It is inaccurate, distorting, even misleading, to call the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis the “Middle East conflict” or the “Arab Israeli conflict,” especially in this time and day. At a minimum, Middle East includes Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE. Other definitions may go further to include Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but even if we stick to the smaller set of countries, the usage of this term can be problematic.
Jordan and Egypt had signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, they maintain diplomatic relations, and even before the peace treaties, relations between the governments of Jordan and Israel had been friendly. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is true that historically, Saddam’s Iraq had been in conflict with Israel, best exemplified in the onslaught of scud missiles in 1991 following the invasion of Kuwait. And about a decade earlier, Israeli air force had bombed Iraqi sites. Iraq had also supported the Palestinian resistance movements financially and politically. But since that time, and especially after 2003, Iraq has been very occupied with its own problems, so there is really no conflict between it and Israel.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE have never had a conflict with Israel, even if they don’t enjoy formal diplomatic relations with the latter. The practical life of the average citizen in any of those countries is not in the slightest impacted by Israel (or vice versa), though many may have their hearts and minds invested in the conflict. The only other countries in the Middle East that have a palpable problem with Israel today are Lebanon and Syria. But on any average day, the life of a Lebanese or a Syrian is nowhere impacted by Israel. Existentially, it is the Palestinian’s day-to-day life, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, that is made unnecessarily so much more difficult, if not unbearable, by the Jewish State.
Calling it the “Middle East Conflict” exaggerates the scope of the conflict, for it may make it appear that twelve countries are at war with Israel, though only three are involved, and at best partially (one doesn’t have an army or a proper country for that matter – Palestine, and the other, Lebanon, only has a government faction, Hezbollah, putting up a fight.) The term may work to draw sympathy towards the Jewish State, a lone country surrounded by hostile Arabs, where in reality Israel wields so much power that it can choose to bomb sites in other sovereign countries like it did in Iraq in 1982, and Syria in 2008, actions that amount to acts of war, without seemingly worrying about reprisals.
Naming it the “Middle East Conflict” has the added effect of diluting the Palestinians’ stake in the discord, the specificity of their suffering, and the uniqueness of their plight to protect their precarious identity.
The term “Arab Israeli Conflict” is also misleading. Again it serves the purpose of exaggerating the discord, insinuating that all of the Arabs are out after Israel. There are 350 million people defined as Arab. While most of them, just like other citizens in the world, may oppose Israel because of its human rights abuses and violations of International Law, not a mere 2% of them are “officially” in conflict with Israel.
To the surprise of many in the U.S., many Jews are Arab themselves, including Egyptian, Iraqi, Yamani, Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian and Tunisian. These Arab Jews, known as Mizrahi, mostly live in Israel today, some in the U.S., some still in Syria, many in Morocco. These Arabs are definitely not in conflict with Israel. They are Israeli citizens with full rights, unlike the non-Jewish, Palestinian citizens of Israel.
According to Ella Habiba Shohat, an Iraqi Jew and Professor of Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at New York University, the story of Israel and Jews only takes the European narrative into consideration, most notably the Holocaust, and assumes it for the collective memory and experience of all Jews, thus excluding the experience of Arab Jews.
These Mizrahis spoke more Arabic than Yiddish, ate and looked more like Middle Easterners than Europeans, and were immersed in some of the Arab traditions. They had more in common with Moslem and Christian Arabs than with Polish or German Jews. Mizrahis lived in harmony (though there were times of tension) with and were integrated in the non-Jewish Arab communities where they lived, contrary to what some Israelis would have us believe—that the suppression of Jews was a global and simultaneous phenomenon. (Tensions in the Arab World started after, and as a result of, the creation of Israel.)
According to Shohat, “In Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia, Jews became members of legislatures, of municipal councils, of the judiciary, and even occupied high economic positions. (The finance minister of Iraq in the ’40s was Ishak Sasson, and in Egypt, Jamas Sanua–higher positions, ironically, than those our community had generally achieved within the Jewish state until the 1990s!)”
The different communities that once lived in harmony were not so consumed by their religious affiliation to derive their sense of identity.
Terming the Palestinian-Israeli conflict an Arab Israeli conflict unnecessarily invites more people to join the conflict, politicizes and segregates people further, and emphasizes our differences instead of our similarities. It pushes us to identify ourselves in terms of binarism, us versus them, good versus evil (how good and evil are determined is another story,) instead of acknowledging that we are the same people and that we all demand to be treated with respect and dignity.
What if Christian Arabs formed a state and called it “X,” brought European Christians to live in it and suppressed the indigenous non-Christian population in that state. Would they call the ensuing conflict the Arab-X conflict?
Again, this naming serves to obfuscate the idea of a Palestinian identity and is inaccurate. The main distinguishing factor is whether a citizen in Israel is Jewish or not, not if she is Arab or not, just as in the example of the Iraqi, Yemeni and Egyptian Jew living in Israel. The whole burden of this racist design fell crushingly on the shoulder of the Palestinian, first and foremost. The “Arab-Israeli” is none other than a Palestinian, hence she should be called a Palestinian-Israeli. Similar to the Palestinian living in Israel proper, the one in Gaza and the West Bank happens to be a Moslem or a Christian, not a Jew. Hence, he stands to receive the wrath of the Israeli suppression machine.
At the core of it, this conflict is about a universal fight for human rights and social justice, an oppressed-versus-oppressor conflict. This is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Tags: Arab, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Arab-Jews, Israeli, Jewish, Jews, Middle East Conflict, Mizrahi, Naming of Arab-Israeli Conflict, Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Enjoyed your article very much. I strongly urge you to write it in arabic and have it appear in arabic newspapers. As arabic readers need to be exposed to such an opinion.
Good luck,
Majed