An 80-89 Year Conflict That Should Have Been Avoided – OpEd

The Jewish memorial date of Tisha B’Av is the one day on the Jewish calendar when the topic of the unrestrained hatred of other Jews (sinat khinam) should be central; because our sages say that both Jerusalem and the Second Temple were destroyed because of Jewish sectarian extremist hatred (sinat khinam); like that which in our days, killed the Israeli leader Yitzchak Rabin.

Unpacking that Jewish collective cardinal sin of sinat khinam should become Tisha B’Av’s central theme because when one attaches to “hatred” the growing instances of racism, intolerance and ultra-nationalism in Israeli society the danger of history repeating itself is growing. Now the good news of the New York Declaration will spark terrible political conflicts in Israel.  

For the first time the entire Arab League has condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, and urges Hamas to disarm, at a 2-state UN conference. Arab and Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, signed a declaration condemning for the first time Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and calling on the Palestinian terror group to release all the hostages it is holding, disarm and end its rule of Gaza, in a bid to end the war in the Strip.

The “New York Declaration” sets out a phased plan to end the nearly eight-decade conflict and the ongoing war in Gaza. The plan would culminate with an independent, demilitarized Palestine living side by side peacefully with Israel, and their eventual integration into the wider Middle East region. The timeframe for achieving a Palestinian state is 15 months.

The “New York Declaration” text condemned the deadly Hamas-led October 7 assault on Israel, when some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage — of whom 50 are still held, most of them not alive — and which sparked the war in Gaza. It marks the first condemnation by virtually all Arab nations of the attack.

Public support among Israelis for a two-state solution has reached a new low, with only 21% believing that a peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state is possible, according to a new poll by Pew Research Center released on June 3, 2025. 

Among Jewish Israelis, the results are even more stark: only 16% believe peaceful coexistence is achievable. Arab Israelis are more hopeful, with 40% hoping a two-state future is possible.

The survey, was conducted between February 5 and March 11, 2025, during a temporary ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, found a steep decline in Jewish optimism, due to the Hamas massacre of 1,200+ people on October 7, 2023, down by 14 percentage points from spring 2023, and the lowest level recorded since Pew began polling the question in 2013.

The majority of Israelis no longer see two states as a viable path to peace, not because of ideology, but sadly because of bitter experience. And the majority of Palestinians will no longer see Iran or any of the Arab States as coming to their rescue in another war. And when in mid June, Israel attacked Iran, more than one Arab state in the region supported Israeli air defenses, in a similar way to how they had done in previous Iranian attacks on Israel.

So is Armageddon coming soon? The word Armageddon comes from the Hebrew Har Meghiddo, meaning “Mountain of Megiddo”. Har Magheddon, 80 miles north of Jerusalem, is the symbol of a major battle in which, when the need is greatest and the believers are most oppressed, God reveals His power to His distressed people and their evil enemies are destroyed. 

Millions of religious people think that Armageddon is a warning that people in the Middle East need to change their politics to avoid Armageddon. And for the first time Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack, while reiterating his call for the terror group to release the remaining hostages in Gaza. 

“What Hamas did in October 2023 in killing and taking civilians hostage is unacceptable and condemnable and Hamas must immediately release all hostages,” Abbas wrote in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who this month will co-chair a UN conference aimed at advancing a two-state solution. It is too bad that he did not say this many years ago. 

The Palestine-Zionist wars started with the Great Revolt of the Arabs against the British pro-Zionist Mandate in 1936. It has continued off and on for 89 years. 

If the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had taken advantage of the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl’s offer of massive investments into the Ottoman Empire by European Jews like the French and British Rothschilds in return for expanded Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Ottomans would not have joined World War 1, and the Arabs would have fought the Turks for independence. 

If the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem had to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence; there would have no British Mcahon-Hussein letters, nor any Balfour Declaration or British Mandate. 

European and American Jewish Zionists would have supported the Arabs and Zionists against the Turks; and an independent Jewish Allied state might have become the outcome. Ali Maher Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister and chief adviser to King Farouk said, “in a better atmosphere they (the Zionists) might be able to advance further, not by force, but with Arab goodwill.”

But by 1939 Nationalistic secular politics had made even Arab government rivals; and Hajj Amin Husseini had already poisoned the possibility that Arabs could have offered their well respected traditional welcome of guests, to their cousins who were desperate to return home.

The earlier Ben-Gurion’s meetings with George Antonius and Muse Alami would more likely have led to a more peaceful outcome for both sides. Millions of European Jews would not have died in the Nazi holocaust; and millions of Palestinians would not be living in refugee camps. 

The Great Revolt period was between 1936 and 1939, when several thousand Palestinians living under the British Mandate rose up violently against a growing Jewish population and the Brits who were in charge. About 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5-8,000 Arabs died; of whom at least 1,500 fell at the hands of fellow Arabs.

In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, while placing major limits on Jewish immigration. Most Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, felt forced to accept the proposal because of the Nazi danger and half a loaf is better than nothing.

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and de facto leader of the Palestinian community, rejected the idea and called for jihad. He later went to Nazi Germany. The Palestinians emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Since then more than 150,000-200,000 lives have been lost.

However, the Palestinians did accomplish their goal of substantially slowing the growth of the Jewish populations. If  the Palestinians had accepted  Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposal partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, hundreds of thousands of European Jews could have been rescued and brought to the Jewish state in the years preceding the Nazi’s Final Solution.

And the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe)
when they lost the next anti-Zionist war in 1948. 

So are the Palestinian Arabs victims of a “settler colonial project,” or their own failed leadership? Can two people share the land, by dividing it? The idea that things could have indeed gone differently, and that they weren’t fated for endless conflict, suggests maybe they still can go differently in the future, unless they want to fight for another 89 years. 

What if Herbert Samuel, the Jewish British high commissioner for Palestine, had appointed a moderate Palestinian instead of al-Husseini as grand mufti? What if the two-state solution offered by the Peel Commission report in 1937 had gone through? “Jews would have gotten less than 20% of the country but there would have been no Palestinian refugee crisis. There would have been no Nakhba in 1948 and the Gaza Strip would not be teeming with refugees today.

What would have happened if the religious leaders of Palestine had followed the Qur’an statement that “We made the people who were considered weak (the Jews) to inherit the eastern part of the land (Jordan) and the western part thereof (Israel) which we have blessed. And the fair Word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because of their endurance.  And We completely destroyed all the great works and buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected.” (Qur’an 7:137)

This verse is clear that the land was meant for Jews by using the phrase ‘the people who were 
considered weak’. Most of the interpreters perceive that this phrase refers to the Children of 
Israel (Al-Razi, Al-Shawkani; Al-Tabari; Al-Zamakhshari). In fact, although it seems implicit at the beginning, the meaning is directly made understood from the later part of the same verse which mentions ‘Children of Israel’ in relation to ‘Pharaoh’.

And Prophet Solomon built a Temple in Jerusalem that, unlike the Ka’ba, would allow both Jews and non-Jews to pray at the two places where Prophets Abraham, Ishmael and Issac were tested by God: “Moreover, concerning a foreigner, who is not of Your people Israel, but has come from a far country for Your name’s sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this temple, hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do all that the foreigner who calls to You.”  (1 Kings  8:41-43)

The Nakba (catastrophe), the displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence, could have been totally avoided if the Palestinian leadership had accepted the UN two state solution. 

Indeed, if the Palestinian leadership had accepted the British 1937 two state solution; millions of Jews would have been able to escape the Holocaust (catastrophe). Hopefully, the Palestinians will not make an all or nothing mistake again.

Israeli Zionists agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, the Palestinian leadership refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

The majority of Israelis no longer see two states as a viable path to peace, not because of ideology, but sadly because of bitter experience. And the majority of Palestinians will no longer see Iran or any of the Arab States as coming to their rescue in another war.

If we all can live up to the ideal of following the will of God we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel  will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)