HISTORY OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Answer QUESTION 1 and ONE other. Each question represents 50% of the total marks. There
is a limit of 1,500 words (in total) for each question.

1. Comment on TWO of the following:

a) The age-long persecution of the Jews grows more virulent from year to year.
Pogroms and mass discrimination have become habitual phenomena in Jewish life;
the human dignity of the Jew is being trampled upon everywhere. The fundamental
general cause of Jewish oppression is that of all human oppression; it springs from
the unequal distribution of political and economic privileges inherent in the class
character of modern society. The specific immediate cause is to be found in the fact
that the Jews, as a people, are socially and politically powerless. The Jews have
persisted in history only because they performed a social-economic function
necessary to other people. Syrkin, ‘Socialist Zionist Manifesto’, Jewish Frontier
(1901),

b) 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.’ I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the
knowledge of the Zionist Federation. Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917)

c) It is in the darkest hour of Jewish history that the British Government proposes to
deprive the Jews of their last hope and to close the road back to their Homeland. It
is a cruel blow, doubly cruel because it comes from the government of a great
nation which has extended a helping hand to the Jews, and whose position must
rest on foundations of moral authority and international good faith. This blow will
not subdue the Jewish people. The historic bond between the people and the land
of Israel cannot be broken. The Jews will never accept the closing to them of the
gates of Palestine nor let their national home be converted into a ghetto. The
Jewish pioneers who, during the past three generations, have shown their strength
in the upbuilding of a derelict country, will from now on display the same strength in
defending Jewish immigration, the Jewish home, and Jewish freedom. The Zionist
reaction to the White Paper: Statement by the Jewish Agency for Palestine
(1939)

d) 3. Occupation and control of all isolated Arab neighbourhoods located between our
municipal centre and the Arab municipal centre, especially those neighbourhoods
which control the city's exit and entry roads. These neighbourhoods will be
controlled according to the guidelines set for searching villages. In case of
resistance, the population will be expelled to the area of the Arab municipal centre.
4. Encirclement of the central Arab municipal area and its isolation from external
transportation routes, as well as the termination of its vital services (water,
electricity, fuel, etc.), as far as possible. Plan Dalet (10 March 1948)
e) We. The Palestinian Arab people, dictate and declare this Palestinian National
Covenant and vow to realize it. Article 1. Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by
strong national ties to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the
large Arab homeland. Article 2. Palestine with its boundaries at the time of the
British Mandate is a regional indivisible unit. Article 3. The Palestinian Arab people
has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab
Nation. It shares the sufferings and aspirations of the Arab Nation and its struggle
for freedom, sovereignty, progress, and unity. Article 4. The people of Palestine
determine destiny when it completes the liberation of its homeland in accordance
with its own wishes and free will and choice. Article 5. The Palestinian personality
is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred
from fathers to sons. Palestine Liberation Organization: The Original Palestine
Charter (1964).

f) The forces of imperialism imagine that Gamal Abdel Nasser is their enemy. I want
it to be clear to them that their enemy is the entire Arab nation, not just Gamal
Abdel Nasser. The forces hostile to the Arab national movement try to portray this
movement as an empire of Abdel Nasser. This is not true, because the aspiration
for Arab unity began before Abdel Nasser and will remain after Abdel Nasser. I
always used to tell you that the nation remains, and that the individual – whatever
his role and however great his contribution to the causes of his homeland – is only
a tool of the popular will, and not its creator. Gamal Abdel Nasser: Resignation
Broadcast, 9 June 1967

g) The world is in need of tremendous efforts if its aspirations for peace, freedom
justice, equality and development are to be realized if its struggle is to be victorious
over colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism in all its forms, including
Zionism. Only by such efforts can actual form be given to the aspirations of all
peoples, including the aspirations of peoples whose States oppose such efforts. It
is this road that leads to the fulfilment of those principles emphasized by the United
Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Where the status
quo simply to be maintained, however, the world would instead be exposed to
prolonged armed conflict, in addition to economic. human and natural calamity.
Despite abiding world crises, despite even the gloomy powers of backwardness
and disastrous wrong, we live in a time of glorious change. An old-world order is
crumbling before our eyes, as imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and
racism, the chief form of which is Zionism, ineluctably perish. Speech by Yasser
Arafat to the UN General Assembly in New York, 13 November 1974.

2. What are the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

3. How did British policies contribute to the development of the conflict between
Arabs and Jews in Mandatory Palestine?

4. How did Palestinians understand and frame al-Nakba?

5. Assess the competing claims of different historiographical approaches on the

origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948.

6. To what extent did the emergence of the PLO in 1964 change the dynamics of the
 Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

7. In what way did the Six-Day War and occupation of Palestinian territories change
Zionism and the Israeli State?

8. What were the causes of the collapse of the negotiation between Israel and the
PLO in 2000?

9. To what extent has religion radicalised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

END OF PAPER