The origins for the taking of 251 hostages on 7.10.23; 108 not released today, 27.8.24

MILITARY MEANS WILL NOT RESOLVE THE PROBLEM, ONLY NEGOTIATIONS AND PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE

Below, from Jeremy Bowen's 'The Making of the Modern Middle East - a personal history'.  Published 2022

Page 54 - last paragraph:

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat on how Israel/USA/UK are convinced that the Palestinians will never give up terrorism even if Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi were involved on the Palestinian side in peace negotiations with the Israelis and Americans.

Page 55

The problem is "the collision between the rights of Palestinians and the success and legitimacy of Zionism, the movement founded in Europe to create a homeland for the Jews in Palestine."  And not in Argentina, as Theodor Herzl suggested in his 1896 book 'The Jewish State' or Uganda that was suggested by the British government (p 56).  "For a while Herzl favoured the barren scrub of the Sinai Desert."

Herzl wrote an essay called, 'What made me a Zionist was the Dreyfus trial'.  A state for the Jews was a necessity for the founder of Zionism.

Page 56

"Zionism's challenge was always that Palestine was not empty."  Hence, the Rabbis reporting back to Theodor Herzl, 'The bride is beautiful but she is already taken'

"Palestine had well-established Jewish communities ... part of the Ottoman Empire's religious mosaic."  At the beginning of the 20th century Palestine was overwhelmingly Arab.  But Jerusalem had a "Jewish plurality".  But what does that mean?  A much higher proportion of Jews in Jerusalem, I believe.  Or, even a majority were Jews?  The Jews in Jerusalem 125 years ago were more religious than those who followed, it seems.

Page 57

"Unsurprisingly, a people whose own presence on the land went back millennia saw Zionism imposing an alien creed on their land, but the Jews argued that their claim was older and had greater moral force."

The Jews who came from Europe had wealth to buy land from often absentee Arab landlords.  It was worked by Palestinians who lived off the land and depended on it for their very existence.  This caused "competition and clashes about possession and control", wrote Bowen.

The new incomers were seen to displace and even forcibly remove the indigenous Arab farmers.

Theodor Herzl wrote in 1895:

"We shall try to spirit the penniless populations across the border by procuring employment for them in the transit countries, while denying them employment in their own country."

Referenced by Bowen in his book on p 340, quoting Tom Segev in his book, 'A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion'.

"For the Zionists, a Jewish majority was a necessity in their future independent state, and it was clear from early on that the Arabs were not going to agree."

"Although the conflict has many other layers, at its heart is a long and violent saga between two peoples competing for one piece of land." (my emphasis)  Competing and intermittent warring since the conquest of Canaan?  ("began somewhere about 1240 BCE", Lion Handbook to the Bible, p 209, 2nd edition 1983)

All quotes are Jeremy Bowen's from 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', on the pages stated.