Both the intifada that started in December 1987 and the Arab revolt of 1936 to 1939 unexpectedly jolted the political status quo. But unlike its precursor, the intifada unified a physically dispersed and ideologically diverse Palestinian community.
In early 1988, for the second time within eight years, the Reagan Administration reacted to events in the Middle East by proposing that the stalled Arab-Israel negotiating process be reactivated, an effort known as the Shultz Initiative.
Hamas absolutely opposes Israel’s right to exist, with its leadership repeatedly declaring that all of Palestine belongs to Moslems.
Conclusions suggest that Israel has no direct responsibility for the massacre of
Palestinians in refugee camps in Beirut; Defense Minister Sharon resigns for ignoring the danger of potential
bloodshed.
In taking personal responsibility for her government’s mistakes of judgment that allowed Syrian and Egyptian armies to cause massive Israeli deaths, destruction, injuries and prisoners taken hostage in the October 1973 war, Prime Minister Golda…
Henry Kissinger and and Hafez al-Assad meet in Damascus in December 1973 (credit: Agence France-Presse stringer, released by Getty in January 1974). By Ken Stein Sandwiched between the end of the 1973 October Middle East…
Ken Stein explains in detail how Egyptian and Israeli leaders coached their generals into reaching an understanding on how their troops would be disengaged after the war. On that day, a German-born Egyptian career foreign service officer, Omar Sirry was told to pack his toothbrush and go to meet several Israelis along with other Egyptians at the 101 Kilometer marker for talks.
Egyptian President Sadat colluded with Syrian President Assad to attack Israel on October 6, 1973. Sadat’s objective was not to seek Israel’s destruction but to gain a limited success by crossing the canal. He also sought to engage American diplomacy to generate talks with Israel that would see Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian land Israel secured in the June 1967 War. Sadat took a large gamble by attacking Israel yet he unfolded a negotiating process with Israel that lasted through 1979. He achieved his overarching long-term priority of having Egyptian Sinai returned to Egyptian sovereignty.
By Yehoshua Porath, 1973 Historian Yehoshua Porath wrote “Social Aspects of the Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement” as a chapter for the book Society and Political Structure in the Arab World, Menachem Milson…
Musa Alami, “The Lesson of Palestine,” Middle East Journal, Volume 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405 Reprinted with permission of the Middle East Institute, October 2021 In this 1949 article published in Middle East…
Otherwise known as Israel’s War of Independence, or, “the nakbah” or disaster to the Arab world because a Jewish state was established, the war was fought between the newly established Jewish state of Israel opposed by Palestinian irregulars, and armies from five Arab states. Official beginning of the war is usually given as May 14, 1948, the date Israel declared itself an independent Jewish state, but the war’s first of four phases began in November 1947. Lasting for two years, the war ended with armistice agreements signed in 1949 between Israel and four Arab states.
In “The Arabs and the Approaching War with Israel, 1945-1948,” Yaacov Shimoni reviews in detail the period from the early 1940s to May 1948, examining decisions made by Arab leaders toward Palestine and Zionism. He concludes that disunity among Arab states, jealousies, and disorganization plagued Arab preparations for the expected coming war with the Zionists.
Apart from the Zionist movement and the Jewish community in Palestine, the role of President Truman, however, was the most important factor enabling the establishment of the Jewish state.
In the months before the UN vote to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states in November 1947, the Jewish Agency leadership there had to overcome a series of foreign policy obstacles working against the Jewish state’s establishment.
Irrefutable evidence shows Palestinian Arab collaboration with Zionists during the British Mandate greatly assisted Jewish state building. Cohen further asserts a general absence among Palestinians of a sense of national feeling, with loyalties instead tied to families, villages and other localities. Quite certainly without Palestinian Arab collaboration, Zionists would not have succeeded in building a nucleus for the Jewish state. Arabic newspapers in Palestine and British scrutiny show the constancy of the Arab population’s engagement with the Zionists, and this included Arabs resident inside Palestine.
Steady disintegration of Palestinian Arab society from 1945-1949 is detailed by five Arab and non-Arab historians citing local social cleavages, economic impoverishment, fear, indebtedness, and political dysfunction.
