One of the hot-button issues in America today that normally divides among political party lines is that of the United States military involvement throughout the world, particularly the Middle East. From the current crisis in Syria, the threat of ISIS, and the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, back to the Iraq war, to 9/11, the first Persian Gulf War, and beyond, it seems that the United States in always involved in the Middle East, and the Middle East is always on the verge of Armageddon.
As I was sketching out what will be the last few posts in my Ways of Worldviews series, I realized that part of what makes up the current worldview paradigm in the United States today is that of this very issue: how we view the United States’ involvement in the world. Generally speaking, the GOP, conservatives, and Evangelicals tend to be pro-Israel, pro-military, and are ready and willing to use military force, because they view America as the only country who has the chance to keep a lid on the Middle East. On the other hand, the Democratic party, liberals, and progressive Christians tend to be pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel, suspicious of the military, anti-war, and generally view America’s meddling in the Middle East as the reason for its problems.
Now of course, these are oversimplistic caricatures, but generally speaking, these are the lines of demarcation within our political climate today. In these next two posts, though, I aim to simply give a bit of historical perspective on the events that have led up to the current situation in the Middle East today. Along the way, I want to share some observations as well.
Where to Begin?
The Middle Eastern crisis began long before the United States was really involved. It started at the close of WWI, when the Ottoman Empire, who had allied with Germany, suffered the loss right along with Germany, was effectively destroyed, and had its lands divided up among the conquering powers. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Ottoman Empire into the various Middle Eastern states we have today. The area that comprises Israel and Palestine today was known as only Palestine, and was put under the rule of the British Empire. Up to that point, there never had been a country known as Palestine. That area was simply part of the Ottoman Empire.
A year later, on November 2nd, 1917, the Balfour Declaration stated Great Britain’s support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The push for a Jewish state had begun 20 years earlier, when Theodor Herzl created the World Zionist Organization. There had been no Jewish state of any kind since the Roman Empire had destroyed the Jewish Temple in 70 AD, and Herzl thought it was time for the Jews to have a state of their own again. At first, he wasn’t even looking for it to be in Palestine. He had inquired of the Kaiser of Germany to help establish a Jewish homeland in Argentina, but the Kaiser rejected the idea.
By 1922, Great Britain was given a mandate by the League of Nations to rule Palestine, and by the end of the decade, trouble started to boil over between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. For the next 20-25 yeasr, riots and fighting between Jews and Arabs seemed par for the course. The Arabs were not happy with being ruled by a European power who had expressed support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the Jews were not happy that things weren’t really progressing at all.
By 1937, the Peel Commission recommended “splitting the baby” so to speak, and dividing up Palestine into two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab. At that point, Jews owned 5.6% of the land in Palestine. The proposal would have given them 40% of the land. Two years later though, Great Britain abandoned their support for a Jewish state in Palestine. By 1940, Jewish groups like Irgun and Lehi (i.e. The Stern Gang) were formed to fight against British occupation of Palestine. In the eyes of many Jews, Britain had turned its back on them…and then WWII happened. And that, of course, changed everything.
The Establishment of the State of Israel
As WWII was coming to a close, many European Jews—the ones who had escaped the Nazis—immigrated to Palestine. But since Great Britain had earlier walked back their plans to establish a Jewish state, many Jews viewed Britain as the enemy as well. For all practical purposes, groups like Irgun and Lehi were Jewish terrorist groups, and perhaps the most heinous acts of Irgun was its bombing of the King David Hotel, the site of the administrative headquarters of the British military.
Irgun was commanded by Menachem Begin, who would eventually become the Prime Minister of Israel. Another member of Irgun was Yitzhak Shamir, who also would one day be the Prime Minister of Israel. Another “founding father” of the State of Israel was David ben-Gurion, who led the fight for the establishment of Israel, and who became Israel’s first Prime Minister. One of the major players on the Arab side of this fight was Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He had long fought against the immigration of Jews into Palestine, and he had allied himself with Adolf Hitler, even helping recruit Bosnian Muslims to serve in a Nazi Panzer division. He was the uncle of Yasser Arafat.
In November of 1947, the United Nations voted in favor to split Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab territories. By then, Jews in Palestine owned 7% of the land; the UN rewarded the Jews 55% of Palestine. The Holocaust no doubt provided the motivating factor for the United Nations to establish a homeland for the Jews—partly out of pity for what the Jews endured, and partly out of the fact that a lot of Europeans were anti-Semitic anyway, so why not give the Jews some land over in Palestine, and get them out of Europe?
In any case, the State of Israel was established in May of 1948. From November to May, fighting between Jews and Arabs in Palestine continued to mount, and as soon as the State of Israel was established, the Arab world (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq) declared war against it. It was during this time that most Arab countries forcibly expelled their Jewish populations, and those Jews, not surprisingly immigrated to Israel. The Arab-Israeli War lasted for about a year and a half. But what transpired during that war had dramatic consequences. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had encouraged the Palestinians living in Palestine to temporarily flee their homes and seek safety while the Arab armies swept in and destroyed the State of Israel. Then, after the job was done, the Palestinians would be able to return to their homes.
As it turned out, though, Israel somehow was able, not only to repel the Arab attack, but to positively defeat the Arab armies. The result was that by 1949, the State of Israel (which had originally been given 55% of the land) had been able to take over 78% of the land. The Palestinian people who had fled their homes found themselves homeless, and consequently fled to either the Gaza strip or the West Bank, which was still controlled by Jordan. Israel then took their newly won land and opened it up for the new Jewish immigrants to settle.
The Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973
For 20 years, Israel was able to maintain its sovereignty in light of continual threats from the surrounding Arab world. But by 1967, Yasser Arafat, the nephew of Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization—the PLO, and the new Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, felt he would be able to unite the Arab world behind him as he led the fight to wipe out Israel once and for all. When he closed the Gulf of Aqaba and started amassing troops, Israel decided to strike first.
- On June 5th, at 7:00 am, Israeli fighter jets wiped out half of Egypt’s air force before it was able to get off the ground.
- That very afternoon, Israeli tanks moved in, and took over, the entire Sinai Peninsula.
- On June 7th, Israeli forces took over the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the first time in 1900 years that Jews had possession of Jerusalem.
- On June 10th, Israeli forces took control of the Golan Heights in the north.
Within six days, Israel had expanded its territory and had secured its borders to the south against Egypt, the east against Jordan, and the north against Lebanon. Nassar had suffered a humiliating defeat. He died a few years later in 1970. Anwar Sedat succeeded him as president of Egypt. After the Six Day War, Arafat’s PLO gained in strength among the Palestinians, because it had become clear to them that the surrounding Arab countries were not going help them.
Six years later, in 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in an attempt to regain the land that was lost in the Six Day War. That war lasted for only 19 days. Israel was able to repel Egyptian and Syrian forces, but it did suffer significant losses. The Yom Kippur War (along with the PLO’s killing of the Israeli Olympic team during the 1972 Olympics) opened the door for peace talks between Israel and Egypt. Some king of peace had to be reached. It was at this point that the United States started taking an active role in peace talks, first during the Nixon administration, and later in the Carter administration.
Amazingly, by the end of the 1970s, it seemed that peace between Israel and its neighbors was at hand. Anwar Sedat of Egypt and Menachim Begin of Israel met with Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1979 and signed a historic peace treaty: Egypt formally recognized Israel as a state, and Israel gave back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Two years later, though, Muslim extremists assassinated Sedat—by trying to make peace with Israel, he was viewed as a traitor. Hosni Mubarak succeeded Sedat and ruled Egypt for the next 30 years, honoring the peace treaty with Israel, allying himself with the United States, and cracking down hard on Muslim militants.
Three Things to Take Away at This Point
In the next two posts, I will further highlight the United States’ involvement in not only the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but also in the wider region of the Middle East to the present day. But at this point, three things need to be established:
- The Jewish-Arab conflict was sparked and was raging long before the United States got involved. It was the result of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs’ resentment of being ruled by Britain and of Britain’s wishy-washiness concerning the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
- What prompted more direct involvement on the part of the United States was the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. The United States got more involved as a mediator between Jews and Arabs in an attempt to negotiate a peace.
- The Palestinian people have been caught in no-man’s land since 1948. They voluntarily left their homes, believing that the surrounding Arab countries would defeat Israel in 1948. But when Israel won the war, the new Jewish immigrants who were expelled from the surrounding Arab countries were allowed to settle in the land that the Palestinians had left. The Palestinians became refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, without citizenship to any country. Israel obviously did not want them—they had been the enemy. Yet the surrounding Arab countries—the very ones who had encouraged the Palestinians to temporarily leave their homes—refused to grant them citizenship into their own countries. That is what lies at the root of the Israel-Palestinian crisis.
There is one more thing worth noting, particularly for American Evangelicals. The establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 was the impetus for many “End-Times” prognosticators in America to start pushing an entire “End Times” scenario that has taken hold of a significant segment of Evangelicalism for the past 60 years. From Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, to the Thief in the Night film series of the 1970s, and up to The Left Behind Series franchise of the past 20 years, Evangelicals have been convinced that the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 heralded the beginning of the End Times. And that whole mindset has had a significant impact on the Evangelical impact on American politics.
But more on that in another post. For now, we need to make sure we get a clear understanding of a few more things involving the United States and the current Middle East. In the next post, we will begin where we left off in this one. I have to warn you though, things are going to get really messy: the PLO, the Iran Hostage Crisis, Saddam Hussein, the Iran-Iraq War, Soviets in Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Al-Qaeda…like I said, really messy.
Very good post, Joel, and I believe quite accurate and balanced. I hope you dont mind if I add a few items, since this topic is one that I am fairly knowledgeable about.
1. The Jewish Hagannah, which was the major Jewish force for a free state, fought on the side of Britain during the war, and they formed the “Palestinian Brigade” since of course, as you said, the whole region was called Palestine. After the war, the veterans formed the nucleus of the Hagannah, which later became the Israeli army. There was also a brief civil war between Hagannah and Irgun, and many Jews were also opposed to the tactics of the Irgun, and Stern gang.
2. After the war, the British foreign office, in order to curry favor with the oil rich Arab states, imposed a blockade refusing to allow European Jewish refugees to enter Palestine. It was this and other anti Jewish policies of the British foreign office that caused the Jewish revolt against Britain. In fact later on, details emerged about British decisions to not bomb the extermination camps in Germany and Poland, to avoid what they saw as a post war “Jewish problem” in the Middle East.
3. The great powers have an interesting history here. Right after the war, the Soviet Union, (and world wide communists) were pro Israel. That changed when Nasser took over Egypt, and changed even more after the 6 day war. In the United States, early support for Israel among liberals was overturned by radical groups like SDS in the late 1960s, who began a long lasting policy of equating Israel with South Africa and other racist regimes. It is my contention (based on personal knowledge) that the shift in the left from pro to anti Israel was the direct result of the Soviet change in policy to ally with rising nationalist anti Western movements in the third world.
4. An interesting tidbit is that one of the earliest supporters of the Israeli independence movement was the Irish separatist group Sinn Fein, based on Britain as the common enemy. Of course later, in the 1960s, all the European terrorist groups, like Bader Meinhof, and Red Brigades were solidly pro PLO.
5. The nation of Israel has benefited from American financial and military aid for decades, starting with the 1956 Suez war, (which Britain also joined in). And of course, in addition to US government support, American Jews have been major financial contributors to Israeli institutions.
Thanks for the added information. In these posts I really am just trying to skim the surface of what is undoubtedly an extremely complicated issue, if for no other reason than to alert people that it really is a complicated issue, and that therefore they need to be wary of over-simplistic explanations. In my next post I’m going to explain a bit more about not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1980 to today, but also put it within the larger context of the US involvement in places like Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I think your #3 is huge: I think most of the reasons for the United States’ choices in the Middle East go back to the bigger Cold War we were fighting against the USSR ever since the end of WWII. All these states in the Middle East (as well as various countries in the Far East) really were just pawns and chess pieces in the game the US was playing against the USSR.
Exactly.
I’ll be interested to read your analysis of the next couple of posts.