At root of Mideast conflict is injustice to Palestinians
IN MAKING his case that Israel is the "right side" in the continuing Mideast conflict, Mike Miyashiro ("Gathering Place," July 30) asserts that the "one who has made efforts for peace is morally right. The one who proclaims death to the other is morally wrong." He condemns Hamas and Hezbollah, supporting Israel's right to self-defense, though not conceding the same right to the Palestinians and Lebanese.
In the long and heated debate about the Mideast, one question that persists is this: Why do so many Palestinians and their allies continue to fight against such a powerful enemy?
ISRAEL has the best-trained and best-equipped military force in the region, thanks mostly to the U.S. government. It has nuclear weapons and runs an intelligence operation that is legendary for its exploits. It is gaining economic strength on the world stage, especially in high-tech, while 4 million Palestinians remain mired in poverty. So, after 60 years of struggle, why don't the Palestinians take what they can get and live in peace, even on is it's on Israeli terms?
Miyashiro bases his argument on his view of Mideast history. Likewise, the answer to the question of Palestinian persistence also lies in the past. There are many places to start, as far back as the mid-19th century and the birth of Zionism, but a good beginning is right after World War II, when thousands of European Jews who had survived the horrors of the Shoah were trying to migrate to their ancient homeland, then called the British Mandate of Palestine.
GREAT Britain, impoverished by the war and unwilling to cope with the continuing bloodshed in Palestine, withdrew and turned the problem over to the newly created United Nations. The U.N. appointed a commission, which recommended partitioning the territory, creating two states, and on Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly voted 33-13 in favor. The United States, Soviet Union, European and most Asia and Latin America members supported the measure, while every country in the region, Arabs, Turkey, Greece and Iran, opposed it.
Two aspects of the vote provide clues to the answer about Palestinian persistence. The first is that the United States violated its own founding principle that a government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. The Palestinians, who naturally rejected partition of their own country, comprised 67 percent of the population at the time. The second is that the entire region opposed the measure, a clear indication of serious trouble ahead.
THE next year, Secretary of State George C. Marshall advised President Truman against recognizing Israel when its leaders were about to declare statehood. Marshall feared that the United States might be drawn into a war at the very time we were trying to rehabilitate the world economy. But he lost the argument when, shortly after Israel announced itself as a state on May 14, 1948, Truman declared diplomatic recognition for the new nation. (In announcing statehood, Israel literally wiped Palestine off the map, so it's no wonder that some of her enemies use similar phraseology about Israel today.)
At about the same time that Truman was recognizing Israel, the neighboring Arab nations attacked the Israelis from the south, east and north. To the surprise of many experts, the Israelis defeated the Palestinians and their allies, as they have in five major wars since then.
The U.N. eventually secured a cease-fire and sought to mediate a settlement. The Palestinians rejected every proposal on the grounds that the Israelis were an illegitimate occupying military force, a conviction they hold to this day.
IN 1950, the Israeli government passed the "Absentee Property Law," which in effect confiscated land and other property that the fleeing Palestinians had left. In 1980, the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property estimated that Palestinians, individually or through businesses or their former government, had owned up to 70 percent of all land in Palestine in 1947. The Jewish National Fund gave a higher estimate.
The U.N. estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees (those who lost both homes and means of support) was 914,000 in 1950, and that they and their descendants now number 4.9 million.
This brief summary, based mostly on U.N. documents, does not cover the immense complexities of the Mideast conflict but does attempt to explain why the Palestinians and their supporters believe so strongly in their cause. History tells them that other occupied peoples eventually recovered their lands and their self-determination.
Webster Nolan is a retired journalist.