are denied land east of some arbitrary cease fire line, or if Arabs are denied to live west of that land, even when many of their homes (the overwhelming majority of Israel’s population lives on a disporportiately small chunk of land, [1] [2]) and villages are still unoccupied. That being said, given current lack of trust and violence, it may be that two governments operating very closely is an acceptable interim solution. But for permanent peace, reconciliation and binationalism are essential.

Because things have been so screwed up everywhere, what needs to happen immediately is a union of Israeli and Palestinian economies (Israel should not be importing workers from the Far East), Israeli acceptance of some number of refugees into Israel, Israel starting to treat Palestinian-Israelis equally, and some plan put forth (if possible by both Palestinian and Israeli rulers) for a plan to share soverignty to some degree in all of the land and otherwise improve the living conditions of everyone (i.e. nobody lives in a tent and nobody gets blown up)

[1] http://www.cbs.gov.il/statistical/populationeng.htm
[2] http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story577.html

42

The Palestinians lost. It’s not their country anymore.

43

Actually, most historians will tell you that few Palestinians actually fought, with the bulk of the fighting being done by the Arab regular armies who entered Mandate Palestine in 1948.

Not as if that matters; what moral, legal, or ethical basis to you have for removing civillians from conquered land, on the basis of their religion (i.e. not-Jewish)? I’d love to know what rule of war comes into play here.

If Israel wanted to annex the territories and set up a government where all people would be equal under the law, many people would applaud her. I certainly would.

44

This is a separate debate, and not related to the Hebron question raised by the OP. With that said, since you are comparing the Hebron massacre of 1929 and subsequent expultion, with the mass exodus of Arabs from Israel in 1948, I’ll point out some major differences.

The Jews of Hebron were really expelled. Many were murdered in the massacre, and after 1929, there were no living Jews remaining in Hebron, where there had been a Jewish community for almost 500 years preceding.

It is debatable whether the Arabs were expelled by Jews in 1948. They were asked by their leaders to leave or join the fight in wiping out the Jews. Many left, but many remained, and those that remained, along with their families have lived happily in Israel for over 50 years, enjoying rights to vote, assemble, worship, and speak and publish freely unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.

The difference is obvious. In one case, people were unjustly attacked and forced from their homes. In the other, people left their homes voluntarily to make it easier for the advancing armies of their bretheren to murder their neighbors.

45

To respond:

a. That’s not really fair. Under Ottoman rule, it is true that most of the land that was owned in Palestine was assigned to an absentee landlord. But the people who worked on it for centuries are, if not de jure, de facto owners and should be treated as such. It is an injustice to say that Palestinians did not deserve the land because they had merely worked it, unable to afford- or simply not considering- purchasing the deed from the Ottomans.

b. They’re not using it productively? The last figure I found said that Jews use 1.5 times as much water as Arabs in Israel, and they were most certainly at least self sufficient prior to Zionism (note that Palestinian olives and citrus have long been famous)

c. Perhaps it was as fair as any wars are.

d. Having land as the spoils of war does not justify denying rights to the indigenous population, especially on the basis of religion.

46

Nothing to do with events like the Deir Yassin massacre then:

The main effect of the Deir Yassin massacre “Arabs throughout the country, induced to belive wild tales of Irgun butchery were seized with limtless panic and started to flee for their lives. The mass flight soon developed into a massive uncontrablle stampede” J. Dimebly and D.McCullin the Palestinians 1979,

"This order (UN order to allow the return of refugees was ignored by the Israeli government, which contiuned it’s tactics designed to drive ouit the Arabs, justifying them by arguing that they should resettle in other Middle Eastern countries governed by Arab peoples. Various tactics have been used.

  1. Terrorism

The barrel bomb has been one of the most common urban incendiary devices:

It consisted of a barrel cask, or metal drum filled with a mixture of explosives and petrol and filled with two old rubber tyres containing the detonating fuse. It was rolled down the sharply sloping alleys and stepped lanes of Arab urban markets where it crashed into walls and dooorways making an inferno of raging flames and endless explosions.

  1. Psychological warfare

Attacks on Arab quarters were generally accompianied by loudspeaker announcments: “get out of this bloodbath…if you stay, you invite diaster.”

  1. Torture

A number of detainess have undergone torture during interrogations by the Military police. According to the evidence the torture took the following forms:
1 Suspensiom of the detainee by the hands
2 Burns with cigarette stubs
3 Blows by rods on the gentials
4 Tying up and blindfolding for days
5 Bites by dogs
6 Electric shocks at the temples, mouth, hte chest and testicles

UN special report 1972

Torture is systematic. It appears to be sanctioned at some level as delibrate policy. Torturing…

From the World Conflict in the Twentifieth Century 1987 SM Harrison

Also many Arab villages, such as Beit Nuba were delibrately blown up so the inhabitants had no choice but to leave the area.

You cannot justify the Jewish settlments on the grounds that they are re-establishment of a former Jewish population while a much larger Arab population is not allowed to return to their homes it what is now Israel.

47

Well, MC Master of Ceremonies wasn’t referring to the Palestinians in the territories…he was talking about letting the Palestinians return to land in Israel proper. And they left when Israel was established.

48

Well I wasn’t really proposing that such a solution would be grossly impractical as in 1948 about 50%-60% of the land in Mandate Palestine was owned by Arabs. The point is that what Mhand is saying is moral for when ethnic group is not moral for another.

49

The difference is that I care about the Israelis. I don’t give a damn about the Palestinians. :slight_smile:

50

At this point, I would have to say that neither side “deserves” anything.

Seriously, when is enough going to be enough?

51

I don’t think you’ve understood me. I didn’t say that the same actions are moral for one group and not another. In fact, I said that the two situations are not the same. In one case the exodus was voluntary and in the other it was not.

52

In one case the exodus was voluntary and in the other it was not.

This is veeeery disputable, and as a matter of fact under heavy debate. But you state as fact. In reality this is the position promoted by the Israeli administration. But please feel free to provide some fairly credible and unbiased cites to this effect.

53

Long time Israeli supporter here.

Around the time of Israel’s conception both sides were engaging in terrorism against each other. The well established history of Arab abuses and Nazi complicity and so on, did not excuse the tactics like Dier Yassin and the fact that Hebron had been Jewish and its inhabitants killed and expelled does not justify settlements there today. The “they terrorized us first” argument may be accurate but it is just not ethically sound. It doesn’t matter. It is occupied Arab territory and settlements on occupied lands are wrong.

At some point an Israeli admonistration is going to have to take the settler’s lobby head on. Forced evacuation or leaving them under PA authority at their own risk will have to occur at some point. Meanwhile the cowardly avoidance of these battles torpedos the surprisingly realistic and doable goals contained within the roadmap. Some real movement on containing the settlements, if not removing them, needs to be made in concert with the efforts by the PA to contain the terror, as minimal as they may be, to help bootstrap the process.

Sharon is a schmuck.

54

Why? If Jews forced out of their homes in 1929 were not justified in returning to them in 1967, why would an Arab forced out of his (stolen) home in 1967 be justified in coming back in 2005?

How far back to you go in a title search?

55

The “voluntary” nature of the Arab exodues is nothing but pure propaganda.

Beny Morris, the famous Israeli historian of 1948, clealry and amply documented the falsity of the claims that the Arabs simply left of their own volition.

Among certain Zionist groups there was a clear terror campaign aimed at “cleaning” Jewish territories of Arabs – while at the same time more liberal groups were trying to get them to stay to be sure. The supposed Arab broadcasts calling on Arabs to leave never occured, per Morris’ research including review of British monitoring of both sides radio traffic and broadcasts.

I believe somewhere in the archives here the specific citations are to be found, I do not at present have Morris’ books at hand, however there is ample evidence to refute the myth of voluntary departure.

A comment on Arab-Nazi connexions. This is frequently brought up. In large part the Arab sympathy for the Nazis/Germans in the 1940-1945 period was driven by their (stupidly uninformed) hopes that the Germans would kick out the British and the French and that they, the Arabs would be free of colonial rule. Very, very few Arabs had any real information or grasp of what Nazi Germany really was – beyond the information barrier, the diff. between Arab society and Germany society in this period IMO rendered understanding that system very hard.

Doubltless there were some few who sympathized with the anti-Jewish aspects of Nazi mythology, and were willing to overlook the rest, including its neo-Xian/pagan irreligiousity. In gross, however, German sympathies were largely driven by anti-colonial, enemy of my enemy is my friend logic. A stupid and misplaced logic given the Nazis, but one driven by ignorance and blind hope in large part.

And finally to answer our dear Hand’s question: there will not be 1967 returnees, except for symbolic old folks and the like, political settlements, so the question in the end is moot.

56

They aren’t. As Coll points out, it aint gonna happen. Israel exists as a Jewish state and is going to remain so. The debate about how much Arab flight was voluntary and how much was forced (both occurred) and how many Jews were forced out of Arab areas and left their property behind (roughly the same as Arabs from proto-Israel), and how bad the previous treatment of Jews by Arabs was for all the time Arabs were dominant (often quite bad and despite Coll’s statement, not predominantly anti-colonial … and it long predates Nazism) is interesting perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant. There is not and will not be a right to return for Arabs to Israel because it would assure the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Move along, nothing to see here. To call for it is a bargaining ploy only; they’ll get financial renumeration in some final deal.

So it can’t be used to justify a right to take over land that currently is not yours.

It is time to look at what exists and at what is possible for the future.

Israel exists as a Jewish state. Arabs may resent it, but fantasies about its going away are counter-productive.

The Palestinian people exist and are without a land of their own. The argument that their national identity is a creation of the last 50 years is irrelevant; they exist now and won’t disappear. I blame their current dismal conditions on other Arabs; Coll would blame it on Israel - but it doesn’t matter. Going forward they need a state that has an economic future. Such a state cannot exist if it has a real risk of being an ongoing threat to Israeli security, nor can it exist economically without Israeli partnering.

Any new Palestine will be made in currently occupied lands. Most, if not all, settlements there will have to go at some point, unless the current staus of being an occupying power is to continue for Israel forever (not in Israel’s own best interest.) Allowing further entrenchment of the settlements only makes further progress that much more difficult. Failure to show some real sign of being willing to reduce settlements would be just as much a justifiable stopper for the process as a failure to make any real effort to contain terror attacks would be on the other side. Letting some prisoners go and easing travel restrictions is not enough to get the process bootstrapped.

Compromise means that you give up on some things that you believe you shouldn’t have to give up on. And the other side does too. Because at the end of the process your future will be better than if you don’t.

57

Dseid, I presume you simply misread my intervention: my comment was going directly to the oft noted Arab sympathies for Germany in WWII.

In re the issue of Jewish-Muslim-Xian relation in the Arab world, I point readers to Bernard Lewis’ The Jews of Islam and related works for a serious, professional historian’s overview of the good, the bad and the middling in Jewish-Muslim-Xian relations in the classic Middle East.

No, I would blame the conditions on both sides. Both. I often take a harshly critical line on Israeli responsibilities for Palestinian situation here because it strikes me as a much needed corrective for the past biases in reporting / commenting here. In the last few decades Israel bears no small blame due to the simple logic of occupation, not bec. I see any particular good or evil in either side.

Frankly living and working in the region, I am often ready to take the lot of them and throw them all into the sea, and bring in Turks and Ethiopians… (gallows humor amigos, I actually love everyone but frustration at the pig-headedness does drive one to bizarre thoughts at times.)

58

I apologize for my misread. And you are correct … both share in blame.

59

Question-aren’t there any “Arab Jews?”

60

Guin: Yes they form part of the Sephardi group of Jews. There has always been Jews living in Israel (so technically they could be Arab Jews), as well as Jews from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria,Jordan, Morrocco and Iraq (Baghdad was the oldest major Jewish commmunity outside of Israel, the Talmud was written there for instance), most of whom were forced out of those countries after the formation of Israel in 1948. Some were forced out earlier, for instance in Iraq, when the pro-Nazi leader Rashid Ali started an anti-Jewish riot in 1941 killing about 180 Jews, wounding 1000 and starting the exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel.