Restless Holy Land

Since ancient times, Palestine has been a "hot" area of ​​religious and ethnic conflicts. The first inhabitants inhabited it in the third millennium BC. Ibrimi, the Jews, "those who come from beyond (the river)", arrived in Palestine - a millennium later - from the area east of the Euphrates. Other invaders came from the east, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Macedonians, the Romans. Roman Emperor Titus ordered the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in 70 BC. Jews were cruelly persecuted, deported and forced, for the most part, to leave Palestine. However, the largest part of the autochthonous population remained, a veritable mosaic of different ethnic groups and tribes that eventually merged into the people we call Palestinians today. The city of Jerusalem, except for a short period during the Crusades, remained in the hands of Muslims until 1967.

During the long Arab and Ottoman occupation, the two communities - Palestinian and Jewish - lived in discreet harmony. In the second half of the 1896th century, Zionist theoretical writings by various authors, from Yehudah Leib Pinsker to Theodor Herzl, began to circulate in Europe. The latter published the work "The Jewish State" in XNUMX.

MORE ELECTRICITY: At that time, Palestine had half a million inhabitants, of whom 24.000 were Jews, and most of them lived in Jerusalem (within the walls of the old city and some new quarters). They were engaged in the most diverse crafts. They lived very modestly, often depending on the help of their European compatriots, who had no idea about the Jewish state in Palestine. On the other hand, the largest part of the Arab population consisted of poor peasants who worked on the latifundia of rich effendi.

Palestine at that time was quite backward and neglected, but by no means a desolate and uninhabited area, as is sometimes heard. To Europe they exported cereals, oranges and honey from Jaffa, olive oil from Nablus, grapes from Hebron. Industry was also underdeveloped. They produced soap, glass, ceramics, minerals. Biblical cities such as Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem were the destination of numerous pilgrims.

There were several currents within the Zionist movement: the democratic one with socialist characteristics, humanistic and spiritual Zionism, but also the militant and chauvinistic one. Even the choice of Palestine as the future promised countries it was not unanimous: there was also talk about Uganda or Argentina. But historical events accelerated the final outcome. In Tsarist Russia in 1881, a new wave of terrible pogroms began in Ukraine. For the Jews, flight was the only salvation. One group of refugees decided to move to the old biblical homeland, where they had already settled near Jaffa in a colony helped by Baron Rothschild. It was the beginning aliyah, the first Jewish migrations to Palestine. New, increasingly numerous waves of migration soon followed, which was only temporarily halted by the outbreak of the First World War. At that time, 50 Jews lived in about 85.000 settlements (the total population of Palestine was 700.000).

IMMIGRATION I REACTIONS: Although - until then - moderate, the immigration caused a reaction from the Arab population. The Ottoman government tried to limit Jewish immigration through decrees. The Palestinians got carried away with the idea that it could be stopped with weapons and a boycott of settlers. Conflicts and mass protests began. We should not forget the role of the great powers, which divided the Middle East into zones of influence. At the conference in Sanrem in May 1920, the British mandate in Palestine was established. As mutual relations became more and more strained, the Jewish settlers, like their Palestinian neighbors, became politically organized and armed.

The coming of Nazism to power in Germany forced an even greater number of Jews to travel to Palestine (1933 refugees arrived in 30.000, 42.000 the following year, and 62.000 a year later). The Arabs responded with an armed uprising.

The monstrous genocide of the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps led to a mass exodus to Palestine. About half a million unfortunate people arrived on its shores with the hope that they were finally saved. However, new hostility and intolerance awaited them there. The situation became extremely unbearable, so on November 29, 1947, the OUN passed Resolution (181) on the division of Palestine between Palestinians and Jews and the creation of an international zone in Jerusalem. The Arab countries and the Palestinians rejected this offer. However, after the end of the British mandate, Ben Gurion proclaimed the creation of the state of Israel in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948. Since then, peace has not returned to To the world country.

PET WARS: Arab countries and Israel have fought five wars so far. The first erupted on May 15, 1948. Israel then conquered more than 70 percent of the Palestinian territories, Jordan secured the West Bank, and Egypt secured the Gaza Strip. About a million Palestinians fled to Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. At the end of October 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai, but soon withdrew after a cease-fire was established on November 6. War of six on it broke out on May 5, 1967, when Israeli forces occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan and Sinai. The Palestinians who found refuge there after the 1948 war were condemned to a new exodus to Jordan. The fourth war broke out on the great Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur on October 6, 1973, when Egypt and Syria suddenly attacked Israel and in the first phase of the conflict, Egyptian troops managed to regain Sinai. At the beginning of June 1982, Israel carried out the second invasion of Lebanon. Beirut was also bombed, so the PLO Headquarters moved to Tunisia.

Therefore, Palestinians have been living without a homeland for almost half a century, scattered all over the world. They live in Israel, as second-class citizens, in the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and many other countries on all continents. Although many of them have managed to fully integrate into the new environment, most unfortunately live in desperate conditions. This primarily refers to the almost four million refugees who live in refugee camps to this day. Many families have been living there for the third generation. The world was petrified by the news of the terrible massacres in the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camps (March 14, 1978) and Sabra and Shatila (September 16, 1982). All these defeats, unfulfilled promises and loss of trust in Arab governments have left many Palestinians in a state of utter hopelessness. Most of the Palestinian organizations have been responding to all this for decades with terrorist actions, the victims of which are mostly innocent people. When Palestinian self-government was introduced in the Gaza Strip and major cities of the West Bank (1995), great hope opened up for many Palestinians. But it seems that the events of the last ten months have buried the Oslo Agreement (1993), and with it all the hopes it raised.

Palestine u numbers

(December 2000)

The borders of the territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which would include a Palestinian state in the future, have not yet been definitively determined, just as the issue of its capital still remains unresolved.

Area: 5997 km²

Population: 2.896.000

Official language: Arabic

Life expectancy: men 69 years; women 73 years old

Religion: 75 percent Muslim; 17 percent Jews; the rest – Christian minorities.

School system: compulsory schooling from 6-15 years. in addition to 1074 state schools, 147 private and 253 UNWRA schools; two universities in the Gaza Strip and six in the West Bank attended in 1998-99. 60.846 Palestinians, of which 45 percent are women.

WEST BANK (area): 5633 km² (including East Jerusalem)

Population: 1.663 (plus 000 residents in East Jerusalem)

83 percent are Palestinians, nine percent live in refugee camps;

And 166.000 Israeli settlers (plus 176.000 settled in East Jerusalem);

17 percent Jews

Population density: 295,2 inhabitants per km²

Natural increase: 3,14 percent

GAZA (area): 364 km²

Population: 1.022.000 - Palestinians (52 percent live in refugee camps)

6000 – Israeli settlers

Population density: 2807,7 inhabitants per km²

Natural increase: 4,44 percent

Religion: 99 percent Muslim

GDP: $4,2 billion

GNP per capita: Gaza - $1000

West Coast – $2000

Unemployment: 14,4 percent

Transport: there is no railway network. Out of a total of 4500 km of the road network on the West Bank, 2700 km are under asphalt.

(source: "Spiegel")

Israel u numbers

(December 2000)

Area: 22.145 km (including East Jerusalem and the Golan)

Population: 6,1 million (80 percent Jews, 20 percent others.)

Population density: 275,5 per km²

Natural increase: 2,21 percent

Language: the official language is the new Hebrew (Hebrew) and Arabic

Religion: 79 percent Jewish, 15 percent Muslim, 2 percent Christian, 2 percent Druze.

GDP: $94,79 billion

GDP per capita: $17.301

Foreign exchange reserves: $22,43 billion

School system: compulsory schooling from 5-15 years. about 90 percent of students attend public schools; there are also ultra-orthodox educational institutions; six universities

Illiteracy: 2,7 percent men, 7,1 percent women

Unemployment: 8,9 percent

Life expectancy: men 76 years, women 80 years.

Railway network: 530 km

Road network: 15.464 km (56 km of motorway)

(source: "Spiegel")

Palestinian liberation organization (PLO)

A person who is inextricably linked to this organization is Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (his real name is Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa), now seventy-two years old. He was born in Jerusalem in 1929 in a wealthy family. The Arafats moved first to Gaza, and then to Cairo, where he studied and earned a degree in engineering. He participated in the war against Israel (1956) as a volunteer, and in 1959 he founded the National Movement for the Liberation of Palestine (Al-Fatah). At the beginning of 1965, Al-Fatah proclaimed an armed struggle against Israel.

Arab defeat in the war of six on (June 1967), the occupation of Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank and the refugee tragedy, put before the Palestinians the necessity of creating an organization that would be able to protect their rights. At that time, there was already a PLO (founded in Jerusalem in May 1964), headed by Ahmed Shukeiri, a moderate figure favored by all Arab governments in the region. At the end of 1967, Al-Fatah and other important Palestinian resistance groups joined this organization: Habash's FPLP, Havatmeh's FDPLP, Jibril's People's Front and others. In March of the following year, Al-Fatah fighters clashed with Israeli forces and emerged victorious from the clash: it was an opportunity for Arafat to emerge from anonymity. He took the fighting name Abu Amar, and the weekly magazine "Time" dedicated its front page to him. In February 1969, he was elected president of the PLO. Since then, he represents a charismatic leader for the majority of Palestinians. Formally, it became so in November 1973, when it was decided at the Arab summit in Rabat that the PLO would be the sole representative of the Palestinians. This is the moment of Arafat's maximum popularity, the crown of which is his speech at the United Nations. A supporter of the idea of ​​creating a mini-Palestinian state in the territories of Gaza and the West Bank, Arafat recognized the resolutions of the UN in November 1988 and thereby recognized Israel. A Palestinian state was proclaimed in Gaza and the West Bank and a provisional government-in-exile was soon appointed (January 1989). Naturally, this act caused great anger and hatred from extreme Palestinian organizations.

But Arafat also made many mistakes. One of them is siding with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. This mistake cost many Palestinians dearly, on whom revenge fell after the Iraqi defeat and withdrawal from Kuwait.

Yasser Arafat was elected Palestinian president in January 1996.

Palestinian self-government

Ramallah is a city located about 20 km north of Jerusalem, it belongs to the so-called Area A of the West Bank, which is under the Palestinian Authority. The Oslo peace process resulted in the Palestinians' right to self-determination in the large cities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which was supposed to be the first step towards the formation of a Palestinian state. Israeli troops withdrew from Ramallah, as well as from other West Bank cities in December 1995 (Bethlehem, Nablus, Tulkarm, Bet el Psagot, Jenin and Qalqilya), after having left most of Gaza and the city a year earlier Jericho. The Palestinians demand that Israel completely withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). Israel, however, intends to annex ten percent of the West Bank territories where Jewish settlements are located. There is no agreement on the status of East Jerusalem either, because Israel is willing to hand over to the Palestinians only the smaller Arab settlements on the outskirts of the city.

Ramallah is the seat of the Palestinian parliament and most of the bodies of the Palestinian self-government, although for the Palestinians the capital of the future state can only be Jerusalem.

In the middle of August, after six years, Israeli tanks again entered Jenin (a city with about 200.000 inhabitants) and demolished the police station there. It was Israel's response to the massacres by suicide bombers in Haifa and Jerusalem, who allegedly came from this Palestinian city.

Intifada (Arabic - uprising)

This, the second in a row, erupted on September 29, 2000. The first intifada began on December 9, 1987, almost spontaneously (the occasion was an incident in Gaza when an Israeli cargo truck killed four Palestinians). Riots, mass demonstrations and a general strike spread with incredible speed to the entire occupied territory and lasted - with varying intensity - for a full six years, and aimed at the final liberation and independence of Palestine. Images of young Palestinians armed with stones on one side and heavily armed Israeli soldiers on the other have gone around the world. Israel responded with economic sanctions, deportations, but also with the continuation of the settlement construction program in the occupied territory.

The current Al Aqsa intifada (named after the famous mosque in Jerusalem, where the riots started) has been going on for ten months. There are victims on both sides, and at this moment, it is difficult to predict when this bloody violence will stop and give way to negotiations.

Refugees

Palestinians demand the return to Israel of all compatriots and their descendants who fled or were expelled from Palestine during and after the Israeli-Arab war of 1948. According to UNRWA sources, the number of refugees at that time - in 1950 there were 914.000 - has increased many times today (in 2000 there were 3,7 million). Palestinian President Arafat invokes the right of return from UN Resolution 194 of December 1949, which calls for the return of all refugees and compensation for those who do not want to return. Today, a third of the refugees live in 59 camps set up by UNWRA in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and areas under Palestinian self-government (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank). Israel is ready to accept only 70.000 Palestinians.

Jihad

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is considered one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the Middle East. In her eyes, Israel is the main enemy of Muslims, which must be destroyed in jihad (holy war). The organization was founded in 1975 by Palestinian students in Egypt. It is under the leadership of Fati Shakaki, who accepted radicalism and the ideas of the Iranian revolution while studying medicine in Egypt; in the early eighties, the organization expanded into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli secret service Mossad organized his assassination in Malta. The organization was taken over by Ramadan Abdallah Shalah, who studied economics in Great Britain. This organization is behind many bloody assassinations.

Youth Fatah

The latest escalation of the crisis can be largely attributed to 41-year-old Marwan Barghouti. He seems to have more influence on Fatah activists than President Yasser Arafat himself. Barghouti is one of the organizers of the intifada. He worked with Arafat for years, but now he openly opposes his "compromises". In the West Bank, he organized a dense network of supporters of the fight against Israeli settlers. According to Israeli sources, the organization has a large arsenal of weapons (70.000 pieces of various weapons). It is not entirely clear whether the Palestinian authorities are able to control the violence and hatred of the Fatah youth, especially if the Israeli estimates that a third of young Palestinians are personally ready to participate in suicide attacks against Israelis are correct.

Hamas

The founder of the Islamic-fundamentalist Palestinian organization Hamas is Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Its goal is the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state within the borders of Palestine. According to Jasin, Palestine stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

The movement originated in the Gaza Strip, but it also operates in the West Bank and in Israel itself. Israeli authorities initially treated Hamas as a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and indirectly encouraged it. Its militant activity became undeniable after the outbreak of the first intifada at the end of 1987. Two years later, the Israeli authorities banned its activities in the occupied territories. Yasin, today a sixty-five-year-old in poor health and almost blind, spent eight years (1989-1997) in Israeli prisons. During this time, the violence of his followers culminated. Hamas is financed by contributions from members and sympathizers, but also from some Islamic and Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran).

In the occupied territories, they organized an efficient social service, which brought them great sympathy from the population. The victims of every Hamas attack are also many Palestinians who live in the occupied territories and work in Israel, about 160.000 of them. Since the outbreak of the second intifada, Israel has closed the borders and these people cannot go to work and are left without income. Willingly or not, this situation pushes many into the arms of Hamas.

Yassin considers the current intifada to be a "qualitative leap" compared to the first one, because young Palestinians picked up hand grenades instead of stones. He publicly declares himself a friend of Arafat, although many think that the Palestinian president does not need enemies in addition to such friends.

Settlements immigrants

About 190.000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied territories, which represents an almost insurmountable obstacle to achieving a final solution to the conflict. They live fortified in a hostile environment of more than three million Palestinians. Since the intifada has been going on, they have been the constant target of attacks and bloody assassinations, and therefore they move with an armed escort.

The international community condemned Israel's policy of settling the occupied territories, but all governments in the last 33 years - not only right-wing ones, as is often thought - continued with it. During the rule of Yitzhak Rabin (1992-1995), the number of settlements increased significantly, and even Barak's government, despite the proclaimed policy of "territory for peace", did not stop investing in settlements.

Since proclaiming the diaspora's right of return in 1950, Israel has been facing a large influx of residents, particularly intensified by the mass immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union over the past decade.

Water

In addition to the great disagreements that exist today between Israel and the Palestinians, there is also the problem of a precious resource - water. Palestinians demand full disposal of natural water resources in the West Bank. The Israelis use about 450 million cubic meters of water from these sources annually, so the Palestinians only have a third of their own water.