What happens to Palestine after World War I? How did Nazi Germany affect Jewish immigration to Palestine? What is the war of independence or the Nakba? And what happened to both Palestinians and Jews afterward? What is the state of Israel and how did it grow as a Jewish nation? What role did countries like Great Britain, the United States, Jordan and Egypt play in the aftermath of the war? What were conditions like in refugee camps? What is the PLO?
Who is President Nasser and how did he influence Arab politics leading up to 1967? We'll learn the answers to these questions and many more in today's episode, part two of three, the Palestinian Israeli conflict 101. Welcome to Wiser World, a podcast for busy people who need a refresher on all things world. Here we explore different regions of the globe, giving you the facts and context you need to think historically about current events.
I truly believe that the more we learn about the world, the more we embrace our shared humanity. I'm your host, Ali Roper. Thanks for being here. Welcome back to part two of the Palestinian Israeli conflict 101 episodes. If you haven't listened to part one yet, this episode builds on all that context and won't make a lot of sense without part one.
So please go give it a listen, I also give you a synopsis of the intended audience for these episodes, my approach to the history, all of that in part one. So go give it a listen. There is no way I could possibly cover everything in three short episodes. So I want to make clear that I hope this is just a primer for you to start learning more about this issue and hopefully dive into more accounts than just mine.
Also a quick reminder that starting next month, September 2023, I will be doing one episode a month for the foreseeable future. I do still have a Patreon and I'm so grateful for the support there. Those few extra dollars a month that subscribers spend make a huge difference for me, allow me to pay for my research assistant and other costs of running a podcast.
So you can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash wiserworldpodcast and you get additional resources for every episode and the resources for these episodes are particularly good because I've read a lot on this topic over the years and have a lot that I share with you there. I also have a free email list where once a month I just email out the episodes of the month, kind of a reminder and a share additional announcements there.
You can sign up for that by going to wiserworldpodcast.com and that's free. Okay, enough announcements. Let's keep going on Israel. We ended last time with the Balfour Declaration in November of 1917, right? This was when Great Britain essentially said they supported the concept of a Jewish homeland in the land of Palestine. At this time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, which was headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Ottoman Empire was on the side of the Axis powers in World War I. So essentially they were enemies to the US, Britain, France and other allied powers. And World War I's going on right now, right? And in December of 1917, right after the Balfour Declaration, Jerusalem is captured by the British in the war. And this marks the end of four centuries that Jerusalem was ruled by the Ottomans.
General Allen B, when he entered Jerusalem on foot, famously declared, quote, only now have the Crusades ended. Whoa, what a statement. So the British have occupied Jerusalem and surrounding areas at this point. And the people living there, mostly Arabs, some Jews, some other groups, they're on alert, right? They are occupied by the British instead of the Ottomans now. It's an adjustment. And World War I ends a year later in 1918. The Allies win.
And thus begins a complicated time with a lot of postwar peace negotiations to figure out what to do with the countries and empires that lost the war. Like what do we do with Germany and Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire? That's the best way to manage these struggling postwar areas. And the Ottoman Empire had controlled over a lot of the Middle East, including Palestine. And it collapsed right around the end of the war, right?
The British taking over Jerusalem and other things. So it had been around for roughly 600 years, the Ottoman Empire. This is historical. And the victorious nations needed to figure out what to do. So in 1920, something called the League of Nations was created. This was an organization with multiple governments who had the goal of promoting international cooperation to prevent future world wars, right? I mean, they really didn't want another world war.
And one of the components of the League of Nations was a mandate system. The mandate system allowed for these victorious countries that were part of the League of Nations like Britain, France more, you know, to occupy those territories with the goal of eventual self-rule. So as you can imagine, this caused significant upheaval and conflicts, many of which we are still feeling the results of today in the Middle East.
Were these Ottoman territories pleased by their former enemies coming in and managing things? Not generally, right? But to make a long story short, many victorious allied nations sat down together and redrew the boundaries in the Middle East and created many new states, re-adjusted state boundaries, and many of them were governed by allied powers. And Palestine was affected by this. Palestine came under British control under the mandate system.
This time in history is called the British Mandate Era of Palestine. And it lasted formally from 1920 to 1948. So good 28 years. Part of this mandate meant that the British began implementing the principles of the Balfour Declaration. They said that they wanted to move forward with a Jewish homeland in Palestine while also safeguarding the rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.
And Arab Palestinians were generally pretty unhappy with the Balfour Declaration being implemented. They felt that their families had been on this land for many, many centuries. And the concept that their land in some way or other would become a homeland for the Jews was confusing for some and enraging for others. For so long, Arab Christians and Arab Muslims and Jews had coexisted as Palestinians together. But during the British occupation, things really started to disintegrate.
Because of the Balfour Declaration and the dangerously high uptick of anti-Semitism in Europe, more Jews began immigrating to Palestine. And naturally there were tensions and clashes. If you think about it, there are tensions and clashes about immigration right now in a lot of countries around the world. And this was like that. But on steroids because Zionism, which we talked about in part one, put a trickier spin on things, this wasn't just immigrants moving into a country for refuge.
But the underlying question was if they would take the land and make it exclusively for the Jews. There's this Jewish homeland question, right? The British authorized what was called an appropriate Jewish agency, that would help develop public works and utilities and resources, more or less kind of the beginnings of a Jewish government in Palestine. And it begged the question, did the Jews have rights to this land? Where would this leave the Arabs?
The Arab population became uneasy, which led to unrest and distrust between all of the different groups. The British struggled to manage the demands between the Jewish and Arab communities. And there was an increase in violence and tensions, especially in the 1930s. In 1933, Adolf Hitler takes power in Germany. Now we know from part one that anti-Semitism has been rampant in Europe for quite some time. But Hitler not only intensified it, he institutionalized it very quickly.
The Nazi party began enforcing all kinds of anti-Semitic policies like a boycott of Jewish businesses dismissing all Jewish civil servants from the government, universities in schools, right? And they were forced to strip Jews of their German citizenship, prohibiting non-Jews from marrying Jews. Jews all over the world, they're talking to each other, they're writing letters, and they're becoming aware of this. And naturally, there was a desire to get out of there and go somewhere safe.
And Zionism became much more of a beacon to many people during this time. The idea of a safe place that the British were supporting for them in Palestine, especially in Jerusalem, was very appealing. As author Ari Shavit said, quote, now any reasonable person can see that Europe is becoming a death trap for Jews. And it is also clear that America would not open its gates in time to save the persecuted Jews of Europe.
The belief of many Jews, as he put it, was that, quote, only a Jewish state in Palestine can save the lives of the millions who are about to die. End of quote. This was kind of the Jewish sentiment at the time for many Jews. So the 1930s saw a major uptick in Jewish immigrants in Palestine because the Jewish situation in Europe was deteriorating rapidly.
This time in history is described really well by journalist Sandy Tolen, quote, underground Zionist organizations began smuggling boatloads of Jews in ever greater numbers from European ports to Haifa along the northern Mediterranean coast of Palestine. The British authorities struggled to control the flow between 1922 and 1936, the Jewish population of Palestine quadrupled from 84,000 to 352,000. During the same time, the Arab population had increased by about 36% to 900,000.
And I want to add here that in those intervening 14 years, as the Jewish community in Palestine had grown more powerful, and the Zionist Congress was, you know, a more mature political body, a nationalistic fervor began to rise among the Arabs of Palestine. Okay, I'm going to keep quoting him now. For decades, Arabs had been selling land to Jews arriving from Europe.
Gradually as land sales increased, and Jewish leaders pressed their call for a state of their own, many Arabs began to fear Jewish domination. By the mid 1930s, Arab leaders had declared that any land lord selling land to the Jews was an act of treason. They were opposed to a separate Jewish state, and increasingly they wanted the British out of Palestine end of quote. On the flip side, there were some Arabs who benefited from Jews working the land.
Many Jews came in and set up successful farms and employed many Arabs and created work opportunities that had not been there before. So again, it's really multifaceted, right? Jews from other parts of the world also brought in new technologies and medicine that had not been in Palestine before under the Ottomans. By now, the Jews of Palestine had a trade union, a bank, a university, and even a Jewish militia known as the Haganah.
In 1936, many Arabs felt that the British were favoring Jews over the Arabs, and mistrust was rampant, and some Arabs began rebelling openly. Some Arabs got together into groups. They would hide in the hills and kill Jews while they traveled. Many preached religion, morality, rifles, homemade bombs, and then a group of Jews retaliated with looting Arab run shops and killing Arabs in return. The country was in a panic.
Over time, each group, Arab and Jewish began retaliating with more vigilante actions until finally, the British brought in military reinforcements and imposed strict curfews, harassed people, searched their homes without warrants, and censored communications. So it's pretty much a hot mess. In the meantime, Arab guerrilla fighters began setting up committees in towns villages to serve as bases for an insurgency.
They began boycotting Jewish goods and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and in selling land to Jews. They wanted to end the British mandate and have a single state where all groups could co-exist, but not a Jewish state. Arab rebels cut phone and telegraph lines, burned bridges and forest, sniped on Jewish settlements, attacked the British, then retaliated with demolishing the homes of these rebels, the Haganah, that Jewish militia.
They also went rogue and committed their own intense retaliation acts targeting Arabs and also retaliating when Arabs targeted Jews. During this Arab rebellion, which lasted about three years, the British made recommendations for how to work with both groups, trying to figure out how to appease Arab suspicion of Jews while also appeasing Zionist leadership. This is really difficult.
They even recommended a two-state solution, which basically means dividing Palestine into two nations, one for the Jews, one for the Arabs. However, their suggestion meant that the Jewish states would have hundreds of Arab villages in it and made everyone ask, well, what would happen to those Arab villages? It was suggested that they would be moved out completely, voluntarily or involuntarily. The Arabs rejected this and wanted a single independent Arab majority state.
This idea of transfer, the removal of the Arab population, became part of mainstream Zionist thinking around this time. It was really unheard of in 1935 to think of transferring Arabs out, but by 1937, this was an acceptable thought in Zionism. The British took more and more control of the civil authorities because of all of this violence. As they put it, quote, terrorism has called for severe countermeasures. This was the District Commissioner of Al-Ramla, for example.
They jailed people, executed people at demolished homes. They exiled many of the Arab rebellions key leaders. It was a very chaotic time with lots of different opinions on what should be done. And like today, the moderate majority who were willing to compromise weren't heard and over 1800 people were killed in the course of just a year.
In 1939, the Arab rebels had a win when the British issued what's called the white paper of 1939, which proposed limiting Jewish immigration and also restricting land sales to choose. It also called for a single independent state. This is a big win for the Arabs, right? World War II starts right around this exact time. And Jews throughout Europe, especially in Germany, are being taken in horrific ways and murdered in concentration camps. The Holocaust is underway.
Jews who aren't taken to concentration camps are living in desperate situations and ghettos, other horrible circumstances. So Jewish leaders are very upset with this white paper of 1939, right? They feel abandoned by the British. The British had said that they would help them build a national homeland and now they're kind of backing out. So very, very quickly, many Jewish underground organizations in Palestine began acting out against the British.
They did all kinds of things from acts of sabotage to attacking British forces, directly planting explosives in post offices, things of that nature. So just as the British had shut down the Arab rebellion, Jewish rebellion ramps up. I think it's evident now that both Jews and Arabs committed acts of terrorism against each other and the British at this time. There is a lot of documentation for both. And the word terrorism was used back in the 1930s.
So I'm not superimposing my own 2023 language there. After all, from my research, I can see that the Arab rebellion changed a few things for both groups. It changed the collective psyche of the Jewish people from what I could gather to be more forceful for a Jewish homeland. And then for the Arabs, you know, before the rebellion, there hadn't been as much of a collective, national Arab Palestinian identity near as much.
But after this Arab rebellion, that Arab Palestinian identity begins to come into play. And it seems that both groups became more us versus them as a result. Now also during this time during the beginning of the war, Palestine was built up quite a lot because it was a staging area for the war in North Africa. So new roads were built and the war economy did help Palestine. Meanwhile, every single day in Europe, thousands of Jews are murdered. And in 1942 alone, over a million Jews are murdered.
And while the news wasn't completely out, the Jews knew. Let's talk to Bankin, a Zionist activist said, quote, our feeling is that of ultimate loneliness. There is no way to know how many Jews will remain alive. There is no guarantee that the Nazis will not exterminate the entire 100%. Bitter is the knowledge of our solitude and the knowledge that the world is our enemy. End of quote. Now that's just his one opinion, but you can see the Zionist just despair, right?
It's just despair of what's happening in Europe. World War II ends in Europe in May of 1945. And the full truth of the Holocaust began to be uncovered. Approximately six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust and naturally there was an outpouring of international sympathy for Jewish survivors. At the end of World War II, something called the United Nations was created.
And this was yet another international organization with the goal to promote peace, you know, different from the League of Nations after World War I, but with similar goals. Basically, we do not want another World War people, right? That's the goal of the United Nations. So we have at least a quarter of a million Jewish refugees with nowhere to go at the end of the war. Their families have been killed, right? It's like, where do we go? Their homes have been taken.
They had not been welcome in their countries and many were desperate for somewhere to live. Even Jews throughout Europe that hadn't been a part of the Holocaust were interested in leaving Europe for more security for their families and to be with other like-minded Jews. At this time, the Zionist movement had a key leader named David Bingerian. He grew up in Eastern Europe and had lived in Palestine since 1906.
When the war ended, Bingerian was very clear that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was the task of the moment. That's the quote, the task of the moment. He was also pro-transfer. He believed Arab people needed to be transferred, I say, in quotes, out of Palestine into nearby Arab countries. So the question of what to do with all of these Jewish refugees, it was a monumental question.
And during the chaos at the end of the war, a group called Masad, which today is Israel's spy agency, smuggled out tens of thousands of Jews from displaced Persian camps in Europe, and took boatloads of them out to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Now do you remember how Britain had done the white paper of 1939 and kind of tightened up the rules on Jewish immigration into Palestine?
Well, quote, as details of the atrocities in Europe began to emerge, images of stateless, bedruggled Holocaust survivors in the Cyprus camps were seared into the minds of the Western public and Britain was pressured to loosen its policy. End of quote. Historians have named this Holocaust guilt. The US was especially pressuring Britain to increase land sales in Palestine to Jews and to allow more to enter the country.
And the Western world was much more supportive of the Zionist movement than it had ever been before. The Jewish community in Palestine began to be less and less cooperative with the British, and do you remember how the Jews had their own militia, the Haganah? Well that group and a couple of other extremist Jewish groups fought hard to expel the British from Palestine.
They even planted a bomb that exploded in Jerusalem's famous King David Hotel, where the British had their headquarters for military intelligence. 80 people were killed. So tensions are very high between the Jews and Britain and the Jews and the Arabs, and there's this end of war question. What do we do with these Holocaust survivors?
And while the Arabs had been weakened in their leadership after the rebellion that had been shut down so heavily, they were very clear that they only wanted one state, no Jewish state, no Arab state, one state, Arab majority. Finally, the British threw their hands up and said they were going to hand the problem of Palestine over to the United Nations. Let them try to come up with a plan for what to do. Let's stop there for a second. You might be swimming in names and dates. Let's just review.
We have the Balfour Declaration. Britain saying they support a Jewish homeland, right? At the end of World War I, Ottoman Empire collapses. Palestine is brought in under a British mandate. More and more Jews move in, build strength, Arabs become uneasy. There's a massive Arab rebellion. There's terrorism on all sides. World War II and the Holocaust happened at the end of the war. The question of a Jewish state becomes more top of mind than it's ever been before.
The United States is tasked, or it's not the United States, sorry, the United Nations is tasked with what to do with Palestine. Okay, that's where we are. I think it's worth a second to consider to yourself or if you're listening in a group, what would you do if you were in the UN and you were tasked with what to do with a situation? What do you think you would do? It's a great discussion question. I used to ask it in my classes, and it's a difficult one. Let's find out what the UN does.
In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed the UN partition plan, which basically recommended that the land of Palestine be divided into two separate nation states, both a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem being an internationally administered area. They were going to divide Palestine with the hopes of the British walking out on May 15, 1948, and two new states would be born that day.
So for my Patreon supporters, I'll send out a map of what this initial plan looked like in this episode's post. For those of you who are not on Patreon, you can also just look up 1947 UN partition plan, a map on Google right now. If you want to see what it looks like, because I think it's very helpful to get an image in your mind of the plan. The Arabs would receive areas called the Gaza Strip, also the West Bank, and a section in the North.
If you look at a map, you can see that the Arab state and the Jewish state are not like cohesive land masses. They didn't divide up the land in half, for example. Rather, the map kind of looks like a jagged puzzle, with chunks of Arab land over here and down there and up on top, and then Jewish land filling it in. And from my perspective, it really doesn't take a genius to see that traveling within the land would get tricky, right?
You'd have to pass through Jewish land to get to parts of Arab land and vice versa. It was complicated. This plan was a complicated plan. Despite that, the Jewish leaders did accept the plan. David Bingerian did worry about the Jewish state having so many Arabs. He spoke openly about that. Arab leaders on the other hand rejected the plan and pledged to fight it. Many Arabs were shocked as they looked at the plan's map.
Many of the villages and towns that they lived in would now be a part of a new Jewish state. 54% of Palestine's land, and more than 80% of its cultivated citrus and grain plantations, would go to the Jewish state. Let me repeat that. 54% of Palestine's land in general, and more than 80% of its cultivated citrus and grain plantations would go to the Jewish state. At the time, Jews represented about a third of the population, and they owned about 7% of the land.
So you can see how this would be an issue, and there would be a lot of questions. What would happen to Arab landowners in the new Jewish state? Do Arabs get to stay in their villages, that their families had lived in? Would they become minorities in a Jewish state? Would they be forced to move out? Lots of questions going on in family homes. What's going to happen here with this UN partition plan? The majority of Arabs are not happy.
Within hours of the UN announcements, Arabs attack a Jewish bus. There were protests and clashes all over. Some leaders and other Arab states in the region promised that they would send armies to eliminate a Jewish state before it was even established. Meanwhile, the Zionists had been preparing for a long time to recruit young Jewish men, many Holocaust survivors, to fight to defend what they hoped would be their new homeland.
It became pretty clear, pretty fast, that this UN resolution was not going to be peaceful, that there was going to be violence. Now leading up to this fateful day in May, when they hoped that the British would leave, there was a lot of violence. The Haganah, the Jewish militia, they sent rockets into Arab villages and even massacred hundreds of Arab women and children in one village. These Arabs from these attacks started to flee to other villages.
Rumors started circulating among the Arabs of a Jewish army that was coming and that had started killing people. This is 1948. This is not a time when people have phones and can text each other and tell each other what's going on. These rumors and talks of what's happened in other villages. This is just word of mouth, mostly, and some printed documents. This is a time when people are really starting Arab people are starting to really feel very nervous about this.
And on May 14, 1948, David Bangerian declared Israel as a Jewish independent state. Now you'll remember the name Israel is very significant. That name goes way, way, way back. We talked about that in part one with Abraham's lineage and Israel, you know, with his 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel. So this is a significant name for this new Jewish independent state. Pretty much immediately Arab nations such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, the attack.
They did not want a Jewish state and wanted a one Arab majority state called Palestine. The Jewish militia mobilized. Sometimes battles happened in cities, you know, with citizens hiding in their homes and men be mobilized on the spot to fight with little to no experience. Other times Jewish militia would march into villages and tell everybody to leave or people just left before they even got there out of fear for their lives. Everything is in turmoil and the UN steps in forcefully in June.
So within a month and they put on strict UN arms embargoes, basically meaning that arms trading became restricted. UN mediator stepped into try and find new options. You know, this plan of theirs clearly wasn't working. However, it really didn't make much of a difference. This war lasted over a year until early 1949. The US provided military aid to Israel during this war, sending in arms secretly despite the arms embargo.
So just to be clear, this war is between, you know, this new nation called Israel and Arab nations and Palestinians that are against the idea of a Jewish state. And this war has two names. Israel is often called the Israeli War of Independence and among Palestinians, it is called the Nukba, which is Arabic for the catastrophe. I think this is such an important distinction to focus on. What is a win for one group is a disaster for another.
Around 6,000 Jewish soldiers, soldiers and civilians were killed during this conflict. And the death toll for Arabs is debated, but we do know that during the conflict, around 1,700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during this conflict. You know, I read books about this written by Israeli Jews and also by Palestinian Arabs. And there is general consensus that this war was utter humiliation for the Palestinians. The refugee situation was also terrible.
Many civilians were told by Jewish soldiers to leave immediately. And so they left behind their homes and belongings exactly as they were. Most of them thinking that they would be returning home soon. However, that ended up not being the case at all. And these Arabs became refugees in parts of Palestine. So they moved to areas that had Palestinian villages and cities that hadn't been occupied by the Jews. Or they went to neighboring Arab nations, especially Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
And the early expulsions from cities and these treks that these Palestinians made across the desert, they made them in the dead of summer, no supplies. The stories that I read were terrible. You know, women giving birth in 120 degree heat, making a trek like that completely unprepared to an unknown location. I highly recommend reading on some personal stories on this. I think they're very compelling.
If you're a part of Patreon, I share some resources written by Palestinians and also by Jewish soldiers who are part of this expulsion of the Palestinians into other areas outside of where they had lived for many centuries. Situations in these refugee camps were unprotected and disorganized. People died from hunger and thirst and heatstroke. Some of the dispossessed Palestinians sold anything that they had on them. They begged Stole trying to find food.
Many felt betrayed by the other Arab nations, especially King Abdullah from Jordan, who had failed to protect their lands as he had promised. While in this state of limbo, many Palestinians began talking of return. There was this belief that they would be able to return to their homes one day. Some people even tried to go back and were shot on site. In many villages, their fields were burned to prevent Palestinians from coming back and harvesting.
Many Palestinians did everything they could to get their land back, writing letters to show their ownership, seeking any method to go home. But it became clear that Israel wasn't going to give those places back. Instead, Israel made many official declarations that the Arabs had not actually been expelled but had voluntarily left their homes. In fact, this is what many most Jewish children were taught in school for many years back then. That the Palestinians had up and left on their own accord.
The UN provided emergency supplies to these refugee camps, many of which are still around today, and still accept UN assistance. Now throughout this war, or the Nakba, depending on which side you view it from, Jewish immigrants were mostly refugees from Europe, began pouring into the now state of Israel. From a governing perspective, it was a crazy time. Their new nation for starters. And then now, what do we do with all of these Jews who have nowhere to go?
In the beginning, many of these homeless Jews were taken to empty homes that the Arabs had vacated. They had fled. It was kind of like moving into a ghost town. Many of them wrote. There's these abandoned homes everywhere. These Jews were told very little about the homes and those who were there before them. They signed agreements with the state to be, quote, custodians of abandoned property.
So from a historical perspective, I see this as refugees moving into homes that had just created another set of refugees. These Jews began changing the names of streets to Hebrew names. They moved in and began their new lives trying to distance themselves from the painful memories of the Holocaust. And the intense antisemitism that they had survived, life wasn't easy for them. Having to start from scratch, create jobs during a war economy.
They just left World War II and went into another war zone. So this is all very fresh for them. After Arab homes were filled, Jews who were waiting for homes, they lived in tents, tin shacks, their own sort of camps. Israel had this massive job of creating homes for an immigrant influx that was almost impossible to handle. Two in mediators worked really hard to create a new plan that could work for both parties.
One mediator, Count Bernadotte, said, quote, the right of innocent people, uprooted by the present terror and ravage of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return. End of quote. So he's basically saying, you know, the Palestinians should be able to return back to their homes. We can work this out peacefully.
But the day after he said this, he was assassinated by a Jewish militia group. So that went well. By early 1949, a set of armistice agreements were signed between Israel and the neighboring Arab states, which brought an end to the active fighting. These armistice lines were known as the Green Line. They created new boundaries. So Israel was now in control of 78% of the land of Palestine. That's what the war gave. So Israel is now in control of 78% of Palestine.
So Israel emerges as an independent state with more land than the original UN partition plan had called for. Meanwhile, the Palestinian territories, which included the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Gollon Heights. So West Bank, by the way, is on the east side of modern-day Israel. It was called the West Bank because it's on the west of Jordan and it used to be a part of Jordan. Anyway, the Gaza Strip is in the south and the Gollon Heights is in the north.
All of these were kind of divvied up between Arab nations who helped control those areas. So the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, Gaza Strip by Egypt and the Gollon Heights by Syria. Jerusalem was also divided with east Jerusalem being Arab-controlled and west Jerusalem being Israel-controlled.
Now this is significant because Israel controlled the western part of the city, parts of the old city, and Arab-Jordanian forces took control of the eastern part of the city, which includes many important religious sites, such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, which is revered by Muslims, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is important to Christians. So Jerusalem is divided up. And when you hear the term Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this is what we're talking about, right?
This is a conflict between the Arab Palestinians and the Israeli Jews who have different ideas of what this land should be. Because I've made these episodes to be relatively simple, I'm not including all of the different other opinions here, but just please know that they do exist. Like even back then, and today, there were and are Jews who were Zionists and believed in a Jewish state.
There also were and are Jews who were not Zionists, or did not feel that the land should become a Jewish state, right? There also were Arabs who believed in only a one-state solution, but there also were Arabs who were open to a two-state solution. But at this time in history, the majority is what I'm going to talk about in these episodes. And the majority of Jews at the time wanted a Jewish state of Israel, and the majority of Arab Palestinians wanted a secular single state.
So I hope that makes sense. At this point, at the end of the war, most Palestinians felt pretty stateless. Many of them living under martial law in other Arab countries, as refugees, or as refugees in parts of Palestine that were now being controlled by other Arab nations. In Gaza, for example, Palestinian nationalism had to go pretty much underground, because the Egyptians repressed all forms of political expression just in hopes of keeping order.
In the refugee camps, most children went to school and learned about the Nakva, and how they had a right of return. And this phrase, right of return, was huge in Palestinian talk. So this idea of we deserve to go home, we deserve to go home. Children were taught to fight for Palestine. However, as the years slipped by, and Israel began to truly become a new nation, creating a government, sinking down its roots, it became ever more clear that the Palestinians may not ever go home, right?
And if they did, there would be a Jewish family living there. So hopelessness settles into these refugee camps. Some of the Israeli perspective, they have a massive job ahead of them. They're surrounded by animosity on all sides. And while they did receive help from Western countries, yes, they also were building a nation largely themselves. After all, you know, European countries were rebuilding after World War II as well. And so it's kind of alone in a hostile desert.
And Israeli parliament called the Knesset, was created, passing all kinds of laws and systems and courts and independent stay, education, right? They put into place something called the law of return, which was essentially that every Jew who expressed desire to settle in Israel would receive citizenship. Okay. So the law of return, new state of Israel, every Jew who expressed desire to settle in Israel would receive citizenship. This was very great for Jews who wanted citizenship to Israel.
This was devastating for Arabs. There were so many Jews pouring into Israel that Israel had to import 85% of its food during this time. Egypt decides they're going to block any food coming into Israel through the Suez Canal as a statement of their anger over this new law of return. Likewise, a policy was put in place that made military service mandatory for all Israelis starting at the age of 18.
Okay. So the Israel, new Israeli government saying everyone at the age of 18 that Israeli must serve in the military. This is a policy still in place today, though it's evolved a little bit. But this is really important to know as it still remains a cornerstone of Israel's national defense strategy. It's part of the Israeli nationality and identity. Meanwhile, there are Egyptian and Palestinian gorillas going on to now Israeli land and wrecking havoc in whatever way they could.
The Israelis responded in kind, violence met with violence. Both sides in essence saw themselves as defending their land. In the mid-1950s, there was a new Egyptian president, President Nasser. And he began to, again, unite the Arab countries with hopes for the liberation of Palestine as he called it and returning all of these refugees. He was very, very vocal about this liberation of Palestine.
Then suddenly in October of 1956, Israeli troops attacked Egypt, hoping to get the Suez Canal and take control of it. This is often called the Suez Canal Crisis. Now when the US Soviet Union, Britain and France stepped in, the whole debacle ended with Nasser keeping control of the Suez Canal, which made him even more important in the eyes of the Arabs. He gained traction as an Arab leader who could possibly help the Palestinian situation.
During this time, Prime Minister David Bingerian, Israeli Prime Minister, makes the decision for Israel to create nuclear weapons. I'll talk more about this nuclear program in part three, but yes, during this time, nuclear weapons begin in Israel. Very significant. Meanwhile, in Israel amongst the Jews, a new culture is emerging. Jews from all over the world were mixing here, right? Some of them were even from Arab countries, Arab and Jordy countries.
This was not all Jews from Europe, but Jews from all over the world with different skin colors, languages, cultures, foods, traditions, different perspectives of what it means to be a Jew and belong to a Jewish state. You know, there's even racism and discrimination happening between Jews. I find it fascinating how hell-bent humans are on categorizing each other, no matter what and the stories of just Jewish nation-building during this time were fascinating to me as I studied. Anyway, I digress.
Part of this culture was something called the Sabra, and as journalist Sandy Tolin puts it, quote, the model that was held up for all immigrants, especially the men, was the Sabra, the native born Israeli, whose optimism, strength and mythical heroism was something to aspire toward. The Sabra was handsome, tough, physically strong, and ardent Zionist, upbeat, without fear and unencumbered by the weakness of his ancestors. End of quote. There would be no more Holocaust complex, right?
No more pity needed. Most Jews did not want to be associated with the image of a victim and wanted to portray strength after the humiliation of the Holocaust. This was a theme across many, many books that I read about the culture at the time. Throughout the 1950s, Israel relied on reparation payments from West Germany and many other Jews, especially American Jews, invested in many economic projects in Israel.
Eventually, it did become economically self-sufficient, but it really did rely on outside help for a long time. On the other hand, during this time, Palestinian leaders begin something called the PLO, or the Palestine Liberation Organization. Palestine Liberation Organization. This is a political and paramilitary organization that is seen by many as representing Palestinian people and their aspirations for self-determination and statehood.
The PLO was founded in 1964 with the goal of uniting various Palestinian factions, because there were lots of different opinions on this Palestinian situation. It was the idea to unite these factions under one kind of umbrella organization. It does not represent all Palestinians, of course it doesn't, right? But that was the idea of the PLO. Years go by, you know, with more generations being born and raised for both the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Right of return for the Palestinians versus law of return for the Israelis, right? Ideologies are becoming more and more entrenched. And while there isn't an active war going on at the time, Egypt's President Nasser was growing stronger as Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East becomes more and more popular. For many Palestinians, they saw that unifying Arabs everywhere was really critical for their Palestinian cause, right? Some Palestinians disagreed.
You know, they felt that returning was only possible if they did it themselves, that they didn't need the Arab countries around them. But generally it was seen as we need these Arab countries to help us to get the right of return. And the movement starts to grow and one branch of the PLO called the Fata launched significant attacks throughout the night, throughout 1965 and 1966, these directly targeted Israelis and increased anxiety that things were about to escalate again.
Then in 1966, Israel attacked a village in the West Bank, which was under King Hussein of Jordan's, you know, is under his jurisdiction. It was clear that Israel wanted this land and the attack was a shock to many, especially the United States who actually condemned it. Arabs around the world started calling on King Hussein and they're saying, you're weak for allowing this to happen. And riots broke out in the West Bank and Jordan. Arabs again were divided.
Nasser, President Nasser of Egypt, decides to send troops into Sinai along the Israeli border and he declared, quote, the Jews threatened us with war and we say to them, you are welcome, we are ready. End of quote. So it's 1967 and things are about to get really messy, but we're going to stop there and I'll continue this story in part three. We learned a lot in this episode. So let's summarize really quick. The Ottoman Empire collapses.
End of World War I. There's a British mandate over Palestine, basically great Britain occupies Palestine. Then we have a large scale Arab rebellion happens from 1936 to 1939 as more Jews enter Palestine and there's this question of a Jewish state, right? Then World War II happens. Guild after the Holocaust means that world powers begin pressuring Britain to allow for more and more Jews to immigrate to Palestine. Zionism is at an all time high with David Bengurian as a prominent leader.
There's tension with all this immigration and talk of a Jewish homeland and Britain hands it over to the UN to solve the problem. They suggest a two state solution, one for Jews, one for Arabs with Jerusalem as an international Jewish, international zone. Jews accept it. Arabs don't. May 1948. The state of Israel is declared. Arab nations in the area attack and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee for safety, most end up in refugee camps.
Israel's war is called the war of independence for Israelis and the Nakba for Palestinians. The war ends with Israel having much more land than the UN partition plan and the Gaza strip, West Bank, Golan Heights are divvied up between nearby Arab nations. Palestinians generally feel stateless. Israel moves forward as a new nation. They define a new culture for the Jewish people. Arab response is often violent and met with violence in return.
The Palestinian liberation organization, the PLO, is seen generally as a representative of the Palestinian people. Nasser of Egypt rises up as an Arab leader claiming that he will help liberate the Palestinians. He mobilizes troops, says he's ready for war in 1967. Okay, so we're going to stop. My takeaway from this episode. I believe that one of the gifts of studying world history is being able to tolerate complexity and that two or more things can be true at once.
In this case, I've contemplated a lot on how the same event can be catastrophic to one person and the best day ever to another. The war of independence was a win for the Israelis, but it's called a catastrophe for the Palestinians. Within those words, there are thousands of different nuanced opinions based on thousands of different lived experiences of the same time in history. One person is safe during the war. Another is hiding in a hole under their kitchen cabinet.
One person is a soldier fighting for what they believe is true and another is shot down without warning. History is so subjective based on who we are talking about and yet it's often portrayed as objective and it's just not. I grapple with this all the time as I study and as I produce this podcast, try to show both sides of this issue.
I think that's why it's a good idea to learn history with boots on the ground stories, but also from a bird's eye view like we've done here so that we can kind of get a large scale look and then go down into those individual stories from both sides, get a deeper personal look at things. I share some of my favorite historical fictions and also memoirs about this time that are written by both sides so that you can get a good picture of what that looked like and I share that on my Patreon.
You can sign up for that on patreon.com slash wise or world podcast. Ultimately, I just, I find that interesting and I think it's something worth discussing as individuals, as families, as communities that one thing can be disastrous to one group and the best thing ever to another group and just do things are true at once. I hope that part two is helpful. I hope that you listen to this as many times as you need to kind of wrap your head around it. It's a lot of info.
See you with the last installment of this series, so part three in a couple of weeks. And if this episode taught you anything at all, please consider sharing it with someone you know. And special thanks to my research assistant Rachel for her help on these episodes. Feel free to check out our sources in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening and sharing and I'll see you in two weeks. Let's go make the world a little wiser.