A conflict built on centuries of myth-making

A conflict built on centuries of myth-making. 

‘Forever wars’ do not exist but bringing peace to the Holy Land is complicated by so much of its history being wilfully misunderstood. 

Jerusalem is at the heart of Israeli and Palestinian national identities but many moderates in both camps believe a compromise solution is impossible. 

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Friday September 06 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times

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There was a moment during the last significant negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, in May 2008, that is relevant today. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian minister of negotiations, told the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni: “It’s no secret we’re offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history. But we must talk about the concept of al-Quds. We’ve taken your interests and concerns into account … ”

Three years later these conversations were leaked to the media as the Palestine Papers. There was an outcry by Palestinians against Erekat, who was accused of treason. He resigned, suffering a heart attack. His treason was using the word Yerushalayim, the Hebrew for Jerusalem, alongside al-Quds, Arabic for Jerusalem. Yet he was no traitor but a brave, noble peacemaker — and an inspiration to this writer: there can be no Yerushalayim without al-Quds, no Israel without Palestine, no Palestine without Israel. One Holy City, one Holy Land — but ultimately, two nations, two republics.

In our world crisis of today, amid the blood-brimmed heartbreak of war and slaughter, that dream may seem naive yet there is little choice. Nonetheless, for it to happen titanic changes must take place in both nations. Essential is a respect for the history of the other side. History really matters in the Middle East; myths are as important as the real history but even as a historian, I think there is way too much attention paid to history in the Middle East. What should matter is how people want to live now; their right to live in peace, in their own country.

It is our reverence for the semi-sacred legitimacy granted by history that gives it lethal propulsive power. People live for it, quote it, die for it. History itself is never history: it changes, shapeshifts; it haunts us for ever. That is why it matters; why we have to fight for a balanced history, as much as such a thing is possible. History cannot be undone nor invented to suit modern emotions or ideologies.

As the Erekat story illustrates, it is impossible to make peace without acknowledging the history of the other. During the Camp David negotiations in 2000, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat shocked President Clinton and the Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak by insisting there had never been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, a lie widely repeated by Palestinian leaders. On the other side, there are plenty of Israeli nationalists who insist the Palestinian nation is itself an invention.

That is why I originally wrote a history of the Holy City/Holy Land that would encompass all peoples, all religions, all empires, from the dawn of history to the 20th century, where my narrative climaxed with the creation of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 war. There are many histories of the conflict, most of them wildly biased, some pro-Israel, most anti-Israel. This, I hope, was a balanced chronicle of both peoples, glorying in and respecting their narratives, though history of this tournament of scorpions remains a huge challenge.

When it came out in 2011, it still seemed negotiations would be revived. Instead, for ten years dominated by the Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel thrived in the presumption that no peace process was necessary while the Palestinians were split into two warring factions: the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas, which seemed content to terrorise Gaza with its Islamist tyranny, funded by Qatari and Iranian cash, bountiful western aid — and Israeli complaisance.

This week protesters in Tel Aviv called for a ceasefire and a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas

This week protesters in Tel Aviv called for a ceasefire and a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas

SAEED QAQ/GETTY

On October 7 Hamas’s diabolical slaughter was so alien to the sophisticated, tolerant mainstream of Arab culture and history that I was reminded not of sporadic Arab violence against Jews during the Ottoman centuries or British rule but of the fanatical religious hatred and frenzied evil of the Crusader massacre of Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem on July 15, 1099. That is no coincidence: nothing about Hamas is truly rooted in Arab history. Its Islamism is a new ideology, that of the Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and its eliminationist racism derives from 20th-century European racism and fascism. Yet since October 7, history has become a sparkwheel of hatred and ignorance on the internet. Social media has its charms yet is simultaneously a cesspit and dumpster fire of lies and loathing, a reliquary of falsehoods, prejudices, conspiracies. So often the history is not merely untrue but a brazen calumny — and when lies are corrected and the actual history asserted, the latest phrase, emblazoned on student banners astonishing in its arrogance and ignorance, is: “I aint reading all that!”

That was when I decided to update and revise my book to show how the Jewish and Arab histories of the Holy Land are ancient and intertwined. Both were indigenous, both ruled their own kingdoms, both conquered and colonised others too. Both peoples were conquered and colonised themselves by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and, after the eclipse of the Arab empire, by Christian Crusaders, then Islamic Mamluks and Ottomans. After the Romans crushed the last Judean prince, Simon bar Kochba in AD135, there were always Jews living in the Holy Land but no state until 1948; Palestinian Arabs always lived there as subjects of the empires of others, except for the short 18th-century rule of Sheikh Zahir al-Umar.

One of the tragedies of the modern conflict is the bleak binary of two nationalisms locked in a death-grip, justified by the simplistic outrages of eliminationist anti-Israel terrorists and western activists, and anti-Palestinian Israeli religious nationalists. Neither reflect the history of the region. Jerusalem today is the heart of Palestinian and Israeli national identities yet the history of the Holy Land is a multi-ethnic, multisect chronicle of indigenous peoples, Arab and Jewish, alike descended from Canaanites in the ancient Levant as well as outsiders, settlers, colonists and pilgrims who have included Arabs, Jews, Turks, Armenians and Greeks. This reflects its geostrategic position as bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa; its coastal road marched by so many armies, the pivot of the east Mediterranean, the meeting place, gallery and arcade, casbah, souk and bazaar of many peoples.

There are 5.3 million Palestinians outside Israel itself, three million in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 2.3 million in Gaza. There are nine million Israelis, including two million Israeli Arab citizens and seven million Jewish Israelis. Both peoples have grown inexorably since 1948. One thing is certain: Israel should not and cannot rule five million Palestinians indefinitely without dangerous degradation of its state and society, as we are witnessing.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the two communities can live together. Israeli Jews and many Israeli Arabs coexist; many of the latter, proud Israelis, heroically rushed to aid their Jewish co-citizens on October 7 and gave their lives. This was understood by earlier leaders: Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion both negotiated with Arab leaders of Syria and Jordan, the Hashemite brothers Faisal and Abdullah, both kings, who discussed between 1918 and 1949 various ways to encompass Jewish entities and communities within regional Arab federations, believing Jews and Arabs could thrive together. Palestinian nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s also saw regional solutions, proposing Palestine be part of Syrian, Egyptian or Jordanian kingdoms. A single-state “solution” now seems impossible without bloody strife if not slaughter. The vision of two nations, two republics, with all its flaws, remains plausible if incredibly difficult. Two nations, two republics. Words matter. I prefer to use this new, plain coinage to the weary slogan of the “two-state solution”, tainted by the failed peace processes, for the simple reason that the word solution implies a finality that I now believe is unrealistic. Some frankness is obligatory here. October 7 may have placed the Palestinian plight back at the centre of the global agenda but its gleeful sadism, rapine, butchery and bloodthirst, its hostage-taking, its pure evil, have probably put it back by decades for many Israelis.

The ferocious Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, with its unbearable civilian cost, may have discredited peaceful existence with Israel for many Palestinians. Yet there is no other way except endless killing and suffering. Not everyone would embrace this compromise. Some Palestinians hope for Israel’s downfall and the expulsion if not slaughter of its Jews, because the Holy Land is God-given Arab Islamic territory. This is the view of Hamas and its many supporters. There have always been Israelis who believe in the subjugation and expulsion of Palestinians because every inch is God-given Jewish Promised Land. Such Israeli extremists now disgrace the disastrous present government and menace the very existence of Israel almost as grievously as its external enemies. Other decent people in both nations believe two republics will never be feasible in terms of security or trust. But these views have waxed and waned over the decades and will continue to do so, depending on circumstance. The essential compromise settlement, the vision of two nations, two republics, may never win over everyone but it should and could win over enough people in both nations to work. It is not a “solution” that totally ends conflict. It is a pragmatic arrangement of compromise.

History and geography offer some perspective. Looking back over the mere century since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Israel–Palestine conflict is both exceptional and utterly typical of the region. Many of the nation-states created between 1930 and 1948 are unstable to the point of disintegration: Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan, mired in civil war and ethnic strife, cursed by tyranny. Lebanon, a warning against one-state solutions, survived spasms of civil war only to be captured by Hezbollah.

More than a quarter of the 400 million people of the Arab world live in states dominated by parastate militias. The most successful states are the wealthy absolutist monarchies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and a flawed democracy, Israel.

The tragedies of the region are made worse by the clumsy interference of outsiders driven by the international obsession in — and superior righteousness inspired by — Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Ever since the Roman campaigns scattered the Jews, the Holy Land has had a significance far beyond its location, thanks to an extraordinary concentration of events: Constantine’s conversion, the universality of the Bible across Europe (and later America), the Christianisation of the Arab world, the mystical significance of Jerusalem in the Jewish, Christian and then Islamic revelations, the Arab and Islamic imperial conquests, Crusades and Saladin’s reconquest. The 19th-century Christian re-focus on the Holy Land, the Balfour Declaration, League of Nations mandate and UN partition confirmed this unique sacred-cultural status even in an era of secular institutions and international law. The centrality of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in wider western culture, added to that of Aqsa and al-Quds in Islamic and Palestinian culture, is a super-multiplier that magnifies and distorts both exponentially.

It is ironic that the western fixation is based on a sense of familiarity, if not moral ownership, that originates in European crusades as well as imperialism and orientalism, deeply, often unconsciously, buried in the western soul. The Holy Land acts like a strange carnival mirror in which we see a version of ourselves, past and present, serving as a proxy passion play for local struggles in distant places and a contorting lens through which we see others more dramatically, crudely and righteously, which wondrously grants instant superiority without any jeopardy for ourselves: the Jerusalem Effect. The romanticisation of Hamas, a murderous religious sect that abhors every tenet of liberal democracy, led by Yahya Sinwar, a man who made his name torturing men to death by hand because they were homosexuals, is the classic example of this — a mistake rarely made by people born and bred in the Middle East. The fetish is based too on the history of the Jewish people, half of whom now live in Israel, and reflects their exceptional place and role in western history — now expressed in new strains of antisemitism retooled for an age of formal “anti-racism” that inverts recent Jewish history and uses it against Jews — and the safety of Israelis.

The various peace plans to end the conflict, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player

The various peace plans to end the conflict, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player

DAWOUD ABO ALKAS/GETTY

At a time when the academy is committed to a critique of the historical morality of western states, the role of European empires in that history has intensified this entitlement to judge. This volcano of moral hysteria is ignited not only by fashionable ideologies, cultural wars, historical illiteracy and ancient bigotries but also by the maddening algorithmic whirlpool of social media. All harvest new hatreds to feed into a conflict not short of old ones.

Peace-making is about psychology as well as power: “The psychological barrier is 70 per cent of the problem,” said President Sadat of Egypt as he bravely flew into Jerusalem, “the substance is just 30.” But it is not only one side that must reassess their worldview. For Palestinian extremists, the long-held dream of destroying Israel and the urge to murder Israelis, the thrall to killing cults, martyrdom fetishes and maximalist exclusivity of a pure “Arab Palestine”, only ensure slaughter, interminable impoverishment and moral desolation. For Israeli extremists, the urge to deny Palestinians rights, safety, respect and statehood, the thrall to cults of messianic chiliasm, Jewish supremacy and maximalist expansion, mean slaughter, international isolation, moral desolation and a steep slope towards the degradation of the Jewish republic.

The Jewish extremists who besmirch Netanyahu’s disgraceful ministry and seek to inflame Jerusalem and the West Bank should never again be allowed near an Israeli cabinet. Both sides must change; both must reject the extremists in their ranks. And not only within their ranks. Israel’s golden opportunities and gravest threats — of Saudi conciliation and Iranian menace — are linked to the Palestinian question but also profoundly based on wider geopolitical conflicts. This is both a local ethnic conflict and a theatre in a wider tournament between America and the open societies with their Sunni Arab allies — Saudi, the UAE and Egypt — and Iran with its senior ally, Russia, and its parastate vassals — Assadist Syria, Hezbollah, Houthis and Hamas, all enemies of every value we in the liberal democracies hold dear.

At the moment, many banners of the Palestinian cause are waved by activists who benefit from the freedoms of democracies yet belong in the camp of democracy’s intolerant, authoritarian enemies. A Palestinian republic will only happen when the Palestinian movement separates itself from these eliminationists. States can make peace with past enemies who accept their existence but there is no point in making peace with those who wish to kill you, now and tomorrow. Yet amid the hellscape of today’s slaughter, rage and grief, the killing of civilians, the red mist of war and the looming danger of wider regional conflict, out of the darkness of this nightmare for both peoples, the dawn must come.

The cruellest tragedies can sometimes shake established views and lead to new visions and acts of courage ­— as they did for Sadat and Begin after 1973 and for Rabin and Arafat in 1993 after the Intifada. Whenever the fighting dies down, it is essential for Israel and Palestinians to resume negotiations. “That’s why,” commented Barak, citing the total lack of public confidence in Netanyahu and his “messianic crazies”, “we need a sensible and capable government” — and a fresh mindset.

Few states in history have made concessions out of pure philanthropy. Entities negotiate about interests. October 7 and its wider sequels exposed vulnerabilities in Israel’s position. The short-term solutions may be military but the long-term ones are political. Similarly, October 7 proved Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorists can punish Israel with military raids and urban warfare in Gaza and make the West Bank ungovernable but neither threatens Israel’s existence and are achievable only at an unbearable cost in Palestinian lives. The various peace plans, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player. That is why — however difficult it may be, however fortified the positions of Israeli and Palestinian maximalists — there is an opportunity, tortuous and tangled. Ghouls, killers and pyromaniacs maraud on both sides. It will be up to the brave, the moderate and the heroic to find that path.

Conflicts are often called “forever wars” but none are eternal. They all end in victory, defeat, compromise or exhaustion. For two nations to live beside each other without violence, love is not necessary, nor in this case likely; nor, for many, is forgiveness or amity — though many Israelis and Palestinians are already building friendships. None of this is necessary, only recognition, acceptance and peace. It is possible. It is essential. And it is inevitable. One day.

The revised and updated Jerusalem: a History of the Middle East by Simon Sebag Montefiore is out now