The Conflict in Gaza

The short explanation of the Israel-Palestine conflict & the factions involved.

J. in Boston asks:

“I need a tl;dr education about what is happening in Gaza”

The roots of today’s conflict go back to the early 20th century, when Jewish people started immigrating to Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) empire. This Jewish immigration movement was called Zionism, and in those days it had a sort of utopian and quasi-socialist flavor to it. Some prominent Jews supported it, others thought the prospect of carving out a Jewish state in the Middle East was too far-fetched to ever be successful. But, during the First World War, two things happened that made Zionism a more realistic prospect. A Jewish chemist named Chaim Weizmann discovered a new way of synthesizing explosives, which saved Britain's war efforts during an armaments shortage. Weizmann used his influence with the government to gain Britain’s support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. And, coincidentally, Britain's army (aided by a local Arab revolt, as seen in the movie Lawrence of Arabia) defeated the Ottoman Turk armies in the Middle East. When the dust settled in 1918, Britain controlled Palestine and had pledged to support the Zionist cause. 

More and more Jewish settlers started coming in after the First World War, which started creating tensions with the local Arab (majority-Muslim, though with a large Christian minority) Palestinian people. 

Then, this thing you may have heard of called the Holocaust happened, which shifted the Zionist cause into high gear. Many survivors felt that they couldn’t ever trust a government or a society where Jews were in the minority, and the prospect of living alongside their former tormentors in the ruins of war-ravaged Europe wasn’t very enticing. Loads more people started coming in, and at this point Zionism went from being a slightly odd utopian project to a very serious idea. Britain tried to limit the influx of Jewish settlers because they thought it would lead to Arab-Jewish clashes (which did happen in the 30s and 40s), but at the same time, this was the late 1940s and the UK had about $0.50 left in the bank. Palestine was something they ended up with by accident after WW1, and the strain on their finances and military after WW2 meant Britain had to pick and choose the imperial possessions it was worth trying to hold onto. So (after a anti-British insurgency campaign) the Jewish settlers declared their own independent state of Israel in 1948.

And immediately, every neighbouring Arab country attacked Israel with the intention of driving the Jews out and preventing the formation of a Jewish state, but the Israelis won. Many of the Israelis had military or paramilitary training, and they were highly motivated to defend themselves after recent events in Europe. In 1949 there was an armistice brokered by the UN with the intention of setting borders between the Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state, with Palestine comprising what we know today as the Gaza strip and the West Bank. However, this Palestinian state never actually came to fruition, partly because the neighbouring country of Jordan claimed the West Bank, and Egypt claimed Gaza, so those areas fell into a weird grey zone of non-independent status. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, large numbers of Palestinians became refugees living in neighbouring countries, where their descendents still reside today.

After that, in 1967 there was another war due to tensions between Israel and Egypt. During this war, which only lasted six days, Israel captured and occupied Gaza, the West Bank, and the entire Sinai peninsula in Egypt.

So now, post-1967, the West Bank and Gaza are now under Israeli military occupation. This is also religiously significant because now Israel controls all of Jerusalem, including the site of the ancient Jewish temple, which is also the site of the Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest site in Islam. This era marks the start of large-scale Palestinian terrorism against Israel, led by the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization). From this point on, they do lots of nasty stuff like bombing commercial airliners and killing members of the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Olympics.

But in the early 1990s, there was a peace accord signed between the PLO and Israel where both parties recognized each other’s right to exist and agreed to work together towards eventual Palestinian statehood in Gaza and the West Bank. Subsequently the PLO morphed into a political party called Fatah which renounced terrorism and was recognized internationally as the leaders of the Palestinian movement. For a moment, it looked like a peaceful solution had been found.

However, not all the Palestinians were down with this peace accord. A new faction, Hamas emerges during this time. They are an Islamic fundamentalist jihadist group (the PLO was secular and quasi-socialist) dedicated to the destruction of Israel, whereas the PLO at this stage wanted to make peace with Israel and settle borders. Hamas launched terrorism campaigns against Israel (this was the era of the suicide bomber you may remember from the early 2000s) that were more or less outside of the PLO's control. At this point, the PLO/Fatah started to look like crusty out-of-touch politicians who were more interested in cutting deals with Israel to maintain their political power rather than taking back lost territories, and these new radicals from Hamas gained a lot of followers.

So because of this terrorism campaign, Israel built a giant concrete separation wall around the entire West Bank to keep suicide bombers from coming in. But they didn’t build the wall around the old 1949 boundaries, they started to encroach into the West Bank and effectively annex Palestinian territory that Israeli settlers have built on. Israeli settlers are usually far-right very religious people who think the West Bank is their God-given birthright as stated in the Bible. During recent decades their numbers have increased to more than 500,000 and they’ve slowly taken over a lot of West Bank territory which is now on the Israeli side of the wall.

In 2006, there was an election in Palestine, Fatah vs. Hamas, and Hamas won by a large margin. This posed a major problem for Fatah, since besides losing control of the government, it was doubtful if Israel would ever accept a government led by Hamas. So they just decided to ignore the election results and keep themselves in power. The Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term as Palestinian president in 2005, but he’s been in power ever since and isn’t interested in having more elections. He’s currently 87 years old, and is viewed as corrupt and out of touch by most Palestinians.

After the failed election, Hamas took over Gaza from Fatah by force and have run it as a one-party state since then. So now, up until today, there are two competing Palestinian "governments": Fatah in the West Bank, which is seen by many as weak and out-of-touch, and Hamas in Gaza, which is extremely violent and nasty. 

Gaza is a bit different from the West Bank: there are no Israeli settlers there anymore and Israel pulled out its last occupation troops in 2005. It’s a very densely populated place with about 2.5 million people living in an area smaller than Queens. To keep Hamas from smuggling fighters out or weapons in, Israel has built a barbed wire fence all around it and controls all traffic in and out of Gaza. It’s basically a giant open-air prison, since the civilians inside can’t leave. The people there are penned in and ruled by a violent terrorist group. As such, it is not a very nice place to live even when bullets aren’t flying back and forth. 

The holy grail for US Presidents for a long, long time was the need to negotiate a "two state solution": an independent (and functional) Palestine alongside Israel, living in peace with each other. For the past 25 years there’s been no progress on this because: (1) Israel doesn't want to relinquish control for fear of attacks, (2) a lot of that occupied territory has Jewish settlements on it that are now large-sized towns, and (3) any Palestinian government would have to include Hamas in some shape or form, and they are violent anti-semitic terrorists who are more interested in killing people than making a peace deal.

So this situation drags on, year after year, and nothing really changes. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been the Israeli Prime Minister for most of the past 15 years, is basically happy to sit on the status quo and not do anything about it, other than bombing Hamas occasionally when they do something bad. Currently his party is in coalition with far-right religious Jewish parties who want him to officially annex the entire West Bank as part of Israel, and sort of just pretend the Palestinians don’t exist. 

Decades ago the Arab states went to war with Israel regularly, but lately they have been making deals and granting diplomatic recognition to Israel. Morocco, Bahrain, and the UAE have established diplomatic relations with Israel in the last few years. And these Arab nations were also not too bothered about sidelining the never-ending Palestinian issue and ignoring it, if that led to Arab-Israeli investment deals and regional defense alliances against their rival, Iran. 

The big prize that was supposed to happen this month was Saudi Arabia. The holy kingdom, the heirs of the prophet, the keepers of the two sacred mosques were going to recognize Israel, which would basically signal that the Arab world was ready to forget about the Palestinians, accept the status quo, and move on. The Biden administration has been working feverishly behind the scenes with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to make this happen. That would have put the Palestinian cause on the back burner forever and made any prospect of a functional Palestinian state disappear. 

So, on Saturday October 7th, a massive army of Hamas fighters smashed through the barbed wire fence from Gaza into southern Israel and started massacring Israeli civilians, as well as taking captives. Their basic goal, and keep in mind, these are not nice people, was to provoke a massive Israeli military response, because if Israel kills Palestinian civilians in the counter-attack, Saudi Arabia will not establish relations with Israel at this time and the other Arab nations may rethink their recent warm relations with Israel. 

So now, it looks like Israel is going to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to try to root out Hamas, kill as many of their leaders as they can, and free the hostages. This probably won’t work because Hamas has lots of underground bunkers and tunnels they can use to escape, and much of their leadership lives abroad to avoid being targeted. Lots of Palestinians will die, and the Palestinian cause will go from the back burner to front page news, which will achieve Hamas's goal.

This conflict defies simple characterization into “good guys and bad guys”. Innocent civilians are being killed on both sides. The people in Gaza are basically trapped and can't leave, and they are stuck in the crossfire between Hamas and Israel. Social justice loudmouths on social media  are trying to oversimplify the situation and claim that Hamas are righteous indigenous freedom fighters, but in reality they are a murderous terrorist group whose attitude toward Jews would make Heinrich Himmler proud. Right-wing loudmouths on social media lump the entire Palestinian population in with Hamas and think that Palestinian civilians should be punished for Hamas’s crimes.

It is fair and legitimate to criticize Netanyahu's policies, since he has not been interested in creating any kind of constructive peace effort and has been happy to sit on this situation and let it fester for the past 15 years. Now it's reached a boiling point, and there isn't a quick and easy solution. Mahmoud Abbas on the Fatah side is completely checked out and has no control over what happens in Gaza. Politically, there is no one on either side who has any serious plans for reaching a durable, reasonable peace settlement that would give Israel security and Palestinians control over their destiny.

So it's a nasty situation through and through. Instead of picking a side to mindlessly cheer for, have empathy for the people suffering on both sides.

If you have a question or topic you want me to write about next, email distilledhistory@substack.com