Currently, the State of Israel it is one of the most powerful, economically and militarily, in the world. It is also a state that has one of the most efficient and feared secret polices across the globe since the end of the Second World War: The Mossad Despite its short existence as a state – Israel was only made official and recognized as a country in 1948 –, it was the protagonist of intense conflicting episodes that occurred in the Middle East region in the second half of the 20th century, mainly due to the historical conflict with Muslim countries that surround their territory. But in order to have a minimal understanding of the reason for these conflicts and the peculiar characteristics of the short history of the State of Israel, it is necessary for us to know how their origin occurred.
The creation of the State of Israel, as said, took place in 1948, but the process of formation of Jewish communities in the region of Palestine dates back to the last decades of the 19th century, when the
Zionist movement. Zionism, or the Zionist movement, was created by Jewish intellectuals in the early 1890s and had as its main objective the fight against the anti-Semitism(Aversion to the Jewish people that spread throughout the world after the dissolution of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in the Ancient Age), which subsisted in Europe since the Middle Ages and which had intensified in the 19th century.Zionism
Zionists like Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), preached the return of the Jews to their region of origin, Palestine (the “promised land”), the in order to form there a modern state along the lines of Western nations as a form of self-determination for the people Jewish. A constituted State would bring them, in addition to political legitimacy, its own means for the basic exercise of sovereignty and citizenship, as a military defense and guarantee of fundamental rights.
A fact that contributed to stimulate the idea of the formation of a Jewish State in Palestine was the so-called Dreyfus case, a conspiracy of French Army officers against Alfred Dreyfus, who was also an official of the same institution. Dreyfus was unfairly accused by his colleagues of providing French intelligence information to authorities in the German Army, France's arch-rivals at the time. TheodorHerzl, who was a journalist, with the writer emileZola, he incurred the public defense of Dreyfus in the pages of newspapers of that period, denouncing the frauds of the accusations and making explicit the anti-Semitism that was spreading in Europe.
The stimulus to the Zionist cause, given by the Dreyfus Affair, incited the various Jewish communities that were spread across the country. world to gather around a financial fund to fund the purchase of land in the region of Palestine, then belonging to to the EmpireOttoman. Little by little, at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, the land located between the Golan Heights, the Peninsula of Sinai and the Jordan River were being leased by the Jews, who also began to migrate to the region in the same period. time course.
World War I and End of Ottoman Empire
In the 1910s came the First World War, which called into question the entire world geopolitics, including that of the Middle East region. The Ottoman Empire, which previously guaranteed the unity of Muslim nations, weakened during the war and fragmented at its end, being extinguished in 1924. Many of the nations formerly subject to Ottoman authority have gained political independence, such as Turkey. Others, such as Palestine, because they did not constitute a defined political unit and, evidently, because of the massive presence of Jews in the same territory, they could not immediately form a State. It fell to one of the winners of the war, Great Britain, to administer the region of Palestine after the war.
Jews vs Muslims
In 1920, the British created the so-called British Mandate of Palestine, an administration commission for the entire Palestinian territory, on the banks of the Jordan River, so to speak. This mandate spanned the interwar period, the Second World War and only ended in 1948.
During the period of the British Mandate, there was an alarming rebirth of the nationalism It's from political revenge in various parts of the world, including Europe and the Middle East. It was at this time that the rise of the nazi-fascism and the intensification of European anti-Semitism. Obviously, one of the repercussions of this was the increase in the mass migration of Jews into the territory of Palestine. However, at the same time, a double phenomenon began in the Middle East region: the radicalization of a part of the movement and also the radicalization of the Muslim nationalist ideology, which absorbed many presuppositions of anti-Westernism. gives Muslim brotherhood (created in 1928) and Nazi anti-Semitism – even some Arab nationalist leaders had direct contact with Nazism at that time.
Palestinians, inflamed by pan-Islamism and anti-Semitism, began to challenge the presence of Jews in that territory and began to carry out attacks on Jewish facilities in Palestine. The Jews, for their part, responded by forming a paramilitary force called haganah, which soon became the basis for a Jewish protostate from the Yishuv (of the settlement that already existed), designed by the Zionist David Ben-Gurion.
Ben-Gurion, however, sought to orient himself by the guidelines of the British Mandate and even by armed conflicts with Muslims, shared the idea of dividing the region between Palestinians and Jews. However, Gurion's Zionism was not unique. There was a radical wing, headed by Zeev Jabotinsky and then, Menachem Begin, who intended to subvert the British Mandate and extend Jewish territory beyond the eastern shores from the Jordan River, that is, to occupy the entire Palestinian territory, including the region where the kingdom of Jordan.
David Ben-Gurion was one of the main Zionist leaders at the beginning of the creation of Israel *
At the same time that these differences occurred, the Second World War came to an end and the burnt offering of the jews, perpetrated by the Nazis, was revealed and reported around the world. This shocking event further stimulated the actions of the international Zionist movement and generated tension between the victorious powers of the war to decide the question of Palestine.
The problem was that, at the end of the war, the radicalization between Palestinians and Jews increased considerably on both sides. While Palestinian militias continued their attacks on Jewish settlements and vehemently denied the creation of Israel, other Arab nations, such as Egypt and Syria, also declared themselves openly against it. purpose.
On the Zionist side, there was also extremism. A Jewish terrorist group called irgun, promoted a bomb attack in the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem on June 22, 1946. This attack victimized the British minister for Middle East affairs, Lord Moyne.
Faced with the aggravation of the facts, the British transferred the problem to the newly created United Nations Organization (UN), which created the Special Committee for Palestine (UNSCOP) in order to deal with the decision for territorial partition. The one elected to the 1948 General Assembly, who was in charge of managing this issue, was a Brazilian who had been minister of Getúlio Vargas: OswaldoSpider. Aranha advocated for the creation of the Jewish state and called for a vote of delegates from the then constituted nations.
All Arab countries voted against the creation of Israel and the division of territory. Some Western countries, such as England, did not vote, but the majority voted in favour. The State of Israel was then declared officially existent. The Jewish leader who spearheaded the entire process, bypassing the radical wing, was still Ben-Gurion. It was he who even signed the Israel's declaration of independence at the Tel Aviv National Museum, and then he was elected prime minister of the parliamentary republic of Israel.
In the same year that it was recognized as an officially existing state, Israel has already had to deal with the first of many wars that would face against the Arab States, which, by the way, for a long time did not recognize Israel's right to exist.
*Image credits: Shutterstock | Georgios Kollides
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/a-criacao-estado-israel.htm
