Where Blood Kin Fight (2)

Holy Land Conquests

Because it is identified with Jesus and the Old Testament, Christians use the term Holy Land for Israel. Within the Holy Land is the contested city of Jerusalem. It was occupied by Muslim Arabs after their conquest in AD 322.

By 1099, the Christian Crusaders from Europe wrested the Holy Land and slaughtered Jews and Muslims. Saladin came a century later and again conquered Jerusalem for Muslims. The Crusaders were eventually evicted and the Ottoman Turks became the new conquerors. Suleiman then built the Muslim Wall in Jerusalem.

In the 1200s, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II won back Jerusalem, only to be recaptured by the Turks in less than 20 years to become part of the Ottoman Empire by the 1500s.

Britain came in to wrest Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917. It became the capital of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1922 to 1948.

The Multitude’s Holy City

The Jews consider Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, as their holiest place. It is part of the walled platform on which once stood the first temple built by King Solomon in 950 BC.

Just as holy for Muslims is the Dome of the Rock (or Omar), the Muslim temple, which has stood on the same site since AD 692.  The adherents of the two religions, among many other reasons, thus just can’t give up Jerusalem.
It is of note too that it is also in Jerusalem that Emperor Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in AD 335.

As if claims to the city by the world’s three monotheistic religions were not enough complication, centuries of ancient wars and conquests seem to be perpetuated by modern wars.

There was Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917, which was understood by both Jews and Arabs as promising a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine. Riots by Arabs in Palestine against the establishment of a home for Jews in their country spilled over as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. This led to the partition of Palestine, one part for Arabs, another part for Jews. This was approved by the United Nations but rejected by the Arabs.

By this time Zionism, which is the desire of Jews to create a Jewish state in Palestine, had its stirrings. This movement was strengthened later by Nazism and the Holocaust (Shoah to the Jews.)

Endless Wars

World War II’s Holocaust that exterminated six million Jews multiplied Jewish migration to Palestine. Zionism was at its peak. But modern Israel’s existence was threatened by wars from all sides.

By 1948, when Britain left its Palestine mandate, Israel fought its War of Independence.  Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia? Arab countries all, declared war on Israel.

In the armistice that followed a year later, Israel gained five percent more land than the previously planned UN Partition.

Israel, with British and French help, invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 1956 in reaction to Egypt’s border raids and its closure of the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, and to prevent Egypt from using newly acquired Soviet weapons.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with Yasser Arafat as the guerilla leader was founded in 1964. Based in neighboring Lebanon in the beginning, where Palestinian refugees teem, the PLO’s charter calls for the liquidation of Israel.

The Six-Day War of 1967 flared after Egypt dismissed the UN peacekeeping force and closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In that war Israel wrested Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

The Yom Kippur War or October War of 1973 allowed Egypt to retake the Suez Canal and Syria the Golan Heights. The war’s tide turned, and Israel managed to cut off the Egyptian army and threaten Damascus, making the Golan Heights a sore spot between Israel and Syria until now.

All these wars increased the confusion over territorial claims by these warring contiguous countries and were made more convoluted when they took on East-West undercurrents.  The Arab cause was adopted by the Soviet while the US supported Israel.  Expectedly, both countries armed, or sold their arms, to their respective adopted warring faction.

(2006)