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Likud and Settlement: 1967-83
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Begin's renaming of the West Bank as Judaea and Samaria has an immediate practical influence on Israeli policy. If this area is to be part of Israel, it makes strategic sense to build more settlements in different parts of the territory. The more scattered but well-defended settlements there are, the harder it will be for a viable Palestine state to be established. This chimes with Likud's categorical rejection of the two-state solution.
The founding of settlements began on a limited scale after the 1967 Israeli occupation of a wide stretch of Palestinian territory. They were small military outposts, many of them near the borders, established by young men doing military service and agriculture combined. With Likud's arrival in power in 1977 the scale and pace of settlement increases, even though President Carter warns Israel in no uncertain terms that America is strongly opposed, regarding settlement in the occupied territories as illegal. In spite of this, Israelis are now enticed to settle in the occupied territories with the offer of financial benefits cheaper houses, lower mortgage rates, tax advantages. By 1983 there are 20,000 settlers in the territories, many of them very close to densely populated Arab areas, and a target is announced of 100,000 by the end of the decade.
The difficulty in ever removing this huge number of settlers is powerfully demonstrated in 1981when a relatively small group refuses to leave the settlement of Yamit in the Sinai. Part of Begin's Camp David agreement with Sadat in 1978 has been Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai and he is determined to fulfil this commitment. Some of the Yamit settlers barricade themselves in a bunker and threaten to blow themselves up. Others take refuge on their rooftops and the world sees on television Israeli soldiers using water cannon to try and dislodge them. Equally unappealing is the sight of the soldiers demolishing the houses of Yamit and systemically destroying the settlers' orchards. Begin's purpose is achieved, but at considerable cost.
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Immigration: since 1947
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In Israel's founding charter one of the principles is that all Jews anywhere in the world have the right of return to their ancestral home ('the ingathering of the exiles'), and it is also very much in Israel's interest that as many as possible shall do so. A small nation needs to grow larger and stronger, and it becomes particularly important to be in a majority if a large number of Palestinian Arabs are living in the same territory.
The first mass immigration to Israel is in response to the concept of homecoming to a separate Jewish state. Between 1947 and 1951 nearly 700,000 Jews arrive, coming from seventy different countries. Their number doubles the population.
Subsequently major immigration groups, arriving within a fairly short timespan, tend to come from a particular region, sharing already a group identity. One of the most important, particularly in symbolic terms, are the Jews of Iraq. The Iraqi government, hostile to Israel after the 1948 war, is strongly opposed to their departure. It requires secret diplomacy by Israel, reinforced by a large cash-payment, for visas to become available from March 1950 to Jews wanting to emigrate to Israel.
Within three months 90,000 Jews (out of a total 130,000 in Iraq) take this opportunity, even though it means losing their homes and being forced to leave behind all gold, jewellery and any other valuable objects. The symbolic importance of this achievement is that these Jews form the oldest ¬diaspora in the world. They are descendants of Jews captured in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC and carried off to Babylon. Their community has survived in Iraq ever since. Subsequently this long tradition is brought entirely to an end when nearly all the remaining Jews leave the country as a result of severe persecution under the Ba'athist regime, from 1968. After the defeat of Saddam Hussein in 2003 the Jewish Agency for Israel attempts to contact all the Jews in Iraq. They find only thirty-four.
The largest regional group to have reached Israel are the Russian Jews. Israel has been well aware that their great numbers make them the prime source for the immigrants so sorely needed, but there is a double problem. The Soviet Union allows a relatively small number to leave each year. And of these only a small percentage choose to come to Israel, preferring the economic lure and the greater safety of the United States. In 1988 about 18,000 Russian Jews are given exit permits, specifically to Israel, but only 2000 arrive arrive. The rest have opted out of the Israeli flight in Vienna and transferred to an American one.
The Israeli government makes great but unsuccessful efforts to persuade the USA to restrict Jewish immigration, diverting the immigrants to Israel (the destination entered on their exit visas) where they will be greeted as citizens rather than received as refugees. The Americans insist that it is their right to choose where they want to go. The Israelis argue that they should arrive in Israel before exercising that choice.
However, knowing that the Soviet Union plans to grant a rapidly increasing number of exit permits, the USA decides in its own interest to alter the system. From late in 1989 those who want to go to the USA must apply for a visa in the normal way from the US embassy in Moscow. In 1990 the total number of Jews arriving from Russia is 185,000. This is never again matched but the annual number has remained high ever since, with the result that Russian immigrants by now far outnumber all others in Israel.
The Russian total is now 1.25 million, whereas the next largest group is 350,00 from north Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). These are Sephardim, meaning descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal a little later. They, together with the Jews of Iraq, are ethnically a minority in Israel. The majority are Ashkenazim descendants of the Jews of Germany and eastern Europe, the region of the two next largest groups, Romania (275,000) and Poland (175,000).
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Prime ministers and the peace process: 1994-2000
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Likud's hard line in relation to settlement is softened for a while between 1984 and 1990 when neither it (led now by Yitzhak Shamir) nor Labour (led now by Shimon Peres) can form a coalition without the other. A National Unity Government is formed, with the leaders agreeing to alternate as prime minister.
The1980s see one isolated development that is helpful to the peace process, when in 1988 Yasser Arafat declares that the PLO renounces 'terrorism in all its forms'. But other events at the time are less promising. In previous years Hezbollah has emerged in Lebanon (in 1982) as an Iranian-sponsored resistance movement to end the Israeli occupation of the southern part of the country. In 1987 Hamas (acronym in Arabic for 'Movement for Islamic Resistance') is founded in the occupied territories to lead armed resistance against Israel. And in the same year an Intifada begins against Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
This First Intifada lasts for several years and brings a high number of casualties, with the Israeli army killing more than 1000 Palestinians. The aggression against the soldiers is most often by boys throwing stones, sometimes by Molotov cocktails, and occasionally towards the end by the use of firearms. The heavy-handed nature of the Israeli response serves often to escalate the anger and the level of resistance.
After the 1992 elections Labour is strong enough to govern without Likud. The leader by now is Yitzhak Rabin, and his period in power sees a very hopeful movement towards peace. Secret discussions with the PLO about ways forward are held during 1992 and 1993 with Shimon Peres, by now foreign minister, representing Israel. By the autumn of 1993 these meetings yield promising results. On September 9 Rabin sends a letter to Yasser Arafat recognising the PLO and Arafat sends a letter to Rabin renouncing violence and officially recognizing the state of Israel.
The majority of the meetings have been in Oslo and the agreement becomes known as the Oslo Accords. Its main provision is the establishment of an interim Palestinian National Authority, that will have a measure of control over the Gaza Strip and parts of the West bank. The intention is for this to lead to Israel gradually yielding more autonomy to the Palestinians. When Rabin announces the agreement, he declares "We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears ... enough!"
The formal signing is in the USA, presided over by President Clinton. It ends with a historic handshake between Rabin and Arafat. The two of them, together with Shimon Peres, are awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. But the Israelis are passionately divided on the wisdom of this step. Like Sadat earlier on the Muslim side, Rabin pays with his life for offering a gesture of friendship. At the end of a rally in Tel Aviv in 1995 in support of the Accords, he is shot by a radical Orthodox Jew.
The Palestinian National Authority is duly formed, in 1994, with Arafat as its president and prime minister. The following years, up to the millennium, see continuing efforts to further the peace process. In 1996 Likud returns to power, with Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. He is temperamentally inclined to the right-wing Likud stance of minimum negotiation with the Palestinians, but in 1998 Netanyahu and Arafat under the guidance and coaxing of President Clinton sign the Wye River Memorandum (named from the conference centre in the USA where the negotiations take place). In it Netanyahu commits Israel to transferring more territories to the control of the Palestinian National Authority, which is duly done.
In 1999 Labour return to power and the new prime minister, Ehud Barak, continues the process. In 2000 he withdraws Israeli troops from southern Lebanon and responds to another peace effort by President Clinton. Negotiations are to take place with Yasser Arafat, again at the presidential country retreat, Camp David. The aim is to find a lasting plan to end the Palestinian-Israeli problem, by now deeply rooted. Barak offers Arafat a proposal for a new Palestinian state, in a dramatic break from Israeli opposition to a two-nation solution. Arafat rejects it as inadequate.
From this point on, for various reasons, things get steadily worse.
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Suicides and the barrier: 1993-2008
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From 1993 a terrifying feature of life within Israel has been suicide attacks by Palestinians, with responsibility claimed mainly by Hamas, but also by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and by Fatah. A peak is reached in 2002, with 47 bombings during the year. The death toll up to 2008 is more than 800. This is a tragic waste of life, both of young Palestinians and of their much more numerous and randomly selected victims. It is a certain way of increasing the hostility of most Israelis to the Palestinian cause.
An equally certain way of hardening attitudes within the Palestinian population is the long-standing Israeli policy of building Jewish settlements on their land. Starting soon after 1967, when the entire Palestinian region fell into Israeli hands, the establishment of permanent settlements in the occupied territories has been strongly condemned, by the United Nations and by most of the major countries in the world, as being illegal under international law. Yet the number and size of new settlements has increased dramatically from 20,000 settlers in 1983 to 300,000 in 2013, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan heights.
The suicide bombers have presented Israel with a major security problem, and defending the widely spread settlements is also difficult and expensive. The danger of suicides is eventually solved by far more stringent checks at the borders and a closer watch on the streets.
The defence of settlements, and in particular of those in and near Jerusalem, prompts a much more controversial and unusual solution. It is the creation of the West Bank barrier. With construction starting in 2000, this 430-mile-long is intended to keep out intruders. But it is also calculated to enclose nearly 10% of Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
Most of the barrier is a fence with trenches impassable by vehicles, but approximately 40 miles skirting Jerusalem consist of an 8-metre high concrete wall. In 2004 the International Court of Justice decided that "the construction of the wall, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law". Nevertheless from the Israeli point of view it has been a great success in terms of its official purpose. Since 2008 there have been virtually no successful suicide attacks within Jerusalem.
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The Second Intifada: 2000-05
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The years following the millennium bring a new crisis the beginning of a second intifada. There are several reasons for the new outbreak of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, where frustration has been steadily building. Some maintain that an uprising has been planned for some months by Yasser Arafat. But one very provocative gesture in 2000 by a new leader of Likud, Ariel Sharon, is often quoted as the trigger that ignites a very tense situation.
Sharon plans a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, treated by custom as being under Muslim control since the enclosure contains two of their most holy buildings, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa. Sharon arrives in the area with several hundred Israeli police officers, making the point that there is no region in the country that is not under Israeli control. The affront leads to Palestinian riots the next day, with demonstrators provoking the police with a barrage of stones. The police respond with rubber-coated metal bullets, killing 4 people and injuring about 200.
The uprising continues for five years, in a series of incidents reaching levels of violence far exceeding that of the first intifada 13 years previously. It is calculated that the number of dead, military and civilian, is about 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Israelis. There is no precise reason for the gradual easing of the intifada in late 2004 and early 2005. The death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004 lessens the intensity of the conflict. He is succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas as leader of the PLO, and in January 2005 Abbas becomes president of the Palestinian National Authority.
Abbas immediately takes serious steps to prevent Hamas continuing the violence and in particular to stop them attacking Israeli settlements with rockets and mortar fire (usually ineffectual apart from psychologically). Sharon, impressed by this, agrees to meet Abbas at a summit in Sharm-al-Sheikh in February 2005, sitting round a table with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
A deal is done. Both leaders agree to bring violence by their side to an end and SharonThe years following the millennium bring a new crisis the beginning of a second intifada. There are several reasons for the new outbreak of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, where frustration has been steadily building. Some maintain that an uprising has been planned for some months by Yasser Arafat. But one very provocative gesture in 2000 by a new leader of Likud, Ariel Sharon, is often quoted as the trigger that ignites a very tense situation.
Sharon plans a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, treated by custom as being under Muslim control since the enclosure contains two of their most holy buildings, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa. Sharon arrives in the area with several hundred Israeli police officers, making the point that there is no region in the country that is not under Israeli control. The affront leads to Palestinian riots the next day, with demonstrators provoking the police with a barrage of stones. The police respond with rubber-coated metal bullets, killing 4 people and injuring about 200.
The uprising continues for five years, in a series of incidents reaching levels of violence far exceeding that of the first intifada 13 years previously. It is calculated that the number of dead, military and civilian, is about 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Israelis. There is no precise reason for the gradual easing of the intifada in late 2004 and early 2005. The death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004 lessens the intensity of the conflict. He is succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas as leader of the PLO, and in January 2005 Abbas becomes president of the Palestinian National Authority.
Abbas immediately takes serious steps to prevent Hamas continuing the violence and in particular to stop them attacking Israeli settlements with rockets and mortar fire (usually ineffectual apart from psychologically). Sharon, impressed by this, agrees to meet Abbas at a summit in Sharm-al-Sheikh in February 2005, sitting round a table with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
A deal is done. Both leaders agree to bring violence by their side to an end and Sharon promises the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners. Over the following months Sharon is as good as his word. He has already, in 2004, persuaded the Knesset to back his bold plan to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza and resettle the settlers living there. In August 2005 this is put into effect. The settlers leave, many of them having to be forcibly evicted, after which the troops depart from Gaza.
promises the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners. Over the following months Sharon is as good as his word. He has already, in 2004, persuaded the Knesset to back his bold plan to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza and resettle the settlers living there. In August 2005 this is put into effect. The settlers leave, many of them having to be forcibly evicted, after which the troops depart from Gaza.
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Fatah and Hamas: 2005-07
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After 2005 a major rivalry develops between the two major groups representing the interests of Palestinians. Fatah, in its early years justifiably regarded as a terrorist organization, is now a political party with which Israel can negotiate. Hamas by contrast remains true to its paramilitary origins and regards sudden attacks on Israeli not as acts of terrorism, the definition of them by most other nations, but as tactics in a war of liberation against an occupying force. Hamas, therefore, cannot be controlled by Fatah or forced to end its policy of aggression.
Since the formation of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994 Fatah has governed the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, within the practical limits imposed by Israel. But in 2006 this changes dramatically. In the election of that year Hamas wins 76 of the 132 seats in the parliament, including an even larger proportion in Palestine's largest city, Gaza, with a population of nearly half a million.
In 2006 and 2007 there are efforts to achieve a national government as a coalition between between Fatah and Hamas, but hostilities between them are too great for this to become a practical reality. In June 2007 fighting breaks out between the two sides in what has become known as the Battle of Gaza. Within a week, and after more than 100 deaths, Hamas is the clear winner. They remove all Fatah officials from the Gaza Strip and take control of the city, leaving Fatah and its leader Mahmoud Abbas with power only in the West Bank.
Hamas is extremely popular in Gaza, partly for its hard-line policy in relation to Israel but more so because it provides a much valued welfare service, using part of its large budget (mainly from Muslim countries and organizations sharing its religious fundamentalism) to support schools, orphanages, health clinics, food kitchens and sports clubs.
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Politics and peace: since 2005
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In November 2005 Ariel Sharon leaves Likud and founds a new centrist and liberal party, Kadima (meaning Forward). The purpose is to enable him to continue his measures to disengage unilaterally from involvement in the West Bank and Gaza. But in the following month he suffers a stroke, relatively mild but making him unable, at any rate in the short term, to continue as prime minister. And then, in January 2007 he has a massive stroke, leaving him in a coma (in which he remains to this day).
He is succeeded by Ehud Olmert, a fellow member of Kadima. Olmert remains prime minister until the election in 2009 which is won by Likud, bringing Benjamin Netanyahu back to power.
The years after 2005 continue Israel's unsettled relationship with its neighbours. In July 2006 another war with Lebanon erupts. The underlying cause is the fact that the parts of Lebanon bordering Israel are under the control of Hezbollah, making it easy for them to launch terrorist attacks across the border. The immediate trigger for forceful Israeli retaliation is an incident much more serious than most. A launch of rockets against northern Israeli towns is timed to coincide with an anti-tank assault on two military vehicles and the abduction of two soldiers.
The war rapidly escalates with a major Israeli response by sea, air and land. A naval blockade of Lebanon is put in place; bridges and roads in Lebanon are destroyed by air strikes, to prevent the movement of Hezbollah equipment; the runway of Beirut airport is made unusable; Hezbollah's stockpiles of rockets and weapons are targeted and mainly demolished; and a ground force is sent across the border Meanwhile Hezbollah makes energetic use of its relatively sophisticated armoury, much of it supplied by Russia. It launches on average 100 rockets a day on cities in northern Israel and operates as a guerrilla force well supplied with anti-tank missiles. After a little more than a month a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations comes into effect.
Israel's main problem during the following years is Gaza and Hamas. A mood of confrontation and unease on both sides of the Gaza border is a constant factor, on the Israeli side because settlements and towns in the south are regularly the targets of rockets launched by Hamas and by a few smaller terrorist groups, and on the Palestinian side because of the danger of reprisals when Israeli patience is stretched too far.
Every two or three years Israel launches military interventions into Gaza. The longest and most violent is the three-week Operation Cast Lead (more commonly known as the Gaza War) in the winter of 2008-2009. This follows a dramatic increase in the number of rocket attacks during the previous months on Israeli settlements and towns in the south, and it does major damage within Gaza. Because of Israel's vastly greater military power the different level of casualties for the two sides is striking about 1200 Palestinian deaths and 13 Israeli, four of them from friendly fire.
In all this there is no change, although gestures of peace are regularly made. Hamas, for example, has broken with its founding principle of total opposition to the existence of Israel in any form. In 2009 it offers to recognize the state of Israel on various conditions that Palestinians have a right of return to Israel, that Israel withdraws to its pre-1967 borders and that all settlements in the West Bank are removed, enabling a cohesive Palestinian state to exist with East Jerusalem as its capital. Hamas can confidently make such an offer knowing that Israel will reject it.
The life of more than a million Palestinians in the refugee camps (both within and outside Palestine, in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) is a major welfare catastrophe, with by now two generations born in the camps and still living there. Their condition is the result of past war and conflict and their relative well-being is the responsibility of the UN agency UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). By contrast the life of nearly half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, severely restricted in their own territory in terms of movement and supplies, is the result of Israeli policies (albeit in response to frequent threats) and is regarded by many around the world as a major stain on Israel's reputation.
Peace talks are resumed in July 2013 when the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, persuades representatives of the two sides to attend a preliminary session in Washington. Subsequent negotiations are scheduled to take place in Jerusalem and Hebron, but they soon falter over the same familiar issues.
It is widely agreed internationally that the only solution is two separate states. But however much diplomatic compromises may seem to move the peace process in that direction, there is a profound obstacle. A Palestinian state is not viable if it has to make its way round enclaves belonging to Israel, yet the removal of 300,000 settlers from the West Bank seems a practical impossibility.
The relationship between Israel and the Palestinians remains the world's most intractable political problem.
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