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On Saturday morning, the 7th of October 2023, Hamas militants carried out a surprise attack of an unprecedented scale on Israel. The event caused many casualties alongside generating a shockwave through the international community. This episode of gruesomeness sheds new light on the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict and insists on going back to the roots from which the conflict took shape over the course of the 20th and 21st century.
Photo by 2427999 via Pixabay
At 7am on the 7th of October, as claimed by Hamas, about 5,000 rockets were launched from the blockaded enclave of Gaza. Moreover, the Hamas militants crossed the Israeli border, which resulted in killings and citizens being taken captive. In response to the attacks, Israel declared a state of war, claiming the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would defend its civilians.
Keeping word, the gruesome killings, including the attack on the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City as well as the numerous offensives on health care services, on Israel’s side have targeted Gaza, causing a vast flow of refuge and depriving 2,2 million people of essential food, electricity, water and medicine. Simultaneously, Hamas has proceeded with its offensives. It is needless to say that converting their military actions into a cease-fire seems far out of reach for both parties to the conflict.
More recently, on the 20th of October, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) of the United Nations, stressed in a press release that the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank is rapidly deteriorating as well as that the unlawful use of lethal force has been on the up in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Moreover, the paramount importance of respecting international human rights law was underlined.
Returning to the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems crucial in order to grasp the nature of the events of the 7th of October. Although ancient religious backgrounds and geographical positioning are of crucial importance in the ongoing dispute, the battle that is being fought today is rooted in the 20th century in particular.
In 1922, Palestine, a then former Ottoman territory, was placed under UK administration by the League of Nations. Whilst other former Ottoman territories were liberated and gained full independence, Palestine did not. Instead, the British Mandate for Palestine, which the Palestinian Arabs highly opposed, aimed at and foresaw the establishment of two independent states on the Palestinian territory, respectively an Arab and a Jewish one. The latter was facilitated by the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Over the course of the 1920s up until the late 1940s, there was significant Jewish immigration to the area. Yet, the scream for independence from the Arab community became increasingly louder and eventually resulted in terrorism on both sides, primarily based on territorial grounds.
As the UK handed down the Palestine question to the UN, the latter proposed in 1947 to terminate the Mandate and proceeded with constituting plans to partition Palestine into two independent entities by 1948, Jerusalem being internationalized by Resolution 181(II).
Indeed, 1948 may be regarded as a defining moment for the region as a whole. The Arab-Israeli War broke out when five Arab nations (i.e. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) invaded territory in the former Palestinian mandate as an immediate result of Israel announcing its independence on the 15th of May 1948. However, Israeli forces were able to gain the offensive. Additionally, since the launching of the Six-Day War, Israel has been occupying both the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem, captured from Jordan and Syria’s Golan Heights.
However, the formulation of the Security Council Resolution 242, emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for just and lasting peace and security, could not prevent the 1973 Yom Kippur War and 1982 Lebanon War from crystallizing. In the meantime, the United Nations General Assembly established the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and conferred on the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) the status of ‘observer’ in the Assembly 1974.
The Organization itself was entrenched in 1964 as an initiative by Gamal Abd-el Nasser, the then-ruling president of Egypt. The 1973 War primarily affected the state of Israel and the PLO opted since then for a dialogue rather than seeking refuge in violence in order to settle the dispute.
At the end of the 1980s, a new Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, shrouded in history as the First Intifada, i.e. a spontaneous popular uprising in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, began in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is relevant to mention that children played an important role in contributing during this Intifada. They were often referred to as ‘children of the stones’, as these children were often portrayed in the media carrying stones whilst facing their enemy. This event was accompanied by the uprising of the militant group Hamas, which later became a political movement. The militant group of Hamas, now led by Mohammed Deif, was not a member of the PLO. It became a competitor of Fatah, a political movement entrenched in the PLO.
The 1991 Peace Conference in Madrid was convened with the aim of achieving peaceful settlement through direct negotiations between on the one hand Israel and the Arab States, and on the other hand Israel and the Palestinians. These multilateral track negotiations succeeded in convincing both parties to the conflict to recognize one another as well as it brought about subsequent implementation agreements in the form of the Oslo Accord. Important to note, however, is that Hamas has never recognized Israel as such.
Nonetheless, the 1993 Oslo Accord deferred certain issues to a permanent status of negotiations, which were held in Camp David (2000) and Taba (2001). These proved inconclusive as the Second Intifada, known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, embarked and Israel consequently started with the construction of a West Bank separation wall.
The Quartet (US, EU, Russia and the UN) released a Road Map to a two-state solution in 2003 in an attempt to cool down the reheated conflict, without favourable results in the long run. Up until this date, the international community has kept on initiating several dispute settlement episodes, even requesting the International Court of Justice in 2020 to render an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the prolonged Israeli occupation that has proceeded since 1967.
At last, the surprise attack on the 7th of October by Hamas militants in Gaza was, as author Dahlia Scheindlin describes, a shock, but not a surprise as peace-making has often failed in the region. She continues by saying that ‘it is not just a crisis for grass-roots peace activists, (but that) it is a grand failure on a global stage’.
It remains, nonetheless, difficult to determine the means by which the conflict can be effectively settled in the future. In the meantime, the death toll in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory keeps rising to disturbing numbers.
References
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McKernan, B. (2023, 13 October). Israel and Hamas at war after surprise attacks from Gaza Strip. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/07/hamas-launches-surprise-attack-on-israel-as-palestinian-gunmen-reported-in-south
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United Nations. (2023, 20 October). Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (20 October 2023) - OHCHR press Release - Question of Palestine. Question of Palestine. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-20-october-2023-ohchr-press-release/
United Nations. (1993, 8 October). Agreement - Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (a.k.a. “Oslo Accord”) - Question of Palestine. (2019, 11 March). Question of Palestine. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180015/
United Nations. (n.d.). Israel-Palestine: Gaza death toll passes 5,000 with no ceasefire in sight. (2023, 24 oktober). UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142687
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