270 • 16 THE CONTEST FOR PALESTINEagainst Jews, inasmuch as Arabs are Semites, too) was worse, but that his¬
toric prejudice sets a poor standard for religious toleration.
Jews and Arabs have some common traits. Both use Semitic languages
and they often resemble each other. Each looks back to a golden age early
in its history, to an era of political power, economic prosperity, and cul¬
tural flowering. For each people, that era was followed by a long time span
during which their political destinies were controlled by outsiders. Be¬
cause of their long subjugation, the birth of nationalism (which began in
the late nineteenth century for both Jews and Arabs) was slow, painful,
and uncertain. Neither group felt good about leaving its revealed religion
for a modern ideology of collective self-love. Both suspected others of
exploiting them. Both feared that when the chips were down, the whole
world would turn against them. On the strength of the Bible and 2,000
years of religious tradition, Zionist Jews believed that the land of Israel
(basically parts of what are now Israel and Jordan) would be restored to
them someday and that the Temple would be rebuilt in Jerusalem. Only in
the land of Israel had the Jews flourished as a sovereign nation. Muslim
Arabs believed that Palestine, for so long a part of the umma and contain¬
ing Jerusalem, a city holy to them as well as to Jews and Christians, could
not be alienated from the lands ruled by Islam. How could Muslim and
Christian Arabs, who had lived in Palestine for 1,300 years (indeed longer,
for the seventh-century Arab conquest had not displaced the earlier
inhabitants), give up their claim? Were the rights of the Palestinians any
less than the national rights of the Turks, Iranians, Egyptians, or Arabs liv¬
ing elsewhere?
Such arguments as these have come up so often during our own times
that we naturally think they always did. This really is not true. Although
Jews and Arabs have claims to Palestine going back hundreds of years, the
real contest was just starting when World War I broke out. At that time, few
foresaw how strong it would be. The duration and intensity of what we
now call the Arab-Israeli conflict were due to the rise of nationalism in
modern times. We have already studied the Arab nationalist movement
in Chapter 13, with additional glances in the intervening chapters; now it
is time to look at the history of Zionism. This chapter carries the contest
for Palestine (itself a debatable and ill-defined geographical term) up to
the creation of Israel as the Jewish state. You will soon see why we stress the
struggle between Arab nationalism and political Zionism. In later chapters,
as we examine the various phases of the Arab-Israeli conflict, you will also
see why it is so intense, so hard to resolve, and so relevant to other Middle
East conflicts.