The collapse of the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of painful days not only for Turks but also for the Middle East and especially Palestine. After a long siege of Gaza, the Turkish Army completely withdrew from Palestine at the end of 1917. With the Armistice of Mudros, Palestine legally came under British administration, establishing a mandate administration that would last until 1948. In line with the Balfour Declaration, issued during World War I to gain support from Jewish businessmen and bankers, work began to establish a homeland for Jews in Palestine. Interestingly, the conservative British government that issued the Balfour Declaration was known to be antisemitic. In other words, it is claimed that the real intention of British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour was to establish a Jewish State in Palestine to get rid of Jews in Europe. It should be noted that even in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, there were projects for a Jewish State to be created by exiling Jews.
Contrary to popular belief, Jewish colonization of Palestine began during the Ottoman period. During the reign of Abdulhamid II, there was migration particularly from Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire, which grew closer to Germany, granted German Jews the right to settle and acquire property in Palestine, and this right continued until Cemal Pasha’s arrival in the region in 1916. Despite this, Ottoman Jews largely stood against Zionism and, rather than migrating to Palestine, maintained their Turkish identity as strong advocates of Turkism policies.
Under British administration, Jewish immigration became systematic, and with the rise of Nazi Germany, America and Palestine became attractive settlement options for European Jews. After World War II ended, the inhabitants of the emptied concentration camps chose a new life in Palestine, leaving behind the European geography that left them with painful memories.
Until the British left Palestine, both Jews and Arabs had uprisings against the colonial administration. In 1947, the United Nations adopted a plan for the division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. According to this plan, much more land than what is known as the 1967 borders was left to the Arabs, and the lands left to the Jewish state were divided into two, ensuring free passage through Arab lands. However, the Arabs rejected this plan and declared war on Israel, which declared independence in 1948, and were defeated.
After the 1956 Suez Crisis, lines were drawn more strictly in the Middle East, with Arab countries taking their place in the Eastern bloc while Israel became the West’s outpost in the Middle East. In 1967, Israel, using Arab countries’ excessive armament as an excuse, created an image of an invincible Israeli army by destroying the heavy weapons power of Arab countries, primarily Egypt, with a surprise raid. In this war, known in history as the “Six-Day War,” Israel captured Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and the West Bank. Although Arabs gained partial achievements in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, they couldn’t reclaim Palestine. After this year, Arab countries began developing good relations with Israel and abandoned Palestine to its fate.
After remaining under Israeli occupation for a long time, following the 1993 Oslo Talks, the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority was accepted in Palestine. This development, accepted as the first concrete step toward peace, was followed by Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian National Authority under Fatah entering negotiations with Israel and seeking solutions in the international arena led to the formation of a new opposition. Under Hamas leadership, opposition groups took control of administration in Gaza in 2007, establishing a separate administration from the one in the West Bank.
While Hamas was ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood, it had a completely opposite understanding from secular Fatah, which had adopted Arab Socialism. It rejected negotiations with Israel and opposed the mediation of Western institutions. The parties accused each other of being “Israel’s project” and “betraying the Palestinian cause.” As such, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process reached a deadlock and conflicts intensified.
Almost every year, coinciding with a holy time period, Hamas fires rockets at Israel, and Israel disproportionately bombs civilian settlements in Gaza. In every bombardment, Israel is condemned in world capitals, anti-Semitic rhetoric gets out of hand each time, anti-Israel Orthodox Jewish groups are shown on television, but nothing changes.
Hamas’s large-scale terror act against Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent disproportionate and lawless action against Gaza is today’s manifestation of a long-standing deadlock.
The fact that both the Arab world and Western powers show no will to solve the problem, along with the parties’ unwillingness to compromise, shows that Gaza will be bombed more. Following this, Hamas will fire more rockets, Israel will find more bombing excuses, resisting Hamas will become more legitimate in the eyes of the people, and the Palestine problem will remain unresolved.
What does International Law say?
The Six-Day War in 1967 began with Israel’s surprise attack on Arab countries. A sudden attack without legitimate cause violates the prohibition of use of force regulated in the UN Charter, and therefore the acquisition of territories seized with jus cogens violation is not legal. For this reason, returning to the 1967 borders has been the primary agenda item for solving the Palestine problem. Although Israel bases its attack on “preventive self-defense,” such a norm is not accepted in international law.
Besides immediate violations such as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) using prohibited weapons in operations against Palestine, Israel also has continuous violations. The first of these is the Jewish settler policy that complicates the two-state solution in Palestine. Accordingly, Israel brings Jewish settlers to the West Bank territories it occupied after the Six-Day War. Thus, it aims to change the demographics of the region in its favor. However, since the Fourth Geneva Convention, which has become international custom, prohibits such settlement activities by the occupying power in occupied territories, the United Nations has declared Israel’s policy contrary to international law. Despite UN warnings, illegal Jewish settlers placed by Israel in the West Bank, which continues this policy, invite ethnic conflict in the region. As can be seen in the map at the beginning of the article, the locations of these settlement units are chosen to complicate an independent Palestine by preventing the formation of a land connection between Palestinian Arab territories.
During Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the tragic images created by the forced evacuation of Jewish settlers continued to be dramatized by the media afterward, and therefore whenever the evacuation of settlers in the West Bank comes to the agenda, it meets with social backlash. Not only does Israel have no intention of evacuating Jewish settlements, but it builds new settlements every day and places military units under the pretext of ensuring the security of these settlements. Today, the number of Jewish settlers in Palestine, excluding Jerusalem, is around 350,000. According to famous philosopher and opinion leader Noam Chomsky, Israel should unconditionally withdraw from these lands, and Jewish settlers should become citizens of the future Palestinian State, with their return to Israel facilitated if they wish. Because Chomsky points out that an evacuation of this size could bring other problems. Lieberman, who once served as Israel’s Foreign Minister, proposed a population exchange between Arabs living in Israeli territory with Israeli citizenship and Jewish settlers in Palestine, but this plan received heavy criticism for being “racist.”
In 2013, the Palestinian National Authority was accepted to the UN as an “observer state” and recognized internationally as a “state.” Despite this, Palestine’s state status, which takes its legal basis from the 1947 plan for the division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs, is still controversial. Some lawyers argue that Palestine does not meet the three objective conditions of being a state (territory, people, and single authority). These claims are not unfounded. Indeed, it is difficult to speak of a single authority condition while there is Fatah authority in the West Bank and Hamas authority in Gaza. Additionally, the claim that the territory condition is not met constitutes grounds for many European countries not to recognize Palestine. Indeed, it is ambiguous whether the Palestinian State will be recognized with the 1967 borders or in the territories transferred to the Palestinian National Authority by Israel in 1993.
Although Hamas and Fatah’s decision to form a joint cabinet was once considered a positive step toward achieving single authority, the joint cabinet project ended in failure. Israel was most disturbed by this situation. Because it is obvious that as long as the Hamas-Fatah division continues, the Palestine problem will not be solved. To go one step further, many international politicians saying that Israel turned a blind eye to Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, which favors armed struggle and refuses to enter negotiations with Israel, thus gaining time for Israel’s planned occupation policy in the West Bank, is more than a conspiracy theory.
Peace Plans
Various plans are proposed under single-state, two-state, and three-state solution headings for solving the Palestine problem. To briefly touch on these plans, the single-state solution is about annexing Palestinian territories to Israel and granting cultural or administrative autonomy to Arabs in these territories. The two-state solution, which strengthened its supporters’ hand after Palestine’s recognition as a state by the UN, envisions establishing two sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states according to 1967 borders or as determined by the parties. However, in this case, there are critical issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the situation of Jewish settlers. The three-state solution proposes leaving control of the West Bank to Jordan and control of Gaza to Egypt. This plan is supported especially because it will prevent administrative crises like the Hamas-Fatah division between Gaza and the West Bank.
What should be done?
It is clear by international law that the 1967 borders are Palestine’s legal borders and settlements in the West Bank are illegal. However, due to a lack of political power to enforce international law, the problems of Palestine remains unresolved.
Considering Turkey’s economic structure and influence in foreign policy, it can be easily seen that it is not in a position to solve this problem alone. Likewise, Iran and Syria lack weapons that could affect the West and force a solution.
Here, a previously proven method should come into play; Oil Embargo… The United States and NATO, which saved Israel from the Arabs when it started to lose in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, suffered the wrath of the Arabs’ only useful weapon at the end of the war. With the 1973 Oil Embargo, an oil crisis emerged in the world, Western powers began attempts to reconcile Arabs and Israel, eventually Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, partial improvement was achieved in Palestinians’ situation, and Egypt-Israel peace was signed. It seems that there is no solution other than hitting the economy to force the west towards a resolution, such attacks on economy could be done through the initiatives of countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Of course, this will not give Arabs unlimited right to demand. While Israel needs to make radical decisions regarding the status of settlers and Jerusalem, Arabs must also recognize Israel’s power and reality in the Middle East. Because groups like Hamas and Hezbollah display an uncompromising attitude with rhetoric like erasing Israel from the Middle East and destroying Jews, ignoring the suffering that the status quo gives to their people. The fight against such groups and political factions needs to be done by Arabs after peace; otherwise, Israel will always find an excuse for military intervention in the name of protecting its own existence.
On the other hand, there is a need for a new figure who can be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian People instead of Fatah, which has lost its political legitimacy, and Hamas, which stands out with its uncompromising attitudes. Sensible Western actors and Gulf countries who want to solve this politically and militarily gangrenous problem are highlighting the name Mohammed Dahlan. An Arab Nationalist originally from Gaza, Dahlan started politics within Fatah and held managerial positions within the Fatah structure in Gaza. Dahlan, who was also a member of the Palestinian Assembly, was wanted to be arrested on charges of espionage and corruption but took refuge in the United Arab Emirates. Dahlan continued his life, which he started as an Arab Nationalist, with more liberal ideas and finally conducts politics from outside Palestine with the claim of existing as a third way between Fatah and Hamas. The name Mohammed Dahlan is not unfamiliar to Turkey; Dahlan is under investigation in Turkey for allegedly spying for the UAE and is being tried in absentia in the “July 15 Coup Attempt” file. According to the allegation, Dahlan manages the relationship traffic and financial network between the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization and the UAE and has direct involvement in the July 15 Coup Attempt.
Considering the recent rapprochement between the Western World and Gulf Countries, bringing Dahlan to power in Palestine as a figure cleansed of Hamas and supported by the West could mean the restart of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and perhaps the finalization of peace. However, it’s another mystery how Turkey will view Dahlan, who has been declared the number one state enemy in Turkey, becoming the president of the “brother” Palestinian people.
