Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published April 10, 2002

Peace, peace? There is no peace!

Even my wife has advised me not to presume sufficient wisdom to write about the Middle East situation, but I must do it anyhow. This conflict involves both politics and religion, neither of which lends itself to an objective analysis. And, to add to our confusion, everything we either see or hear has already been passed through some ethno-political filter before it ever gets to us.

Do I offer answers to the Israeli-Palestine conflict? Surely not. But maybe a cursory view of the history of the region will at least give us an idea of the commitment of the principals involved, and help explain what motivates the combatants to fight to the finish.

Palestine has been an Arab nation for as far back as there is a recorded history. From the Old Testament accounts of the reign of King Solomon in the 9th Century BC, to its being conquered by Alexander the Great in the 3rd Century BC, to the Crusades of the 11th Century AD, to its domination by the Ottoman Turks from 1516 to 1917, Palestine has been a battleground for conquering foreign rulers. Palestinians consider the Israelis to be just the latest in their long list of invaders.

The seeds of its current conflict began as far back as 1882, when approximately 25,000 Jewish settlers began arriving in Palestine, financed largely by French Baron E. de Rothschild. By 1895, there were some 47,000 Jews in the population of half a million Palestinian Muslims. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress met in Switzerland and issued the Basle Program, "calling for a home for the Jewish people in Palestine," and established the World Zionist Organization to pursue that goal.

With the outbreak of World War I, the British promised to free Palestine of Ottoman rule, in return for Arab support against Turkey, which was then an ally of Germany. Following the war, Britain and France then signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement which decreed that Palestine was to be "internationalized," whatever that meant.

British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour then issued the "Balfour Declaration," in which he pledged British support toward the establishment of a Palestinian home for the Jewish people. By that time, the total population of Palestine was 700,000, including 574,000 Muslims, 74,000 Christians, and 56,000 Jews.

In 1922 the League of Nations issued a "Mandate on Palestine," which also favored the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations issued Resolution No. 181, under which Palestine was divided, and the Palestinian Arabs, who previously owned 92 percent of the land, were left with only 47 percent, the remainder being set aside for the establishment of a Jewish nation.

In May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed, British forces were withdrawn, and Arab armies moved in to defend the native Palestinians. In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed with the sole purpose of reclaiming the Palestinian lands from the Jews, and in 1974 Yasser Arafat was named its chairman.

Since that time the Jews and the Arabs have been engaged in wars, terrorist attacks, peace talks, more terrorist attacks, armed retaliations, etc., etc. There was the Madrid Conference, the Jericho Agreement, the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Agreement and so forth. Numerous Israeli prime ministers, British prime ministers, and U.S. presidents, have come and gone; with every one of them - from Harry Truman to Margaret Thatcher to JFK to Tony Blair to George Bush - calling for peace. But there is no peace.

Arafat remains. And Arafat remains committed to his position that Israel must be removed from what he considers to be the homeland of his people.

So here we have the Jewish people worldwide, supported by the government of the United States of America, Britain and most western nations, resolute in their position that the lands that were formerly a part of Palestine shall remain the homeland of the Jewish nation ... forever. And PLO leader Arafat - now supported by the remaining Palestinians, all the Arab nations and Muslims worldwide - are just as resolute that there will be no peace, no settlement, no appeasement, until Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants are no longer occupying Palestinian soil.

So now we've gone full circle, from the Jews evicting the Palestinians in order to establish their homeland, to the Palestinians seeking to evict the Jews in order to reclaim what they feel is their homeland. Which claim is legitimate and which isn't? I don't know. Maybe you can decide. But one thing is certain: there will be no peace until one side or the other ceases to exist.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.