On October 24, 18 days after the start of the war, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made a statement at a Security Council meeting in New York that shook diplomacy. He said that the Hamas surprise attack on October 7, which left 1,400 Israelis dead, did not come out of nowhere but took place in the context of the suffering of the Palestinian people, referring to the violence inflicted on the Palestinian population in the West Bank Although he strongly condemned the massacre of the Israeli population by the Islamic Resistance Movement (full name: Hamas), “the grief of the Palestinian people cannot justify the terrible attacks of Hamas,” he said – he also referred to the 56 years Crew. “They have seen their lands consumed by settlements and plagued by violence,” he said, specifically referring to the strangulation of the Palestinian economy, the displacement of people and the demolition of homes. This speech was met with painful reverberations in Israel and other parts of the world, where many media outlets avoid providing context to the situation in Palestine and reference to the occupation. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who was present in the room, disqualified Guterres: “But what world do you live in? “Of course this is not our world.” And then Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called for the Secretary General to resign. Guterres dared to talk about the elephant in the room, something Israeli leaders are not used to hearing from Western leaders, namely the French president, the German chancellor and the British prime minister, among others.
In the picture above, Israeli soldiers cry at the funeral of Hamas victims on October 23. Below, Palestinians collect the bodies of victims of the Jabalia camp bombed by Israel on November 1. Ariel Schalit (Ap / LaPresse) /
But certainly Guterres’ speech is embedded in a reality that has been visible and evident for decades, but which the Israeli state does not recognize. The context for understanding how we got here begins at the end of the 19th century, when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and romantic ideas circulated widely throughout Europe. Given the nationalist backdrop of the Romantic era, it is estimated that between 1881 and 1903, approximately 25,000 Jews, mostly Europeans from Russia and Romania, emigrated to Palestine as part of the so-called first Aliyah (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel). Even under the Ottoman Empire, a small community of Jews who were not Zionists lived there since time immemorial. .
The Zionist movement sought to create a Jewish state in the region of Palestine. He was very active during these years. Its main character, the Austro-Hungarian activist Theodor Herzl, found employment in journalism. Herzl was not the first ideologue of Zionism, although he is mentioned in Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence; There were other thinkers before him. In the first years of his life he was a so-called assimilated and non-religious Jew, that is, a Jew who was in the process of cultural integration into his Christian European environment. But then came the case of Dreyfus, which shook his ideas, and if he had previously preached the massive conversion of Jews to Christianity, from that moment on he became a staunch advocate of an ideal Jewish homeland, later identified with Palestine.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
Jewish journalist and activist. Father of political Zionism and the concept of the current State of Israel. Their goal was to create a new country for the Jewish people.
The Alfred Dreyfus case broke out in France in 1894 and had a significant impact on Jews. French Captain Dreyfus, a Jew, was wrongly accused of spying for Germany and was the victim of an anti-Semitic trial. Unlike the Zionists, Herzl had not paid much attention to the Jewish question until then, but from then on he devoted himself to it. He reported on the Dreyfus case for a major Viennese newspaper and became a passionate Zionist. In his book The Jewish State, published in 1896, he proposed the creation of an independent state in which all the world’s Jews would live. This state would have numerous virtues, such as ending the anti-Semitism that manifested itself throughout Europe. Initially the idea was not well received by the most influential Jews, as they largely thought that the solution to the so-called “Jewish question” was assimilation into their surroundings, but gradually the idea began to take hold in Jewish communities of Europe.
Jerusalem, around 1890. A group of devout Jews praying at the Wailing Wall.Bettman (Getty Images)Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). Jewish journalist and activist. He was the father of political Zionism and the concept of the current State of Israel. As the author of “The Jewish State: Essay on a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question (1896),” his goal was to create a new country for the Jewish people. Universal History Archive (GettyJune 1948. A crowd gathers on Tel Aviv beach to view the remains of the ship Altena loaded with Jewish migrants and weapons.Robert Capa (ICP / Magnum PhotosHaifa, May-June 1949, thousands of Jewish immigrants from all over Eastern Europe, Turkey and Tunisia come to Palestine by boat.Robert Capa (ICP / Magnum photos
The influx of migrants into Palestine continued almost uninterrupted until it reached another milestone in the Zionist movement, perhaps the most crucial, namely the Balfour Declaration, a letter written by Lord Arthur Balfour, Secretary of State for the United Kingdom, to Lord Lionel Walter . Rothschild, leader of the British Jewish community, in 1917, in the midst of the First World War. This document was the result of a long effort by Zionist leaders. The diplomat and member of the Jewish community Lord Herbert Samuel had promoted the content of this declaration since the beginning of the First World War, when he foresaw the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He believed that his defeat would facilitate the creation of fundamental conditions that would allow the United Kingdom to take a stand on the side of the Zionists and to the detriment of the Arab Palestinians living in Palestine under the British mandate. The declaration referred for the first time to the creation of a Jewish “national homeland,” a phrase unprecedented in diplomatic language but carefully chosen by the British and the Zionists to pave the way for the creation once possible , a Jewish state in the middle of an area historically inhabited by Arabs, the vast majority of whom are Sunni Muslims. Paradoxically, in 2017, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the British government recognized that this document should have protected the political rights of the non-Jewish population, that is, the Arab-Palestinian population, which it did not do.
Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)
British Conservative politician. Foreign Secretary between 1916 and 1919. He drafted the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which supported the creation of a Jewish “national home” by the United Kingdom.
The reaction of the non-Jewish population – Muslims and Christians – who made up almost 90% of the inhabitants of Palestine was rejection. Much later, the American-Palestinian Christian philosopher Edward Said said that this declaration was adopted by a Western power in a non-Western territory and that it did not correspond to the wishes of the vast majority of its population. Of course, it was clear to everyone that a project of this kind could only be carried out by force of arms. A statement signed shortly thereafter by a hundred figures from all local non-Jewish denominations said that Muslim and Christian Arabs had historically sympathized with the cause of the Jews, who had been persecuted almost everywhere they had lived, but from then on they had not could accept the Jews would rule them.
As events unfolded, violence occurred, more or less severe at different times and in different places, as the local communities, due to their association with the major powers, were unable to stop the Zionist movement. A notable figure in this regard was Izz al Din al Qassam, who died in 1935 and whose memory lives on in the name of the Hamas militias. The preacher Al Qassam was a Syrian who studied at the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo, but gained his legend fighting the European powers that had occupied the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. He first fought in Syria against the French and after his defeat emigrated to Palestine to fight against the British and Jews, dying at the hands of the British in 1935.
Izz al-Din al-Qassam (1892-1935)
Islamic cleric, politician and Arab guerrilla who fought militarily against European powers after the First World War. Gives its name to the armed wing of Hamas.
In May 1948, one day before the expiration of the British mandate, David Ben Gurion, in his capacity as head of the Jewish Agency, announced the establishment of a Jewish state that took the name Israel. Ben-Gurion’s declaration recognized no border with that state, aside from a vague reference to Eretz Israel, a concept that has since often been translated as “Greater Israel.” Ben Gurion’s failure to define the borders reflects the desire of Zionist leaders to incorporate as much of historic Palestine into the state as possible. The United Nations had recently predicted the existence of two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with an international zone encompassing Jerusalem, with the former granted just over half the territory. The Arab countries, which did not accept the distribution proposed by the United Nations, sent troops to the newly founded State of Israel to fight the Haganah, the Jewish militias. However, these small and poorly disciplined contingents were quickly defeated by the efficient Haganah, which managed to occupy numerous territories that had been allocated in the United Nations partition plan to a future Arab state in historic Palestine.
The founding of the Jewish state came just a few years after the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust, in the midst of an Arab-Israeli armed conflict, during which Jews expelled Arabs from more than 750 cities, towns and villages in Palestine. So the territorial division proposed by the United Nations very soon became a dead letter; The better armed, more organized and more effective Jews occupied most of the territory, leaving only the West Bank and Gaza Strip outside their state, i.e. 22% of Palestine’s historic territory. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (estimated at least 750,000) were forced to leave their homes and flee to the West Bank, Gaza Strip or neighboring countries as refugees, never being allowed to return. It is estimated that there are around seven million Palestinian refugees today, including the descendants of those expelled in 1948, whom Israel wants nothing to do with. When UN Secretary-General António Guterres said it was important to remember that the October 7 attack did not come out of nowhere, he was probably referring to this context.
In the 1967 war, the so-called Six-Day War, Israel inflicted defeat on its enemies: a coalition of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Within hours, it occupied the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt’s Sinai and the Syrian Golan. The famous scientist and philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Israel’s ethical, religious and political conscience, described the government of the Palestinian territories as a military administration, which he called “Jewish-Nazi” and “dehumanized,” and, being himself an Orthodox Jew, said he: criticized Zionism, holding that for the right and also for a certain part of the left, Israel had renounced the humanistic values of Diaspora Judaism and subordinated its new values to the idea of the State of Israel.
Gradually, the state resettled hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories, most of whom were radical or very radical, and encouraged them to settle in the colonies with tax and economic advantages. These now represent a complex network in which Israelis live in Palestinian cities and towns without a relationship of trust with them. It is very difficult to reverse this situation, especially considering that President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, located in the city of Ramallah, 20 kilometers north of Jerusalem, is for many Palestinians an extension of the Israeli Authority is dedicated to the persecution of all dissident Palestinians willing to participate in the resistance.
October 1973, Ariel Sharon (Prime Minister of Israel in 2001), in the middle, next to the legendary General Moshe Dayan, during the Yom Kippur War. IDF (Afp / Getty Images) A group of Palestinians surrender to Israeli soldiers June 1967, in the occupied territory of the West Bank.Pierre Guillaud (Afp / Getty ImaA young Palestinian shoots an Israeli army helicopter with a slingshot during the 1988 Intifada in Nablus. Javier Bauluz
The next war, the Yom Kippur War, was started jointly by Egypt and Syria in 1973. After a few days of surprise, the Israeli army recovered and recaptured the areas that the Arabs had initially liberated. In the 20 days that this conflict lasted, 2,656 soldiers died, almost twice as many Israelis who died in the Hamas attack on October 7, which was around 1,400 in a single day, according to official figures than 300 soldiers data. However, after losses were assumed, the 1973 war did not change the government’s policy, which continued to send settlers to the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and Sinai. Just a few years later, the peace agreement signed by Egyptian President Anwar al Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin came as a surprise. Egypt recaptured Sinai and Israel was guaranteed that the 1973 war would not be repeated. Relations between the two countries normalized, although to this day they have developed in a kind of cold and distant peace, a peace that does not accept a large part of the Egyptian population.
The occupation continued to intensify and in 1987 the first Intifada, the name by which successive Palestinian uprisings over time are known, broke out. This initially took several years. The Palestinian territories became a hotbed of protests, resulting in a death toll. An event that would shape the next decades was the founding of Hamas in Gaza, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, an organization that initially satisfied Israel. In these early years, Israeli authorities established informal contacts with Hamas leaders, anticipating that the Islamists would be depoliticized and would not participate in armed resistance. Simón Peres was one of the politicians who promoted Hamas the most in order to discredit Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Western circles. However, Hamas soon became involved in the armed struggle with much greater determination than the PLO.
Yasser Arafat (1929–2004)
Leader since the founding of the PLO in 1964, which initially transformed itself from a terrorist group into a political party. Nobel Peace Prize 1994 with Rabin and Peres.
It was undoubtedly the resistance of the first Intifada that led to the celebration of the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the subsequent Oslo Accords of 1993. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Shamir accepted negotiations with the Palestinians. and with the Arab countries with the intention of obtaining the 10 billion dollars that the Americans had promised to integrate hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union into Israel. Within a few years, the impression that peace was within reach emerged, but it was nothing more than a mirage that lasted until the assassination of Prime Minister Isaac Rabin on November 4, 1995. It was a strong shock for the entire country. The attacker, Yigal Amir, was a young right-wing extremist Jewish religious student who, according to investigations, acted alone.
It is not clear whether the late Rabin would have led the country to peace with the Palestinians and Syrians, although it seemed at the time; It is also not clear how far Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who withdrew the army and settlers from Gaza in 2005, would have gone. This withdrawal of settlers from Gaza was traumatic for a large part of Israeli society, although it was clear that this presence represented a burden that systematically claimed the lives of settlers and soldiers. The militias, particularly the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, carried out daily daring attacks against the army and settlers, and this was likely the reason why Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Sharon died after a stroke and it is impossible to know whether she would have continued the withdrawal from the West Bank.
The Oslo Accords between Yasir Arafat (right) and Isaac Rabin (third from left); in the middle of the two the President of the United States, Bill Clinton; and left, Israeli Foreign Minister Simon Peres and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. Gary Hershorn (Portal / Contact) An Israeli police officer and a Palestinian civilian face each other in Jerusalem in 2000. Amit Shabi (Portal / Contact) Mahmoud Abbas (1935), Palestinian politician. Since 2005, President of the State of Palestine and its predecessor, the Palestinian Authority. He studied between Syria and Egypt and joined the PLO, a formation he controlled. Others consider him a Holocaust denier. He is a puppet of Israel. Palestinian Presidency Anadolu New York UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Security Council on October 24. “You have seen your country consumed by settlements and plagued by violence,” he said. Seth Wening (Ap/LaPresse)A Palestinian man watches over the bodies of his relatives at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. Abed Zagout (Anadolu / Getty Ima
Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled Israel for most of the 21st century. With regard to the Palestinians, the policy was to increase the colonization of the West Bank and to keep the Palestinians in Gaza in check through a strict blockade. The president of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is seen by many as a Netanyahu collaborator who is doing the dirty work of ridding the occupied territories of any traces of resistance. But after Hamas’s latest attack, Netanyahu finds himself walking a tightrope.
One way to end a decades-long conflict is the so-called two-state solution, which Spain, along with other countries, is staunchly defending. However, of the 193 member states of the United Nations, only 139 have recognized the state of Palestine. Neither the USA nor major European countries are included. Perhaps it is interesting to remember that other moments of crisis have led to agreements. Under pressure from the first Intifada, the Israelis went to the Madrid Conference and signed it in Oslo. Under pressure from the second intifada, they withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And they left southern Lebanon in 2000 to put an end to the constant killing of soldiers by the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. Perhaps the great tragedy we have been witnessing since October 7th will finally give pause to some leaders and an international community who have so far been unwilling to take action this century.
Eugenio Garcia Gascon (Barcelona, 1957) is a journalist who has lived in the Middle East for more than 30 years. He is the author and co-author of six books on regional issues.