Letter: Understanding the historical context of Palestine and Israel

Lynn Harding

I’m writing to thank you for the two-part series published on Monday and Tuesday, giving a concise history of the area of the world known generally as Palestine, and now more specifically as Israel.

What a truly amazing, detailed delve into that history, right back to the earliest days of civilisation.

Thank you, Mr Mellet, and thank you, Cape Times.

One of the references Mr Mellet used is the book Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History ... we surely can’t go back further than that!

As a non-Jew or Muslim, I have always been interested in Jerusalem as the ancient Holy City, tossed back and forth between warring nations, specifically the period of the Crusaders and the Muslim warrior Salah-al-Din.

He was a wise ruler who restored Jerusalem to its rightful place as the centre of worship for Muslims, Christians and Jews, and revived and protected the architecture and Islamic art and precious books.

During that, and further periods through Ottoman rule, people existed peacefully and were tolerant of each other’s faith.

I can imagine the many pastoral people, small farmers and herders wandering those lands, while traders and business people plied their trade in the villages and cities, all respectful of each other’s rights, including worshipping at the temple in Jerusalem.

Mr Mellet’s explanation of the Ashkenazi Europeans, largely non-religious to start with, it seems, is interesting, and with no direct roots to Palestine.

However, the Zionist movement started by Theodor Herzl in Europe in the 1880s, seems to me to be the start of all the trouble.

Jews will not agree with me, of course, as they feel the Bible promised them a homeland in the region known as Palestine.

I am no scholar but, to take the Bible literally I feel is to play with fire. God is the God of all and Allah is just another name for Him.

Surely this God whom we are all supposed to believe in would not give a country to one group of His people at the exclusion of the other?

Where were the non-Jews, and they vastly outnumbered the Jewish population then, supposed to go?

I also found it interesting to see reference to the beginning of fascism in the Zionist movement, starting in the 1920s shortly after the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of a homeland for the Jews.

That was probably the biggest mistake the British government and the Allies have ever made, and the real start of all the problems in the Middle East.

It’s interesting that there was a definite but distinct difference between state-Zionism and the more culturally-based Zionism, with its emphasis on faith, culture and ethos.

Who knew that, or that the state Zionism had won the day and prevails in Israel.

Mr Mellet goes on to detail the activities of the state fascist-Zionists up to and including World War II, with many sordid details emerging of unsavoury collaboration with the Nazis, but the UN Partition Plan in 1947 and the declaration of the state of Israel 1948, was the final straw that has broken the back of Palestine.

Since then the military rule throughout the country, controlling every movement of the Palestine people in their own land, has been a total aberration.

Like South Africa, the “pot has been boiling” since then, and however much the Israelis watch and hope that the pot never boils over, it surely will.

We see this in the formation of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

These groups are like the ANC in the early days, described as a terrorist organisation but in fact the pot finally boiling and spilling over a little within the larger population, whose people have been suppressed.

They may not be popular with many of their own people, who just want to live in peace and not fight the system, but it’s inevitable.

The worry in the Middle East conflict is that it directly involves the big power players, and could spell catastrophe.

What’s the answer?

For starters, get rid of all the present leaders ...Natanyahu, Abbas from the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all who are directly contributing to the conflict.

Have properly controlled general elections where the people of each group are given the chance to vote and elect their leaders, who hopefully will realise the gravity of the situation and sit down and negotiate without interference from the West or East, and work out their own future. Maybe that’s a pipe dream but what else will do?

Cape Times