OP-ED: Why conflict over possession of the West Bank requires total victory
“Taken together, these incompatible positions show how deeply conflicting religious claims, historical interpretations, and national aspirations leave little room for compromise.”
Author: Hymie Rubenstein
Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Jewish communities across the world share significant genetic ties to the ancient Levant, the eastern Mediterranean region that includes present-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Modern Jewish groups also share substantial genetic ancestry with the ancient Canaanites. DNA studies show that most Jewish populations trace at least half of their genetic heritage to these ancient people of the Levant, suggesting that the early Israelites and Hebrews emerged from within the indigenous Canaanite population rather than replacing them entirely.
For example, a major study published in Cell analyzed ancient DNA from the southern Levant and found that modern Jewish groups, along with other regional populations, possess substantial Canaanite-related ancestry.
Palestinians are among those other regional populations, although Jews and Palestinians developed distinct histories, cultures, and religious traditions.
Historians and archaeologists also widely agree that the early Israelites were a subgroup of local Canaanites who split off culturally and religiously in the central hill country, rather than an entirely foreign invading force.
Because the ancient Israelites originated in Canaan, Jewish populations retain a deep Levantine genetic link despite centuries of migration and diaspora.
In short, the Jews of Israel trace enduring historical and religious ties to this land, a connection reinforced by the Old Testament and by long-standing Jewish tradition.
By contrast, Palestinian national identity developed more recently in its modern political form, especially as Jewish immigration and competing national movements intensified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Their strongest religious tie, one they share with all Muslims, whether of Arab background or not, is that Jerusalem is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (the Noble Sanctuary), revered as Islam’s third-holiest site. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad travelled miraculously from Mecca to Jerusalem and ascended to heaven from that location.
Historically, however, there has never been an independent, sovereign state called Palestine. Throughout history, the region has been governed by a succession of empires, including the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire.
When the British Mandate ended in 1948, the United Nations proposed partitioning the territory into independent Arab and Jewish states. The Jewish state of Israel was established, but a Palestinian Arab state was not because the Muslim Arabs who increasingly began calling themselves Palestinians refused to accept a Jewish state in their midst. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) came under Jordanian administration, while Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured both territories, though it disengaged from control over the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Though an age-old practice around the world, in modern international usage, land captured in war is often described as occupied territory, even as both the legal label and its political implications remain contested in this and other cases.
This is why an August 1 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news item titled “Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge” requires rebuttal.
For example, the article gives limited context for the fear and hostility many orthodox Jews in the West Bank feel toward their Palestinian neighbours, including their belief that the land is part of a divinely promised homeland described in the Old Testament, a text also recognized within Islamic tradition.
The piece describes the West Bank — including parts of the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Samaria — as “occupied land,” rather than acknowledging that many Israelis and their supporters regard it as contested or historically Jewish land.
It also refers to Jewish residents of the West Bank as “settlers,” a term that many critics use to imply colonial dispossession and that supporters dispute as historically inaccurate.
The BBC’s correspondent, Lucy Williamson, interviewed Yehuda Shimon, a lawyer with an organization that represents Israelis arrested for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, who “accused the global media of ‘buying the narrative of the Palestinians,’ alleging that every Palestinian in the area owned two guns and was preparing to repeat the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.”
“If we don’t wake up and drop them all from this area, from all areas of Israel, even Gaza too, they will come back, and come back [again],” he said, citing the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel and continued Palestinian support for both Hamas and that attack as evidence of the threat he perceives.
Asked about the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, Shimon laid out three options: live quietly under Israeli rule and ownership of the land; voluntarily emigrate to other Arab or Muslim nations; or “if you don’t want to make peace with us, and you don’t want to get out, I don’t have a choice: I must kill you, and I will kill you all,” he said.
Shimon’s position also resembles elements of a 2017 blueprint by Israel’s current Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, written before he joined the government.
In his blueprint for the West Bank, Palestinians would be told to give up any struggle for a Palestinian state and live quietly under Israeli rule. Those who had “difficulty letting go of national ambitions” could leave the territory, he said at the time, and those who stayed and continued armed struggle against Israel would be killed by Israel’s armed forces.
As for the blueprint of the terrorist organization Hamas, its 2017 charter affirms that “Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the West … is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity…. Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws. At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Taken together, these incompatible positions show how deeply conflicting religious claims, historical interpretations, and national aspirations leave little room for compromise, making the conflict likely to end only when one side achieves total victory over the other.