As I write these lines, Israel is amassing troops near the Gaza border, while Western countries are beginning to evacuate their citizens from Israel. It’s approaching midnight where I live. I’m sure many people in our neighborhood are asleep. I wonder how people in Gaza sleep amidst the tremors and explosions caused by the bombings. In various cities in Israel, do the explosions caused by those who manage to surpass the missile defense system’s rockets, fired by Hamas, also prevent people from sleeping? Is a world where there are no bombs, where humans do not destroy each other, where being human is considered the highest value, and where the sanctity of life is more valuable than the sanctity of all religions, the promised heavens of their prophets, and their scriptures, too utopian, childish, naive, or pure of thought?
For thousands of years, a tiny piece of land for which people have fiercely fought, shed blood, and waged wars still bears witness to the killing of one human by another, despite thousands of years passing by. From prehistoric times to the land promised to Moses’ children in Canaan, to the seafaring and trading Greeks from the Roman occupation of polytheistic Romans, the early resistance of Christian Apostles and their disciples, followed by the victories of Christian Rome and Christian Byzantium and their transformation into homelands for their citizens, to the Muslim Arab occupation and Islamization of the region, to the Ottoman conquest of the region, to British rule – a land that constantly changes hands, with shifting demographics and cultures, bloody, and yet considered sacred.
Perhaps the only thing that has not changed in the region is this constant changing of hands, conquests, cultural transformations, the diversity of languages and religions, and the fate of this region, considered sacred by all three major religions. The history of this land, whether we call it Palestine or Israel – Canaan, has always been at the forefront of the world’s religious, cultural, and political centers, from ancient times to modern times, from the Twenty-First Century.
The beginning of modern history, breaking the linear historical line of Rome-Islam and the Ottoman Empire, was the year 1917 when Britain took the region from the Ottomans and gained control. When the Ottoman Empire fragmented, states emerged from its various corners. Thus, the geography where today’s struggle is taking place underwent another change in its demographics. Just as the Romans conquered Judea and scattered the Jews, just as Christianity replaced the established culture in the region it influenced, just as Islam, through the conquests of the Arabs, changed the linguistic and cultural codes of the region through migrations and assimilation, just as the Ottoman provincial system froze existing cultural, religious, and linguistic divisions for five centuries, British rule was pregnant with similar upheavals, transformations, and changes. Thus, until 1917, a rural, undeveloped, moderately populated region with a Muslim Arab majority would be exposed to a significant Jewish immigration.
Jews who were expelled from the region by another empire would begin to return to their ancestral homeland in Canaan. By the 1940s, an average of ten thousand Jews migrated to the region each year. However, in the 1940s, European Jews who had suffered the most terrible genocide the world had ever seen, fleeing from German executioners and their Führer Hitler, would make the region their refuge. Zionism, born in the twentieth century – the idea of Jews coming to Canaan to establish their own state and its adoption as a political goal – would gain a real political platform for the first time after being born as a Jewish utopia.”
Towards the end of the 1940s, Jews who had flocked to the region and become a visible demographic factor began to struggle against the military forces of Britain, which offered them this opportunity. Their numbers reached incredible levels until the end of World War II. With the sale of extensive lands by the Arabs in the region to Jews, the settlement areas of these immigrant Jews expanded greatly. Thus, European Jews, far beyond the Oriental region’s Jewish population, found a home in the region. Most of them did not have a political goal of establishing a state. They were looking for a piece of land to save their lives, and there was no such land in Europe or America.
Those who feared a repeat of the disaster that had befallen them saw the end of the world war as an opportunity to establish their own state. In this context, with the approval of the victorious states and the newly established United Nations, it was decided in 1947 to divide the region between Jews and Arabs. The states and communities that now make up the Arab League did not accept this. Turkey would be the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel’s independence. In this environment, Israel was established in 1948 and became a member of the United Nations. However, as soon as it declared its independence, five Arab states – Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon – declared war on Israel. They entered the land given to Israel from the north, south, and east, occupying the new state squeezed on the Mediterranean coast. This first Arab-Israeli War would actually be a war that would determine the future fate of Israel and Palestine. Israel would win this ten-month struggle, and over a million Jews, who had to flee from Arab countries from 1948 to the 1960s, would immigrate to Israel. Following them, 750,000 Arabs, who had to flee Israel during the same period, would do the same. The demographic development that had already favored the Jews would thus accelerate. Jews were now the clear majority in their own region. The Arabs fled to third countries, and those who remained chose to continue their lives under Israeli rule. A kind of bloody population exchange process would cause further alienation and enmity between the two ethno-religious communities.
Thus, a waiting period was entered that would last until 1967. During this time, Israel consolidated and institutionalized itself. Thanks to the influx of qualified population and human capital, it experienced multifaceted economic, infrastructural, scientific, educational, and military development. In June 1967, a second Arab military operation against this strengthened Israel began. Egypt expelled the United Nations force stationed in the buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula and blocked Israel’s access to the Red Sea. Israel launched a military intervention against the Egyptian forces that blocked the Israeli port area. Egypt, along with Jordan and Syria, attacked Israel. However, something unexpected happened. In just six days, Israel inflicted a heavy defeat on the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies on separate fronts. Israel took East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria, doubling its borders.
In 1973, to avenge this war and reclaim lost territories, this time Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. Initially successful, Israel would win this war as well. The United States took a clear pro-Israel stance for the first time in this war. This position would form the basis of U.S. Middle East policy in the coming years. Israel’s position became even stronger, increasing its deterrence. The role of Egypt, the first Arab state to change its Israel policy, was significant. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel and Jerusalem, Egypt recognized Israel, and in exchange for peace, Israel returned the territory it had captured in the 1967 Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. In 1981, Israel destroyed the nuclear facilities opened by Iraq to produce nuclear technology – and potentially nuclear weapons. Israel now had the most deterrent and powerful armed forces in the region.
The Intifada and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat began a free Palestinian struggle against such a state. In addition to local actions, terrorist attacks against the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympics, numerous plane hijackings and assassinations, local actions, and attacks began to attract more and more attention. The Intifada movement would be increasingly embraced among the Arab/Palestinian population in the region. Israel’s rigid policies, its illegal immigrant settlement policy, its use of asymmetrical force against Palestinians, its cruel and human rights-violating practices, massacres, and other forms of oppression would increase international support for the Palestinian cause and also give rise to a significant movement of doves alongside the hawks in Israel. The strategy of land for peace, such as giving up Sinai territories in exchange for peace to Egypt, thus emerged as a new hope in the region.
In the early 1980s, the Palestinian Liberation Movement intensified its actions. In 1982, there was an assassination attempt on Israel’s ambassador to the UK by the PLO, leading to Israel launching a military operation against the PLO headquarters in Lebanon. During this period, a subgroup affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Egypt founded Hamas in Gaza.
By the 1990s, the world was rapidly changing. The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Gorbachev, was implementing reforms. Within this framework, for the first time in its history, the Soviet government granted permission for Soviet Jewish citizens to immigrate to Israel. Over a million Soviet Jews settled in Israel. In 1993, Yasser Arafat, with great courage, decided to initiate peace negotiations with Israel. When the Israeli government under Yitzhak Rabin decided to start these negotiations, a serious chance for peace emerged. Israel wanted to put an end to the Intifada and the cycle of violence, while the Palestinians aimed to have their own state. Both Israelis and Palestinians were determined that religious differences should not hinder peace. The Oslo Accords were crowned with the Oslo Declaration. Rabin and Arafat, accompanied by U.S. President Bill Clinton, signed the Declaration. Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate authority of Palestine and withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza. The Oslo Accords would bring the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat and Rabin.
For the first time in its 5,000-year history, peace was coming to the region through a local agreement. Although peace supporters were in the majority on both sides, unfortunately, there were also significant numbers of those who feared peace, maximalists, and fanatical forces, both in Israel and Palestine. On November 4, 1995, a radical Jewish Israeli named Yigal Amir treacherously shot Yitzhak Rabin, killing him. Amir stated that he was against the Oslo Accords and claimed that he received the order to kill Rabin directly from God! Just as among the Palestinians, where increasingly influential factions were emerging. Hamas was leading among them.
In 2006, Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, won elections in Gaza. Although the Palestinian Authority did not recognize Hamas as the legitimate government, Hamas established a separate administration in Gaza, disconnected from the West Bank administration. Upon coming to power, Hamas began to eliminate or neutralize those it perceived as its opposition. It consolidated its power through assassinations, attacks, intimidation, threats, and other dirty methods against the opposition. Meanwhile, since 2006, it did not hold elections in Gaza. Unlike the Palestinian Authority, Hamas never accepted the existence of Israel and categorically opposed Israel, just like Shia Iran, and justified its policies with religious arguments. By explicitly waging jihad and regularly launching attacks from Gaza territories on Israeli civilian settlements, Hamas reached a military level where it could launch an average of 1,500 rockets annually, using rocket technology obtained illegally from Iran and other countries. These attacks hindered the chances of doves gaining power in Israel and pushed the far-right to prominence. They also provided a pretext for Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Hamas never made any efforts for the welfare and development of Gaza. Instead, it turned existing infrastructure, such as schools, government buildings, sports facilities, mosques, etc., into military targets, arsenals, rocket production centers, and used civilians as human shields. In Israel’s attacks, Hamas used the deaths or injuries of these human shields as political material and arguments.
The recent Hamas attack was the most horrific attack since the founding of the Israeli state – more than a thousand Israeli civilians lost their lives in this attack, and thousands were seriously injured, including children. Young people attending a peace concert were also the target of this barbaric attack. Hamas terrorists mowed down 260 of the young concertgoers with automatic weapons, injuring hundreds. In the midst of the carnage, Hamas terrorists committed mass rape against young women, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ at the expense of sullying their own religion and the name of God. Unfortunately, this horrendous terrorist act was celebrated with joy by some Muslims living in many parts of the world. Of course, devout and genuinely religious Muslims categorically rejected this hatred and violence and strongly condemned Hamas. However, unfortunately, Islamic extremism (using the Islamic faith for cheap and even vile political actions) and jihadism in the Islamic world have caused significant damage to the image of Islam, which Hamas’s savage attack is a typical example of.
Following this attack, the administration in Israel under Netanyahu’s leadership launched airstrikes on Gaza. Due to the proximity of military targets to civilian areas and Hamas’s human shield tactic, we are witnessing an increase in civilian casualties with each passing hour. For Hamas, the death of civilians is not important at all, because despite Israel warning in advance and evacuating civilians from these areas, Hamas does not allow civilians to leave these areas. Of course, this does not justify Israel hitting civilian targets or writing off civilian casualties entirely to Hamas’s account. Israel should have been particularly sensitive to civilians, but apparently Netanyahu does not have the necessary sensitivity in this regard, and as a result, the news of innocent civilians, especially children, dying intensifies the Gaza-Israel drama.
How painful it is to have to write about the deaths of people, especially children, in political analyses or columns! One would wish that the influence of Hamas and the hawks feeding on violence on both sides would come to an end, and peace-loving Israelis and Palestinians would return to the path laid out in Oslo. Israeli and Palestinian children should participate in student exchange programs, play sports together, have fun, learn each other’s languages and cultures, taste delicious food from one another – and, most importantly, live, so that they can live!
Can the Canaanite Jews and Canaanite Arabs, the descendants of Abraham, one day turn those lands that have been watered with blood and shaped by suffering into a paradise on Earth together? At the moment, it cannot be said that this is very likely. However, what falls to us is, as always, to be hopeful of goodness, beauty, and brotherhood!
On this occasion, I respectfully commemorate all innocent civilians who lost their lives. I hope that the losses of Israelis and Palestinians come to an end, and both communities achieve peace and tranquility as soon as possible.
