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Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine ( ISBN 0-929093-13-5) is a book about the Arab–Israeli conflict by Shmuel Katz. Katz analyzes the roots of the conflict and what he sees as the inseparable connection between modern and biblical Israel. [1]
In the book, Katz discusses the policies of the British in 1948, the continuous Jewish presence in Palestine, the bond of the Jewish People with the region, Jerusalem's religious history, the Arab claim to the region, the "myth" of the Arab refugee problem, Arab propaganda, Muslim fanaticism and terrorism.
One of his main conclusions is that there was never a "Palestinian Arab" nation, and to the Arab people as a whole, no such entity as Palestine has ever existed. This stands in clear contrast to the strong bond that the Jews always had with the land. The real purpose behind the Arab claims was, according to the author, the destruction of Israel as an entity of the Jewish people and not a response to Israeli violation of any political rights of another people.
Katz recalls that it was against the embryo state of pre-1948 war Israel that the Arabs declared and waged their war. The total area allotted to the Jewish state by the UN partition plan, amounting to little more than half of western Palestine, was roughly 15,000 square kilometers (about 6,000 square miles), including the semi-arid Negev. The Arabs were thus assured seven eighths of the totality of Palestina (Eretz Israel).
The seven independent Arab states in 1947 – Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Transjordan – whose leaders decided to prevent the creation of Israel, contained an area 230 times larger than the projected Jewish state and a population 60 times that of its Jewish inhabitants, who numbered only 650,000. Such was the attitude of the Arabs in 1947, Katz claims, when they had in their hands all, and more than, the territory they are now demanding from Israel. At that time, they violently refused to share Palestine with the Jews in a territorial ratio of seven to one. They refused to recognize the Jewish claim to the country or to the smallest part of it; to acquiesce in the international recognition of that claim; or to abate this one jot of their designs on the whole of the area that had once been the Arab Empire.
Less than thirty years earlier, according to Katz's view, the "historic rights" of the Arabs to Palestine, allegedly existing for a thousand years, had not yet been discovered. In February 1919, the Emir Faisal, the one recognized Arab leader at the time, then still striving for the creation of Arab political independence in Syria (of which he was briefly king) and Iraq (over which he and his house subsequently ruled for forty years), signed a formal agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing the World Zionist Organization. This provided for co-operation between the projected Arab state and the projected reconstituted Jewish state of Palestine. Borders were still to be negotiated, but Faisal had already described the Zionist proposals as "moderate and proper." The borders proposed by the Zionists included what subsequently became Mandatory Palestine on both banks of the Jordan River as well as north-western Galilee up to the Litani River – later included in southern Lebanon, part of the Golan Heights – later included in Syria—and part of the Sinai Peninsula – left under British administration in Egypt.
In a review for The New York Times , Nadav Safran wrote that "Katz devotes an entire chapter documenting the existence of every Jewish village in Palestine and the immigration of every band of Jews to it through the centuries since the destruction of the Second Temple in order to enhance the Jewish claim to the country. Yet, the Arab and Muslim rule there for near 1,200 years is not deemed by him sufficient ground to establish its claim to a national homeland in it. He asserts the fact that there was never a Palestinian Arab nation, as if three-fourths of the present members of the United Nations were not lacking the credentials he demands from the Palestinians" [2]
It has been translated to many languages. An example to its popularity is that in placing its first order for paperbacks from Bantam Books, an official import company in the People's Republic of China selected this book together with two more. [3]
In her work Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process Ofira Seliktar wrote that the Jewish Defense League distributed Katz's book to bolster support for the Greater Land of Israel, "a policy, which, in its view, mandated the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories". Pamphlets from Americans for a Safe Israel, co-founded by Katz in 1971, were later distributed along with copies of Battleground by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. [4]
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–1949 Palestine war and the Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
In the 20th century, approximately 900000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia. Primarily a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine. Al-Husseini was the scion of the al-Husayni family of Jerusalemite Arab nobles, who trace their origins to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
The Faisal–Weizmann agreement was signed by Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organization on 3 January 1919. Signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference, it was presented by the Zionist delegation alongside a March 1919 letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal's name to American Zionist leader Felix Frankfurter as two documents to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had prior approval of Arabs.
The history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict traces back to the late 19th century when Zionists sought to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants to the region. Following World War II and the Holocaust, international pressure mounted for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948.
Prior to the rise of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the term Palestinian referred to any person born in or living in Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. During the British Mandate over Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to any person legally considered to be a citizen of Mandatory Palestine as defined in the 1925 Citizenship Order.
The Arab–Israeli conflict began in the 20th century, evolving from earlier Intercommunal violence in Mandatory Palestine. The conflict became a major international issue with the birth of Israel in 1948. The Arab–Israeli conflict has resulted in at least five major wars and a number of minor conflicts. It has also been the source of two major Palestinian uprisings (intifadas).
Shmuel "Mooki" Katz was an Israeli writer, historian and journalist. Prior to the formation of the State of Israel, he was a Zionist activist and member of the high command of Irgun, a proscribed paramiltary group. He was a member of the first Knesset and is also known for his biography of Jewish leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
During the 1948 Palestine war in which the State of Israel was established, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the total population of the territory Israel captured fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. The causes for this mass displacement is a matter of great controversy among historians, journalists, and commentators.
The Palestinian people are an ethnonational group with family origins in the region of Palestine. Since 1964, they have been referred to as Palestinians, but before that they were usually referred to as Palestinian Arabs. During the period of the British Mandate, the term Palestinian was also used to describe the Jewish community living in Palestine.
During the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, there was civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish Yishuv, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The conflict shifted from sectarian clashes in the 1920s and early 1930s to an armed Arab Rebellion against British rule in 1936, armed Jewish Revolt primarily against the British in mid-1940s and finally open war in November 1947 between Arabs and Jews.
Muslim supporters of Israel refers to both Muslims and cultural Muslims who support the right to self-determination of the Jewish people and the likewise existence of a Jewish homeland in the Southern Levant, traditionally known as the Land of Israel and corresponding to the modern polity known as the State of Israel. Muslim supporters of the Israeli state are widely considered to be a rare phenomenon in light of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the larger Arab–Israeli conflict. Within the Muslim world, the legitimacy of the State of Israel has been challenged since its inception, and support for Israel's right to exist is a minority orientation. Pro-Israel Muslims have faced opposition from both moderate Muslims and Islamists.
After Saturday comes Sunday is a Middle Eastern proverb. It has been documented in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, albeit in the form sállẹf ẹs-sábt bẹtlâqi l-ḥádd qẹddâmẹk. According to some journalist accounts, the proverb is prominent among the Maronites with the meaning that the Muslims will do away with the Christians after they have dealt with the Jews, implying the pending elimination or expulsion of minorities living in the Muslim world. Israeli folklorist Shimon Khayyat has interpreted it as a threatening message, stating: "Since the Jews are now persecuted, it is as inevitable that the Christians' turn will come next as it is Sunday that will follow Saturday". Recent uses of the proverb have been attributed to Arab Christians expressing a fear that they might soon be ostracized on a scale akin to that which was seen during the Jewish exodus from Muslim-majority countries. It is often reported to be used by Muslim fundamentalists as a slogan to intimidate local Christian communities.
The Syrian National Congress, also called the Pan-Syrian Congress and General Syrian Congress (GSC), was convened in May 1919 in Damascus, Syria, after the expulsion of the Ottomans from Syria. The mission of the Congress was to consider the future of "Syria", by which was meant Greater Syria: present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. The Congress also intended to present Arab views to the American King-Crane Commission of inquiry. The Congress was considered the first national parliament in the modern history of Syria.
In the 1948 Palestine war more than 700000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of the Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people that espouses self-determination and sovereignty over the region of Palestine. Originally formed in the early 20th century in opposition to Zionism, Palestinian nationalism later internationalized and attached itself to other ideologies; it has thus rejected the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the government of Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinian nationalists often draw upon broader political traditions in their ideology, such as Arab socialism and ethnic nationalism in the context of Muslim religious nationalism. Related beliefs have shaped the government of Palestine and continue to do so.
The Nakba was the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Palestine war through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is also used to describe the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the shattering of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.