Meloni and her lieutenants plan their takeover of = Europe (2024)

Around the time of Herzl=E2=80=99s death, in 1904, young Zionists, mostly sociali=sts=20from Eastern Europe, began to come to Palestine. One was David Gruen,=20who later changed his name to David Ben-Gurion. Born in Poland, he=20arrived in 1906 at the age of 20 and joined a Jewish workers=E2=80=99 group= in=20the Galilee. His first political activity was the promotion of =E2=80=9CHeb=rew=20labor=E2=80=9D=E2=80=94an attempt to require Jewish employers to hire Jews =rather than=20Arabs. At the time, the Zionists=E2=80=99 acquisition of land also led to t=he=20dispossession of some Arab agricultural workers, some of whom reacted=20violently. In the spring of 1909, Ben-Gurion=E2=80=99s settlement was attac=ked,=20and two of his fellow members were killed, one of them apparently in=20front of Ben-Gurion. The future prime minister of Israel concluded that=20the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs had irreconcilable differences; there was no escaping the conflict.

Ben-Gurion=E2=80=99s attitude toward t=he=20Arabs was further shaped by two other experiences. During World War I,=20he was expelled from Palestine by the Ottoman authorities. On one of his last days in Jerusalem, he ran into a young Arab with whom he had=20studied in Istanbul. When Ben-Gurion reported that he was about to be=20expelled, his acquaintance replied that as his dear friend, he was=20deeply sorry for him, but as an Arab nationalist, he was very happy.=20=E2=80=9CThat was the first time in my life that I heard an honest answer f=rom=20an Arab intellectual,=E2=80=9D Ben-Gurion said. =E2=80=9CHis words burned t=hemselves=20into my heart, very, very deeply.=E2=80=9D Years later, Ben-Gurion had a=20conversation with Musa Alami, a prominent Arab Palestinian and=20politician. Ben-Gurion promised as usual that the Zionists would develop Palestine for all its inhabitants. According to Ben-Gurion, Alami=20replied that he would rather leave the land poor and desolate for=20another century, if need be, until the Arabs could develop it=20themselves.

Ben-Gurion often dismissed the =E2=80=9Ceasy solutions=E2==80=9D that=20he attributed to some of his colleagues, such as the notion that Jews=20could be encouraged to learn Arabic or even that Jews and Arabs could=20live together in one state. They were refusing to acknowledge the facts. Ben-Gurion=E2=80=99s own concept of the Jewish future in Palestine was bas=ed=20simply on acquiring as much land as possible, if not necessarily the=20entire territory, and populating it with as many Jews and as few Arabs=20as possible. His views about the conflict remained unchanged to the end=20of his life and continuously informed his efforts to manage it.

SWIT=ZERLAND IN JUDEA

In 1917, the Zionist movement achieved one of its most important successes when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared the United= Kingdom to be in favor of establishing a =E2=80=9Cnational home=E2=80=9D for the J=ewish people=20in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, as it became known, was part of a strategic British plan to take the Holy Land from Ottoman dominion. In=20reality, like almost everything to do with that land, Balfour=E2=80=99s pol=icy=20was driven more by sentimental religious ideas than by rational=20statecraft. A staunch Christian Zionist, Balfour was committed to the=20idea that the people of God should return to their homeland after a=202,000-year exile so that they could fulfill their biblical destiny. He=20aspired to go down in history as the man who made this messianic=20transformation possible.

As was often the case with Western=20officials at the time, Balfour=E2=80=99s apparent reverence for the Jews=20simultaneously drew on deep anti-Semitic prejudice. Like others of his=20era, he attributed almost unlimited power and influence to =E2=80=9Cthe Jew=,=E2=80=9D=20including an ability to determine history and even convince the United=20States to enter World War I. (It was hoped that the Balfour Declaration=20would sway American Jews to push the United States to join the Allied=20powers in the war.)

By the end of 1917, the United Kingdom had=20conquered Palestine, thus beginning nearly 30 years of British rule.=20During this period, the Zionist movement laid the political, economic,=20cultural, and military foundations for the future state of Israel.=20Tensions with the Arabs increased over the years as hundreds of=20thousands of new Jewish immigrants, mainly from Europe, continued to=20arrive. In the 1920s, these immigrants were motivated not by support for Zionism but by the severe new immigration restrictions imposed by the=20United States. In the 1930s, more than 50,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine from Nazi Germany, although in less desperate circ*mstances=20most of them would have preferred to stay in their country.=C2=A0

Lar=ge-scale immigration of Jews sparked more waves of Arab violence against Jews=20and against the British authorities, who were seen as supporting Zionist aims. This came to a head in the Arab revolt of 1936=E2=80=9339, in which==20Palestinians rose up against the British colonial administration through a general strike, an armed insurrection, and attacks on railways and=20Jewish settlements. Amid this turmoil, the British began to regard=20Palestine as a nuisance. To get rid of the problem, they appointed the=20so-called Peel Commission, which recommended dividing the land into=20Jewish and Arab states=E2=80=94the very first =E2=80=9Ctwo-state=E2=80=9D s=olution.

1. British Mandate Palestine in 1933. 2. The UN=E2=80=99s 1947 two-state part=ition plan, with Jerusalem and surrounding areas under international=20trusteeship. 3. Israeli-held territory after the 1967 war, including=20Sinai, which was eventually returned to Egypt in 1982.

Although the Jewish state it envisioned was small, amounting to just 17 percent=20of British Mandate Palestine, Ben-Gurion supported the plan. Notably,=20Arab inhabitants of the area designated for the Jewish state were to be=20transferred to the Arab state, a provision that he described in his=20diary as a =E2=80=9Cforced transfer,=E2=80=9D drawing a thick line under th=e words. Most of his colleagues, however, wanted much more land for the Jewish state, setting off a contentious debate between the center-left Zionist=20leadership and right-wing =E2=80=9CRevisionists=E2=80=9D who cultivated a d=ream of a=20Greater Israel on both banks of the Jordan River. Although they stood to gain control of about 75 percent of the land, the Arabs rejected the=20idea of a Jewish state in principle, and the British withdrew the plan.=20Here, again, was the =E2=80=9Cabyss=E2=80=9D between Jews and Arabs that Be=n-Gurion had=20identified years earlier and that would become even deeper after the=20Holocaust and the war of 1948.

In January 1942, a few weeks before Nazi leaders met at the infamous Wannsee Conference to discuss the=20=E2=80=9CFinal Solution to the Jewish Question,=E2=80=9D Foreign Affairs= published an arti=cle by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the time, no one outside Germany knew=20about the Nazis=E2=80=99 planned extermination camps, but their treatment o=f=20Jews in occupied Western Europe and during Germany=E2=80=99s ruthless assau=lt on the Soviet Union had already made clear that the Nazis were threatening the existence of the entire Jewish people. Only total victory over the=20Third Reich could halt the extermination of the Jews, and although=20Weizmann expressed a hope that a better world could be built after the=20war, his article was an urgent appeal for a Jewish homeland. Palestine,=20he wrote, was the only place where Jews, particularly Jewish refugees,=20could survive.

From a Zionist perspective, Weizmann=E2=80=99s proposa=l=20contained elements of compromise: more than 20 years earlier, at the=20Versailles peace conference after World War I, he had presented a map of the Land of Israel with biblical borders that extended to the east bank of the Jordan River=E2=80=94territory much larger than the country would e=ver=20attain. In his article, by contrast, Weizmann did not specify borders=20but proposed unlimited Jewish immigration to a democratic country that=20would offer equal rights to all its inhabitants, including Arabs.=20Although he wrote that the Arabs must be =E2=80=9Cclearly told that the Jew=s=20will be encouraged to settle in Palestine, and will control their own=20immigration,=E2=80=9D he asserted that Arabs would not be discriminated aga=inst=20and would =E2=80=9Cenjoy full autonomy in their own internal affairs.=E2=80==9D He also=20did not rule out the possibility that the new Jewish state could join=20=E2=80=9Cin federation=E2=80=9D with neighboring Arab states. But like Ben-=Gurion, he=20also foresaw the need to contain the Palestinian Arabs: should they=20wish, he wrote, =E2=80=9Cevery facility will be given to them to transfer t=o one of the many and vast Arab countries.=E2=80=9D

Attempting to convince= his=20readers that the Jews were worthy of help, Weizmann somewhat=20pathetically promised that =E2=80=9Cthe Jew=E2=80=9D no longer fit the anti=-Semitic=20stereotypes that were prevalent in the West before the start of the=20Zionist project. =E2=80=9CWhen the Jew is reunited with the soil of Palesti=ne,=E2=80=9D=20he wrote, =E2=80=9Cenergies are released=E2=80=9D that if =E2=80=9Cgiven an= outlet, can create=20values which may be of service even to richer and more fortunate=20countries.=E2=80=9D Weizmann compared the hoped-for Zionist state to=20Switzerland, =E2=80=9Canother small country, also poor in natural resources=,=E2=80=9D=20that had nevertheless become =E2=80=9Cone of the most orderly and stable of==20European democracies.=E2=80=9D Seven years later, he was elected the first==20president of Israel. In the meantime, the Nazis had murdered six million Jews.

UNREALIZED GAINS

In November 1947, the UN General=20Assembly recommended the partition of Palestine, this time in a division that would give each side broadly equitable areas of land, with the Old City of Jerusalem under international control. The Arabs rejected the=20plan, in accordance with their traditional objection to Jewish statehood in Palestine. The Zionists accepted partition, although Ben-Gurion=20expected war and hoped that it would end with territory that was empty=20of Arabs.

Soon afterward, Arab militias began a series of attacks=20on the Jewish population, and Zionist groups retaliated with actions=20against Arab communities. In May 1948, Ben-Gurion declared Israel=E2=80=99s==20independence. It was a dangerous gamble. Regular Arab armies and=20volunteers from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and=20Transjordan were about to invade the new country, and top commanders of=20the Jewish armed forces warned that the odds of defeating them were even at best. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall demanded an immediate=20cease-fire; Ben-Gurion feared that the Zionists were not ready for war.=20Before the UN partition plan was announced, he had tried in vain to=20persuade the British to stay in Palestine for five to ten more years,=20which could have given the Jews more time to increase immigration and=20strengthen their forces.

But faced with the historic opportunity=20to declare a Jewish state, Ben-Gurion chose to obey a Zionist imperative that he said had guided him since the age of three. He later explained=20that the Israelis won not because they were better at fighting but=20because the Arabs were even worse. In keeping with his abiding view that establishing a Jewish majority was more important than gaining=20territory, he led the army to push out or expel most of the Arabs=E2=80=94s=ome=20750,000=E2=80=94who fled to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which==20Ben-Gurion left unoccupied, as well as to neighboring Arab countries. A=20direct line could be traced from the Zionists=E2=80=99 campaign in the 1920=s to=20replace Arab workers with Jews to the far larger effort in 1948 to=20remove Arabs from the land of the new Jewish state. Israel lost close to 6,000 soldiers in that war, nearly one percent of the new country=E2=80=99=s=20Jewish population at the time.

Israeli troops firing at an Arab village =in the Galilee region, 1948

When the war ended in early 1949, green pencils were used to draw armistice=20boundaries between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the famous =E2=80=9CGreen==20Line.=E2=80=9D Gaza became an Egyptian protectorate, and the West Bank was==20annexed by Jordan. Israel now controlled more territory than it had been allocated in the=20UN partition plan. It was also almost free of Arabs; the ones who=20remained were subjected to a rather arbitrary and often corrupt military rule. Most Israelis at the time saw this as an acceptable situation=E2=80==94a=20rational way of managing the conflict. The Arabs in turn considered=20Israel=E2=80=99s existence a humiliation that had to be remedied. In Jordan=,=20Lebanon, and Syria, authorities did not allow Palestinian refugees to be integrated into their new countries of residence, forcing them instead=20to live in temporary camps, where they were encouraged to nurture the=20idea of return.

In the first two decades after independence,=20Israel made remarkable achievements. But it failed to reach the Zionist=20goal of providing the entire Jewish people with a safe national=20homeland. Most of the world=E2=80=99s Jews, including many survivors of the==20Holocaust, still preferred to remain in other countries; those in the=20Soviet Union and other communist countries were forbidden to emigrate by the authorities in those places. After the 1948 war, most Middle=20Eastern Jews, many of whose families had been in the region for=20thousands of years, no longer felt safe in Muslim countries and chose=E2=80==94or were forced=E2=80=94to leave. Most settled in Israel, at first often as=20destitute refugees. By the mid-1960s, immigrants who had arrived since=20independence made up around 60 percent of the Israeli population. Most=20had not yet mastered the Hebrew language, and they often disagreed on=20basic values and even on how to define a Jew.

Ben-Gurion continued to manage the conflict, but many Israelis, particularly newcomers, felt that Israel=E2=80=99s existence was still in danger. Only a few close=20confidants knew about Ben-Gurion=E2=80=99s nuclear project. Border wars=20frequently broke out; the IDF prepared contingency plans for the=20occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. During the Suez crisis of 1956,=20Israeli forces invaded Egypt, occupying Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula,=20but withdrew a few months later. In a cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion said=20that if he believed in miracles, he would ask for Gaza to be swallowed=20up by the sea.

After Ben-Gurion resigned in 1963, Israelis were=20left with a weak and hesitant leadership and a deep economic crisis.=20More and more of them began to lose confidence in Israel=E2=80=99s future. =In=201966, the number of Jews emigrating from the country exceeded the number entering it. A popular joke referred to a sign supposedly hanging at=20the exit gate of the international airport that read: =E2=80=9CWould the la=st=20person to leave the country please turn off the lights?=E2=80=9D

LAN=D FOR WAR

By the mid-1960s, a new generation of Palestinian refugees= had grown up on the legacy of the nakba and the dream of return. They founded the Palestine Liberation=20Organization, a movement that declared a war to free Palestinians and=20establish an Arab state encompassing their entire historical land, and=20began carrying out attacks on military and civilian targets in Israel.=20Some Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel from Syria and Jordan.=20Israel responded with military reprisals, and in May 1967, Egyptian=20officials openly threatened to =E2=80=9Cannihilate=E2=80=9D Israel. As tensions rose, many Israelis doubted that their country could=20survive, and the weariest ones relived their Holocaust experiences.=20Playgrounds around the country were hastily prepared to serve as burial=20grounds for the tens of thousands of the expected dead. Israel=E2=80=99s=20decision to attack Egypt in June 1967 was not only a preemptive strike=20but also an act of nightmarish panic.

But the surprise attack,=20launching what would come to be called the Six-Day War, resulted in a=20dramatic victory for the IDF. Within hours, the Egyptian air force had=20been destroyed on the ground, and Israelis=E2=80=99 existential dread was==20replaced by an almost uncontrolled triumphalism. Led by Revisionist=20opposition leader Menachem Begin, who had joined Israel=E2=80=99s emergency==20cabinet on the eve of the war and would later become prime minister, as=20well as some other cabinet ministers, prominent Israeli politicians=20demanded the =E2=80=9Cliberation=E2=80=9D of what they called Greater Israe=l=E2=80=94the=20biblical land that included the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem.

=Such an ambition reflected national and religious feelings, but=20strategically it was contested. A few months before the war, senior=20officials from the IDF, the prime minister=E2=80=99s office, and the Mossad=, the Israeli intelligence agency, had met to discuss the possibility that=20King Hussein of Jordan would be overthrown by Palestinians living in the West Bank. At the time, the Israeli leadership concluded that the king=20was working to eradicate Palestinian nationalism in Jordan and the West=20Bank and that it would be advisable, indeed almost vital, for Israel to=20stay out of it. After the June victory, however, none of the cabinet=20ministers questioned why it would be in Israel=E2=80=99s interest to occupy= land that was populated by millions of Palestinians. Having just experienced a kind of national resurrection, they were determined to acquire as=20much land as possible. The impulse came from the heart, not from the=20head.

No one questioned why it was in Israel=E2=80==99s interest to occupy the West Bank.

Ben-Gurion had opposed the attack on Egypt because he feared defeat, including the destruction of Israel=E2=80=99s nuclear reactor in Dimona. After the war, =he=20said that if he had to choose between a smaller state of Israel with=20peace or the newly expanded boundaries without peace, he would choose=20the first option. But even he could not contain his emotions when=20Israeli forces entered the Arab-controlled areas of Jerusalem at the=20beginning of the war. Shortly afterward, he demanded that the wall of=20the Old City immediately be torn down to ensure that Jerusalem remained=20=E2=80=9Cunited=E2=80=9D forever.

Taking Arab Jerusalem was a fatal d=ecision, for=20neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were likely to agree to any=20compromise there. There were efforts to manage this flash point, but=20these arrangements often broke down, and the eternal city has since=20remained the emotional core of insoluble conflict. The Israeli conquest=20of the West Bank sparked similar messianic passions, and within months,=20Israelis began to settle there. Only a few realized that in the long=20run, occupying the Palestinian territories would put Israel=E2=80=99s Jewis=h=20majority and its shaky democracy in jeopardy. Just as there was no=20rational justification for the existential hysteria that had preceded=20the Six-Day War, there was no rational basis for the unbridled=20expansionism that took hold after it.

Despite Israel=E2=80=99s victor=y,=20the 1967 war simply reinforced the underlying tensions that had long=20driven the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arab countries reaffirmed their=20refusal to recognize the existence of Israel; the Palestinians=E2=80=99 lon=ging=20for their lost homeland intensified. Every few years, another war broke=20out. And each side did what it could to manage a situation that had no=20ready answers. Egypt was able to make peace with Israel in 1979 mostly=20because Israel was not required to give up any part of Palestine; under a similar logic, Jordan was able to follow suit in 1994. In reaching=20these agreements, both Arab countries abandoned the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, perpetuating the people=E2=80=99s iden=tity=20as the orphans of the Middle East.

CONTAINMENT OR CATASTROPHE

Like Ben-Gurion and other Israeli leaders, Netanyahu does not believe the=20conflict can be solved. But he has proved even less adept than his=20predecessors at managing it. In an attempt to divide and rule the=20Palestinians and prevent them from attaining independence, he accepted=20and then encouraged the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Later, he developed the=20illusion that peace with some Gulf Arab states in the 2020 Abraham A=ccords would weaken the Palestinian cause. Implicit in these moves was the=20idea that it would be possible to control Hamas by bribing its leaders:=20Israel thus allowed Qatar to deliver Hamas millions of dollars in cash=20packed in suitcases. The Israeli government also issued work permits for residents of Gaza on the premise that this economic arrangement would=20restrain Hamas. This kind of bribery reflects a long tradition of=20Israeli condescension toward the Arabs=E2=80=94a fundamental contempt for t=hem=20and their national feelings.

In reality, Hamas used much of the=20money to acquire thousands of rockets, some of them obtained from Iran,=20that were frequently fired at Israeli cities. In reaction, Israel=20imposed a blockade on the territory that made Gazans even poorer. Hamas organized a fighting force and constructed a web of tunnels that some=20experts have described as the most extensive underground fortress in the history of modern warfare. Most important, Netanyahu=E2=80=99s approach=20disregarded Hamas=E2=80=99s ideological and emotional commitments, some of =which outweigh even life itself, as was illustrated by the organization=E2=80=99=s=20barbarity last October and in the months since. Israel has responded to=20this indescribable catastrophe with the vengeful devastation of Gaza and its people, a military campaign that, after more than five months, has=20singularly failed in its primary goal of =E2=80=9Ctotal victory=E2=80=9D ov=er Hamas.

The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is rife with futile peace plans.=20These have varied from a single binational state=E2=80=94a concept that was==20first proposed by Jewish intellectuals in the 1920s, and again in the=201940s=E2=80=94to transforming the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan into a Palest=inian state, an idea that has repeatedly resurfaced since the 1967 war.=20Seemingly reasonable two-state solutions have also been conceived over=20the years that might allow Israelis and Palestinians to control their=20own destinies, in some cases with some form of international oversight=20of the contested holy sites in Jerusalem.

For decades, successive=20U.S. administrations have sponsored such initiatives, but rarely have=20they gotten beyond the concept stage, regardless of how favorable they=20might seem to one side or the other. Consider the =E2=80=9Cdeal of the cent=ury,=E2=80=9D a two-state solution briefly proposed by the Trump administration in=202020. It would have left Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East=20Jerusalem largely intact and given Israel complete security control over both. Yet Jewish settlers themselves did not support it because it gave parts of the West Bank, as well as the outskirts of East Jerusalem, to=20the Palestinians. That =E2=80=9Cdeal=E2=80=9D was merely another iteration =of an=20enduring fantasy. There is little reason to believe that the Biden=20administration=E2=80=99s efforts to lay down a post-Gaza peace plan will be= any=20more successful.

Israeli soldiers =next to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters, Gaza City,= February 2024

Histor=ically, Israelis and Palestinians have occasionally shown a readiness to make=20at least some compromises. And in the early 1990s, it seemed that peace=20had won after all: the Oslo accords brought leaders of the two sides to=20the White House lawn in 1993 and subsequently earned them the Nobel=20Peace Prize. But even then, the results were evanescent. The following=20year, an Israeli fanatic massacred 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron in the West Bank, setting off new waves of terrorist attacks by=20Palestinians. Shortly thereafter, another Israeli extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin=E2=80=94just as, after the 1979 peace==20accord with Israel, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated by an Egyptian fanatic. Acts of terrorism and the rise of extremist=20forces on each side led to the end of the Oslo peace process, but in=20hindsight, the plan had never had much chance of success.

The=20common flaw in these international peace initiatives is a failure to=20contend with the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to=20embrace a lasting solution. Outside powers, including the United States, have never acted forcefully enough to stop the systematic violation of=20human rights in the Palestinian territories. But the primary reason the=20conflict endures is neither Israeli oppression of the Palestinians nor=20Palestinian terrorism, but rather the irrevocable commitment of both=20peoples to undivided land. These absolute positions have increasingly=20become the essence of collective identities on each side, and any=20compromise is likely to be denounced by significant Israeli and=20Palestinian constituencies as a national and religious betrayal.

Evid=ently, existential conflicts shaped around competing visions of nationhood=20cannot be ended by grand solutions that neither side will support=E2=80=94l=east=20of all, during the most devastating war that Israelis and Palestinians=20have experienced in three-quarters of a century. But such a conflict can be managed in more or less reasonable ways. If a century of failure has made clear that the two sides are unlikely to be reconciled in the=20foreseeable future, the war in Gaza has exposed the terrifying cataclysm that poor handling of the conflict can bring about. When the fighting=20is over, imaginative, resourceful, and compassionate management of the=20conflict between the two sides will be more crucial than ever. Rather=20than devoting energy and political capital to deeply unpopular=E2=80=94and==20unsustainable=E2=80=94peace plans, the United States and other leading powe=rs=20must do more to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis can find a safer=20and more tolerable existence in a world without peace.

Countless=20failures in the search for a solution to the conflict have given rise to a hypothesis that only a catastrophe of biblical proportions could=20persuade either side to rethink their delusional national creeds. The=20unfolding events in Israel and Gaza may suggest that both sides have not yet suffered enough. But perhaps this hypothesis is not rooted in=20reality, either.