The conflict in Israel-Palestine is sometimes framed as a millennia-long feud which can’t possibly be solved.
This framing is absolutely false.
Jews lived in Muslim lands for centuries, and although their circumstances varied depending on the time and place, there were certainly many high points during which Jews lived in safety and even prosperity. Certainly the kind of pogroms and expulsions that are found throughout the Jewish experience in the Christian world are all but absent in most of Islamic history. Avi Shlaim is one Jew of Iraqi origin who has written about this topic using his own family’s example.
The modern conflict in Israel-Palestine is founded squarely in the late 19th and early 20th Century with the idea of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine that was promoted by Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) and others at the turn of the century, and was marked by a migration of Jews from Europe to the region. This migration was slow at first but picked up steam with the Nazi holocaust, and eventually resulted in inter-ethnic violence as Palestinians demanded independence. A more detailed history can be found here. The conflict that is now in the news therefore, is about one hundred years old and has specific historical, political and demographic roots.
Another thing to remember is the distinction between ethnicity and religion. While for many, Judaism is both an ethnicity and a religion, people who are ethnically Arab can be any religion. Historically, a significant minority of the Palestinian population in Palestine was in fact Christian. Remember that key Christian holy sites like Bethlehem, Nazareth and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are all located in historic Palestine, and Christians naturally wanted to live in that area. There were also Palestinians who were Jewish in faith, either as part of their history or even when the influx of Jews from Europe began in the early 20th Century.
One Palestinian told the story of her family in an online forum as follows:
“My family has been farming olive trees for thousands of years. Many of our trees are older than the government of Israel, which was created in 1948. The grove (located in a tiny village in the West Bank) sits next to the ancient Jewish temple that my family used to worship at before we converted from Judaism to Christianity and then Islam. Many people talk about this issue as if the Palestinians are an invading force who kicked Jewish people out in ancient times. I would like you to know that this is unequivocally untrue. My family was Jewish. We are not invaders. We literally just converted. This does not erase our indigeneity because our ties are based in the land, not a text or a specific label. The culture of Palestinians is to exist beyond labels. We were invaded by the Romans. We were invaded by several crusades. We were invaded by the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Egyptian Empire. Throughout all of these technical name changes, we have remained indigenous. I am very sorry that the Romans kicked out your family thousands of years ago. I am not saying that your family was *not* kicked out. I just want you to know that I am not Roman, nor are most Palestinians. You are making an ancient conflict out of one that began in 1948.”
~ Elena N.