Israel has always extended its hand in peace to its Arab neighbors. The Arabs, of course, have for the longest time rebuffed these efforts and remain determined to be enemies. At least, that’s what the Israeli claim is.
This distorted and ahistorical framing remains one of the cornerstones of the Israeli narrative. This narrative makes Israel out to be a victim on the defense, only reluctantly defending itself because its neighbors simply cannot stand that it exists. While not having much basis in reality, it is a rather convenient talking point. Suddenly, even Israel’s most offensive expansionism can be argued to be in “self-defense”, and helps legitimize the most brutal actions under the pretense that the Arabs cannot be reasoned with.
This talking point has been so successfully propagated that it might seem like common knowledge to many. However, it’s worth mentioning that other discredited Israeli talking points, such as the denial of the existence of Palestinians were also at one point considered common knowledge [You can read more about this here]. Let us briefly explore some examples where the Zionist Yishuv and later Israel could have chosen to pursue peace, but instead chose to maximize territorial gains and depopulate Palestinian communities to create new demographic realities.
Even before the establishment of Israel, Palestinian leadership tried to come to an understanding with the Zionist settlers. For example, in 1928, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow them equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
This point is further reinforced by the Yishuv’s position on partition. While accepting the partition in public, in private Ben Gurion reemphasized that any acceptance of partition would be tactical and temporary:
“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”
This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
Chaim Weizmann expected that “partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”. From the offset, any claims that the Zionist settlers simply wanted to live in peace with the Palestinians are highly suspect. As chairman of the Jewish National Fund and Zionist leader Usishkin emphasized:
“..the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them ..”
Even during the war of 1948, there were many opportunities to cease hostilities which Israel rejected. There were negotiations between Israel and Egypt in October 1948, where based on previous correspondences, Egypt was prepared to offer many concessions in exchange for peace, even offering to resettle the Palestinian refugees in the UN decreed “Arab” areas of Palestine. Four days after Israeli politician Eliyahu Sasson went to meet with Heikal, chairman of the Egyptian senate, Ben Gurion launched a new military operation. Naturally, this put an end to any attempt at avoiding bloodshed.
From their side, the Syrians also attempted to end the war at the beginning of 1949, where prime minister al-Azm informed the US ambassador of their desire to stop the fighting. The only conditions they put forward was that Palestinians be afforded the right to self-determination, and the recognition of traditional and historic Syrian fishing rights in certain areas of lake Tiberius. In the same month, a Syrian mediator attempted to meet with Eliyahu Sasson’s assistant in Paris to directly discuss a peace treaty. He was instantly turned down because the Israelis believed that any negotiation with Syria meant discussing the division of water sources, which Israel wanted to control in their entirety.
Following a coup in Damascus, Husni al-Zaim seized power and offered Israel even more concessions. As a matter of fact, he suggested meeting Ben Gurion face to face to negotiate a full-fledged peace. Not only that, he offered absorbing and resettling 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria. The US was enthusiastic about this development, the Israelis however, were indifferent and refused the offer. Ben Gurion wanted to force an agreement through military might only. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote that:
“During his brief tenure of power [Zaim] gave Israel every opportunity to bury the hatchet and lay the foundations for peaceful coexistence in the long term. If his overtures were spurned, if his constructive proposals were not put to the test, and if a historic opportunity was frittered away . . . the fault must be sought not with Zaim but on the Israeli side.”
This refusal is only perplexing if you have internalized the idea that Israel actually sought peace, and not that it used it as a charade to justify its brazen expansionism. This would not be the only time Israelis could have avoided war but chose to pursue territorial gains instead.
Hoping to repeat the success of 1948, Israel purposefully marched into the 1967 war despite all the claims of it being a defensive war of no-choice. This becomes exceedingly clear once we examine the diplomatic record, and the numerous times Israel sabotaged any attempt at mediation or diplomacy to avert the outbreak of war.
For example, throughout much of the crisis of 1967 Egypt expressed its willingness to resurrect and expand the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (EIMAC), which was officially rejected by Israel in May. In the same month, the UN secretary-General U Thant, personally attempted to avert an escalation by travelling to Cairo to mediate between the Egyptians and Israelis. He came with a proposal which called for a two week moratorium in the straits of Tiran [You can read more about this here]. Egypt agreed to the proposal in an attempt to lower tensions. Israel rejected the proposal. Brian Urquhart, who was a senior UN official at the time, wrote in his memoir that “Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down U Thant’s ideas“.
This is hardly the only attempt at averting an escalation, the United States also tried its hand at mediation. High ranking American diplomats and politicians met with Nasser in late May in a meeting that was deemed a “breakthrough in the crisis”. In this meeting Nasser showed flexibility and a willingness to include the World Court to arbitrate in some of the issues. However, what was most promising was that Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington within a week in an attempt to reach a diplomatic settlement for the crisis.
You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of such a meeting, or what its results were. That is because two days before the meeting, Israel decided to launch its surprise attack, torpedoing all efforts to reach a non-violent diplomatic solution to the crisis.
This shocked even the Americans, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State wrote that:
“They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility.”
Following the diplomatic developments of the time leaves no shadow of a doubt that Israel was purposely seeking war. It rebuffed all attempts at mediation and even deceived and humiliated its ally, the United States, by allowing it to continue with the charade of diplomacy when Israel knew it was going to attack anyway. On the other hand, this shows Nasser to have been far more flexible, and amenable to diplomatic solutions than many suggest. Yet until this day, Israel is portrayed as being forced into a defensive war, while Nasser is portrayed as a warmonger.
In his memoir, U Thant, the UN Secretary General at the time wrote that:
“if only Israel had agreed to permit UNEF to be stationed on its side of the border, even for a short duration, the course of history could have been different. Diplomatic efforts to avert the pending catastrophe might have prevailed; war might have been averted.“
This was further confirmed by Odd Bull, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) at the time, who stated that:
“it is quite possible that the 1967 war could have been avoided’ had Israel acceded to the Secretary-General’s request.“
There are many other examples where Israel chose war or the status-quo over peace to maintain its interests. During the Oslo Accords, the amount of Israeli settlement construction skyrocketed. This was embodied by Ariel Sharon’s quote over Israeli radio in 1998: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
Even the “dove” Rabin never agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, but a “state-minus” with no real sovereignty [you can read more about this here]. Like virtually all Israeli talking points, reality and history paint an entirely different picture than the one offered. However, with the proliferation of the internet and easier access to information, they are coming under considerable attack. A sign that Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds is that it has now resorted to lawfare to make its case, such as its attempts to outlaw BDS. This is not the behavior of somebody secure in their narrative or their history.
- Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Verso, 2003.
- Thant, U. View from the UN. Doubleday Books, 1978.
- Flapan, Simha. The birth of Israel: Myths and realities. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
- Pappe, Ilan. Ten myths about Israel. Verso Books, 2017.