I have just returned from a two week trip to Israel where I visited my family. Having studied the Crusader states of Outremer, I see so many parallels between the fate of the modern state of Israel and the Frankish medieval states, the remnants of which still dot the landscape.
For a time the Crusader states of Outremer (French for "beyond the sea") built great things, achieved a great prosperity, dominating trade routes and exporting sugar to Europe, living in relative peace with the native population, and were the feudal laboratory of innovations in governance. The lords of Outremer lived in luxury in impregnable castles, while the land yielded a wealth not seen in that region since the Phoenicians. And yet in the end this edifice crumbled, leaving only ruins behind, and in retrospect we consider this collapse inevitable and the ambition to establish a permanent European presence in the Holy Land as impossible. Looking at Israel today, I see many of the same dynamics at work and will try to describe them for you. This first diary will look at the social and economic situation, with a later one focusing on the military and diplomatic situation.
The parallels between the Crusader and the Zionist movements are deep and pervasive. The Crusades were envisioned as a idealistic movement of liberation of the Holy Land, the Christian and non-Christian population of which would be freed from the arbitrary Oriental tyranny and the chaos caused in the region by the then ongoing Seljuk Turk invasion and migration. The creation of a Latin Christian base in the Near East would lead to a flowering of trade between Europe and Asia, leading to a great prosperity for the region and its inhabitants that would create a veritable utopia. The population of the region at the time was very diverse, with many Christian denominations dating to the Roman period including large and prosperous culturally Byzantine Greek speaking urban centers such as Antioch, a strong Armenian presence linked into the Greater Armenian region to the north, sizeable Jewish communities in Jerusalem and Galilee, various Bedouin tribes, and some more settled Muslim tribes which had migrated into the region in the four centuries following the Arab conquest. None of these groups felt any real loyalty to their Egyptian, Syrian or Seljuk overlords and many could be expected to be receptive to a Christian rule.
Similarly, early Zionist thinkers believed that a Jewish state founded along socialist principles would be welcomed by the inhabitants of Palestine, who were at the time living under the rule of distant imperial centers, Istanbul and then London. Palestine was badly underdeveloped, and its land was largely unproductive marsh and desert, restricting agriculture to only a few naturally favored areas. The Zionists reasoned that the Muslim and Christian population would benefit from an economy driven by Jewish investment and development, and as the standards of living rose across the board, the locals would come to embrace the new order enthusiastically for improving their lives.
The reality proved different in both cases. The Crusader conquest of the Holy Land was punctuated with atrocities, beginning with pogroms of Jews in Europe and culminating with a nearly total slaughter of the inhabitants of Jerusalem upon its sack. The Jerusalem massacre, in which more local Christians than even Jews or Muslims perished, remained a rallying cry for Muslim armies for generations. The high handed manner in which the local Christians were treated by the Catholic Franks also caused a rift between the Christian communities. So despite the fact that Outremer did in fact reach a high level of prosperity for some time, and remained a trading and exporting hub to Europe for its entire existence, only a few, mostly Italian merchants, saw the economic benefits. Nevertheless, the population of Outremer remained relatively quiescent throughout the Frankish reign, working on the plantations and servicing the Frankish armies, leaving the ouster of the Franks to outside forces.
Similarly, while the Jewish migration to Israel did raise wages and create jobs for local labor, the benefits were not spread evenly. Jewish settlements grew faster and received more benefits, and Jews prospered in newly reclaimed lands while the Muslims and Christians largely continued to live their traditional lifestyles without access to many of the modern marvels enjoyed by the Jews. Even those communities who have accepted and participate in the Israeli state, including serving in the army, such as the Bedouin and the Druze, still do not consider themselves Israelis and lead lives quite different and less affluent than the Jewish Israelis. Some of this is caused by the fact that these native societies are far more hierarchical and the wealth that does exist in held by only a few families, but the appearance of inequality is still galling to the average person. Many divisive and sectarian laws, such as laws prohibiting intermarriage, make life uncomfortable for anyone not affiliated with one of the major religious establishments. The laws usually reflect the orthodox position, and are very restictive for atheists or more reformed practicioners of any of the religions.
Therefore, even though non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel typically enjoy a standard of living higher than their counterparts in other Middle Eastern states, they do not feel like equal members of the society and integration has not taken, and is not taking place. As an example, the intermarriage ban can be easily gotten around by getting married at the Argentinean embassy or in nearby Cyprus, but the community mores are far more effective at enforcing this division than the laws. The outrage of the families involved (which has led to honor killings particularly in the Druze community) is a far more effective tool of preventing miscegenation than any legislation.
Everybody in Israel today is painfully aware which group they belong to. And it’s not just Jew, Christian, Muslim, it’s much more nuanced. Among the Jews they have "the Russians" – emigrants from the former Soviet Union, most of whom are not religious and many are not technically Jewish under the strict Israeli guidelines, the "Southern French" as they call themselves or the Moroccans as everyone else calls them – North African Sephardic Jews who tend to be more orthodox in their religion and tribal in their lifestyles, the Ethiopians – blacks who immigrated claiming a Jewish heritage but are largely seen as "not really Jewish," and so on and on, with a general hierarchy favoring the Ashkenazi European branch and looking down on the Sephardics and the Russians. Among the Christians there are more sects than I can name, a tour of the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher reveals a temple divided into tiny warring clusters by representatives of hostile denominations (the Copts live on the roof), with fistfights between monks being not infrequent. Among the Muslims there are the people we think of as the Palestinians, but also the Bedouin and the Druze, who are more hostile to the other Muslims than they are to the Israelis. Additionally even among the Palestinians, there are those who live lives of relative plenty in old villages and neighborhoods whether in Israel proper or in the occupied territories and are able to earn their living in the traditional ways of shepherding, agriculture and trade, and who are therefore relatively settled and cautious, and there are those who live lives of dependency in squalid conditions in the now permanent refugee camps, where unemployment runs 80 percent and anger and violence predominate.
In thinking about this topic, one should remember that the Palestinian question is not simply an Israeli problem. The Palestinian refugee camps are not located only in Israel or the territories, they dot the Middle Eastern landscape, sowing instability, and a sizeable Palestinian diaspora has taken place throughout the world. Palestinians remain second class citizens, if they are granted citizenship at all, in the Muslim countries they inhabit, and a widespread anti Palestinian prejudice is endemic in the societies where large numbers of Palestinians live. The unresolved Palestinian refugee question largely caused the Lebanese Civil War, and some may remember Black September in Jordan, when the King ordered tens of thousands Palestinians killed to suppress their dissent. Jordan remains an uneasy patchwork of second class Palestinians dominated by royal power, despite the fact that there is no cultural or ethnic distinction between Jordanians and Palestinians, they are one people separated by borders in 1948. Most recently, the Palestinian refugees in Iraq, who, unlike their brethren elsewhere, had enjoyed a preferential status under Saddam Hussein, have been ethnically cleansed from Baghdad during the post-American invasion bloodbath by the Shiite government which viewed them as potential terrorists and allies of Baath. Those Muslim nations claiming leadership in the Muslim world, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, are happy to pay pensions to the families of the Palestinians killed in the intifada, including the notorious rewards to the families of suicide bombers, but are entirely unwilling to welcome and grant rights to any significant numbers of the Palestinians languishing in horrid conditions around the Middle East.
Israel’s own programs designed to improve the economic conditions in the territories have been more stop than go despite many lofty pronouncements, although the situation has improved somewhat in the West Bank since the violence there died down a few years ago and a more pliable Palestinian government under Abbas has taken power. Israel’s economic relationship with the Palestinians is a topic worthy of a separate diary from a person more knowledgeable than myself, it is a very interesting and contradictory situation while my expertise is mainly in medieval history and thus entirely useless at all times. From the beginning of the Zionist migration, the Palestinian population has taken jobs as unskilled laborers for the settlers, and, as stated above, the availability of such jobs caused an influx of Muslim laborers into Israel prior to its independence, ironically exacerbating the following refugee crisis. The borders remained largely open until the intifadas started, and Palestinian labor was employed widely in Israeli construction and other industries hungry for unskilled low paid labor. For a time, it was cheaper to hire dozens of Palestinians to carry concrete in buckets up buildings during construction than it was to build a crane. This all changed once the borders were repeatedly closed down, sometimes for months at a time, following various terror attacks in Israel during the intifada. Employers could not afford to have workers who would be randomly unavailable for weeks or months at a time. Large numbers of Taiwanese and Romanian guest workers were imported to fill the void, and automation has decreased the need for such labor. Obviously this caused unemployment to skyrocket in the territories and in Arab settlements within Israel.
Arab stores remain very popular in Israel, selling everything from amazing falafel and hummus, to various goods prohibited under Jewish law, and stay open on Saturdays, when everything else is closed. These stores enjoyed a boom after the arrival of the million strong Russian Jewish migration, as Russians tend to disregard Jewish law and demand their New Year’s trees every December and various pork products every other day. There are various affirmative action programs encouraging Arab small businesses and good money is being made by Arab merchants even during the worst crises. The picture is far more grim in the territories, where various free trade zones used to exist, such as in Jenin, where high quality clothes and other goods could be bought for very cheap. These zones were discontinued once the intifada kicked in, as Israelis became too fearful to enter the territories even for a good deal. Gaza in particular has been entirely wrecked, and is now a society entirely dependent on foreign donations and Israel’s intermittent provision of power and fuel for its survival.
Other affirmative action programs help Israeli Arabs to get into college and give them preference when applying for government jobs. Simultaneously widespread discrimination against hiring even citizen Arabs exists, for example there is the old trick of requiring a security clearance, meaning military service, for jobs, effectively disqualifying the Arabs who have been freed from the obligation of serving in the Israeli Army. Avigdor Lieberman recently called for a loyalty oath for all Israeli citizens, which proposal is aimed squarely at the Arab community and to a lesser extent at the Orthodox Jews who also do not recognize Israel, waiting for the Messiah to establish the real thing. This call reflects the widespread opinion in Israeli society that Israeli citizen Arabs are not loyal to Israel, and form an internal fifth column, and won Lieberman a lot of votes, though now that he is in the government, it has become clear (to the consternation of many of his voters) that he was not serious about actually implementing such a controversial program.
This view is reminiscent to that held by the Frankish Crusaders, who treated their own serfs and workers as perpetual potential enemies held at bay only through constant displays of force. In Outremer, frequent attacks on pilgrims and other soft targets of the kind we would classify as terrorism today were frequent, but were mostly carried out by raiding parties from beyond the porous frontier rather by the residents of nearby villages who nonetheless often bore the brunt of the Crusader punitive response.
While many Christians served in the Crusader armies, mainly in civilian roles setting up camp and carrying baggage, they were not successful in entering the knightly or even the sergeant ranks in any great numbers, although of course some of the richer native clans retained their position and even influence at court. It is an interesting characteristic of settler societies that the foreign domination in the short term actually increases the power of the local elite, as the colonists prefer to deal with the native community through a few chiefs, whose wealth and power within their community rises as a result. This is true in modern Israel as well, as there are many extremely wealthy sheik families both in the territories and in Israeli Arab towns who continue to live lives of luxury and privilege.
Tensions remain high, perpetuated, often intentionally, by both sides. Though some cities have large mixed populations, the groups are segregated neighborhood by neighborhood, and the education systems are entirely separate, with Arab children studying a standard anti-Zionist Arab world curriculum and not being required to learn Hebrew until the 6th grade. Arabic is taught in Jewish schools, but the only reason for students to excel in it seems to be the prospect of getting a coveted spot in military intelligence when they get drafted. The social tension is plainly visible when thousands of Israelis head out to traditional kebab picnics on Independence Day, to find the picnic spots systematically filled by Arabs who play loud music and otherwise try to ruin what they see as an inappropriate celebration, which phenomenon I witnessed myself on this recent trip.
Despite all of these problems, Israeli Arabs have very rarely been implicated in any terrorist activity, and remain quiescent under Jewish domination, just as their predecessors had been under Frankish rule. But more significantly, rather than the groups gradually growing together, as has been the case even the most racist and institutionally segregated societies on Earth, such as South Africa and the United States, they appear to be drifting further and further apart. My very bright 17 year old cousin who volunteered for the Avigdor Lieberman campaign and is one of those students taking literary Arabic in the hopes of getting into military intelligence service, sees no possibility of peace whatsoever until all Arabs are physically removed or destroyed. He tells me that this position has gained markedly during the last few years, with even formerly leftist teachers abandoning their traditional voting posture for Meretz or Labor and switching over at least to Kadima if not Likud or even Israel Beitenu. The recent spectacular failure of the "unilateral disengagement" ploy attempted by Ariel Sharon in Gaza has disenchanted a lot of people to the possibility of peace.
Nobody that I spoke to could see a peace deal holding with the fractured and radicalized Palestinian community. Even if Abbas accepts a peace deal on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and even in the improbable event that Hamas joins in such a deal, there would remain Islamic Jihad and a myriad other smaller resistance organizations who would relish the chance to distinguish themselves from their larger rivals by taking an uncompromising militant stand. Similarly among the Jews, any meaningful dismantlement of the settlements, even of the tiny unauthorized hilltop squatter trailer parks, will probably touch off a terrorist campaign among the right wing and religious settler communities which will serve to undermine any lasting peace in the region. It would only take a few terror attacks from either side to bring down any carefully constructed peace plan and resume the cycle of violence, and neither side can realistically prevent these inevitable provocations from happening.
In conclusion, the most significant and demoralizing aspect of both Outremer and Israel is that the vicious cycle of events continually weakens the peace party and strengthen the hawks, leading to a long term increase in violence and confrontation, instead of time working to bring the groups together as could have been hoped. Every attack, every failure in the peace and reconciliation process, every tense interaction between Jew and Arab, though they are engineered by the militant factions on both sides, serves to strengthen them and weaken the peaceful elements, who are increasingly seen as impotent and unrealistic in light of the continued violence.
I was often reminded of the tragic argument between Count Raymond of Tripoli, the leader of the peace faction at the court of the last King of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, and Reynald of Chatillon, who was a hawkish leader, though of remarkable vision. Reynald, who had spent decades in Muslim captivity and was fluent in Arabic and well versed in Muslim culture, called for a relentless campaign to undermine the economic vitality and unity of the Muslim world, and, from his base in Transjordan, the modern Jordan, carried out a series of bold raids intended to disrupt caravan routes between Egypt and the Orient, even going so far as to launch pirate ships into the Red Sea to attack the Muslim holy places and sink shipping coming in from India. His arguments gained more and more traction among the Franks as Saladin successfully unified the Near East, justifying his seizures of power by the necessity to unite in order to expel the Crusaders from the Holy Land.
Whether or not Saladin actually intended to fight a total war against the strong states of Outremer, or was simply using this argument to gain popularity, just as ambitious leaders of the Middle East do today, can never be known. What actually happened was that every provocation by Reynald drew a response from Saladin, and each response from Saladin weakened the peace party and strengthened calls at Baldwin’s court for a massive military response. The eventual massive response led by the hawks against the poignant and tearful protests of Raymond of Tripoli, who was prepared for his city of Tiberias and his own wife to be captured by the Muslims rather than risk a showdown, resulted in the entire power of Frankish Outremer being annihilated at the Battle of Hattin and the quick loss of Jerusalem to the Muslims. One can only wonder where the ever growing extremism in Israeli and Arab views, and the increasingly radical positions taken by the leaders on both sides will lead.