What appears to be an official ABC explan­a­tion for the current violence in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank is little more than pro­pa­ganda.  The ABC piece is below, including a running fact-check (in red font).  The ECAJ has made a complaint to the ABC.

To download this response in PDF format, please click here.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021 – 05-14/israel-palestini­an-ter­rit­or­ies-gaza-explained/100134296

An attempt to explain why explosions are again filling the skies over Israel and Gaza

Emily Clark

ABC

May 14, 2021

The skies above Israel and the Palestini­an Ter­rit­or­ies are again alight with explo­sions. The death toll is climbing and there is no end to the fighting in sight.

This is the latest eruption of long-running tensions that date back to conflict over the estab­lish­ment of Israel and the dis­place­ment of Palestini­ans. It is the worst violence since 2014 and there are warnings it could escalate into “full scale war”.

There is a long history of occu­pa­tion, oppres­sion and violence in the region and it’s impossible to explain it all in one concise article. What we can try to do is provide some back­ground, explain what’s happening at the moment and con­tex­tu­al­ise the position of the relevant sides.

We will keep working to explain the situation over coming days and weeks.

An abbreviated history of the region

The region we’re talking about is between the Medi­ter­ranean Sea and the Jordan River, below Lebanon and north of Egypt.

Like many places on Earth, the history of the region is complex and bloodied. It has been ruled by many different powers over centuries, but Arab people have lived there through­out.

Not so. “Arab people” have not lived there “through­out”. It is false to suggest that all Semitic peoples are Arabs.  This is one of the found­a­tion­al myths of the anti-Israel narrative. It is designed to air-brush away the ancient and unbroken his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion of the Jewish people to Israel.

Pre­tend­ing that any of the people of ancient Canaan were “Arab people” is not merely false but disin­genu­ous.  In some of the surviving murals at Karnak from 3000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians strik­ingly depicted the Canaan­ites as a dis­tinctly different ethno-cultural group from the Shasu (the ancestors of the Arabs) – different in dress, hair­styles and general appear­ance.  The ancient Canaan­ites did not speak any ancient or other form of Arabic. They wor­shipped a pantheon of pagan gods, and engaged in bizarre rituals, which would be anathema to all Arabs.  In fact they had religious and cultural practices, such as human sacrifice, including child sacrifice, sexual rites, eating of pigs and drinking of wine, which are entirely repugnant to Arab and Muslim mores. 

The Arabic language and culture ori­gin­ated in the Arabian peninsula. It is a southern Semitic language that is dis­tinctly different from the north-western Semitic languages spoken by the ancient Canaan­ites, Hebrews and Arameans.    Arabic was not embraced as the pre­vail­ing language and culture of the Levant or any other parts of the Middle East and North Africa until well after the Arab-Muslim military invasions and conquests of the 7^th century.  In fact, not a word of Arabic is to be found on any document or artefact from these locations dating any earlier than the 7^th century CE.  

There is thus no evidence of any con­tinu­ity in ethnicity, language, customs, religion, diet or mores between the ancient Canaan­ites and con­tem­por­ary “Arab people”.  Indeed, all the available evidence points to their stark dif­fer­ences. The claim that there is some direct line of con­tinu­ity of people­hood and ethno-cultural identity from the ancient Canaan­ites to modern-day Palestini­ans is a very recent one that has been fab­ric­ated for trans­par­ently political purposes in the context of the con­tem­por­ary Israel-Palestini­an conflict. No academic historian, anthro­po­lo­gist or archae­olo­gist of any repute has given this claim any credence what­so­ever.  It is devoid of truth.

Most recently — and we’re talking the past few hundred years — the area now known as Israel and the occupied Palestini­an ter­rit­or­ies was ruled by the Ottoman Empire and after World War I, the United Kingdom.

No, we’re not just talking “the past few hundred years”.  The Ottomans conquered the Holy Land in 1517.  Over the next two centuries a wave of Jews living in other parts of the Ottoman empire moved to the Holy Land and joined other Jews whose families had lived there con­tinu­ously since antiquity, prin­cip­ally in the four Holy Cities (for Jews) of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron.

There’s no straight line that can be drawn between religious groups. It’s a mix of religion, nation­al­ism, ethnicity and geo­pol­it­ics.

If this is intended as an obscure way to deny the ancient and unbroken his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion of the Jewish people to Israel, it is false. In contrast to the complete absence of Arabic writing, artefacts or inscrip­tions to be found anywhere in the Holy Land dating before the Muslim conquests of the 7^th century CE, and the absence of any reference to Palestine as a descriptor for a people before the late nine­teenth century, there is an abundance of evidence of a distinct people and polity called “Israel” stretch­ing back to the dawn of the Iron Age, more than 3,200 years ago.  Even for those who do not believe in the Bible, there is no shortage of documents and other archae­olo­gic­al artefacts which attest to the antiquity of Israel and the Jewish people. 

The oldest reference to a people called Israel located in ancient Canaan is to be found on a stone monument of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merenptah, son of Rameses II.  The monument is dated to about 1,205 BCE and records Merenptah’s military campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa.  One section of it records his victories in Canaan, and declares that the Egyptians laid waste “Israel” and destroyed its crops. 

Sig­ni­fic­antly, “Israel” is iden­ti­fied by the hiero­glyph­ic determ­in­at­ive for “a people”, a socio-ethnic unity powerful enough to be mentioned along with major city-states against which Merenptah cam­paigned.  According to Professor Michael G Hasel:

“Israel func­tioned as an agri­cul­tur­ally-based/sedent­ary socio-ethnic entity in the late 13^th century B.C., one that is sig­ni­fic­ant enough to be included in the military campaign against political powers in Canaan. …While the Merneptah stela does not give any indic­a­tion of the actual social structure of the people of Israel, it does indicate that Israel was a sig­ni­fic­ant socio-ethnic entity that needed to be reckoned with”

Both Arab people of different faiths and Israeli Jewish people date their claims to the land back thousands of years, but it was in the early 20^th century that the brutal dis­place­ment of the Palestini­ans began.

The descrip­tion “brutal dis­place­ment” to describe lawful land purchases by Jews in the early 20^th century, often at above-market prices, is false and inflam­mat­ory.  Organised sectarian violence began in 1920, and it was directed against Jewish civilians by Arab leaders, including the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later allied himself with, and moved to, Nazi Germany. There were many examples of these attacks, the most notorious of which were the massacres of Jews which took place in Hebron and other places in 1929. 

In the late 1800s, a Jewish movement to establish a homeland in what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine began. It gathered pace after the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

After World War I, the British ruled the area under a mandate from the League of Nations. They committed to the estab­lish­ment of two separate states — one Jewish and one Arab.

No, the British never committed to estab­lish­ing two States. In the Balfour Declar­a­tion, they committed to allowing the Jewish people to establish a national home.  This com­mit­ment received inter­na­tion­al endorse­ment at the San Remo Con­fer­ence of the vic­tori­ous Allied powers of WWI in 1920, and in the terms of the Mandate granted to Britain by the League of Nations in 1922.   The League of Nations Mandate:

• expli­citly recog­nised “the his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for recon­sti­t­ut­ing their national home in that country” (Preamble)
• provided for the recog­ni­tion of a “Jewish agency…as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the [British] Admin­is­tra­tion of Palestine” in economic, social and other policy (Article 4); and
• provided that the Admin­is­tra­tion of Palestine “shall facil­it­ate Jewish immig­ra­tion under suitable con­di­tions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close set­tle­ment by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes” (Article 6)

In 1937 a British Royal Com­mis­sion recom­men­ded par­ti­tion­ing the country into a Jewish State and an Arab State but the British gov­ern­ment never adopted the recom­mend­a­tion. 

Al-Husseini appeared before the Royal Com­mis­sion and shocked the com­mis­sion­ers with his extremism when he suggested that most of the then existing Jewish pop­u­la­tion of Palestine should be forced to leave the country or be exterm­in­ated.  When asked whether he thought the 400,000 Jews already living in Palestine could be assim­il­ated into the country, he gave a one-word answer: “No”.  When pressed whether he meant that some of the Jews “would have to be removed by a process kindly or painful, as the case may be” he replied, “We must leave all this to the future”.  Husseini’s answer takes on an espe­cially sinister con­nota­tion in light of the fact that he was soon to become one of Nazi Germany’s most fanatical and devoted allies.

Following the Mufti’s evidence, the Com­mis­sion noted iron­ic­ally, “We are not ques­tion­ing the Mufti’s intentions…but we cannot forget what recently happened, despite treaty pro­vi­sions and explicit assur­ances, to the Assyrian [Christian] minority in Iraq; nor can we forget that the hatred of the Arab politi­cian for the [Jewish] National Home has never been concealed and that it has now permeated the Arab pop­u­la­tion as a whole.”

On 17 May 1939, as the Arab riots ended, the British issued a White Paper severely limiting Jewish immig­ra­tion into Palestine.  Published on the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, the White Paper tore up the Balfour Declaration’s com­mit­ment to foster the Jewish national home and effect­ively signed the death warrant for tens of thousands of European Jews who might otherwise have found refuge from the approach­ing Nazi genocide.  The existing Jewish pop­u­la­tion in Palestine would be relegated to permanent minority status in a future majority-Arab state.

Yet incred­ibly this too was rejected by al-Husseini and his followers.  As Husseini’s evidence to the Com­mis­sion had revealed, they were resolved to expel or kill off most of the Jews already living in Palestine.

This rejec­tion­ist attitude sadly persists, and remains at the core of the conflict.

After the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people in World War II, the newly formed United Nations voted to establish Israel alongside a Palestini­an state.

In fact the UN General Assembly resolved that the territory of the British Mandate be par­ti­tioned into a “Jewish State” which would have oblig­a­tions to protect the rights of its “Arab minority” and an “Arab State” which would have oblig­a­tions to protect the rights of its “Jewish minority”. The Arabs not only rejected the res­ol­u­tion but in late November 1947 they went to war against their Jewish neigh­bours to prevent its imple­ment­a­tion. This civil war, openly declared and initiated by Arab leaders, was what caused the first Palestini­ans to flee the country.

Many Jews believe this was a home­com­ing, the return to their Holy Land and their rightful place.

In fact by 1947, the Jewish pop­u­la­tion already living in the country had already estab­lished the found­a­tions of a State.

In 1948, the state of Israel was founded. The Arab nations of the region, including Jordan and Egypt, refused to recognise it and war followed.

War did not just “follow”.  The armies of 5 Arab States invaded the country on 15 May 1948 in a massive land grab.

The new Israeli armed forces conquered more territory than envisaged by the UN vote — including the western half of Jerusalem.

The UN vote was violently rejected by all Arab leaders. They announced and launched a war that was openly aimed at “driving the Jews into the sea” in order to prevent the UN res­ol­u­tion from being imple­men­ted.

The partition and sub­sequent war resulted in dis­place­ment of hundreds of thousands of Palestini­ans.

It also resulted in an even greater number of Jews, some 800,000 of them, being forcibly expelled from Arab countries.

Many were forced from their homes and their property was seized by Israelis.

Prop­er­ties left behind by the Palestini­ans who fled are held by the gov­ern­ment Custodian in Israel. As early as 1949, the Israeli gov­ern­ment committed itself to paying fair com­pens­a­tion for these prop­er­ties as part of an overall peace set­tle­ment.

A much smaller number of Jews were displaced, mostly from East Jerusalem.

They were killed or evicted and their homes were either destroyed or seized by Jordan, without any com­mit­ment to pay com­pens­a­tion. Quite the contrary.

In the next war, in 1967, Israel extended its control further, pushing Jordan, Syria and Egypt back to take over the rest of Jerusalem and the sur­round­ing West Bank, as well as the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights on the Syrian border.

The 1967 war was instig­ated by Arab leaders in a second attempt to expel the Jews.  In May 1967, the Egyptian gov­ern­ment massed 100,000 troops in the Sinai peninsula to confront Israel, ordered out the UN peace­keep­ing force and imposed a naval blockade cutting off maritime access to Israel’s southern port of Eilat through which, at that time, Israel imported 90% of its oil require­ments.   The latter measure, a clearly unlawful act of aggres­sion which was widely denounced as such at the time, was the proximate cause of the 1967 war.

Israel estab­lished long-running military occu­pa­tion of these areas and despite UN Security Council res­ol­u­tions against it, Israel built new set­tle­ments for its people.

As well as civilian pro­test­ers, armed Palestini­an groups have opposed the Israelis and several terrorist groups, including militant group Hamas, have launched waves of attacks, including suicide bombers.

Recently, the Inter­na­tion­al Criminal Court launched an invest­ig­a­tion into alleged war crimes by both Israel and Palestini­ans and on Thursday its head pro­sec­utor said she was watching current events “with great concern”.

So, Israel is an inde­pend­ent state, but the Palestini­ans do not have an equi­val­ent.

See next comment. 

For decades, the inter­na­tion­al community has worked towards estab­lish­ing a Palestini­an state but that hasn’t happened.

Israel has made far-reaching offers to the Palestini­ans to try to resolve the conflict – at Camp David in 2000, at Taba in 2001 (based on the Clinton Bridging proposals) and at Annapolis in 2008 (the Olmert offer).  In a joint Israeli-Palestini­an statement made at the con­clu­sion of the Taba Summit on 27 January 2001, the parties declared that “they have never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus [their] shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resump­tion of nego­ti­ations…”  The ser­i­ous­ness of the Israeli offers is thus beyond reas­on­able argument.

The Palestini­an National Authority, estab­lished in the 1990s, runs police and services in the major cities and towns of the West Bank, and has slowly brought the terrorist groups there under control.

The Tanzim and other terrorist groups operating in the West Bank are branches of the PLO which controls the Palestini­an National Authority. 

While Israel still controls the air and sea space around Gaza, it pulled its troops out in 2005, but Hamas, not the Palestini­an Authority, now controls it.

That’s where the rockets fired at Israel are coming from.

And of course — Jerusalem. You might have heard news about Jerusalem being a disputed capital.

The fate of Jerusalem and its holy sites is one of the most explosive issues in the ongoing Israeli-Palestini­an conflict.

Israel controls the whole city and has declared it the capital, but there are UN Security Council res­ol­u­tions against that too because inter­na­tion­al law bans acquiring territory by force.

Israel’s claims are not based on force.  They are based on the terms of the League of Nations Mandate which continued to operate under the UN Charter (Article 80).

The Palestini­ans haven’t given up on estab­lish­ing their own capital in the eastern part of the city.

And the offers Israel made to the Palestini­ans (see above) included having their capital in the pre­dom­in­antly Arab neigh­bour­hoods in eastern Jerusalem.

That’s why most nations have their embassies in Tel Aviv and why it was such a big deal when Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 — it’s seen as recog­ni­tion of Israel’s claim.

Details of the recent conflict

So, the battle for Jerusalem has been going for decades.

Inside East Jerusalem is the al-Aqsa Mosque — the third holiest site in Islam.

The site is also sacred to Jews, who believe [It’s not just a belief. Until the 1950s the Arab religious author­it­ies and Muslim writers acknow­ledged that the site is where the Ancient Jewish Temple stood]  it’s where the Jewish Second Temple stood until the first century, and is con­sidered a “chronic flash­point” in the regional conflict.

Over the weekend, violence erupted at the al-Aqsa Mosque when Israeli riot police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at Palestini­ans.

Israel says they stormed the mosque’s compound in response to Palestini­ans stock­pil­ing rocks and throwing them at police.

Video is freely available online to sub­stan­ti­ate the stock­pil­ing inside the mosque.

More than 300 Palestini­ans were injured, according to the Red Crescent, the Red Cross affiliate in the Muslim world.

At least 21 police officers were injured, according to Israeli police.

Hamas gave Israeli forces a deadline to be out of the area and when that lapsed, the militant group fired rockets into Israel from Gaza.

The Jerusalem events had nothing to do with Hamas, 75 kilo­metres away in Gaza, and in any event they did not even remotely justify the indis­crim­in­ate firing of 1800 rockets or more at Israeli cities. The inter­ven­tion of Hamas was largely oppor­tun­ist­ic, It was intended to grand­stand and gain a political advantage over their rivals in the Palestini­an Authority. This has to be seen in the context of the recent can­cel­la­tion of elections by the Palestini­an Authority.  The last elections were in 2006.  They are supposed to happen every four years.

This ignition of the cross-border fight came after weeks of skir­mishes on the streets, protests by Palestini­ans and demands Israeli forces leave parts of East Jerusalem.

Israel has now carried out hundreds of air strikes in Gaza, and Hamas militants have fired heavy rocket barrages at Tel Aviv, towards Jerusalem and at several southern Israeli cities.

The Israel Defense Forces are also attacking Gaza from the ground, but on the Israeli side of the border.

The hos­til­it­ies are the most intense the region has seen since 2014, with the death toll climbing.

Hamas clearly intends to maximise civilian cas­u­al­ties. Israel takes extraordin­ary pre­cau­tions to minimise them, on both sides.

Why now?

An Israeli fire­fight­er extin­guishes a burning bus after it was hit by a rocket fired from Gaza, at the central Israeli town of Holon, near Tel Aviv.(

Com­ment­at­ors say several pressure points in the volatile Israeli-Palestini­an rela­tion­ship have recently converged and the violence that has broken out has escalated very quickly.

An ongoing trigger for violence is the Israeli set­tle­ment of the land they occupied in 1967.

Since his last election campaign, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to offi­cially annex large swathes of the West Bank.

This week, an Israeli court was delib­er­at­ing a case involving the East Jerusalem neigh­bour­hood of Sheikh Jarrah.

It’s about a lot of things.  But internal Palestini­an politics is a key factor missed by most western journ­al­ists.

The court was due to rule on whether author­it­ies could evict dozens of Palestini­ans from their homes in the neigh­bour­hood, but the ruling was delayed.

Sheikh Jarrah is an area of sig­ni­fic­ance. It was captured by Israel in the 1967 war and the evictions of Palestini­an families by Jewish settlers are seen by the Palestini­ans as another bid to drive them from Jerusalem.

The settlers claim the area was occupied by Jews prior to the war and the Palestini­ans are squatters.

• The homes in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem have had Jewish owners con­tinu­ously since 1875;
• The Palestini­an residents under threat of court eviction were illegally installed as tenants when the neigh­bour­hood was under Jordanian military occu­pa­tion in the 1950s, and they have not paid rent since the 1990s;
• Hamas and other armed Palestini­an groups in Gaza, 75 kilo­met­ers away, have cynically exploited the dispute for political advantage against their rivals in the Palestini­an Authority by using it as a pretext to fire more than 1800 rockets indis­crim­in­ately at Israeli cities with the undis­guised aim of killing as many Israeli civilians as possible;
• Hamas rockets have killed both Arabs and Jews. One quarter of them have fallen short and struck Gaza, which is seldom reported;
• The Israeli air strikes are a response to the rocket attacks from Gaza, not the other way around.

It’s a very sensitive situation and has been met with protests from Palestini­ans.

Also, Muslim Palestini­ans have been observing the holy month of Ramadan.

Anger flared last week when Israel decided to barricade a plaza outside of Jer­u­s­alem’s Old City where Palestini­ans tra­di­tion­ally gather after evening prayers.

The bar­ri­cades were not just put up for the fun of it. There had been a spate of attacks against Jews by Palestini­an youths, with incite­ment to more attacks on social media, and the situation was already worsening.

Then there was the “death to the Arabs” march on April 22.

It was organised by a far-right group of Jewish extrem­ists, in response to the growing spate of attacks against Jews by Palestini­an youths which has recently seen several of its members elected to the Israeli Par­lia­ment.

That march went through occupied East Jerusalem and was seen as extremely pro­voc­at­ive.

Violence followed and more than 100 Palestini­ans were injured as well as 20 Israeli police.

Adding to the uncer­tainty in the region, Israel has had four elections over two years, none with clear results, and the Palestini­ans in the West Bank have not been to the polls since 2006.

What are Israelis saying?

Israelis believe the aerial bom­bard­ments of Gaza are justified responses to rocket attacks on Israel launched by Hamas, a group many countries recognise as a terrorist organ­isa­tion.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been very clear, insisting Israel will not back down and saying “this is just the beginning”.

“We’ll hit them like they’ve never dreamed possible,” he said.

Overnight on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu also had a warning for Israelis.

“Citizens of Israel, what is happening in the towns of Israel in recent days is intol­er­able. We’ve seen Arab rioters torching syn­agogues, torching cars, storming policemen, hurting peaceful and innocent citizens. This is something we cannot accept. This is anarchy. Nothing can justify it,” he said.

“And I will tell you more than that — nothing can justify a lynching of Jews by Arabs and nothing can justify a lynching of Arabs by Jews.

“We will not accept it. This is not us, not this violence, not this savagery. We will bring back gov­ernance to Israel’s cities every­where, in all cities.”

What are Palestinians saying?

Palestini­ans argue they are not the instig­at­or of the violence, and their rockets are in reaction to Israeli oppres­sion and are part of the ongoing res­ist­ance to occu­pa­tion.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said: “The con­front­a­tion with the enemy is open-ended.”

The Hamas Charter is expressly committed to the violent destruc­tion of Israel and its Jewish pop­u­la­tion.

The head of the Palestini­an Mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, gave an interview to BBC in which he said “this isn’t about Hamas”.

“This is about Israel. Israel provokes. Israel commits every crime you can imagine. Israel injures more than 300 wor­ship­pers, peaceful wor­ship­pers,” he said.

“Israel evicts people from their homes, continues with its sheer viol­a­tions of the very basic rights of people and then they try to blame the react, rather than the act. This must stop.”