User:Stabby the Misanthrope/Essay:Promised Lands

Promised Lands Land Claims Over Israel & Palestine

Israel and Palestine combined are barely larger than the state of New Jersey. Their arable lands were originally swamps and their deserts hold no oil. The hallowed city of Jerusalem contains fewer Jews than New York City and the entire West Bank has fewer Muslims than Moscow. By rights, the area should be an insignificant backwater, relevant only for events happening millenia ago.

Yet the conflict over this tiny strip of land—a "shirtpocket empire" as Gershom Gorenberg described it —is enough to shift global politics. Forty thousand have died because of it, $3 billion a year in foreign aid is given to supply it, Congresspeople are bought and sold over it, a dozen wars fought and a dozen treaties signed because of it. To Christians, it is the birth and deathplace of the messiah, to Muslims, the site of divine revelation. And to Jews, it was promised by God and purchased with the ashes of six million.

This essay will not stop the conflict. It will probably not change anyone's mind. It's just my attempt to understand a small corner of the world, whose land is inextricably tied to my religion and and whose conflict has captured my brother.

An aside on answering the indefinable
I don't think it's possible to find answers to the conflict, because I don't think it's possible to even define the language used. The tropes and shibboleths that define the Israeli-Palestinian debate pack entire universes of interconnected nebulous concepts.

"A homeland for the Jews" — what is a Jew? Who gets to define Jewishness? What is religion?

"The ancient Jewish kingdom..." — how Jewish does the kingdom have to be before it can be called Jewish? Can just the ruling class be Jewish, or does a majority of the population have to be Jewish? If the ruling class is gentile, and a majority of the population Jewish, is the kingdom still Jewish? And how independent does the kingdom have to be for us to call it a Jewish kingdom? If it exists as a tributary to a greater empire is it truly a kingdom? If a foreign power controls the ruling class, is it truly a kingdom? What is a nation?

"Ownership of the land" — how do we even determine who owns what land? Within what framework — international law, national law, local law? And what of the rules of war? Israel expanded its borders during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and again after the Six Day War—is that legitimate? The nature of war throughout history has been to rewrite laws and redraw borders—does this mean a state can declare war and do whatever it wants? What is the rule of law?

There are whole disciplines trying to answer these questions. The answers they offer are less answers and more an awareness of how messy people and history are.

Notes on terminology
From what I've read, the region containing Israel and Palestine is referred to as "the Levant." This region encompasses everything between the Fertile Crescent, Anatola Peninsula, and the Arabian Peninsula. I'll be referring to Israel and Palestine as the Levant forthwith, because saying "Israel and Palestine" gets tiresome, and because it avoids politics (is "Israel and Palestine" strictly alphabetical, or does it imply that Israel is more important, with Palestine as an afterthought?). I will also be avoiding the religiously fraught term "Holy Land."

The historical nations of the Levant this essay will be covering include the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The later, unified, nation is referred to as Judea. Using "ancient Israel" to refer to Judea can be either a harmless synonym or a tip-off to a writer's politics (much like calling the West Bank "Samaria and Idumaria" tells you exactly what someone thinks of Palestine).