Israel at 60

MAY 14 marked the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Israel, and as should be expected on a diamond jubilee, the occasion was marked by celebrations across the country. However, whereas Israelis marked the day with huge fireworks, concerts and aerial displays, their neighbours, the Palestinians, mourned al-Nakba or "the Catastrophe" with solemn marches on the West Bank symbolising the dream of their people to return to their villages that are now effectively part of the state of Israel. Therein lies the irony and the tragedy of the independence anniversary - a day of celebration for one and a day of mourning for the other.

On May 14, 1948, three years after the end of World War II and the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, Israel declared itself an independent state. For the Jews of the 20th century, the historic region of Palestine, the birthplace of Judaism and the site of the ancient Hebrew Kingdom of Israel, offered the most appropriate location for a predominantly Jewish state. In view of their recent and past history, did the Jews not deserve to have a home and state of their own? No one could dispute this although it raised further questions.

How could a Jewish state be implanted in what had become a predominantly Arab and Islamic territory? Was it right to displace the Palestinians who now occupied the territory for the benefit of the Jews? Did the Palestinians not have as much historic right to the land as the Jews? Surely, the Palestinians also did deserve a home and a state of their own. Unravelling these contradictory questions has been at the heart of the Middle East crisis since the state of Israel came into being in 1948.

Palestine became a British mandate territory after World War I in 1918. Throughout the period, the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria, with a mandate to "match a people without a land with a land without a people," encouraged Jewish immigration to Palestine. Thus began a process that led to continuous clashes between Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism.

Following the Holocaust, the consensus favoured creating an independent Jewish state in Palestine, an idea that was anathema to Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. While the Jews accepted the resolution, the Arabs rejected it. On May 14, 1948, the British mandate was terminated and at midnight, Israel declared itself independent. The new state came under immediate attack from the Palestinian population and from the surrounding Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

The state of Israel has fought several wars with its neighbours since then. The Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 created a huge population of Palestinian refugees who fled Israel to camps established by the United Nations in neighbouring Arab countries. Subsequent wars, particularly the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War (or the Ramadan War as the Arabs call it) of 1973, increased the quantum of Palestinian refugees and worsened their situation. In spite of its losses, Israel was triumphant in all the wars, using the opportunity to seize huge expanse of territory, including the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights region of Syria, and all of Jerusalem.

The Middle East crisis has endured to this day. Although Israel has made tremendous advances in the last 60 years, especially in economic development, agriculture, and technological advancement worth celebrating, it is clear that its people will not know much peace until the Middle East crisis is resolved. The Camp David Accords facilitated by United States' President Jimmy Carter in 1979 established peace between Israel and Egypt, but left unresolved the larger issue of establishing a homeland for the Palestinians. There was also the issue of territories, which Israel had seized from its other neighbours.

Efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue began with the Oslo Accords of 1993. This eventually led to the granting of autonomy to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, this has fallen short of the two-state solution that was anticipated by the United Nations back in 1947. Six decades of war, pain and suffering could have been averted if Resolution 181 had been implemented as passed by the United Nations.

As Israel celebrates 60 years of independence and the Palestinians mourn the al-Nakba, it is clear that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians can achieve their extreme positions. Negotiations require compromise. Third parties that intervene to make peace should also not be seen to be unnecessarily partisan. On this score, the United States, which can and has undoubtedly played a major role in the peace process, needs to do more to win the confidence of all the parties to the conflict. It is only then that its efforts to resolve the crisis can bear fruit. We urge all the parties and the international community to work out a compromise based on the two-state solution originally envisaged by the United Nations.