This is nothing new Israel has a history of extreme and disproportionate violence
Just as it was at risk of being marginalised due to further Arab state normalisation with Israel and instability in places like Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, the Israel-Palestine conflict once again finds itself dominating the global headlines.
On October 7th, Hamas militants via a clever and well-co-ordinated attack-using paragliders and bulldozers-burst into Israeli territory and undertook a murderous rampage killing up to 1400 Israeli’s, including many civilians. As expected, Israel responded in the strongest terms imaginable and to date have killed over 8,000 people in Gaza, including at least 3000 children. Israel has bombed residential areas and buildings, refugee camps, ambulances, universities, and more. The ferocity of Israel’s response has led to large and repeated protests the world over calling for an immediate cease fire and end to the horrific violence.
As is often the case, much of the media coverage of the issue lacks historical depth and vital context. Watching the news, one could be forgiven for assuming this all began on October 7th, and Israel is simply exercising its ‘right to self-defence’. However, even a casual reading of history suggests that not only is this conflict deep rooted but also that Israel has long maintained a propensity for often horrific and disproportionate violence.
The Nakba
Like many conflicts, it is difficult to pinpoint an exact starting point. However, in this case, the years immediately following the Second World War proved pivotal. As with other nation-states, violence was to play a significant role in the formation of Modern Israel.
In 1947, the newly formed UN recommended that historical Palestine be partitioned, and its Jewish population be awarded 55% of the territory (Palestinian representatives preferred to share the territory rather than partition). Given that the Jewish population only owned approximately 7% of the land, this naturally became contentious.
Regardless of what was happening in the UN, the Zionist leadership had developed their own plan: Plan Dalet. According to this plan, the idea was Zionist forces would forcibly take around 80-90% of historic Palestine (i.e., all of it except the West Bank and Gaza) on which a Jewish state would be formed. Thus, in March 1948 Zionist forces commenced implementation of this vision. What followed was murder, intimidation, massacres, pillage, rape, and the desecration of religious sites; Although Arab armies intervened to assist their brethren, they were outmuscled.
In total, over 530 villages were ‘cleansed’ as well as 11 towns. At the end of the campaign circa, 800,000 Palestinians (50% of the Palestinian population) were forcibly removed from their homes and land; with many never to return. This event referred to as the Nakba (catastrophe) by the Palestinians would be regarded as the historian Ilan Pappe points out - a crime of ethnic cleansing under International Law today.
Israel’s actions during the Nakba were consistent with the ‘Iron Wall’ strategy detailed in the writings of the right-wing Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky. In brief, this was the notion that the Jews should only negotiate with the Arabs from a position of strength. In other words, the Zionist leadership were aware that what they were undertaking in taking Palestinian land was morally wrong and the best means by which to counter any quest for justice, revenge, or a desire to reclaim land was overwhelming force. This approach argues the historian Avi Shlaim has been t
Zionism and Israel’s preferred option since the 1920’s to the present day.
The Suez Crisis and the Six Day War
It was not long before Israel was involved in another conflict. When newly independent Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser decided well within its rights to nationalise the lucrative Suez Canal Israel colluded with the British and the French to instigate an attack on Egypt. The United States, whose main priority was the Cold War with the Soviets and who were keen to keep the Arabs on side, came down strongly on the trio, even threatening and using economic sanctions. The US intervention proved pivotal, and the crisis concluded.
After just over a decade, Israel would once again go to war with the Arabs in 1967. Conventional wisdom has it that this was a defensive (if hugely successful) war on Israel’s part in which they were able to get the better of a coalition of Arab states in only 6 days who were intent on destroying Israel. Latter day historiography, however, suggests that Israel may have instigated the war to capture more land.
As Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin conceded in a speech in 1982 “in June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us: We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” Further as General Matityahu Peled, chief of logistical command during the war and member of Israel’s General Staff admitted:
“The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war,”
During this war, Israel invaded and took control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. This led to the ‘Naksa’ flight of a further 300,000 Palestinians. In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel to recapture the land taken in 1967. They had some initial success, Israel retaliated, and the conflict ended in a stalemate.
Since then, Israel has continued to take more land incrementally and gradually in the West Bank via settlement building, which the UN has declared illegal. As it stands, there are over 600,000 settlers in the West Bank (as well as some in Gaza), many of whom regularly intimidate, harass, and steal land from Palestinians. In many respects, some settler groups function as fanatical proxies for Israel.
Lebanon
Given this pattern, it was not long before Israel was at war again. After a brief incursion into Lebanese territory Israel in-order to avenge a PLO raid in 1978, Israel using the pretext of a (disputed) assassination attempt on Israel’s ambassador to the UK, launched a full-scale invasion into Lebanon in 1982. This resulted in the siege of West Beirut, with Israel denying its inhabitants basic humanitarian supplies. According to the Red Cross, 18,000 people were killed during this siege, of which approximately 5,000 were PLO guerrillas: the rest civilians.
As the British journalist Robert Fisk documented in his by now famous work ‘Lebanon at war’ Israel’s violence was extreme and brutal, and it forces showed scant regard for civilian life. At one point Israel was so keen to kill the PLO leader Yasser Arafat that if they felt he was in a particular residential building they would take out the whole complex; Arafat had to resort to sleeping in cars. After intense mediation efforts led by the US, the siege of Beirut ended with the agreement that the remaining PLO fighters would be expelled to other Arab countries (mainly Tunisia).
However, Israel wasn’t done. With the PLO fighters out of the picture, Israel invaded West Beirut, and Israeli soldiers lined the streets as Christian militiamen entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and slaughtered 2000-3000 (mainly) defenceless Palestinian women and children. Ariel Sharon, who led Israel’s assault into Lebanon, was deemed complicit in this massacre by an Israeli commission.
Israel would continue to retain a presence in Southern Lebanon right up until the year 2000. They brutalised the local population, and it was in this environment that the Hezbollah militia was formed.
Only 6 years later, after Hezbollah kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers, Israel once again launched an attack on Lebanon. This time, it killed one thousand people (many civilians) and caused enormous damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure and economy. Israel itself suffered 145 casualties, of which 100 were soldiers. Israeli planes regularly violate Lebanon’s airspace intimidating its people, and since October 7th, fighting on it border with Lebanon has again intensified with reports of a significant number of Lebanese civilian casualties
Gaza
In 2006, Hamas surprised many by winning elections in Palestine. Israel and its allies refused to recognise the outcome on the basis that they deemed Hamas a terrorist organisation. The West Bank was split from Gaza, and Hamas took effective control of the strip. Since then, Israel has had several wars with Gaza and attacks it on a regular basis:
In December 2008 – Israel launched a 22-day military assault on Gaza after rockets were fired at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Approximately 1,400 Palestinians and 13 were Israelis killed before a ceasefire is agreed.
November 2012 – Israel kills Hamas’s military chief of staff, Ahmad Jabari, followed by eight days of Israeli air raids on Palestine.
July-August 2014 – The kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers leads to a seven-week war in which more than 2,100 Palestinians are killed in Gaza along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.
March 2018 – non-violent Palestinian protests begin at Gaza’s fenced border with Israel and Israeli troops open fire with live ammunition. More than 170 Palestinians were killed in several months of protests, and by several accounts, not a single bullet was fired by Palestinian protestors. After an Israeli raid into Khan Younis refugee camp, a brief confrontation ensued between Israel and Hamas.
May 2021 – Hundreds of Palestinians are injured by Israeli security forces at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem during Ramadan. Hamas demanded that Israel withdraw security forces from the compound. Israel launched air raids on Gaza in response to what it said were rockets fired from the strip. In the fighting that went on for 11 days, at least 260 people were killed in Gaza, and 13 died in Israel.
August 2022 – Israel kills more than 30 Palestinians, including women and children, in air strikes. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose two commanders were killed in the air strikes, fires dozens of rockets into Israel in response.
On a day-to-day basis, the people of Gaza live in the most strenuous conditions. Entry into Gaza on one side is controlled by Israel (with Israel/and the US putting pressure to keep the Rafah gate closed), it has no airport, Israel controls sea access, and it is one of the most densely populated places in the World. Over 90% of the water is undrinkable, and the UN said it would be uninhabitable for humans by 2020. For some observers, Gaza is effectively an open-air prison or even a concentration camp with its inhabitants being subjected to a slow genocide.
Conclusion
To conclude Israel’s relatively short history is a history of often extreme and brutal violence. Whether defensive or offensive, provoked, or unprovoked, Israel has a habit of using often disproportionate violence from its inception and often with scant regard for civilian life or infrastructure. In most cases, this is not by accident but by design; it is strategic and calculated with the intention to have maximum impact and to send out powerful political messages both to those it deems it enemies and beyond.
