I often think history is irrelevant to the debate, but Icy reminded me in the other thread that people may still consider it relevant. So, instead of talking about the origins of Hamas, I'm going to talk about the origins of Israel and Palestine as nations themselves--going as far back as the Ottoman Empire in the early 1800s. I will put a TL;DR at bottom.

To start there, then, the Ottoman Empire was infamous for being somewhat "ramshackle" in its national make-up, and the oppressive policies it took towards its various demographics. This eventually culminated in the Arab Revolt of 1916, wherein the fighters envisioned a single Arab State from Syria to Yemen. Transjordan (the Kingdom of Jordan, since 1948) saw most of the fighting, and the Arabs were aided by the British military.

Following the end of World War One, and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the British established their own government in the regions of Palestine and Transjordan which was effective from 1920 to 1948 and was known as Mandatory Palestine. The significance of a Jewish presence within the region was marked a few years prior with the 1917 Balfour Declaration which was written by the then Foreign Secretary. It stated:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Palestinians, oppressed under the rule of the Turks, had never been properly recognised as a nation until this point, and they were also afforded a delegation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. This delegation, however, made clear their worries about increasing Jewish immigration, as they thought it'd threaten any Palestinian efforts to control the land. They phrased it as a zero-sum game, and quite starkly said: "We will push the Zionists into the sea, or they will push us into the desert." This concern regarding the incompatibility of the Jewish and Arabian populations was also reflected by Ben-Gurion, the de facto Jewish leader at the time. However, this wasn't just a secular, nationalistic concern; Aref al-Dajani, a prominent Arab statesman at the time and former Mayor of Jerusalem stated that it was "impossible to live with the jews" because wherever they are they "suck the blood of everybody" and Dajani would go on to warn that the country would become "a river of blood" if the League of Nations didn't heed the Arabs' warnings.

He was right. Early in April 1920, Jerusalem played host to the Nebi Musa riots. Slogans inciting and during the riots referenced Jewish immigration and previous conflict with Jewish villages around Northern Palestine. The British decision to remove soldiers from the city and effectively allow the riots to get out of hand caused relations between the Arabs, Jews and the Government to break-down.

The problem got worse in 1922, when British rule was formally recognised by the League of Nations. This would've been fine, were it not for the Transjordan Memorandum added in September, which excluded the entire Transjordan region from Jewish settlement and gave it a separate government. The Jews and the Palestinians now had much less space with which to conduct their activities. From 1921 onwards, also, Haj Amin al-Husseini was in the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and while in his position he promoted Islam as well as Arab Nationalism against the Jews and the British--feelings of animosity and hostility on the side of the Arabs eventually led to the 1929 Palestine Riots, in which 133 Jews were killed by Arabs, with a similar number of Arabs dying at the hands of the British police.

The violence finally spilled over into a relatively large-scale revolt beginning in 1936 against both British colonial rule and Jewish immigration. The first stage of the revolt was largely conducted via strikes organised by the elitist Arab Higher Committee (led by al-Husseini), and it wasn't until a more populist insurgency broke out in late 1937 that people started dying. In 1936, prior to the outburst of violence, the Peel Commission was established by the British government and reached the conclusion that the Mandate was unworkable--this was the first call for partition. The Commission proposed a plan which would give the Jews around 20pc of the country--constituted by a small enclave in Northern Palestine. 

The Arab Higher Committee, however, rejected the plan outright, on the basis that granting any land to the Jews would be unacceptable to the Arabs. The Jews, on the other hand, were persuaded to accept the proposal by Chaim Weizmann and Ben-Gurion as a jumping-off point for further negotiations. The Mufti pressed on with the armed rebellion, and eventually evaded an arrest warrant and found himself being sheltered in Nazi Germany, where he helped the Waffen SS recruit Bosnian Muslims.

In 1947, following World War Two, Britain signaled it's desire to forego to give up the Mandate and the U.N. drew up a resolution which would've divided Palestine roughly in half, giving 56pc to the Jews. The AHC rejected it and then declared a general strike which resulted in an Arab mob attacking Jewish passers-by in Jerusalem with clubs and knives.

With the failure of the Partition, a civil war broke out between the Jewish communities and the AHC's Army of the Holy War, as well as the Arab League's volunteer army: the Arab Liberation Army. As the civil war continued, on the 14 May 1948 the British Mandate expired, and on the following day the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia attacked Israel. After a year of fighting, however, the Israelis won and had taken 60pc of the territory which would've been Palestinian under the rejected partition. Jordan annexed the West Bank; Egypt annexed the Gaza Strip.

Now, the Palestinians had nothing. The Egyptians suppressed the Palestinians in Gaza. After the Six-day War in 1967 which Israel won against Egypt, they pursued the secular PLO (designated as a terrorist organisation at the time), Israel lifted the restrictions against Islamic activism and, with the backing of the Israeli Civil Administration, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza doubled the amount of mosques, established nurseries and took orphans under their protection.

I spoke about Hamas over the course of the 80s and 90s in the other thread, and about how their suicide bombing campaigns violated the Oslo Accords--yet Yasser Arafat was reluctant to stop them--so I'm going to fast-forward to 2005. The Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, decided it was best for Israel to pull out of Gaza (this was also the year when Hamas won a plurality, and would begin fighting Fatah for control of the security apparatus). Sharon pulled Israeli forces back across the border, forcibly evicted 9,000 Israelis from where they were currently living and generously left around 3,000 greenhouses formerly owned by Jews to help assist with economic growth. . . The Palestinians promptly destroyed the greenhouses.



Fin.

Question: Is this Israel/Palestine debate the new Economics 101?

serious is very cyclical. This used to be most of the topics before econ 101.

I don't pay that much attention to Israeli/Palestinian history, but I knew beforehand that Israel kicked ass in the Six Day War. That's some badass shit.

lmao, this is the only thing I know about Israel.