21. Yasser Arafat: Terrorist or Freedom Fighter? Israel and U.S. branded Arafat as a terrorist, but he was admired as a freedom fighter by Palestinians and their allies throughout the world.
22. PLO Terrorism Munich Olympics 1972 Palestinian terrorist from “Black September” 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed at Munich
After ottoman empire broke up after WWI, British gov’t was in control (issue Balfour Declaration giving right to Jews to immigrate back to their homeland, thought both sides could live together peacefully) – Sir Arthur Balfour, secretary of foreign affairs Britain encourages the Arab Hashemite tribe to rebel against the Ottoman Empire, which sided with Germany during World War I. In exchange, British officers pledge support for an independent Arab state in the region, though the promise is vague and its boundaries are disputed. The Arab Revolt begins in 1916. The next year, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour expresses official support to Britain’s Jewish community for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration spurs Jewish immigration and lays the foundation for the eventual establishment of Israel. It also expresses concern for the “rights of existing non-Jewish communities,” and Britain repeatedly affirms its desire for Palestine to be home to Jews and Arabs. 1922 - The League of Nations grants Britain and France administrative control over much of the former Ottoman Empire until local populations are deemed ready for self-rule.
During 1929 – 1939 - As Jewish immigration continues, violence breaks out between Jews and Arabs living in the British Mandate. In 1929, clashes over Jerusalem’s Western Wall and in Hebron leave hundreds dead on both sides. A Jewish militia, the Haganah, emerges and works with British forces to protect Jewish communities. In 1936, a second Arab revolt kicks off a three-year period of sustained violence, with Arab militants attacking Jewish and British installations. To protest Jewish immigration, Arabs hold a general strike and stop paying taxes. During World War II, Germany systematically kills 6 million Jews living in Europe. The Holocaust, as the genocide becomes known, has major implications for the Middle East. Many survivors of the slaughter seek to immigrate to Palestine, though British policy, outlined in a 1939 white paper, limits the influx of Jewish refugees. After the war, many nations horrified by the mass murder become more sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish national home. Despite British policy, Jews make their way to Palestine. A 1945 survey by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry finds some 600,000 Jews living in Palestine, up from 175,000 in 1931. The Jewish population in Palestine reaches 1.2 million by 1950.
Britain realized that co-habitation of Jews & Arabs was going to be a bigger deal than expected so sent the issue to the newly formed United Nations U.N. saw best solution as a two-state solution – providing land to both parties but seen as unfair for much of Islamic/Arab world By 1947, the British have made plans to leave and the mandate is engulfed by civil conflict. Each side accuses the other of atrocities; massacres of Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin, and of Jews in a Hadassah medical convoy, enter the lore of each side. The fledgling United Nations passes Resolution 181 calling for separate Jewish and Arab states in Palestine. Arabs object to the partition, which gives more land to the Jews. Fighting intensifies, and when the British complete their withdrawal in May 1948, Israel declares itself an independent state. The next day, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq invade, but ultimately lose much of the land the UN had set aside for Arabs. Egypt and Jordan are left in control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, respectively.
In response to Arab-Israeli fighting, the UN General Assembly passes Resolution 194, one article of which asserts that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date,” and those who do not should be compensated. Palestinians cite Resolution 194 as the basis for their “right of return.” Israel’s Knesset passes the Law of Return, granting Jews and their families the right to settle in Israel as automatic citizens. The law marks the realization of the Zionist vision of a national home for the Jewish diaspora in the Holy Land. In the three years before the law’s passage, 500,000 Jews had arrived in Israel; another 500,000 arrive in the following decade. Many are effectively refugees from Arab countries, where they faced hostility and persecution. Some are also motivated to come by Zionist ideology and religious yearnings.
In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, which had been operated by the Universal Suez Ship Canal Company, a private company jointly owned by the British government and French investors. Nasser also warns of settling scores with Israel. Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula in October, while Britain and France attack the canal zone. Although Egyptian forces are driven back, the intervention stokes Cold War tensions. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower compels a withdrawal lest the invasion spur a showdown with the Soviet Union. He also pledges to guarantee open access to Israel's sole Red Sea port at Elat. U.S. influence in the region soon eclipses that of the European powers. The war also makes a hero of Nasser, who moves to harness “pan-Arab” sentiment into a geopolitical force over the next decade.
Erroneous Soviet reports of an Israeli troop buildup along Syria’s border prompt Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser to expel UN peacekeepers, send troops into the Sinai Peninsula, and blockade Israel’s sole Red Sea port, access to which the U.S. had guaranteed after the 1956 war. Israel responds with a preemptive strike on Egyptian air forces, catching most of it on the ground, followed by an armored thrust into the Sinai that sweeps Egyptian troops back across the Suez Canal. Jordan and Syria attack from the east but Israeli forces resist, seizing the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. The war deeply scars the Arab psyche and fatally weakens Nasser and his pan-Arab dream. The UN passes Resolution 242, calling for the return of Arab lands in exchange for a “lasting peace.” Israel holds onto the lands, and after the 1977 election of the Likud Party, begins a major expansion of Jewish settlements.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is founded by members of the Arab League as the sole representative for the Palestinian people. The PLO, which is heavily under Egypt’s influence, vows to use “material, military and spiritual forces” to resist Zionism and form a Palestinian state. The PLO’s first chairman is Ahmad Shukeiri, a former Saudi ambassador to the United Nations with Palestinian ancestry. The PLO Charter, adopted by the Palestinian National Assembly in 1964 and later amended in 1968 to include a call for armed struggle, defines “liberation” of Palestine as a Palestinian and Arab duty. It also declares as “null and void” the 1917 Balfour Declaration and asserts that “Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality.”
Origin The group's name derives from the Black September conflict begun on 16 September 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan declared military rule in response to a fedayeen coup d’état to seize his kingdom — resulting in the deaths or expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from Jordan. The BSO began as a small cell of Fatah men determined to take revenge upon King Hussein and the Jordanian army . Structure of the group There is disagreement among historians, journalists, and primary sources about the nature of the BSO and the extent to which it was controlled by Fatah , the PLO faction controlled at the time by Yasser Arafat . In his book Stateless , Salah Khalaf ( Abu Iyad ), Arafat's chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: "Black September was not a terrorist organization, but was rather an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential. During the Munich Olympics, Palestinian terrorists from Black September, a clandestine arm of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s Fatah, storm the Olympic village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine hostage. The terrorists demand the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prison, but Israel refuses to negotiate. German officials agree to grant the hostage takers passage to Egypt, but a botched rescue attempt at the Munich airport results in the murder of all remaining hostages and the deaths of five of their eight captors.
During the month of Ramadan, Egypt and Syria mount a surprise attack in the Sinai and the Golan Heights on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. The war brings the United States and Soviet Union perilously close to open confrontation, and spurs the Arab-dominated OPEC oil cartel to embargo shipments to Western nations that support Israel. The embargo intensifies a shift by France and several other leading European states toward a more pro-Arab stance. After early military gains, the Arab forces are driven back before a UN cease-fire takes effect. Preliminary success in the three-week conflict restores Arab military confidence and provides an opening for the United States to begin a diplomatic process that brings Egypt and Israel to the table. UN Security Council Resolution 338 echoes 242’s call for a land-for-peace deal. As for Egypt, two agreements prompt step-by-step Israeli withdrawal in Sinai—in the process confirming Egypt’s shift from the Soviet to the U.S. camp in the Cold War.
Following a surprise 1977 visit to Israel by Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, the first by any Arab leader, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin meet at Camp David for twelve days of secret negotiations, producing a “Framework for Peace in the Middle East.” Brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the Camp David Accords, as the agreements become known, set the stage for an Egypt-Israel peace treaty the following year. Sadat and Begin receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. The framework calls for similar agreements between Israel and its other neighbors, but to little effect. For the next decade, Egypt is suspended from the Arab League and shunned by other Arab states.
Israel attacks Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) installations in Lebanon following the shooting of an Israeli diplomat. PLO retaliation prompts Israel to push further into Lebanon—which is in the midst of a civil war—shelling and besieging Beirut. U.S., French, and Italian troops intervene, evacuating the PLO to a new home in Tunisia. Israel eventually withdraws to a self-declared “security zone” after helping install a sympathetic president in Beirut, who is soon assassinated on Syrian orders. During the withdrawal, Israeli-allied Christian militiamen massacre at least seven hundred people—perhaps far more—in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. An Israeli inquiry, the Kahan Commission, later holds Ariel Sharon, Israel's defense minister, indirectly responsible for the massacre.
In April, a suicide bomber detonates a delivery van packed with explosives in front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing sixty-three people. In October, two massive truck bombs kill fifty-eight French and 241 American servicemen in almost simultaneous attacks on their respective barracks. A U.S. court eventually rules that the bombings were the work of an emerging Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, which the court says received assistance from Iran. While Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria all deny any role, Israeli officials cite evidence that the Syrian regime was involved. Within five months, U.S., French, and other foreign troops leave Lebanon, which lapses into deeper civil conflict.
The first Palestinian uprising (intifada) begins throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Anger and outbursts over four Palestinian deaths in a traffic accident help young local leaders, and later cadres operating on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to mobilize a more general, coordinated rebellion against the two-decades-old occupation. Some Palestinians use civil disobedience, strikes, and graffiti, while others attack Israeli troops with axes, Molotov cocktails, grenades, and firearms. Demonstrations that throw stones at groups of heavily armed Israeli Defense Forces become symbolic acts of defiance for Palestinians.
Palestinian spiritual leader and activist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founds Hamas, a violent offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood seeking “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” Published in August 1988, the Hamas covenant calls on Muslims to liberate the territory through violent jihad. The group’s emphasis on religion stands in stark contrast to other prominent Palestinian groups, which tend toward secularism. Some Israelis initially welcome the development, viewing it as a blow to their mortal enemy, Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
After months of negotiations outside the Norwegian capital, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agree to a Declaration of Principles, resulting in each side officially recognizing the other and renouncing the use of violence. The so-called Oslo Accords establish the Palestinian Authority, which receives limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The PLO leadership regards this as a step toward a permanent status agreement based on pre-1967 boundaries and recognition of the “right of return.” Israelis, on the other hand, see this as the beginning of a step-by-step process leading to compromise.
The day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel and Jordan agree to work together toward a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” One year later, the two nations sign a peace treaty ending years in which their close relationship and security cooperation had to be kept well hidden.
In July, U.S. President Bill Clinton hosts two weeks of intense Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offers substantial concessions, including withdrawal from more than 90 percent of the occupied territories, possible partition of Jerusalem’s Old City, and a Palestinian state in the area of withdrawal. According to U.S. negotiators involved, Palestinian President Yasir Arafat turns down the deal. Though Arafat is often blamed for the summit’s failure, many Palestinians argue Barak was offering something that he couldn’t deliver and that didn’t satisfy their requirements for a deal: pre-1967 borders and a recognized “right of return.” The summit ends with a Trilateral Statement to serve as a framework for future negotiations, though subsequent efforts by Clinton and others to rekindle the process yield little. Ariel Sharon, the head of the Likud Party and formal opposition leader, makes a September visit to the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem—also the site of Islam’s third-holiest site, the al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharon’s presence provides the spark that ignites a round of fighting, dubbed the “second intifada” by Palestinians. Unlike the 1987 rising, however, this conflict is marked from the beginning by fewer mass demonstrations and a much greater use of firearms and suicide bombs. This, in turn, leads to harsh preventive measures by Israel, including the reoccupation of parts of the West Bank, air strikes, targeted killings, and the construction of a barrier separating Palestinians from Jewish population centers in the West Bank.
In response to the renewal of Hamas suicide attacks, Israel assassinates Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group’s founder, in a March air strike. The move receives widespread international condemnation and precipitates calls for Israel to cease targeted killings. Suicide bombings, however, begin to decline as Israeli security measures take hold. Weeks later, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a pro-settlement hawk for much of his career, unveils his “Disengagement Plan,” calling for the removal of all Israeli settlements in Gaza. In October, Palestinian President Yasir Arafat falls ill. He is flown to France for medical treatment and dies the following month. In January 2005, Palestinians elect Mahmoud Abbas as Arafat's successor.
Israel begins a unilateral withdrawal of nine thousand Jews from settlements in Gaza in August. Some settlers accept government compensation and leave voluntarily, while others are forcibly removed by the Israel Defense Forces. The move is designed to diminish attacks on Israel, though Israel soon begins taking rocket fire from Gaza. Palestinians fear Israel will isolate Gaza and consolidate control over the West Bank. Within months, much of the optimism surrounding the disengagement is dashed when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffers a pair of strokes, leaving him incapacitated. Ehud Olmert is chosen to head the centrist Kadima Party government and vows to pursue Sharon’s design for a similar disengagement on the West Bank.
Hamas and Hezbollah guerrillas infiltrate Israel and abduct Israel Defense Forces soldiers, prompting Israel to invade both Gaza and Lebanon. The two-front war lasts for more than a month, with Israeli air strikes gutting Lebanese neighborhoods and Hezbollah missiles landing frequently in northern Israel. The war ends with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, and the arrival of additional UN peacekeepers. Though Israel inflicts heavy casualties among Hezbollah’s ranks, the war accomplishes little strategically. Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors emerge highly popular in some sections of Lebanon but reviled in others. Egypt and Saudi Arabia also denounce Hezbollah’s actions. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan for West Bank disengagement, meanwhile, appears to be another casualty.
Hamas scores a victory in Palestinian Authority elections in January, causing the United States, the European Union, and other international donors to suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority. The vote also leaves the Palestinian house divided between Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement, represented by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which will control the cabinet and parliament. Efforts at cohabitation fail almost immediately.
Formation of a joint Fatah-Hamas government, brokered by Saudi Arabia, prompts resumption of some of the foreign aid that was suspended after the Hamas election victory. Neither the European Union nor the United States, however, agrees. In June, after months of sporadic clashes, the Hamas-Fatah deal collapses and Hamas militants drive Fatah from Gaza. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounces the violence as a “Hamas coup” and appoints a new government in Ramallah, which is quickly recognized by the United States and European Union. Aid is resumed, and Israel releases Palestinian tax revenues collected but not delivered to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas took office. Gaza remains under Hamas control, and southern Israeli towns are subjected to almost daily rocket attacks, prompting frequent Israeli retaliation.
[In late December 2008, just days after a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas expired, Israel mounts an incursion into the Gaza Strip with the stated goal of preventing rocket fire on nearby Israeli towns. First using air strikes, and later a ground assult, Israel inflicts heavy casualties among Hamas' ranks, destroys hundreds of rockets, and eliminates many of the tunnels that Hamas used to smuggle supplies—including weapons—into Gaza. Throughout the 22-day campaign, Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into Israel. The fighting also produces hundreds of civilian casualties in Gaza and draws sharp criticism from the international community. Though Israel appears to have achieved military victory, the larger strategic implications remain unclear.
It consists of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 meter wide exclusion area (90%) and high concrete walls up to 8 meters high (10%). [1] The barrier is built mainly in the West Bank and partly along the 1949 Armistice line , or " Green Line " between Israel and Palestinian West Bank. In April 2006, the length of the barrier approved by the Israeli government was 703 kilometers (436 miles). In August 2008, approximately 58.04% had been constructed, 8.96% was under construction, and construction had not yet begun on 33% of the barrier. [2] The Jerusalem Post reported in July 2007 that the barrier may not be completed until 2010, seven years after it was originally supposed to be finished Some parts are patrolled by Israeli military & smoothed strip of sand that runs parallel to detect footprints Designed to cut Jerusalem off from West Bank on 3 sides Two P cities – Tulkarem and Qalqiliya were completely surrounded
The barrier is highly controversial. Supporters argue that the barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism, including the suicide bombing attacks that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada; [4] The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier. [5] Settler opponents, by contrast, condemn the barrier for appearing to renounce the Jewish claim to the whole of the Land of Israel. [10] Two similar barriers, the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier and the Israeli-built [11] 7-9 meter (23 – 30 ft) wall separating Gaza from Egypt (temporarily breached on January 23, 2008), have been much less controversial. [12]
Israeli gov’t (through military purposes) just seized land needed to create barrier although offered compensation, still owned by owner but has no access to it 2004 – Israeli SC said barrier was legal but had to tear up a small section & relocate another future portion of barrier, court ruled that Israel would have to balance its security with needs of Palestinians (claimed 35,000 Palestinians faced hardships from wall already) UN & the International Court of Justice said it should be torn down because it infringes on the rights of Palestinians
As conflict ensued, Israel has taken over more terrority
Largest Palestinian political faction, controls West Bank
Started out using guerilla attacks against Israel in the late 1960s 2000 – 2 nd intifada Much more violence broke out with suicide bombings, attacks on settlers and Israeli soldiers
Radical islamic group destined to prevent compromise in Israeli-Palestinian situation Known as terrorist group to U.S. Receives financial support from Iran & Syria
Abducted Israeli soldiers, sent missile attacks deep into Israel
