By Charlie Lee Springtime of Nations

In the news what has become a perennial geopolitical issue has once again reared its head. Though the latest fighting ended in a ceasefire on May 21, 2021, the Arab-Israeli conflict has in some form or another been raging for over 100 years, with no discernible end in sight. Many libertarians have spoken on the conflict, but what we at Springtime of Nations aim to do is to give a brief summary of the history of the conflict before we make our position clear.

From a libertarian lens I think it’s useful to breakup the modern history of Israel and Palestine into 3 periods: The pre-state period (c.1880-1947), the early state period (1947-1967) and the late state period (1967 onwards)during the pre-state period, neither “side” had their own polity, and much of the Arab population were actually pre-state tribalists such as the Bedouin. Both were under the rule of the ottoman empire and later the British empire. Fleeing what they saw as a rising spectre of religious bigotry in Europe, thousands of “Zionists” or Jewish nationalists immigrated to the land they had inhabited until the 2nd century AD. The Jews created their own communities voluntarily, some of them were simply european style cities, others were communes and other intentional communities. violence not only against the rulers, but also between the two stateless communities erupted periodically, in the form of pogroms or riots. Historically, the perpetrators were usually the Arab majority who saw Jewish immigration as a threat to their resources and eventual independence. The Jews formed self defense organizations (like Haganah) as well as overt terror groups (such as Irgun) both to protect their nascent communities and also to wage war on the British occupiers, who had promised national self-determination to both sides during world war I. During the 1936 Arab Revolt the Haganah made the strategic choice to side to with the British army in crushing the Arab nationalists, although this did not convince the British to raise immigration restrictions on European Jews seeking to come to Palestine, even while the jaws of the Nazi war machine were closing in on them.

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