Palestine Conflict: An Another Perspective from the Realm of Confiscation of Land and Legitimization

This paper seeks out the historical background of Palestine conflict over the years with its respective stages from the perspective of defining who are Israelis, Jewish and Judaism. How they came and made Israel from historical events and what lure them to occupy this land and developed it for themselves. This paper also sketches a number of geographical patterns pertaining to the ongoing process of confiscation of Palestinian-Arab land in Israel. It points out a geographical pattern and course of action of ―enclaving‖ and ―exclaving‖, a form of spatial apartheid and exclusionary zoning which was espoused during the pre-state period of Jewish settlement and has continued down to the present day. By having findings on the conflict, paper suggest legitimization from the realm of psychological repertoires by following Kurt Lewin model of change for peaceful resolution of Palestine conflict on concluding notes.

national state in Palestine, since then the Zionist with the fully support from the British as a most superpower at that time, intensified the migrations of Jews and built a Jewish settlements in Palestine.

A Historical Homeland of Israel
According to Jewish historical that based on their Biblical perspective, Palestine was the land that had been promised for them by the initial covenant of God with their foot father Patriarch Abraham. Later, the covenant had been renewed with their leaders, Moses and David at their particulars times also known as the Mosaic covenant and the Davidic covenants. The Mosaic covenant initially delivered in Egypt prior to the Exodus. Accordingly, Moses brought his people lead to Exodus from Egypt to the -Promised Land‖ (Cohn-Sherbok and Cohn-Sherbok, 1994) at roughly the same time the Philistine came to the land. Jews entered the land through West bank of Jordan and after the centuries later they gained the domination over the area after formed a United Kingdom. Since then, the land rather known to them as a Land of Israel (Werblowsky and Wigoder, 1966). Under the leadership of King David who crushed their enemies and established the modest empire, he took Jerusalem as a capital. The Kingdom then succeeded by Great King Solomon but no long after his death the empire was split into two weak states, Israel and Judah. By 5th century Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the entire kingdom.
By the death of Nebuchadnezzar Jews returned to Palestine after half century being deported in Babylon. They rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple but never they revived their Kingdom instead the land had been ruled for centuries by foreign ruler including the Persian, Macedonians, Seleucids and finally by Romans. The later had destroyed Jerusalem on 70 AD and the large number of Jews being dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. By 641 AD Umar the 2nd successor (Ar. Khalifah) to Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) liberated the Holy City and the entire Syria-Palestine from the Romans. In 1099 AD the Crusaders took control of the city but most parts of Palestine remain under the Muslims control. Almost a century later Salahuddin, the Muslim Ruler of Syria regain the control of the Holy City. The City and the entire Palestine was lasted on the hands of Muslims authority until it was taken by British, an ally power who defeated the Turkish Ottoman Empire who last control over the area, at the end of the World War I, 1917. According to Palestinian perspective, the British occupation that provides a -British mandate‖ marked the starting time of the 20th century's disputes over the region (Cayne, 1981;McHenry, 1998). The British keenest toward Zionist had provided a fully support to the idea about to establish the Jewish National State on Palestine. Hence, the Zionist who secured a fully support from British had intensified to build their settlements within the Palestinian territory. All these developments regarded to the Palestinian view as a new era of foreign occupation over their land. On the early days of British occupation in 1918, Palestine's population consist of 600,000 Palestinian Arab included Christians and the only 60,000 Jews (Lorimer et al., 1991) However by 1945, Jews had their settlement almost in the all part of Palestine territory and represent about half of all population in the three main district namely, Yafa, Haifa and Jerusalem.
The land then put under British Mandate and by Nov. 2, British made a declaration known as a Belfour Declaration stated that the Government of British granted to the Jews that Palestine will be a national Jewish State in future. By May 14, 1948 the Zionist Jews proclaimed the establishment of the Israeli's State on the land of Palestine. By May 15, 1948 the Zionist proclaimed the establishment of the National Israeli State on the land of Palestine. The proclamation caused the mass rejection from the Palestinian and the entire Arab who then launched the war toward the new state of Israel. The war lasted for months and ended by January 1949 with an Israeli victory, gained more territory and secured the status-quo of the state. While the Arabs Palestinian lost their home state and forced more than 700,000 flee to the neighboring countries (Lorimer et al., 1991). Thus the date of May 15, 1948 for the Palestinians regarded as -the Naqbah‖ (tragedy).

Jews and Judaism
The Jewish People who belong to Judaism believe that the land had been promised for them by the initial covenant of God with their foot father Patriarch Abraham as stated in their holy book, Jewish Bible.
There are some definitions to define the meaning and to explain the subjects of Jews as well as Judaism alike. According to International (1982) that Jews are descendent of ancient people called the Hebrews who originally came from Mesopotamia. Specifically the Jews trace their ancestry to Abraham the Hebrew who left Mesopotamia in 2nd millennium BC. to settle in Canaan which was later called Palestine and is now Israel. In Canaan he begot Isaac and Isaac begot Jacob who also called Israel. Jacob had twelve sons whom the later Hebrew traced their ancestry to them. During centuries of their history they organized their people accordingly known as Twelve Tribes of Israel or Israelites. The definition of who is a Jew varies according to whether it is being considered by Jews based on normative religious statutes, self-identification, or by non-Jews for other reasons. Because Jewish identity can include characteristics of an ethnicity, a religion, and citizenship, the definition of who is a Jew has varied, depending on whether a religious, sociological, or ethnic aspect was being considered. The definition is seemed so inline to what Lorimer et al. (1991) which define the Jews as a people who trace their descent from the Biblical Israelites and who are united by religion called Judaism. The Origin of the Jews as it recounted in the Book of Genesis referred to Abraham. God had ordered him to migrate to the new land which he promised to him and his descendents as a perpetual inheritance. At -the promised land‖ Abraham begot Isaac and Isaac begot Jacob also known as Israel.

Judaism
Both the words Jews and Judaism are derived from Judah (Heb. Yehudah) one of twelve Jacob (Israel)'s son Roberti (1962), who later became a dominate tribe of Israelites that the name refer to the whole remaining Israelite Kingdom after the fall of Samaria to Assyria ( 772 BC). While the term of Jews refer more on ethnicity characteristic which is shared genealogy of Jewish mother and backed to fatherhood (Patriarchs) Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Judaism on the other hand went more on religious inheritance. It is a common said that Judaism is a religion as well as a culture of Jewish People that inherited by Patriarchs. According to the Bowker (1997), Judaism is a monotheism belief as well as practice backed to Patriarch Abraham and being a people chosen to receive God's guidance in Torah through Moses. It has been depicted by (McArthur, 1986) too insisted that Judaism is a religion based on monotheism that traced by historian back to Abraham but it is generally recognized that is was under Moses Judaism as a religion of Israelites was founded and shaped. Then the development of Judaism went through the various stages of Jewish culture and social history.
According to Werblowsky and Wigoder (1966) that Judaism is a Jewish Religion, also in a wider sense is refer to general characteristic of Jewish values, ethics, attitudes and more. Now days it is used to denote the entirety of Jewish thought based on its principle idea of Monotheism. Seem as a basic terminology that refer both of the words either Jews or Judaism which derived from Judah, there is merely a truth that explained the entity of Jews as a mixture identity of ethnic, national and religious elements (Lorimer et al., 1991).

Jewish Bible and Covenant
It has been generally understood that the holy Bible is a sacred writings both to Judaism and Christianity. For Christians the Holy Bible composed of the Old Testaments and the New Testaments (covenants), but the so called Old Testaments by Christians are the Jewish Bible or the Hebrew Bible for Judaism (Unger, 2009).

Jewish Bible
The original text of the Old Testaments or the Hebrew Bible was in an ancient Hebrew with a few brief passages in Arabic, preserved and treasured through many centuries by Jews. Almost from the very beginning this holy book has been translated into other languages, mainly Latin and Greek. Since then it's known as the Bible (Lat. Biblia) means a collection of sacred books. There are 39 books found in the Hebrew Bible, that commonly however counted 24 books, in which Torah, the first five books of Moses are the first and foremost.
Torah, Hebrew word meaning -teaching‖, -instruction‖ and -guidance‖ contain mainly a historical background of Jews and Judaism that also a basic foundation of learning and tradition that is a central importance to Judaism. According to Judaism belief, the Torah that was initially revealed by God on to Moses at Mont Sinai regarded as a written Torah. Ever since, the -teaching‖, -instruction -and -guidance‖ which are the literal meaning of Torah, did not end throughout the history of the Jewish people with the death of Moses. Thus, the remaining books of Hebrew Bible including Prophets and Writings are also considered -Torah -( Oral Torah) by its spirits and senses (Werblowsky and Wigoder, 1966).

Covenants
Literally, the term of covenant understood as an agreement between two or more parties among peoples or nations freely enter into special kind of relationships (Pappas, 2002). Rather in theology is a term derived from Bible especially used for the sacred agreement between God and Israelites as according to Werblowsky and Wigoder (1966) was usually confirmed by some kind of ritual symbolizing the union of partners. Initially God made a covenant with Patriarch Abraham by commanded him to leave his home in Mesopotamia and migrate to the -Promised Land‖ which God promised him and his descendents as a perpetual inheritance (Lorimer et al., 1991).
The covenants which God made with Abraham subsequently confirmed to Isaac and Jacob is fundamental belief in Judaism. The original covenants which God made with Patriarch renewed by the times of Moses, David and the latter Prophets such as Ezra and Jeremiah (Werblowsky and Wigoder, 1966). It is seem that the Hebrew Bible's main theme is characterized by a strong sense of Jewish and Judaism history and the history was founded on the covenants. Hence, Hebrew believes that their religion was founded on covenant between God and Israelites through their Patriarchs and Prophets.

Palestine, a Heart of the Most Disputed Region
Today, Palestine known as the heart of the most disputed region in the modern world. Modern historical view in general asserted the starting point to all disputes and conflicts back to the British mandate on Palestine. The first juncture of the Arab-Israeli conflict  was typified by an inter-communal struggle, pitting two distinct ethnic communities against each other over a single piece of land. Each group was determined both to ascertain its own political structures and increase the area under its control. During this period, the Arab states demonstrate little interest or concern (Sandler, 1988). Nevertheless, the political impact of the inter-communal struggle became less manageable for the United Kingdom. In August 1936, the British government noted the corrosion of the situation in Palestine and arranges a Royal Commission, headed by William Robert Peel, to examine the situation and to formulate policy recommendations (Inbar, 2009).
In July 1937, the Peel Commission suggested separation of land between the Jews and Arabs into two unequal states, followed by a population transfer. The underlying principle was that if the two ethnic communities could not live together, separation was the preeminent option (Downes, 2001;Kaufmann, 1998) Fig. 1 gives a general cartographic illustration for the division of Jewish land possession in 1944 at macro level. The dark shading in the map, spotted along the costal and northern part of the country, is poised of hundreds of enclaves of various sizes and shapes. This pattern should be seen as it has been in progression for almost half a century and the map present a snapshot of an active colonizing process at a fixed point of time.

Figure-1. Division of Jewish land possession in Palestine in 1944
Source: (Falah, 2003) This was the same proposal which British government made in the case of India numerous years later, in anticipation of limiting turmoil in the subcontinent. The Arabs in Palestine, however, rejected the Peel Commission's suggestion because they denied the Jews' right to reinstate a Jewish commonwealth. A decade later in 1947, another partition plan was recommended, this time by an UN-nominated commission. The Arabs of Palestine, as well as the leaders of the adjacent Arab states, again rejected the proposal because they could not countenance the appearance of a Jewish state. This time, however, the British government decided to end its existence by creating a political vacuum. In May 1948, the Jewish community declared statehood, ending the stage of inter-communal ethnic conflict. This was the first stage of conflict.
The conflict's second stage was mainly inter-state. It began with Israel's establishment and the following attacks by the armies of the surrounding Arab countries on the new entity. The War of 1948 resulted in a de-facto partition of Palestine, which reflect the power disparity between the two sides (Inbar, 2009). Israel held 78 percent of the region and the invading Arab armies took the rest; the Jordanians governed the West Bank, the Egyptians controlled Gaza, and the Syrians held segments of territory in the north. When Jordan takes possession of the West Bank in 1949, its residents became Jordanian citizens. In dissimilarity, Egypt kept Gaza under military rule.
As the mandate at the end provided a delivery to the birth of the Israeli National State 1948, it was certainly the main factor that deepened previous disputes and transformed the holy land to peoples of divine teaching into the most bitterly contested area ever in mankind history between the Zionist Jews and the Palestinian Arab (Shindler, 2002). Ever since the four major Arab-Israel Wars (1948-89, 1956, 1967 and 1973)

Post-1967 Jewish Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
The Jewish settlement ascertained in the West Bank and Gaza strip are sighted here as a multifaceted of exclaves because they are positioned outside Israel's sovereign space as defined by the 1967 -Green Line‖ and are located in areas surrounded by Palestinian lands and localities. While these exclaves are geographically located outside the focal area of the state, functionally and economically they are intimately linked to it. In some sense these arrangements are -forward‖ exclaves or -micro-colonies‖, because they act on behalf and reflect the government policy and are serving, like outposts, to confine and control more territory, analogous to the -oil stains‖ of an earlier proto-colonizing era.
Notwithstanding their indiscretion according to international law, which forbid changes in the status of areas taken by force and using it for civilian purpose, Israel continues with its active project of colonization, taking over the land and building new settlements, totally take no notice of international and specific United Nations resolutions.
During the third stage, between the June 1967 War and the September 1993 Oslo Agreement, the conflict obtained on both inter-state and inter-communal magnitude. During this period, numerous interstate military encounters transpired, including the War of Attrition beside the Suez Canal (1969-70) and the October 1973 War on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. During the 1982 Lebanese War, the fighting, while mainly involving Israeli and Syrian troops, also involved Palestinian militias.
In 1979, the concentration of the inter-state aspect declined after Egypt, the strongest and most significant Arab state, signed a peace treaty with Israel in March of that year. Egypt's defection from the Arab military alliance, in the mid-1970s, also brought about a decline in the use of main force.
After 1982, there were no large-scale wars between Israel and its neighboring states (Ben-Yehuda and Sandler, 2002;Sela, 2012). Immediately after 1967, Israel attempted to pursue a Palestinian option by entering into dialogue with the leadership of the Palestine. This dialogue became unsuccessful (Gazit, 1985).
What I would like to show is how this desire for land has been effectively personified in the newly acquired geography of the Arab Palestinian localities in Israel. The populace of these localities is formally Israeli citizens in theory, so their significance and well-being in a democratic state should be fully protected under the law.
Yet in ethnocratic practice (Yiftachel, 1999), laws and orders were approved very often to deliberately block the progress of the Arab population and to gratify the ideological ends of the now majority ethnic group in the state's citizenry, the Jews. In late December 2001, reports from Israel specified that Palestinian inhabitants of two villages in the Galilee, namely, Hurfeish and ‗Ein Mahil were engaged in a struggle with Israeli authorities to recover and benefit from their expropriated land. In the case of the village of Hurfeish (upper Galilee), members of the village went on open strike by means of sitting up provisionally a tent on the expropriated turf.
This land is situated at the eastern side of the village on a hill known as Abu Ghamir. They asked the Israeli authorities to return this land to them so that they build their new houses on it. Yet, the case of ‗Ein Mahil village (lower Galilee) was someway more dramatic.
The Israeli establishment sent in bulldozers, shielded by some 500 soldiers and policemen, leveled the land and uprooted over 2000 olive trees. All this was done for the sake of increasing a new settlement project belonging to the Jewish town of Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth). Let us look at the geography of an Arab village or town in Israel and think the way in which these settlements have been treated from the planning standpoint.
A typical Arab town or village can be alienated into three different geographical zones that by and large encircle each other (see fig. 2). The first zone is an area nominated for the extension of the built-up area. It can be segregated by an imaginary line which circles the houses of the town. From the planning viewpoint, this area is often merged into the Master Plan or sometimes called Outline Plan for the settlement-i.e., a plan that designated future development within the site of the village and established land uses. The size of this zone is comparatively small in comparison with the original land held by the inhabitants, a form of redlining to contract Arab land.
The second zone is an area lying instantaneously outside the built-up area and surrounds the village. It is bigger than the nominated built-up area and is officially called the jurisdiction area of the local municipality or council. The size and shape of this area is decided by the Minister of Interior at the time a locality is acknowledged and get municipal status. From the planning perspective, this zone includes the built-up area and added areas that are assigned for future development, including recreational, agricultural and industrial land uses.
The third zone is mainly all residual areas in the original land of the village or town after the deduction of the previous two zones. Such a third zone lies outside the command area of the municipality but belongs geographically to the original land of the village or town. It should be noted that the degree of land holding for each Palestinian locality (including pre-state Jewish colonies) was discriminated on maps since 1928 when the Mandatory Government of Palestine was in office. One can scrutinize the maps accompanying the 1945 Village Statistics and see the precise area of boundaries for all Palestinian localities (Hadawi, 1979).
Considerably, when it appears to planning, the Israeli authorities do not like to confess (or even wish to recognize) that Arab villages in Israel have original lands that they wish to continue to maintain title over and develop as they wish. Such a room in the state, owned by non-Jews, becomes a likely target for disintegration and confiscation. Israel's policies of regional and local planning were intended in part to be an effective tool for fragmentation in a Judaizing state (Falah, 2003). Source: (Falah, 2003) In a critical reading of the the Beit Zarzir master plan made by the Israel Land Administration in 1974 (see figure 3), one observed that the Arab private land was targeted in three different ways: first, the planners intentionally excluded Arab private land (that is settled by dozens of Arab households) from the zoning, a form of spatial gerrymandering similar to urban redlining.
These houses and land parcels were left out of the perimeters of the master plan in spite of the short distance of less than a hundred meters. Declared in effect illegal, such houses are subject to demolition by dint of this omission from the master plan. Second, in looking at the designations of land used within the master plan itself, one can notice that the planners attempted to leave out privately owned Arab lands from designation as residential areas. They have excluded such categories of land while dexterously allocating another type of land for residential use: namely, land that mainly now belongs to the state (impound or transferred to state ownership by various means). In other words, the planners channel the residents to an understanding where they are compelled to lease state lands to build their future homes. These Arab residents were unable to use their own land for such reasons-even though the fact that they lie within the accepted master plan.
Third, in numerous cases, the planner intentionally planned the internal roads between diverse neighborhoods to cut, partition and thus splinter the private Arab lands. This is another approach to minimize the total area of Arab lands. One should note that once private land is allotted for roads, it is automatically confiscated by the state for what is termed the public benefit. Fundamentally, it is by force transferred to state ownership. Source: (Falah, 2003) Table 1 depicted an important distinction between the acquisition of land in Israel/Palestine by Zionists after 1967, which is often unobserved in the literature (Reuveny, 2003).
Prior to 1948, most Jewish land was lawfully purchased from Palestinians. The sale of land was done freely, and both sides benefitted from the trade. From 1948-1967, Israel found itself as the de facto landlord of land evacuate by Palestinians in the wake of the War of 1948. The period after the 1967 war, and particularly after Likud came to power in 1977, has seen an elementary change: land-confiscation became the major tool in the armory of Israelis who wished to strengthen Israeli control of the territories and annex them to Israel. At this time, Israel's practices became quite identical to those of other colonial powers.

Methodology
In the context of interpretive paradigm, qualitative method approach has been used for this study. By reviewing literature, analysis has been done of different narrators who wrote about Palestine conflict, issues, background and current status of this conflict. Different eras of this conflict with confiscation of land has been discussed in this paper with respect to what measures has been taken to resolve the conflict and issues. A Table in this paper depicted an important distinction between the acquisitions of land in Israel/Palestine by Zionists after 1967, which is often unobserved in the literature. After analyzing the problem, root cause of the conflict, different eras of this conflict, measures which has been taken by world to resolve the issue this study comes up with the possible solution by giving Kurt Lewin change model to pursue to resolve this conflict.

Results, Findings and Conclusion
The process of conflict resolution that begin in Oslo in 1993 and which, at the time of writing, appears to have collapsed, was the most noteworthy attempt to constitute the territorial realm within which Palestinians and Israelis practice their respective, and separate, political power. However, while the basic issues of power, sovereignty and self-determination have not changed greatly during the past 50 years, today's structural and geographic veracity diverge considerably. The characteristics, implications, and consequences of delegitimization should be seen as a model that is very prominent in situations of intergroup conflict. When delegitimization becomes established, it marks the entire nature of intergroup relations. Delegitimization permit practices like discrimination, exploitation, eviction, mass killings, and genocide that would otherwise be unthinkable. Without the validation provided by delegitimization, many people would have great obscurity to commit such acts (Bandura, 1999;Kelman, 1973;Staub, 1989).
Focusing on stern and violent conflicts, of the type in which Palestinians and Israelis are involved, delegitimization, on the one hand, is a result of the meticulous characteristics of the obstinate conflict and especially of the rival violent behaviors. In this stratum, delegitimization provides an efficient, simplistic, and un-ambiguous elucidation of the nature of the conflict and its threatening features.
This rationalization, in turn, leads to group mobilization for dealing with the threat and harming the opponent as a preventive or reprisal act. On the other hand, however, the need to justify the violence conceded out and the harm caused strengthen the delegitimization. In the present violent altercation with the Palestinians, harsh Israeli measures augment Palestinians' hatred and delegitimization of Israeli Jews, as well as Palestinians' readiness to carry out enormously harmful acts against them. This cycle will continue until a peaceful resolution come into place. As a solution and to conclude the change of the psychological repertoire detained by the Israeli Jews and Palestinians about each other is an essential condition to achieve this step toward peace.
Legitimization and personalization of rivals are crucial processes, without which it is difficult to accomplish a peace process of any serious kind. In this situation ice has to be break by using Kurt Lewin's change model of Israel through legitimization of dialogue as Palestinian retaliation can be stopped if Israel legitimates their current state of psychological repertoire. They can do it by stopping to take apartheid actions against Palestinians as it will neutralize their psychological repertoire to retaliate against Israel which at the end will bring fruitful peaceful results for both of them. Below figure 4 depicted Kurt Lewin's model of change.

Figure-4. Kurt Lewin model of change
Source: (Burnes, 2004) By approaching above model of change Israelis current psychological repertoire can be unfreeze in a way that once there is dialogue between both parties then the message should be given to Israelis that if they stop activities of destruction and genocide of Palestinian then Palestinian will not retaliate in return. This has two prong implications as it will legitimize both Israelis and Palestinians psychological repertoire. Once Israelis will live in peace and do not indulge in activities where they undermine the rights of humanity as well as Palestinians then Palestinians will not harm them and retaliate in return which bring peace in the region.
After unfreezing the situation then fruitful dialogue can be emerged towards peaceful solution of this conflict which will be the positive change towards outcome. Once peaceful outcome will be achieved through dialogue and peaceful solution then it will take the shape of re-freeze and ensuring and enforcing peaceful solution of conflict. So one can conclude that Israel have more responsibility to change their current psychological repertoire through which