El Conflicto Palestino

Introduction

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a struggle taking place in the land of Palestine for regional control. On the one hand there is the state of Israel, established in 1948 on lands confiscated from the local population by use of force and specially designed legal devices, on the other there are the Palestinian Arabs who want their own sovereign state in Palestine and the right toreclaim property that was stolen from them. This essay will primarily deal with the question of legitimacy: Are both side's claims legitimate? Which claims deserve to be addressed and how?



Zionism is a nationalist political ideology which aimed to establish a Jewish homeland in the land of Palestine. Its motivation to do so was the Jewish Problem. During the 18th century Zionists, as did theirgentile counterparts, argued that the Jews constituted a separate race from that of Christian Europeans[1]. As such they could adopt some cultural aspects of their European host nations but they could never become integrated. This feeling of Jewish alienation derived largely from the continuous persecution Jews had suffered throughout Europe for hundreds of years. The solution to this was to createa Jewish nation. In 1948 the state of Israel was founded in Palestine and the first stage of the Zionist program succeeded. Opposing the Zionists and the state of Israel are the Palestinians. Prior to and during the reign of the Ottoman Empire there was no Palestinian state yet the region and its people have a distinct cultural identity. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire Palestinians hoped togain statehood. This was denied them by the expulsion of approximately 750,000[2] from their land in the late 1940's.

While the official line is that a two state solution is acceptable and desirable Israel has systematically imposed unacceptable conditions on the Palestinians as the basis for all negotiations, such as the denial of the right of return for the 1948 conflict's refugees[3], therefusal to discuss the status of Jerusalem[4], or more recently, the unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of the democratically elected Hamas government that controls the Gaza strip. These unacceptable conditions tell us that in reality Israel is not interested in achieving a two state solution and the xenophobic character of the Zionist movement implies that complete Jewish ethnic supremacy inPalestine is the true objective[5]. Israel has tried to advance this agenda by following a policy of facts on the ground in the form of continuous construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Zionists base their claim to Palestine on two things, the first being biblical reference and entitlement. This presents an obvious problem in today's global context. Given that the world hostsdozens of different religions all of which have differing interpretations of how human beings should conduct their affairs it is unacceptable that any one religion should have primacy over the others in determining how the world should function. As long as religion remains a matter of faith, which by definition it shall forever, the only reasonable way to conduct international affairs is in asecular-atheist framework. Principles of individual freedom of belief transcend the designations of any one religion as they are presumed to be universal, thus justifying one's claim to a specific piece of land through biblical reference, which is local to one population group, is a logical fallacy. The second basis for Israeli claims is tangible, it is the reality of the facts on the ground in theform of extensive Israeli settlement of the land of Palestine[6]. As it stands this is a difficult matter to address, however current Israeli policy is aggravating the situation by continuing to expand the number of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. The rationale for this is that the settlements will eventually form a spiderweb that can act as a security buffer zone that protects...